To reduce his strength one-half was to reduce
one-half his chances of independence, and to multiply the
prospects of his continuous application for STATE AID.
The money spent in stopping a hole in a Dutch dyke is doubtless
better invested than if it were to be retained until a vast
breach had laid half a kingdom under water. Surely your
Hollander would agree to be mulcted in one-third of his fortune
rather than run the hazard!
Every day through this wealthy country there are men and women
busy marring the little images of God, that are by-and-by to be
part of its public-shadowing young spirits, repressing their
energy, sapping their vigor or failing to make it up, corrupting
their nature by foul associations, moral and physical. Some are
doing it by special license of the devil, others by Act of
Parliament, others by negligence or niggardliness. Could you
teach or force these people--many unconsciously engaged in the
vile work--to run together, as men alarmed by sudden danger, and
throw around a helpless generation influences and a care more
akin to your own home ideal, would you not transfigure the next
epoch--would not your labor and sacrifice be a GOD-WORK, reaching
out weighty, fruit-laden branches far into the grateful future?
'Tis by feeling and enjoining everywhere the need of such a
movement as this that you, O all-powerful woman! can carry your
will into the play of a great economic and social reform.
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