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“… It is the practice of some to say that nothing but industry and sobriety is needed to place and keep every worker in prosperity. Here you have a refutation of this doctrine. A more industrious, more moral man than Benjamin Rushton never lived ….. More than sixty years of that life were spent in unremitting toil. No energy, no skill, no industry was wanting – and what is the result? Death has been the only almoner who rescued him from want – unless his fellow workmen helped him.
The labour of sixty years left the labourer nothing to live on when past toil; but age that should enrich him made him poorer.
…..But why do we honour our departed brother by this unprecedented gathering? Not because he was a worker only – that most are whom I address – but because he was a Chartist! There dies a patriot – but here a movement lives! There is the grave – but here is the resurrection. There sleeps one heart imbued with truth – here lives truth in myriads of hearts!
Men die, but history lasts - and you make history. Then what is the greatest monument you can raise to the departed – the triumph of his cause! What is the noblest epitaph you can write upon his tomb?
He lived for freedom! And here freedom lives!
.....We bury an honoured friend – but with it we do not bury our hopes – our strength – our future; we gather fresh force from his example and fresh honour from his name And so I consign him not to that cold grave, but to your warm hearts; not to a mute epitaph but a living memory…..
We meet to honour a departed brother: then, who is the man we honour? There rests a working man we honour! There rests a producer- there rests an increaser of his country’s wealth and a benefactor of the human race. He has left his life as our legacy, his example as his glorious testament.
It reads us a lesson – so does every life. No one passes through the world a cipher; no one can live without either injuring or benefiting society. The veriest drone that ever lived is, in reality, an active man, the non-producer who lounges life away on silken couches is guilty of a terrible activity… For he who eats without producing eats the share of some one else and where there is not enough for all that means a social theft. A share do I say? He who produces not by hand or brain has no share and what he takes is robbery. To produce nothing means to starve somebody – and idleness is but another name for murder. .....”
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