"They didn't never go to
school, nor to church nether, except just now and then, sometimes--they had
to mind the shop."
I went on, sickened with the contrast between the highly-bred, over-fed,
fat, thick-woolled animals, with their troughs of turnips and malt-dust,
and their racks of rich clover-hay, and their little pent-house of
rock-salt, having nothing to do but to eat and sleep, and eat again, and
the little half-starved shivering animals who were their slaves. Man
the master of the brutes? Bah! As society is now, the brutes are the
masters--the horse, the sheep, the bullock, is the master, and the labourer
is their slave. "Oh! but the brutes are eaten!" Well; the horses at least
are not eaten--they live, like landlords, till they die. And those who are
eaten, are certainly not eaten by their human servants. The sheep they fat,
another kills, to parody Shelley; and, after all, is not the labourer, as
well as the sheep, eaten by you, my dear Society?--devoured body and soul,
not the less really because you are longer about the meal, there being an
old prejudice against cannibalism, and also against murder--except after
the Riot Act has been read.
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