109
Hence it will be seen that this vast national emigration scheme was carried out by Moses under circumstances of peculiar difficulty which do not exist in the problem at present under consideration.
There are the same destitute hunger-bitten multitudes, it is true, and the same difficulty arises before us as to what to do with these steadily increasing hordes. The same Egyptian remedy, the construction of vast public works, has been resorted to over and over again, with the effect of giving temporary, but not permanent relief. In some respects the position of the Hebrews in Egypt was preferable to that of the destitute masses in India. They seem at least to have had no lack of food and shelter, and if they had to work hard, and were cruelly treated by their taskmasters, we have become familiar in the Indian villages with many instances of cruelty in the treatment of the low caste by the high such as could not well have been surpassed in Egypt itself, to say nothing of the extortions of the money-lender and the ravages of famine and pestilence referred to elsewhere.
But in many respects the situation is far more hopeful. Our Pharaoh is a Christian Queen, tinder whom we have, not one, but many Josephs, who are really anxious for the.high-est welfare of the submerged masses, and who are likely to hail with gladness (as has been already the case in England) any project which bids fair to alleviate permanently the existing misery. The wealth and power of the British Government and Nation, instead of being used to hinder such a scheme, is likely to be thrown bodily into the scale in favour of all reasonable reform that will help congested labour to redistribute itself and recover its normal balances. ,