This is the family.  How strange and yet how undeniable is it that such a house should attract the men whose self-interest, one would imagine, would lead them to shun it, and if they must spend their hard-won earnings, at least to get a good article for their money!  It proves that an appeal to reason is not always the way to manage the working man.  Such a low house is always a nest of agitation:  there the idle, drunken, and ill-conditioned have their rendezvous, there evil is hatched, and from there men take their first step on the road that leads to the gaol.  The place is often crowded at night—­there is scarcely room to sit or stand, the atmosphere is thick with smoke, and a hoarse roar of jarring voices fills it, above which rises the stave of a song shouted in one unvarying key from some corner.  Money pours in apace—­the draughts are deep, and long, and frequent, the mugs are large, the thirst insatiate.  The takings, compared with the size and situation of the house, must be high, and yet, with all this custom and profit, the landlord and his family still grovel.  And grovel they will in dirt, vice, low cunning, and iniquity—­as the serpent went on his belly in the dust—­to the end of their days.

Why do these places exist?  Because in England justice is ever tempered with mercy; sometimes with too much mercy.  The resident squire and magistrate knows the extent of the evil only too well.  He sees it with his own eyes in the village; he sees it brought before him on the bench; the clergyman tells him of it, so do the gamekeeper and the policeman.  His tenants complain of it.  He is perpetually reminded of it, and of what it may ultimately mean as these places become the centres of communistic propagandas.  But though perfectly aware of the evil, to suppress it is quite another matter.

First, you must find the power, and then, having the power, the question arises, is it wise to exercise it?  Though the men who frequent such dens are often of the lowest type, or on their way to that condition, they are not all of that character.  Men of a hard-working and honest stamp go there as well.  All have their rights alike—­rights and liberties which must be held sacred even at some disadvantage.  In short, the reprobate nature of the place may be established, but while it is the chosen resort of the people, or of a section of them, unless some great and manifest harm arises it cannot be touched.  The magistrate will willingly control it as far as lies in his province, but unless directly instructed by the Legislature he cannot go farther.  The truth is, it lies with the labourer himself.  He is not obliged to visit there.  A respectable inn may be found in every village if he desires that wholesome conviviality which, when it does not overstep certain bounds, forms a bond between man and man.  Were such low houses suddenly put down, what an outcry would be raised of favouritism, tyranny, and so on!  When the labourer turns against them himself, he will speedily find powerful friends to assist in attaining the object.