utions are
fore-planned, and not, as everywhere in Europe, the slow and varying
growth of circumstances. But to introduce it into an old society, _hic
labor_, _hoc opus est_! The Augean stable might have been kept clean by
ordinary labour, if from the first the filth had been removed every day;
when it had accumulated for years, it became a task for Hercules to
cleanse it. Alas, the age of heroes and demigods is over!

_Sir Thomas More_.--There lies your error! As no general will ever
defeat an enemy whom he believes to be invincible, so no difficulty can
be overcome by those who fancy themselves unable to overcome it.
Statesmen in this point are, like physicians, afraid, lest their own
reputation should suffer, to try new remedies in cases where the old
routine of practice is known and proved to be ineffectual. Ask yourself
whether the wretched creatures of whom we are discoursing are not
abandoned to their fate without the highest attempt to rescue them from
it? The utmost which your laws profess is, that under their
administration no human being shall perish for want: this is all! To
effect this you draw from the wealthy, the industrious, and the frugal, a
revenue exceeding tenfold the whole expenses of government under Charles
I., and yet even with this enormous expenditure upon the poor it is not
effected. I say nothing of those who perish for want of sufficient food
and necessary comforts, the victims of slow suffering and obscure
disease; nor of those who, having crept to some brick-kiln at night, in
hope of preserving life by its warmth, are found there dead in the
morning. Not a winter passes in which some poor wretch does not actually
die of cold and hunger in the streets of London! With all your public
and private eleemosynary establishments, with your eight million of poor-
rates, with your numerous benevolent associations, and with a spirit of
charity in individuals which keeps pace with the wealth of the richest
nation in the world, these things happen, to the disgrace of the age and
country, and to the opprobrium of humanity, for want of police and order!
You are silent!

_Montesinos_.--Some shocking examples occurred to me. The one of a poor
Savoyard boy with his monkey starved to death in St. James's Park. The
other, which is, if that be possible, a still more disgraceful case, is
recorded incidentally in Rees's Cyclopaedia under the word "monster." It
is only in a huge overgrown city that