The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 274: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

REVELATIONS OF THE MONSTER-MAN = 243 more dreadful to hear, “‘ so altered, I say, that the man has become a monster! ”’ “What mean you?” demanded Tim, shuddering, he knew not why, but with that same instinctive feeling which causes a tremor to creep cold and clammy over a man when he enters a room where he knows there is a huge snake, and even before he has yet set eyes upon it. “TI mean,” returned Melmoth, “ that this accursed state of society which titled rogues, pensioned rascals, high-born demireps, and bloated hypocrites love to applaud as a con- summate civilization is nothing more nor less than the cruellest and most savage barbarism; yes, barbarism all the more cruel and all the more savage, because it commits ten thousand crimes daily in the name of humanity, and Christian love, and philanthropy, and justice, and mercy! It plunges families into workhouses, and vaunts its humanity; it dooms four-fifths of the population to misery, wretchedness, and crushing toil, and dares to talk of Christian love being made parctical; it fills the streets with prostitutes and mendicants and inculcates philanthropy; it hangs, transports, or im- prisons men who demand their rights, and these it persecutes in the name of justice; it enacts a hundred thousand laws to coerce the poor, and not one to compel the rich to do their duty, and this is mercy. Now can you wonder, Mr. Meagles, if a sensitive man should be goaded to desperation by such a system as this?’ Can you wonder if an individual, who himself abounds in Christian love and comprehends the true meaning of justice and mercy, should be driven to madness by the horrors which are perpetrated under the cover of our pretended civilization? Can you be surprised if goading tyranny and grinding persecution should pervert all feelings, change all instincts, and turn man’s very nature inside out? It would be wondrous indeed if such were not the effects of so vile asystem! wondrous if the lamb did not now and then change into the lion, and man become the monster. Well, Mr. Meagles, so was it with me, — and I, a man some short while since, have been turned into a monster.”’ “How wildly —how terribly you talk!” exclaimed Meagles, almost frightened — brave and dauntless though he naturally was—by Melmoth’s words and man- ner. “ And yet you must prepare to hear things more wild and CORNICE OC Ss) (CO)