ey personate great men, and, like bad poets, make the heroes of
the piece talk more like us Grub-Street scribblers than in a style
consonant to persons of gravity and importance in the state. It was easy
to demonstrate the cause, and the sole cause, of that rise in the grand
article and first necessary of life. It would appear that it had no more
connection with the war than the moderate price to which all sorts of
grain were reduced, soon after the return of Lord Malmesbury, had with
the state of politics and the fate of his Lordship's treaty. I have
quite as good reason (that is, no reason at all) to attribute this
abundance to the longer continuance of the war as the gentlemen who
personate leading members of Parliament have had for giving the enhanced
price to that war, at a more early period of its duration. Oh, the folly
of us poor creatures, who, in the midst of our distresses or our
escapes, are ready to claw or caress one another, upon matters that so
seldom depend on our wisdom or our weakness, on our good or evil conduct
towards each other!

An untimely shower or an unseasonable drought, a frost too long
continued or too suddenly broken up with rain and tempest, the blight of
the spring or the smut of the harvest will do more to cause the distress
of the belly than all the contrivances of all statesmen can do to
relieve it. Let government protect and encourage industry, secure
property, repress violence, and discountenance fraud, it is all that
they have to do. In other respects, the less they meddle in these
affairs, the better; the rest is in the hands of our Master and theirs.
We are in a constitution of things wherein "_modo sol nimius, modo
corripit imber_."--But I will push this matter no further. As I have
said a good deal upon it at various times during my public service, and
have lately written something on it, which may yet see the light, I
shall content myself now with observing that the vigorous and laborious
class of life has lately got, from the _bon-ton_ of the humanity of this
day, the name of the "_laboring poor_." We have heard many plans for the
relief of the "_laboring poor_." This puling jargon is not as innocent
as it is foolish. In meddling with great affairs, weakness is never
innoxious. Hitherto the name of poor (in the sense in which it is used
to excite compassion) has not been used for those who can, but for those
who cannot labor,--for the sick and infirm, for orphan infancy, for