Page:Fors Clavigera, Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain.djvu/11

3 whence very doleful creatures, of other temper and colour than Lily, are mewing to get in.

Indeed, my pious public, you cannot, at present, by any coal or blanket subscription, do more than blind yourselves to the plain order "Give to him that asketh thee; and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away."

To him that asketh us, say the public,—but then—everybody would ask us.

Yes, you pitiful public,—pretty nearly everybody would: that is indeed the state of national dignity, and independence, and gushing prosperity, you have brought your England into; a population mostly of beggars, (at heart); or, worse, bagmen, not merely bearing the bag—but nothing else but bags;—sloppy, star-fishy, seven-suckered stomachs of indiscriminate covetousness, ready to beg, borrow, gamble, swindle, or write anything a publisher will pay for.

Nevertheless your order is precise, and clear; ’Give to him that asketh thee'—even to the half of your last cloak—says St. Martin; even to the whole of it, says Christ: ’whosoever of you forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple.'

And you yourself, who have a house among the lakes, and rooms at Oxford, and pictures, and books, and a Dives dinner every day, how about all that?’

Yes, you may well ask—and I answer very distinctly and frankly, that if once I am convinced (and it is