Most significant of all, there are no Dissenting chapels,
with one remarkable exception. Fifteen chapels in the three parishes
of Ratcliff, Shadwell, and St. George's have been closed during the
last twenty years. Does this mean conversion to the Anglican Church?
Not exactly; it means, first, that the people have become too poor to
maintain a chapel, and next, that they have become too poor to think
of religion. So long as an Englishman's head is above the grinding
misery, he exercises, as he should, a free and independent choice of
creeds, thereby vindicating and assorting his liberties. Here there is
no chapel, therefore no one thinks; they lie like sheep; of death and
its possibilities no one heeds; they live from day to day; when they
are young they believe they will be always young; when they are old,
so far as they know, they have been always old.
The people being such as they are--so poor, so hopeless, so
ignorant--what is done for them? How are they helped upward? How are
they driven, pushed, shoved, pulled, to prevent them from sinking
still lower? For they are not at the lowest depths; they are not
criminals; up to their lights they are honest; that poor fellow who
stands with his hands ready--all he has got in the wide world--only
his hands--no trade, no craft, no skill--will give you a good day's
work if you engage him; he will not steal things; he will drink more
than he should with the money you give him; he will knock his wife
down if she angers him; but he is not a criminal.
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