20 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



animosity which watches them to and fro the office 

 or the drawing-room from the street corner. Question 

 it is if any mediaeval soldiery bursting abroad in Sini- 

 gaglia were so brutal as is the street rough, that blot 

 and hideous product of modern civilization. How 

 easy it is to point to the sobriety and the good sense 

 of the working class and smile in assumed compla- 

 cency I What have the sober mass of the working 

 class to do with it ? No more than you or I, or the 

 Rothschilds, or dukes of blood royaL There the thing 

 is, and it requires no great sagacity to see that the 

 present mode of dealing with it is a failure and likely 

 to be worse. If you have gunpowder, you should not 

 put it under hydraulic' pressure. You should not stir 

 it up and hold matches to it to see if it is there. 

 That is what prosecutions and imprisonments on 

 charges of atheism and so on do. It is stirring up 

 the powder and trying it with a match. 



Nor should you put it under hydraulic pressure, 

 which is now being done all over the country, under 

 the new laws which force every wretch who enters 

 a workhouse for a night's shelter to stay there two 

 nights ; under the cold-blooded cruelty which, in the 

 guise of science, takes the miserable quarter of a pint 

 of ale from the lips of the palsied and decrepit in- 

 mates ; which puts the imbecile even the guiltless 

 imbecile on what is practically bread and water. 

 Words fail me to express the cruelty and inhumanity 

 of this crazed legislation. 



Sometimes we see a complacent paragraph in the 

 papers, penned by an official doubtless, congratu- 

 lating the public that the number relieved under the 



