Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/75

 granted. To the ardent mind of Mr. Hume platonic expressions of sympathy by the authorities were a mockery while nothing practical was being done; for he was obsessed by the misery of the masses, and the belief that most of it was preventible. b Intimately acquainted with the inner life of the Indian village, and a witness of successive famines with all their horrors, he was familiar with the sorrows of the impoverished peasantry, and in a pamphlet entitled "The Old Man's Hope," he thus made impassioned appeal to the comfortable classes in England: "Ah men! well fed and happy! Do you at all realize the dull misery of these countless myriads? From their births to their deaths, how many rays of sunshine think you chequer their gloom-shrouded paths? Toil, toil, toil; hunger, hunger, hunger; sickness, suffering, sorrow; these, alas! alas! are the key notes of their short and sad existences." The special travail of his soul was for these suffering masses, and his prayer was, "God save the people"; echoing the cry of Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-Law poet:

"When wilt Thou save the People? Oh God of Mercy—when? The People, Lord—the People! Not thrones and crowns, but men.

"Flowers of thy heart. Oh God, are they. Let them not pass like weeds away, Their heritage a sunless day. God save the People!"

With such feelings, and his heart hot within him, it was not in the nature of the man to wait with calmness when nothing was being done. The pool of Bethesda had been stirred, but no healing had followed. Time was passing; the patient was in danger of collapse; but there were no signs of a remedy; and Mr. Hume felt