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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: spend its entire national wits for a couple of months in weighing
evidence of a single ruffian's having done a single murder; and for
a couple of years see its own children murder each other by their
thousands or tens of thousands a day, considering only what the
effect is likely to be on the price of cotton, and caring no wise to
determine which side of battle is in the wrong. Neither does a
great nation send its poor little boys to jail for stealing six
walnuts; and allow its bankrupts to steal their hundreds of
thousands with a bow, and its bankers, rich with poor men's savings,
to close their doors "under circumstances over which they have no
control," with a "by your leave;" and large landed estates to be
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