and gives you thus a most intelligible hint of how much he wants to bury you. The baker and butcher and grocer want extremely to keep you alive, but the Cemetery Company wants nothing so much as your death and burial. Of all the disgusting and impudent forms in which the trading spirit has yet shewed itself, this is the most intolerable. And what do these honourable companies offer their ground at? They make a pretty enough sort of a burial-ground, as if they would say, "See what a nice garden we have made to plant you in. Do, good fellow, make haste and die, or we cannot realize our cent. per cent.' But when you get their bill of charges, the thing is not quite so attractive, Here are the charges of a company whose printed circular was sent into my house the other day. To say nothing of vaults of from 1261., down to a niche for a single coffin in one at 10%. 10s., with fees for interment, 4l. 4s.; of brick graves in the open ground, at from twenty to thirty guineas, and four guineas fees; burying a child in a catacomb at six guineas; the cost of a private grave in the open ground-that of ground 6 feet by 2 feet-three guineas, with fees 1. 11s. 6d., that is, four guineas and a half for the ground and fees, of a single corpse! But, besides this, you have the ground traded out to you in all sorts of profitable forms-that is, profitable to the company; a reserved ground, at five guineas each body, etc., 1 Then again you have numerous lists of extra fees for interment at any hour before three o'clock or after sunset, for a weather-screen, for certificate, for register, searching register each year, maintaining graves, etc. etc., of a most alarming character. Add to this Mr. Chadwick's statement, derived from the evidence of a large undertaker, that each funeral, for all above the working class, costs from 60l. to 1007.; and who indeed does not justly fear death?! In this country we are the prey of two monsters-the OVERTAKER and the UNDERTAKER; of which the Overtaker, DEATH, is the least of the two. Had St. Paul addressed his sublime queries, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" especially to us English, the answer would have been quickly given, thus: Ques. O death, where is thy sting? Ques. O grave, where is thy victory? Ans. In the Joint-stock Cemetery; associated little spots of earth, to bring in from ten to five hundred guineas each. It is surely high time that we began to think on a reform in this matter. Why do not religious communities, or social communities, take this thing into their own hands, and, without regard to profit, have their own burial-ground, their own hearse, mourning coaches, and all necessary apparatus? The Friends have long done this. They have in many places a plain hearse, and they have wisely discarded all unnecessary pomp. In the matter of this pomp, too, there is nothing which requires a reform so urgently on the score of good taste, as the set-out of an English funeral. Is there any person who has seen a funeral abroad, who, on his return, is not most disagreeably affected at the monstrous apparition of an English funeral? Look at a German funeral, the highest expense of which, as given above, is about 31. sterling-that is, for the highest of the five fixed classes, and may be respectably conducted in the fifth class for 11. Look on this, and see how much more there is of true grace. The hearse or funeral car is low, light, and graceful. It is covered with a black pall, upon which is laid a garland. Then come the mourning coaches, and that is all! But if the invention of a committee of the most notorious possessors of a diseased taste had been put on the rack to produce something most flagrantly barbarous, it could have brought forth nothing so hideous as an English funeral procession. First goes a black fellow with a huge quantity of crape sticking out from his hat and hanging down his back; then comes another carrying a great black board stuck all over with huge plumes; then the hearse, a piece of huge and heavy monstrosity, all covered again with these black giant bushes of plumes; the pall-bearers equally ugly; two fellows marching after with black poles, with big bunches of black stuff or crape on them, and the mourning coaches made as ungainly as possible. It is the most ugly procession that mortal fancy ever vomited up in its most putrid fever of the brain. And for this do Englishmen pay from 60l. to 1007., while the wiser Germans, for a far more tasteful and classical train and apparatus, pay but three! CHAPTER VI. THE SYSTEM OF PATRONAGE AND EMPLOYMENT. HAVING thus established a vast coercive power over the people, in the Ariny, the Censorship, the Police, the German governments might have calculated on a tolerably easy maintenance of its arbitrary rule. In what shape was public discontent to shew itself? Under the ponderous weight of military and police, already described, how were the people physically to shew resistance; under the knife of the secret censor, how was one single cry for help to issue from the popular throat? But tyranny is always suspicious; no security seems strong enough for its self-defence, and German tyrants certainly hit on the most subtle and effective of all modes of strengthening the physical and intellectual bondage, to which it had consigned the people, and that was by the simple process of mothers with hungry children-stopping their mouths with pudding. For this purpose, the most extraordinary scene of patronage and employment which the world ever saw was gradually displayed, the most extraordinary scheme of universal dependence on government, organised into a perfect |