[Download] Paul Clifford: Volume 01 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton, Peter, Ashwell ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free

Circumstance strike through our philanthropy upon our imagination. We see masses of our fellow-creatures the victims of circumstances over which they had no control - contaminated in infancy by the example of parents, their intelligence either extinguished or turned against them, according as the conscience is stifled in ignorance or perverted to apologies for vice. A child who is cradled in ignominy, whose schoolmaster is the felon, whose academy is the House of Correction - who breathes an atmosphere in which virtue is poisoned, to which religion does not pierce - becomes less a responsible and reasoning human being than a wild beast which we suffer to range in the wilderness, till it prowls near our homes, and we kill it in self-defence.