ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 



character of landlords or magistrates, have so acted as to 

 lose the confidence and even gain the hatred of the poor. 

 \Ve look in vain among priests arid bishops of the 

 Established Church for any real comprehension of what 

 this land-question is to the poor ; but we find it in the 

 following words of a dignitary of the older Church, that 

 good man and true follower of Christ, the late Cardinal 

 Manning : 



1 'The land-question means hunger, thirst, nakedness, notice to 

 quit, labour spent in vain, the toil of years seized upon, the 

 breaking up of houses ; the misery, sicknesses, deaths of parents, 

 children, wives ; the despair and wildness which spring up in the 

 hearts of the poor, where legal force, like a sharp harrow, goes over 

 the most sensitive and vital rights of mankind. All this is contained 

 in the land-question." 



But our archbishops and bishops know or care nothing 

 whatever of all this ! They are truly blind guides ; and, 

 as pastors of a Church which should be pre-eminently 

 the Church of the poor, how applicable are the words of 

 Isaiah : 



' ' They are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark ; sleeping, lying down, 

 loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have 

 enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand : they all 

 look to their own way, every one for his gain ! " 



And now, in conclusion, I will give one or two extracts 

 from a book written by a self-taught worker for workers, 

 to show how workers feel on the questions we have touched 

 upon. 



4 * At present the working people of this country live under condi- 

 tions altogether monstrous. Their labour is much too heavy, their 

 pleasures are too few ; and in their close streets and crowded houses, 

 decency and health and cleanliness are well-nigh impossible. It is 

 not only the wrong of this that I resent, it is the ivaste. Look 

 through the slums, and see what childhood, girlhood, womanhood, 

 and manhood have there become. Think what a waste of beauty, 

 of virtue, of strength, and of all the power and goodness that go to 

 make a nation great, is being consummated there by ignorance and 

 by injustice. For, depend upon it, every one of our brothers or 

 sisters ruined or slain by poverty or vice, is a loss to the nation of 

 so much bone and sinew, of so much courage and skill, of so 

 much glory and delight. Cast your eyes, then, over the Registrar- 

 General's returns, and imagine, if you can, how many gentle nurses, 



