Their thefts enabled them to
live in the coarse profusion of meat and drink, which was all they
wanted; yet they were always poor because their plunder was knocked
down for so little; they saved nothing; and they were always egged on
to new robberies by the men who sold them drinks, by the women who
took their money from them, and by the honest merchants who attended
the secret markets.
I dwell upon the past because the present is its natural legacy. When
you read of the efforts now being made to raise the living, or at
least to prevent them from sinking any lower, remember that they are
what the dead made them. We inherit more than the wealth of our
ancestors; we inherit the consequences of their misdeeds. It is a most
expensive thing to suffer the people to drop and sink; it is a sad
burden which we lay upon posterity if we do not continually spend our
utmost in lifting them up. Why, we have been the best part of two
thousand years in recovering the civilization which fell to pieces
when the Roman Empire decayed. We have not been fifty years in
dragging up the very poor whom we neglected and left to themselves,
the gallows, the cat, and the press-gang only a hundred years ago. And
how slow, how slow and sometimes hopeless, is the work!
The establishment of river police and the construction of docks have
cleared the river of all this gentry.
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