THE "REDUCTION TO INIQUITY." 73
I met accidentally in Scotland, recently, a lady of the small landlord class, and the conversation turned upon the poverty of the Highland people. " Yes, they are poor," she said, "but they deserve to be poor; they are so dirty. I have no sympathy with women who won't keep their houses neat and their children tidy."
I suggested that neatness could hardly be expected from women who every day had to trudge for miles with creels of peat and seaweed on their backs.
" Yes," she said, " they do have to work hard. But that is not so sad as the hard lives of the horses. Did you ever think of the horses? They have to work all their lives till they can't work any longer. It makes me sad to think of it. There ought to be big farms where horses should be turned out after they had worked some years, so that they might have time to enjoy themselves before they died."
" But the people ? " I interposed. " They, too, have to work till they can't work longer."
" Oh, yes ! " she replied, " but the people have souls, and even if they do have a hard time of it here, they will, if they are good, go to heaven when they die, and be happy hereafter. But the poor beasts have no souls, and if they don't enjoy themselves here, they have no chance of enjoying themselves at all. It is too bad ! "
The woman was in sober earnest. And I question if she did not fairly represent much that has been taught in Scotland as Christianity. But at last, thank God ! the day is breaking, and the blasphemy that has been preached as religion will not be heard much longer. The manifesto of the Scottish Land Restoration League, calling upon the Scottish people to bind themselves together in solemn league and covenant for the extirpation of the sin and shame of landlordism, is a lark's note in the dawn.
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