church establishment) recommended, some years ago, the passing of a law to put an end to the giving of parish relief, though he recommended no law to put an end to the enormous taxes paid by poor people.  In his book he said, that the poor should be left to the law of Nature, which, in case of their having nothing to buy food with, doomed them to starve.  They would ask nothing better than to be left to the law of Nature; that law which knows nothing about buying food or any thing else; that law which bids the hungry and the naked take food and raiment wherever they find it best and nearest at hand; that law which awards all possessions to the strongest; that law the operations of which would clear out the London meat-markets and the drapers’ and jewellers’ shops in about half an hour:  to this law the parson wished the parliament to leave the poorest of the working people; but, if the parliament had done it, it would have been quickly seen, that this law was far from ’dooming them to be starved.’

341.  Trusting that it is unnecessary for me to express a hope, that barbarous thoughts like those of Malthus and his tribe will never be entertained by any young man who has read the previous Numbers of this work, let me return to my very, very poor man, and ask, whether it be consistent with justice, with humanity, with reason, to deprive a man of the most precious of his political rights, because, and only because, he has been, in a pecuniary way, singularly unfortunate?  The Scripture says, ‘Despise not the poor, because he is poor;’ that is to say, despise him not on account of his poverty.  Why, then, deprive him of his right; why put him out of the pale of the law, on account of his poverty?  There are some men, to be sure, who are reduced to poverty by their vices, by idleness, by gaming, by drinking, by squandering; but, the far greater part by bodily ailments, by misfortunes to the effects of which all men may, without any fault, and even without any folly, be exposed:  and, is there a man on earth so cruelly unjust as to wish to add to the sufferings of such persons by stripping them of their political rights?  How many thousands of industrious and virtuous men have, within these few years, been brought down from a state of competence to that of pauperism!  And, is it just to strip such men of their rights, merely because they are thus brought down?  When I was at ELY, last spring, there were in that neighbourhood, three paupers cracking stones on the roads, who had all three been, not only rate-payers, but overseers of the poor, within seven years of the day when I was there.  Is there any man so barbarous as to say, that these men ought, merely on account of their misfortunes, to be deprived of their political rights?  Their right to receive relief is as perfect as any right of property; and, would you, merely because they claim this right, strip them of another right?  To say no more of the injustice and the cruelty, is there reason, is there common sense in this?  What! if a farmer or tradesman be, by flood or by fire, so totally ruined as to be compelled, surrounded by his family, to resort to the parish-book, would you break the last heart-string of such a man by making him feel the degrading loss of his political rights?