ould be a vain presumption in statesmen to think they can do it.
The people maintain them, and not they the people. It is in the power of
government to prevent much evil; it can do very little positive good in
this, or perhaps in anything else. It is not only so of the state and
statesman, but of all the classes and descriptions of the rich: they are
the pensioners of the poor, and are maintained by their superfluity.
They are under an absolute, hereditary, and indefeasible dependence on
those who labor and are miscalled the poor.

The laboring people are only poor because they are numerous. Numbers in
their nature imply poverty. In a fair distribution among a vast
multitude none can have much. That class of dependent pensioners called
the rich is so extremely small, that, if all their throats were cut, and
a distribution made of all they consume in a year, it would not give a
bit of bread and cheese for one night's supper to those who labor, and
who in reality feed both the pensioners and themselves.

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 recommend