Nor could she resist the belief that the feeling of the rich
towards the poor was not that sentiment of unmingled hate and
scorn which she associated with Norman conquerors and feudal
laws. She would ascribe rather the want of sympathy that
unquestionably exists between Wealth and Work in England, to
mutual ignorance between the classes which possess these two
great elements of national prosperity; and though the source
of that ignorance was to be sought in antecedent circumstances
of violence and oppression, the consequences perhaps had
outlived the causes, as customs survive opinions;
Sybil looked towards Westminster, to those proud and
passionate halls where assembles the Parliament of England;
that rapacious, violent, and haughty body, that had brought
kings and prelates to the block; spoiled churches and then
seized the sacred manors for their personal prey; invested
their own possessions with infinite privileges, and then
mortgaged for their state and empire the labour of countless
generations. Could the voice of solace sound from such a
quarter?
Sybil unfolded a journal which she had brought; not now to be
read for the first time; but now for the first time to be read
alone, undisturbed, in a scene of softness and serenity.
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