"I cannot sell my
loom," he continued, "at the price of old firewood, and it
cost me gold. It is not vice that has brought me to this, nor
indolence, nor imprudence. I was born to labour, and I was
ready to labour. I loved my loom and my loom loved me. It
gave me a cottage in my native village, surrounded by a garden
of whose claims on my solicitude it was not jealous. There
was time for both. It gave me for a wife the maiden that I
had ever loved; and it gathered my children round my hearth
with plenteousness and peace. I was content: I sought no
other lot. It is not adversity that makes me look back upon
the past with tenderness.
"Then why am I here? Why am I, and six hundred thousand
subjects of the Queen, honest, loyal, and industrious, why are
we, after manfully struggling for years, and each year sinking
lower in the scale, why are we driven from our innocent and
happy homes, our country cottages that we loved, first to bide
in close towns without comforts, and gradually to crouch into
cellars, or find a squalid lair like this, without even the
common necessaries of existence; first the ordinary
conveniences of life, then raiment, and, at length, food,
vanishing from us.
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