Page:The reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor (IA b21971961 0001).pdf/19

Rh sanction to, into facts and existing circumstances—this has never yet been fairly and fully made. For a period of more than two centuries, the attention of the nation has been engaged by a succession of projects, for the management of the poor;—almost all of them originating in benevolence; and every one of them received in a manner, and with an interest, that distinctly marked the public anxiety upon the subject. The good effects however, as to the poor, have been limited and uncertain:—the project having originated not in them, but in the projector;—not in fact, but in speculation.

We all feel how far we can be led by encouragement—by kindness —by management, and while we retain the idea of choice and freewill. We all know, in our own instances, how little is to be effected by compulsion;—that, where force begins inclination ceases.—Give then its full effect to the master-spring of action, on