Another powerful cause which promotes the corruption of men, when
thus suddenly congregated together from different quarters in the
manufacturing districts, is, that the restraints of character,
relationship, and vicinity are, in a great measure, lost in the
crowd. Every body knows what powerful influence public opinion, or
the opinion of their relations, friends, and acquaintances, exercises
on all men in their native seats, or when living for any length of
time in one situation. It forms, in fact, next to religion, the most
powerful restraint on vice, and excitement to virtue, that exists in
the world. But when several hundred thousand of the working classes
are suddenly huddled together in densely peopled localities, this
invaluable check is wholly lost. Nay, what is worse, it is rolled
over to the other side; and forms an additional incentive to
licentiousness. The poor in these situations have no neighbours who
care for them, or even know their names; but they are surrounded by
multitudes who are willing to accompany them in the career of
sensuality. They are unknown alike to each other, and to any persons
of respectability or property in their vicinity. Philanthropy seeks
in vain for virtue amidst thousands and tens of thousands of unknown
names; charity itself is repelled by the hopelessness of all attempts
to relieve the stupendous mass of destitution which follows in the
train of such enormous accumulation of numbers. Every individual or
voluntary effort is overlooked amidst the prodigious multitude, as it
was in the Moscow campaign of Napoleon. Thus the most powerful
restraints on human conduct--character, relations, neighbourhood--are
lost upon mankind at the very time when their salutary influence is
most required to enable them to withstand the increasing temptations
arising from density of numbers and a vast increase of wages.
Multitudes remove responsibility without weakening passion. Isolation
ensures concealment without adding to resolution. This is the true