But the throats of the rich ought not to be cut, nor their magazines plundered; because, in their persons, they are trustees for those who labor, and their hoards are the banking-houses of these latter.  Whether they mean it or not, they do, in effect, execute their trust,—­some with more, some with less fidelity and judgment.  But, on the whole, the duty is performed, and everything returns, deducting some very trifling commission and discount, to the place from whence it arose.  When the poor rise to destroy the rich, they act as wisely for their own purposes as when they burn mills and throw corn into the river to make bread cheap.

When I say that we of the people ought to be informed, inclusively I say we ought not to be flattered:  flattery is the reverse of instruction.  The poor in that case would be rendered as improvident as the rich, which would not be at all good for them.

Nothing can be so base and so wicked as the political canting language, “the laboring poor.”  Let compassion be shown in action,—­the more, the better,—­according to every man’s ability; but let there be no lamentation of their condition.  It is no relief to their miserable circumstances; it is only an insult to their miserable understandings.  It arises from a total want of charity or a total want of thought.  Want of one kind was never relieved by want of any other kind.  Patience, labor, sobriety, frugality, and religion should be recommended to them; all the rest is downright fraud.  It is horrible to call them “the once happy laborer.”

Whether what may be called the moral or philosophical happiness of the laborious classes is increased or not, I cannot say.  The seat of that species of happiness is in the mind; and there are few data to ascertain the comparative state of the mind at any two periods.  Philosophical happiness is to want little.  Civil or vulgar happiness is to want much and to enjoy much.

If the happiness of the animal man (which certainly goes somewhere towards the happiness of the rational man) be the object of our estimate, then I assert, without the least hesitation, that the condition of those who labor (in all descriptions of labor, and in all gradations of labor, from the highest to the lowest inclusively) is, on the whole, extremely meliorated, if more and better food is any standard of melioration.  They work more, it is certain; but they have the advantage of their augmented labor:  yet whether that increase of labor be on the whole a good or an evil is a consideration that would lead us a great way, and is not for my present purpose.  But as to the fact of the melioration of their diet, I shall enter into the detail of proof, whenever I am called upon:  in the mean time, the known difficulty of contenting them with anything but bread made of the finest flour and meat of the first quality is proof sufficient.