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Only I want to know how the lower orders the dregs, the scum, the dirt under our feet, the slaves that do all the work and get starved for it how these trampled wretches regard the question. If they are happy, submissive, contented, delighted to lick the boots of their betters, my conscience will be clear to accept their homage, and their money for any stick of mine they look at.
He said the words distinctly, so that the whole circle might have heard, and was turning away, when Mr. Brithwood fired up as an angry man does in a losing game. "Humiliate yourself! What do you mean, sir? Wouldn't you be only too thankful to crawl into the houses of your betters, any how, by hook or by crook? Ha! ha! I know you would.
In truth, he began to conceive hopes of making the serjeant instrumental to his design on Amelia; in other words, to convert him into a pimp; an office in which the colonel had been served by Atkinson's betters, and which, as he knew it was in his power very well to reward him, he had no apprehension that the serjeant would decline an opinion which the serjeant might have pardoned, though he had never given the least grounds for it, since the colonel borrowed it from the knowledge of his own heart.
I am persuaded both children and the lower class of readers hate books which are written down to their capacity, and love those that are more composed for their elders and betters. I will make, if possible, a book that a child will understand, yet a man will feel some temptation to peruse should he chance to take it up. It will require, however, a simplicity of style not quite my own.
Vices and crimes excite hatred and reproach; failings, weaknesses, and awkwardnesses, excite ridicule; they are laid hold of by mimics, who, though very contemptible wretches themselves, often, by their buffoonery, fix ridicule upon their betters.
"If I may be so bold as to put in my oar, your honour," said the veteran boatswain, on whom the command of the schooner had fallen, as he now advanced, rolling his quid in his mouth, and dropping his hat on his shoulder, while the fingers of the hand which clutched it were busily occupied in scratching his bald head, "if I may be so bold, there is another chap here as might better sarve your honour's purpose than that 'ere fat Canadian, who seems to think only of stuffing while his betters are fasting."
The steady workman who moves into the town generally betters himself from the point of view of immediate material advantages. But in regarding the movement as a whole a much more serious question confronts us. What is the net result upon the physical well-being of the nation of this drafting of the abler and better country folk into the towns? Let the death-rate first testify.
Not only a want of philanthropic feeling in their betters, but an inherited contempt for all small industry and retail dealing, has helped to hide them away from us: an inherited contempt, because it is in fact a survival from an older social system, when the citizen did not need the work of the artisan and small retailer, but supplied all his own wants within the circle of his household, i.e. his own family and slaves, and produced on his farm the material of his food and clothing.
In the May weather, the doors of low dwellings were open, and the black and white pigs wandered unhindered from the filthy street without to the misery within, fattening on the poor waste of the desperately poor, fattening in the sun that drove their wretched betters to the daily fight with starvation, fattening in the vile filth to which starvation was dully indifferent, since cleanliness meant labour that brought no bread.
"And so you have got to fight it out with me," continued the other. "Man against man. Are you agreed?" Again the sergeant-major nodded stolidly. Why not? Their betters acted thus. "Shall we settle the thing now at once?" Heppner nodded for the third time. It was all one to him, so long as he could get to rest at last.
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