They were then quite
strangers to the very idea of taking any thought for those who might
chance to be in the way. That has been inculcated of recent years. Those
were the days when there was an irresponsible tyrant in every village,
who could not indeed hang men at his castle gate by feudal right of
gallows, but who could as effectually silence them by setting in motion
laws made by the rich for the rich. It is on record how a poor carrier,
whose only fortune was a decrepit horse, dared presumptuously, against
the will of the lord of the manor, to water his horse at a roadside pond.
For this offence he was taken before the justices and fined, his goods
seized,--
And the knackers had his silly old horse,
And so John Harris was bowled out!
Then there was a still more terrible offence--a hungry man picked up a
rabbit. 'How dared John Bartlett for to venture for to go for to grab
it?' But they put him in gaol and cured him of 'that there villanous
habit,' which rhymes, and the tale thereof may be found by the student of
old times in the 'Punch' of the day--a good true honest manly Punch, who
brought his staff down heavily on the head of abuses and injustice. We do
things every day in the present age equally unjust and cruel, only we
cannot see them; as some one observed, one cannot see the eye because it
is so close to the sight. In the almost sacred name of education
tyrannies are being enacted surpassing anything recorded in the most
outlying village in the most outlying time.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213