NOTE. 



Those who lielieve that our social condition approaches perfection, will 

 think the above word harsh and exaggerated, but it seems to me the only 

 word that can be truly applied to us. We are the richest country in the 

 world, and yet one-twentieth of our population are parish paupers, and one- 

 thirtieth known criminals. Add to these, the criminals who escape detec- 

 tion, and the poor who live mainly on private charity (which according to Dr. 

 Hawkesley, expends seven millions sterling annually in London alone), and we 

 may be sure that more than one-tenth of our population are actually Pau- 

 pers and Criminals. Both these classes we keep idle or at unproductive la- 

 bor, and each criminal costs us annually in our prisons more than the wages 

 of an honest agricultm-al laborer. We allow over a hundred thousand per- 

 sons known to have no means of subsistence but by crime, to remain at large 

 and prey upon the community, and many thousand children to grow up be- 

 fore our eyes in ignorance and vice, to supply trained criminals for the next 

 generation. This, in a country which boasts of its rapid increase in wealth, 

 of its enormous commerce and gigantic manufactures, of its mechanical skill 

 and scientific knowledge, of its high civilization and its pui'e Christianity, I 

 can but terai a state of social barbarism. We also boast of our love of jus- 

 tice, and that the law protects rich and poor alike, yet we retain money fines 

 as a punishment, and make the very first steps to obtain justice a matter of 

 expense — in both cases a barbarous injustice, or denial of justice to the poor. 

 Again, our laws render it possible, that, by mere neglect of a legal form, and 

 contrary to his own wish and intention, a man's property may all go to a 

 stranger, and his own children be left destitute. Such cases have happened 

 through the operation of the laws of inheritance of landed property ; and 

 that such imnatural injustice is possible among us, shows that we are in a 

 state of social barbarism. One more example to justify my use of the term, 

 and I have done. We permit absolute possession of the soil of our country, 

 with no legal rights of existence on the soil, to the vast majority who do not 

 possess it. A great landholder may legally convert his whole property into 

 a forest or a hunting-ground, and expel every human being who has hitherto 

 lived upon it. In a thickly-populated country like England, where every 

 acre has its owner and its occupier, this is a power of legally destroying his 

 fellow-creatures ; and that such a power should exist, and be exercised by 

 individuals, in however small a degree, indicates that, as regards true social 

 science, we are still in a state of barbarism. 



