that the working body of this rich English Nation has sunk or is
fast sinking into a state, to which, all sides of it considered,
there was literally never any parallel. At Stockport Assizes,--
and this too has no reference to the present state of trade,
being of date prior to that,--a Mother and a Father are arraigned
and found guilty of poisoning three of their children, to defraud
a 'burial-society' of some _31.8s._ due on the death of each
child: they are arraigned, found guilty; and the official
authorities, it is whispered, hint that perhaps the case is not
solitary, that perhaps you had better not probe farther into that
department of things. This is in the autumn of 1841; the crime
itself is of the previous year or season. "Brutal savages,
degraded Irish," mutters the idle reader of Newspapers; hardly
lingering on this incident. Yet it is an incident worth
lingering on; the depravity, savagery and degraded Irishism
being never so well admitted. In the British land, a human
Mother and Father, of white skin and professing the Christian
religion, had done this thing; they, with their Irishism and
necessity and savagery, had been driven to do it. Such instances
are like the highest mountain apex emerged into view; under
which lies a whole mountain region and land, not yet emerged. A
human Mother and Father had said to themselves, What shall we do
to escape starvation? We are deep sunk here, in our dark cellar;
and help is far.--Yes, in the Ugolino Hungertower stern things
happen; best-loved little Gaddo fallen dead on his Father's
knees!--The Stockport Mother and Father think and hint: Our poor
little starveling Tom, who cries all day for victuals, who will
see only evil and not good in this world: if he were out of
misery at once; he well dead, and the rest of us perhaps kept
alive? It is thought, and hinted; at last it is done. And now