Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/111

Rh same New England city, the extremes of society are brought together. Here is health, elegance, cultivation, sobriety, decency, refinement—I wish there was more of it; there is poverty, ignorance, drunkenness, violence, crime, in most odious forms—starvation! We have our St. Giles's and St. James's; our nobility, not a whit less noble than the noblest of other lands, and our beggars, both in a Christian city. Amid the needy population, misery and death have found their parish. Who shall dare stop his ears, when they preach their awful denunciation of want and woe? Good men ask, "What shall we do?" Foreign poverty has had this good effect; it has shamed or frightened the American beggar into industry and thrift. Poverty will not be removed till the causes thereof are removed. There are some who look for a great social revolution. So do I; only I do not look for it to come about suddenly, or by mechanical means. "We are in a social revolution, and do not know it. While I cannot accept the peculiar doctrines of the Associationists, I rejoice in their existence. I sympathize with their hope. They point out the evils of society, and that is something. They propose a method of removing its evils. I do not believe in that method, but mankind will probably make many experiments before we hit upon the right one. For my own part, I confess I do not see any way of removing poverty wholly or entirely, in one or two, or in four or five generations. I think it will linger for some ages to come. Like the snow, it is to be removed by a general elevation of the temperature of the air, not all at once; and will long hang about the dark and cold places of the world. But I do think it will at last be overcome, so that a man who cannot subsist will be as rare as a cannibal. "Ye have the poor with you always," said Jesus; and many who remember this, forget that He also said, "And whensoever ye will ye may do them good." I expect to see a mitigation of poverty in this country, and that before long.

It is likely that the legal theory of property in Europe will undergo a great change before many years; that the right to bequeath enormous estates to individuals will be cut off; that primogeniture will cease, and entailments be broken, and all monopolies of rank and power come