Page:Malthus 1807 A letter to Samuel Whitbread.djvu/19

 grounds for believing that it would be more than compensated to them by the general and permanent improvement of their condition.

The moral obligation of private, active, and discriminate charity I have endeavoured to enforce in the strongest language of which I was capable; and if I have denied the natural right of the poor to support, it is solely, to use the language of Sir F. M. Eden, after his able and laborious Enquiry into the State of the Poor, because "it may be doubted whether any right, the gratification of which seems to be impracticable, can be said to exist." To those who do not admit this conclusion, the denial of such a right may appear to be unfavourable to the poor. But those who are convinced of its truth, may, with the most anxious desire of extending the comforts and elevating the condition of the lower classes of society, rationally express their apprehensions, that the attempt to sanction by law