Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1).djvu/391

Rh that I may say is certainly not likely to increase that dissatisfaction. I have advanced nothing concerning your situation, but its real case, but what may be proved to be true. I defy any one to point out a falsehood that I have uttered in the course of this address. It is impossible but the blindest among you must see that every thing is not right. This sight has often pressed some of the poorest among you to take something from the rich man's store by violence, to relieve his own necessities. I cannot justify, but I can pity him. I cannot pity the fruits of the rich man's intemperance, I suppose some are to be found who will justify him. This sight has often brought home to a day-labourer the truth which I wish to impress upon you, that all is not right. But I do not merely wish, to convince you that our present state is bad, but that its alteration for the better, depends on your own exertions and resolutions.

But he has never found out the method of mending it, who does not first mend his own conduct, and then prevail upon others to refrain from any vicious habits which they may have contracted—much less does the poor man suppose that wisdom as well as virtue is necessary, and that the employing his little time in reading and thinking, is really doing all that he has in his power to do towards the state, when pain and vice shall perish altogether.

I wish to impress upon your minds, that without virtue or wisdom, there can be no liberty or happiness; and that temperance, sobriety, charity, and independence of soul, will give you virtue—as thinking, enquiring, reading, and talking, will give you wisdom. Without