Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/99

Rh equally rich; still few or grandfathers of finch. Then there in the class that is miserable. Some of them are supported by public charity, some by private, some of thorn by their toil alone—but altogether they form a mass of men who only stay in the world, and do not live, in the best sense of that word. Such are the great divisions of society in respect to property. However, tho lines between these three classes are net sharp and distinctly drawn. There are no sharp divisions in nature; but, for our convenience, we distinguish classes by their centre, where they are most unlike, and not by their circumference, where they intermix; and resemble each other. The line between the miserable and comfortable, between the comfortable and rich, is not distinctly drawn. The centre of each class is obvious enough, while the limits thereof are a dissolving view.

The poor are miserable. Their food is the least that will sustain nature,—not agreeable, not healthy; their clothing scanty and mean, their dwellings inconvenient and uncomfortable, with roof and walls that let in the cold and the rain—dwellings that are painful and unhealthy; in their personal habits they are commonly unclean. Then they are ignorant; they have no time to attend school in childhood, no time to read or to think in manhood, even they have learned to do either before that. If they have the time, few men can think to any profit while the body is uncomfortable. The cold man thinks only of the cold; the wretched of his misery. Besides this, they are frequently vicious. I do not mean to say they are wicked in the sight of God. I never see a poor man carried to gaol for some petty crime, or even for a great one, without thinking that probably, in God's eye, the man is far better than I am, and, from the State's prison or scaffold, will ascend into heaven and take rank a great ways before me, I do not mean to say they are wicked before God; but it is they who commit the minor crimes, against decency, sobriety, against property and person, and most of the major crimes, against human life. I mean that they commit the crimes that get punished by law. They crowd our courts; they tenant your gaols; they occupy your gallows. If some man would write a book describing the life of all the men hanged in Massachusetts for fifty years