In the west it exhibits a people, not in
the centre of Africa, the steppes of Asia, the backwoods of America--not
some newly-discovered tribes of South Australia, or among the Polynesian
Islands--not Hottentots, Bushmen, or Esquimaux--neither Mahommedans nor
Pagans--but some millions of our own Christian nation at home, living in
a state and condition low and degraded to a degree unheard of before in
any civilized community; driven periodically to the borders of
starvation; and now reduced by a national calamity to an exigency which
all the efforts of benevolence can only mitigate, not control; and under
which thousands are not merely pining away in misery and wretchedness,
but are dying like cattle off the face of the earth, from want and its
kindred horrors! _Is this to be regarded in the light of a Divine
dispensation and punishment? Before we can safely arrive at such a
conclusion, we must be satisfied that human agency and legislation,
individual oppressions, and social relationships have had no hand in
it_."[221] Was it not a money question, when a labourer at task work
could only earn 8d. or 8-1/4d. a-day?--not enough to buy one meal of
food for a moderate sized family.
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