THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



AFBIL. 1884. 



THE COMIKG SLAVERY. 



By HEEBEET SPENCEE. 



THE kinship of pity to love is shown among other ways in this, that 

 it idealizes its object. Sympathy with one in suffering suppresses, 

 for the time being, remembrance of his transgressions. The feeling 

 which vents itself in " poor fellow ! " on seeing one in agony, excludes 

 the thought of "bad fellow," which might at another time arise. 

 Naturally, then, if the wretched are unknown or but vaguely known, 

 all the demerits they may have are ignored ; and thus it happens that 

 when, as just now, the miseries of the poor are depicted, they are 

 thought of as the miseries of the deserving poor, instead of being 

 thought of, as in large measure they should be, as the miseries of the 

 undeserving poor. Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets 

 and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout so- 

 ciety are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged, and 

 none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their own 

 misdeeds. 



On hailing a cab in a London street, it is surprising how generally 

 the door is officiously opened by one who expects to get something for 

 his trouble. The surprise lessens after counting the many loungers 

 about tavern-doors, or after observing the quickness with which a 

 street-performance, or procession, draws from neighboring slums and 

 stable-yards a group of idlers. Seeing how numerous they are in every 

 small area, it becomes manifest that tens of thousands of such swarm 

 through London. " They have no work," you say. Say rather that 



▼OL. XXIV. — 46 



