Had they been reduced to a like
miserable condition while engaged in killing their fellow-creatures on
the field of battle or on the deck of carnage, a grateful country
would have housed them in a palace, and abundantly supplied their
every want; but they were merely employed in procuring the necessaries
of life for their fellows in the mine or the factory, and as nobody
owes them any gratitude for that, they must do what they can. And
behold what they do: they descend, being fit for nothing else, to the
level of the foreign music-grinder, and, mounted on a kind of
bed-carriage, are drawn about the streets of London by their wives or
children; being furnished with a blatant hand-organ of last century's
manufacture, whose ear-torturing growl draws the attention of the
public to their woful plight, they extort that charity which would
else fail to find them out. If there be something gratifying in the
fact, that this is the only class of Britons who follow such an
inglorious profession, there is nothing very flattering in the
consideration, that even these are compelled to it by inexorable
necessity.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Among some of the continental nations, Justice, though blind, is
not supposed to be deaf; she has, on the contrary, a musical ear, and
compels the various grinders of harmony to keep their instruments in
tune, under the penalty of a heavy fine.
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