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62
THE GOSHEN OF THE WEST END.

in Little Ireland or the miserable courts in George's Road. What could the inhabitants of these palaces know of their neighbours? They lived in an atmosphere of their own. They were in a Goshen, where the plagues of Egypt might not come. Of the doings and the sufferings of some million and a half of their fellow-citizens they were as ignorant as if separated by the wide Pacific. They did not even hear of the sufferers, but occasionally as grumblers, discontented with the fate assigned them, Brothers! Could the inhabitants of this great mansion, with all its wellordered and luxurious appointments, recognize a dirty, potato-fed, half-naked, unshaved, and unwashed Spitalfield weaver as his brother? Could he sympathize with such? And were one of the palace-inhabiting, Goshen-sheltered men to be asked what he had done for his brother in Spitalfields, there would be the expression of astonishment like that of Cain, that the welfare of that brother should ever be considered a matter with which he had anything to do. Not that there was utter heartlessness. But there was complete separation of classes. A separation as complete as if they dwelt not in the same world—as destructive of all mutual sympathies—and thus the extremes of luxury and wretchedness were next-door neighbours, who knew not each other, and never interchanged a kind word. It was in this territory of exclusiveness that the "representatives" of the people, as they call themselves, resided. There were the abodes of the possessors of the "hereditary wisdom" that, with the title to which it is attached, is the qualification for a seat in the legislature. Could it be wondered at that legislation should be a class legislation when it proceeded from those who knew nothing beyond the little world in which they moved,—said nothing —heard nothing—not willing to see, or hear, or know anything of suffering poverty? Substantial remedies for deep-felt national evils were not to be expected from such men. Were multitudes complaining for want of food?