342.  Here, young man of sense and of spirit; here is the point on which you are to take your stand.  There are always men enough to plead the cause of the rich; enough and enough to echo the woes of the fallen great; but, be it your part to show compassion for those who labour, and to maintain their rights.  Poverty is not a crime, and, though it sometimes arises from faults, it is not, even in that case, to be visited by punishment beyond that which it brings with itself.  Remember, that poverty is decreed by the very nature of man.  The Scripture says, that ‘the poor shall never cease from out of the land;’ that is to say, that there shall always be some very poor people.  This is inevitable from the very nature of things.  It is necessary to the existence of mankind, that a very large portion of every people should live by manual labour; and, as such labour is pain, more or less, and as no living creature likes pain, it must be, that the far greater part of labouring people will endure only just as much of this pain as is absolutely necessary to the supply of their daily wants.  Experience says that this has always been, and reason and nature tell us, that this must always be.  Therefore, when ailments, when losses, when untoward circumstances of any sort, stop or diminish the daily supply, want comes; and every just government will provide, from the general stock, the means to satisfy this want.

343.  Nor is the deepest poverty without its useful effects in society.  To the practice of the virtues of abstinence, sobriety, care, frugality, industry, and even honesty and amiable manners and acquirement of talent, the two great motives are, to get upwards in riches or fame, and to avoid going downwards to poverty, the last of which is the most powerful of the two.  It is, therefore, not with contempt, but with compassion, that we should look on those, whose state is one of the decrees of nature, from whose sad example we profit, and to whom, in return, we ought to make compensation by every indulgent and kind act in our power, and particularly by a defence of their rights.  To those who labour, we, who labour not with our hands, owe all that we eat, drink and wear; all that shades us by day and that shelters us by night; all the means of enjoying health and pleasure; and, therefore, if we possess talent for the task, we are ungrateful or cowardly, or both, if we omit any effort within our power to prevent them from being slaves; and, disguise the matter how we may, a slave, a real slave, every man is, who has no share in making the laws which he is compelled to obey.