He was now wasted in energy both of mind and
body, reduced to utter poverty, with a large family of children, too
young to assist him, without means of retrieving his circumstances, his
wife and himself gaunt skeletons, his farm neglected, his house wrecked,
and his offices falling to ruin, yet every day bringing the half-year's
term nearer! Oh, ye who riot on the miseries of such men--ye who roll
round the easy circle of fashionable life, think upon this picture! To
vile and heartless landlords, who see not, hear not, know not those to
whose heart-breaking toil ye owe the only merit ye possess--that of
rank in society--come and contemplate this virtuous man, as unfriended,
unassisted, and uncheered by those who are bound by a strong moral duty
to protect and aid him, he looks shuddering into the dark, cheerless
future! Is it to be wondered at that he, and such as he, should, in the
misery of his despair, join the nightly meetings, be lured to associate
himself with the incendiary, or seduced to grasp, in the stupid apathy
of wretchedness, the weapon of the murderer? By neglecting the people;
by draining them, with merciless rapacity, of the means of life; by
goading them on under a cruel system of rack rents, ye become not their
natural benefactors, but curses and scourges, nearly as much in reality
as ye are in their opinion.
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