Note Return to text — REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES AND NEGLECTED CRIMES.

Moralists and pietists have been so utterly blind to the nature of CRIMINAL OSTENTATION, that society is not shocked to read in parallel columns the crushing agonies of famine and pestilence, and the costly revels of aristocracy, or the millions wasted on royal families, that manifest about as much concern for the suffering million as a farmer feels for the squealing of his pigs in cold weather. No one is surprised or shocked to hear that in India, a land famed for poverty, famine, and pestilence, the maharajah of Baroda could offer a pearly and jewelled carpet, ten feet by six, costing a million of dollars, as a present to the woman who had pleased his fancy.11 How many lives and how much of agony did that carpet represent in a country where five cents pays for a day’s labor? Twenty million days’ labor is a small matter to a petty prince.