Untitled - African American History

SLAVERY IN GREAT BRITAIN. CXXX111
room, of all sexes and ages, filth, disease, vice, and
crime, are the inevitable consequences. To this, add a
degree of ignorance appalling, in so old and civilized a
nation, and the result is not astonishing that so many of
the children should be thieves, and the women prosti-
tutes, and the men paupers. 1
The Parliament of Great Britain, at the instance of
great and good men, have not been backward in striving,
by legislation, to stay the oppressor's hand ; to give air
and light, and food and clothing to the caged children ;
to encourage all improvement in the lodging-houses for
the poor; in fact, to remedy every evil within the reach
of their legislation, without giving too violent a shock
to the great agricultural, mechanical, and commercial in-
terests. NOT has the philanthropy of England been
exclusively
extended abroad. Private and associated
charity have done much to relieve suffering humanity.
Yet after all that charity enlightened by religion, and
legislation guided by humanity, can do, the picture w r e
have drawn is not overcolored, when applied to the ac-
tual condition of many of their poor. How these evils
shall be remedied is a problem yet unsolved, and to-day
taxing the thoughts and burdening the hearts of the wise
and good of the land.
1 In addition to the Reports to Parliament, I have relied upon the fol-
lowing authorities : Mayhew's London Labor and London Poor ; Cobden's
White Slaves of England ; Dickens's Household Words, ix, 398 ;
Silliman's Second Visit to Europe, i, 31 ; Dr. Durbin's Observations
in Europe, ii, 120, 170, 171, ch. xii, at large; The Glory and Shame
of England; Prime's Travels in Europe and the East, i, 149, 173, 182 ;
Chartism, by Thomas Carlyle.