The thought of a garden can bring one to many considerations. The word is provocative, and it may be understood as the cultivation of any endeavor. When people gather and form government, they are gardening the future of their society; and when they neglect this garden of laws and limitations, they allow the harvest to grow rank with the weeds of injustice and barbarity.
As I currently read "Redburn," a travelogue by Herman Melville lying within the genre of fiction but decidedly about the author's own experiences as a merchant marine, I am morally awakened by chapter 37 entitled "What Redburn Saw in Launcelott's-Hey." The scene describes a depraved horror of need and destitution in 1830's Liverpool that makes inadequate for the purpose words like poverty and squalor, and needs description beyond my reach to convey.
Thanks to Dickens and others who wrote with a social conscience, I am aware of the hopeless destitution that was suffered by the English poor in the early 19th century. But this scene put forward by Melville, as both a social indictment and an expression of outrage against the English government, is unparalled in its forcefulness. Though only five pages long in the Library of America version that I'm reading, it wallops into awareness one's sensibilities more thoroughly than might a five hundred page treatise. You'll need to scroll to chapter XXXVII. Read Chapter 37 here.
Those asserting that government has no business assisting those in serious need should be forced to read this chapter. It illustrates how the past has shown that when government refuses to provide folks aid when truly needed, barbarism in the form of passive neglect slowly destroys women and children, and along with them all that defines a moral and humane state.
No comments:
Post a Comment