Page:The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States.djvu/47

Rh with their own pinching poverty? To write or preach in this manner is adding insult to oppression.

I have now stated, briefly and generally, the situation of the poor in most European nations, with regard to the necessaries of life, their employments, and their moral and spiritual instruction; and I have avoided entering into the description of the particular hardships, diseases, and instances of mortality, which so much abound in it—these being too obvious and affecting to need a representation to people of any observation, and endued with any sensibility; and, besides, my intention is rather to find out the causes of, and, if possible, a remedy for, the evils, than to give a laboured description of them. I shall first endeavour to discover the cause of their want of a sufficient quantity of the necessaries of life.

I enter on the causes of the scarcity of the necessaries of life in general, I shall premise a few words relating particularly to the great scarcity