Page:Appeal to the wealthy of the land.djvu/11

Rh persons feel disposed to set down the mass as worthless. A little reflection will prove the folly and injustice of this procedure. The estimable part of the poor, who struggle with their poverty, who resist the temptations to fraud and transgressions of every kind, are generally in the back-ground—they escape notice. Hundreds of them may be within a few squares of us, and never attract our attention. Let us suppose a case. A man has, in the course of a year, dealings with five hundred of those persons who depend on their labour for support: among this large number, he discovers ten or a dozen tricky and worthless, who are on the watch to cheat and deceive him. Will he not, in his conversation about his affairs (and how many are there who have no other subject of conversation?) dwell more on the frauds and tricks of these, than on the correct conduct of the four hundred and eighty or four hundred and ninety? And will not superficial persons be disposed to generalize and stigmatize the whole from his statements?

Far from being surprised that among the poor there are to be found many worthless persons, it appears, that the surprise, all things considered, ought to be, that there are so few. In the first place, it is well known that we are the creatures of education and example; and how lamentably deficient the mass of the poor are in point of education and example, we all know. No small proportion have had no education; others only a mere smattering: and the examples which they are to copy, are, alas! too generally ill qualified to form them as useful or estimable members of society.

The higher orders of society have generally enjoyed the advantages of a good education and good examples: the censorial eye of the public is on them, and serves as a curb to restrain them from guilt: regard to character has a powerful operation. Nevertheless, do we not unfortunately see considerable numbers of them who lapse from the paths of rectitude? How powerfully do such lapses tend to extenuate those of the poor, who are under no such controlling or restraining circumstances, and have so much stronger incentives to aberration!

The population of Philadelphia is about 160,000 souls, of whom about 100,000 depend on the labour of their hands; 40,000 are probably labourers, hodmen, seamstresses, families of workmen on the canals and rail-roads. The utmost industry and economy they can employ will scarcely suffice to sustain them, if not unremittingly employed; and few of them are so fortunate as to be employed through the year. These last descriptions of persons are those whose case I have undertaken to consider.

Philadelphia, June 20, 1833.

The first position on which I propose to animadvert is—

So far is this from being true, that a very cursory reflection would satisfy any candid person, that in the most prosperous times and countries, there are certain occupations, which, by the influence of fashion or other causes, suffer occasional stagnations. There are other occupations, at which employment is at all times precarious—and others, again, which furnish little or no employment at certain seasons of the year.

To the first class belong all those who minister to the fanciful wants of society—wants contracted or expanded by the whim or caprice of fashion. For instance, the Prince of Wales having, some years since, laid aside his