Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/110

106 men to work, and so get. rid of the poverty ; and this I take it is the providential design thereof. Poverty, like an armed man, stalks in the rear of the social march, huge and haggard, and gaunt and grim, to scare tho lazy, to goad the idle with his sword, to trample and slay the obstinate sluggard. But he treads also tho feeble under his feet, for no fault of theirs, only for the misfortune of being born in the rear of society. But in poverty there is also a tendency to intimidate, to enfeeble, to benumb. The poverty of the strong man compels him to toil; but with the weak, the destruction of the poor is his poverty. An active man is awakened from his sleep by tho cold; he arises and seeks more covering; the indolent, or the feeble, shiver on till morning, benumbed and enfeebled by the cold. So weakness begets weakness; poverty, poverty; intemperanoe, intemperance ; crime, crime.

Everything is against the poor man; he pays the dearest tax, the highest rent for his house, the dearest price for all ho eats or wears. The poor cannot watch their opportunity, and take advantage of the markets, as other men. They have the most numerous temptations to intemperance and crime; they have the poorest safeguards from these evils. If the chief value of wealth, as a rich man tells us, be this—that "it renders its owner independent of others," then on what shall the poor men lean, neglected and despised by others, looked on as loathsome, and held in contempt, shut Ont even from the sermons and the prayers of respectable men? It is no marvel if they cease to respect themselves.

The poor are the most obnoxious to disease; their children are not only most numerous, but most unhealthy. More than half of the children of that class perish at the age of five. Amongst the poor, infectious diseases rage with frightful violence. The mortality in that class is amazing. If things are to continue as now, I thank God it is so. If Death is their only guardian, he is at least powerful, and does not scorn his work.

In addition to the poor, whom these causes have made and kept in poverty, the needy of other lands flock hither. The nobility cf Old England, so zealous in pursuing their game, in keeping their entails unbroken, and primogeniture safe, have sent their beggary to New' England, to Be supported by the crumbs that fall from our table. So, in the