SERMON XIV.*

PAUPERISM.

MARK xiv. 7.

FOR YE HAVE THE POOR WITH YOU ALWAYS, AND WHENSOEVER

YE WILL YE MAY DO THEM GOOD.

THE poor we have always with us. While man remains as he is and society retains its present form we may despair of any complete exception to this fact. Property is to a certain extent recognised even in those countries, where the fruits of human subsistence are of spontaneous growth as well as those where even the smallest acquisitions are made only by rigid frugality and severe toil. Wherever the institution of property exists poverty of course follows in its train; property becomes an object of necessity or desire; as it is acquired, or used, or desired, it becomes more and more the object of necessity and desire. Luxury and indulgence multiply human wants to an indefinite extent; and to an indefinite extent increase the chances and occasions

* Preached at the Quarterly Charity Lecture, Boston, March, 1832.

of poverty. In proportion as luxury prevails in a community poverty increases. The standard of living, of success, of wealth, is raised; fewer men can reach it; the wants of men are increased and are more difficult to be supplied; luxuries themselves are transformed into absolute necessaries of life; men become more needy and dependent; and want and dependence constitute poverty, though there may not be an actual deficiency of the means of sustaining life; of food, clothing, and shelter. Indeed the class of poor, who perhaps suffer most acutely and are therefore most entitled to commiseration, are not those, who, never having risen above the lowest condition of life, do not feel the want of comforts and indulgences of which they do not know the value; but those, who having been brought up in competency, affluence, and luxury, and acquired all the susceptibilities, which such habits create, are reduced to the bare necessaries of life; feel the bitter cravings of countless artificial wants, to which they have been enured; and are extremely sensitive to every cold blast that approaches them.

Poverty, we say, is an evil necessarily incidental, it would seem, to the present condition of society. The community presents an infinite diversity of condition of all shades and colors very strangely blended and intermingled. The miserable hovel rises under the walls of the palace, and the beggar in his abject wretchedness lies at the gate of the man who fares sumptuously every day.

We all agree that by nature men have equal rights. Placed on this earth by the Creator, they have a common claim upon the goods and advantages, which his bounty presents to their enjoyment. We admit likewise that the institution of property is wholly

artificial and conventional, the institution of society, and not of nature. We do not say that no such thing was designed by Divine Providence; or that it is incompatible with, or opposed to, God's designs. We must allow, that even by nature some men are endowed with extraordinary gifts; physical strength, intellectual ability, which belong properly and wholly to themselves; which cannot be taken from them without violence; which they cannot impart to others at their pleasure; in which others cannot be admitted to participate; but which at the same time, in the acquisition and enjoyment of the goods of life, give them in every form of society undeniable advantages and preferences over others, not so endowed by nature. Yet the right or power by which an individual appropriates to himself any larger portion of this world's goods than others have or can acquire, and is secured in their enjoyment and possession, is the institution of society; the result of positive enactment or mutual compact, the right of law rather than of

nature.

The distribution of property presents many curious examples and results. You may find innumerable instances of men, who do nothing yet have every thing; of others, who do every thing and yet have nothing; of men, who seem to have no claims upon society, reposing sullenly upon their uncounted thousands, neither consuming themselves nor imparting the smallest measure to others; and others, virtuous and deserving, but scarcely possessing the means of preserving life, and without a spot where to lay their heads. You may see likewise large estates descending by entailment through successive generations to the most worthless, miserable, and profligate, who live only to abuse these extraordinary gifts, and to make their property the instrument of

their own degradation, and of corruption and ruin to others; and others, whose lives are adorned with every virtue, and whose supreme desire it is to do good to their fellow men, but who are unable, even by the most anxious and laborious efforts, to acquire the means of making comfortable those whom God has placed upon their care. You see too every day the caprices of fortune, as we choose to call them. An hour enriches, or an hour may beggar a man. The blind selection of some number among thousands, the turning of a die, a storm, a flood, a gust of wind, a little concealed worm in the timbers of one of your floating palaces, may turn the golden flood of wealth into your lap; or bury all your treasures in the deep. We call these the caprices of fortune, the results of chance. Yet in this world, in God's government there is no such thing as chance. Every thing proceeds by fixed laws, by determined principles, which we cannot suspend or alter any more than we can suspend or alter the great principles and laws of nature, the principle of gravitation for example, which is felt throughout the universe, controls the planet as it does the atom, calls back the comet in his most eccentric wanderings to his starting place, and keeps all worlds and systems in harmony.

The laws of society which regulate the disposition of property, must themselves be in unison with the laws of nature, or they would be wholly unavailing. The laws of society, as far as they can do it, determine the acquisition, security, and descent of property. The laws of nature cannot be amended; it would be presumptuous to speak of it. The laws of society are susceptible of amendment; and must be regulated by circumstances; but those which are of a general character, the result of the wisdom and experience of ages,

exercised upon a subject, which of all others has been most interesting to mankind, it would be hazardous to touch without the gravest consideration. Wealth is oftentimes hoarded up and suffered to rust in the close coffers of its possessor; it is often abused and squandered upon what is worthless or pernicious; it is often entailed upon the effeminate, indolent, and profligate. This of course comes from the circumstance of a man's property being at his own disposal and from his being allowed to transmit it to his children. But these are the reasons which induced him to earn and accumulate; and if you take from him the power of disposing of it and the right of securing its advantages to those for whose benefit even the most miserly parent feels more concern than for his own, you remove the greatest incitements to industry, enterprise, frugality, and good conduct.

Plans for equalizing the condition of all men, proposals for establishing a perfect community of goods, Agrarian laws, which should divide all the estates of the country equally among the citizens of the commonwealth, have been often started by fanciful and benevolent minds, who have been shocked with the oppressions and insolence of unbridled wealth, and the degradation and misery of unprotected poverty; and urged forward by others, who being too indolent to labor, and too profligate and vicious to secure to themselves even the common advantages within their réach, and too malignant and rapacious not to hate all those above them, and desire to possess all that they can obtain by right or by wrong, have wished to see every thing thrown into a common heap, that by chance they might secure to themselves, in a general scramble by plunder, what they are unwilling to get by honest labor; but it needs