They raise their mitred fronts, even in palaces, to proclaim and lament
over the spiritual destitution which so extensively prevails--but they
seldom condescend to notice _physical_ destitution. When the cry of
famine rings throughout the land they coolly recommend rapid church
extension, thus literally offering stone to those who ask them for
bread. To get the substantial and give the spiritual is their practical
Christianity. To spiritualise the poor into contentment with the
'nourishing broth' from thrice boiled bones, and to die of hunger rather
than demand relief, are their darling objects. Verily, if these and men
like these do not grind the faces of the poor, the Author of this
Apology is unable to conceive in what that peculiar process consists. In
Scripture we are told, the bread of the poor is his life, and they who
defraud him thereof are men of blood; and by whom are the poor defrauded
of their bread if not by those who, like the Bishops of London and
Chester, legislate for poverty as if it were a crime, and lend theft
sanction to a system which, while it necessitates the wholesale pinching
and screwing even in the commonest necessaries of life 'of independent
labourers,' does also necessitate the wholesale starvation of still more
wretched paupers? Formerly our 'surplus populations' were 'killed off'
by bullet and sabre, now they are got rid of in Poor Law Unions by a
process less expensive perhaps, but not less effectual.
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