48 [Senate 



Nevertheless, the fact is notorious that the great body of our rural 

 population somehow contrive to work a little harder and fare a little 

 poorer than any other class in the community. 



We learn from reliable statistics that paupers increase among us 

 much faster than population. The number that live from hand to 

 mouth, only one step from the poor-house, is increasing with fearful 

 rapidity. There are already more than 500,000 people in this State 

 wholly dependent on their daily labor for their daily bread. 



No government can exceed us in bestowing idle praise on honest 

 productive industry. But what has this Legislature ever done to se- 

 cure from the grasp of avarice, to each hungry mouth and naked 

 back, a fair equivalent for all the food and raiment called into exist- 

 ence by the mind and hands which God has given to each person 1 



In our fierce scramble to exchange with the common farmer ten 

 hours' work for ten days' work, are we sure that we do not trample 

 under our feet every principle of justice, and every right of humanity? 



What great public good is there in a system of legislation, which 

 operates practically in a way that gives to one family ten times more 

 than it really needs, and compels twenty families to live on half al- 

 lowance 1 How long shall we foster in the breasts of a favored few, 

 that morbid " love of money" which is the " root of all evil ?" 



Never till this ,unnatural appetite for needless wealth shall be aba- 

 ted as a public nuisance, by removing from the masses the ignorance 

 that feeds it, will agricultural labor be as well rewarded as the misem- 

 ployed intellect, which now reaps where it has never sown. The in- 

 creasing pauperism, suffering and crime, so common in the land, spring 

 not so much from a lack of the comforts of civilized life, as from their 

 unequal and unjust distribution. 



If the legislature will do as much to instruct the producing classes 

 how to keep and enjoy the entire proceeds of their honest toil, as it 

 does to teach all non-producers how to exchange their shadows for the 

 workingman's substance, nine-tenths of our growing taxes for the sup- 

 port of the poor, and the punishment of crime, will cease forever. On 

 the contrary, so long as three-fourths of any community, give the pro- 

 ducts of three, four, or six hands, for the little earnings of one hand, 

 just so long will hungry mouths, naked backs, and houseless heads, 

 claim assistance by a tax on the property of those that are better off. 

 According to the official report, the direct tax in this State for the 



