yet, notwithstanding this equality, he is to risk all, and, if he escape, he is still to be denied an equality of rights!  If, in such a state of things, the artisan or labourer, when called out to fight in defence of his country, were to answer:  ’Why should I risk my life?  I have no possession but my labour; no enemy will take that from me; you, the rich, possess all the land and all its products; you make what laws you please without my participation or assent; you punish me at your pleasure; you say that my want of property excludes me from the right of having a share in the making of the laws; you say that the property that I have in my labour is nothing worth; on what ground, then, do you call on me to risk my life?’ If, in such a case, such questions were put, the answer is very difficult to be imagined.

339.  In cases of civil commotion the matter comes still more home to us.  On what ground is the rich man to call the artisan from his shop or the labourer from the field to join the sheriff’s posse or the militia, if he refuse to the labourer and artisan the right of sharing in the making of the laws?  Why are they to risk their lives here?  To uphold the laws, and to protect property.  What! laws, in the making of, or assenting to, which they have been allowed to have no share? Property, of which they are said to possess none?  What! compel men to come forth and risk their lives for the protection of property; and then, in the same breath, tell them, that they are not allowed to share in the making of the laws, because, and ONLY BECAUSE, they have no property!  Not because they have committed any crime; not because they are idle or profligate; not because they are vicious in any way; out solely because they have no property; and yet, at the same time, compel them to come forth and risk their lives for the protection of property!

340.  But, the PAUPERS?  Ought they to share in the making of the laws?  And why not?  What is a pauper; what is one of the men to whom this degrading appellation is applied?  A very poor man; a man who is, from some cause or other, unable to supply himself with food and raiment without aid from the parish-rates.  And, is that circumstance alone to deprive him of his right, a right of which he stands more in need than any other man?  Perhaps he has, for many years of his life, contributed directly to those rates; and ten thousand to one he has, by his labour, contributed to them indirectly.  The aid which, under such circumstances, he receives, is his right; he receives it not as an alms:  he is no mendicant; he begs not; he comes to receive that which the law of the country awards him in lieu of the larger portion assigned him by the law of Nature.  Pray mark that, and let it be deeply engraven on your memory.  The audacious and merciless MALTHUS (a parson of the