The Big Society?

Have you ever deliberately set yourselves to imagine and measure the suffering, the guilt, and the mortality caused by the failure of any large-dealing merchant, or largely-branched bank? Take it at the lowest possible supposition - count, at the fewest you choose, the families whose means of support have been involved in the catastrophe. Then, on the morning after the intelligence of ruin, let us go forth amongst them in earnest thought ... strike open the private doors of their chambers, and enter silently into the midst of the domestic misery; look upon the old men, who had reserved for their failing strength some remainder of rest in the evening-tide of life, cast helplessly back into its trouble and tumult; look upon the active strength of middle age suddenly blasted into incapacity - its hopes crushed, and its hardly-earned rewards snatched away in the same instant - at once the heart withered, and the right arm snapped; look upon the piteous children, delicately nurtured, whose soft eyes, now large with wonder at their parents' grief, must soon be set in the dimness of famine; and, far more than all this, look forward to the length of sorrow beyond - to the hardest labour of life, now to be undergone either in all the severity of unexpected and inexperienced trial, or else, more bitter still, to be begun again, and endured for the second time, amidst the ruins of cherished hopes and feebleness of advancing years, embittered by the continual sting and taunt of the inner feeling that it has all been brought about, not by the fair course of appointed circumstance, but by miserable chance and wanton treachery; and, last of all, look beyond all this - to the shattered destinies of those who have faltered under the trial, and sunk past recovery to despair. And then consider whether the hand which has poured this poison into all the springs of life be one whit less guilty red with human blood than that which literally pours the hemlock into the cup, or guides the dagger to the heart?

(John Ruskin, The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy, A Lecture delivered at Tunbridge Wells, February 16th, 1858)