CHAPTER XIII. 



PAUPERS. 



389. IT is a subject of great exultation in the hireling newspapers 

 of the Borough- villains, that &quot;poverty and poor-rates have found 

 &quot; their way to America.&quot; As to the former it is literally true ; 

 for the poverty that is here has, almost the whole of it, come from 

 Europe : but, the means of keeping the poor arise here upon the 

 spot. 



390. Great sums of money are raised in New York, Philadelphia, 

 Boston, and other great sea-ports, for the maintenance of &quot; the 

 poor &quot; : and, the Boroughmongers eagerly catch at the published 

 accounts of this concern, and produce them as proofs, that misery 

 is as great in America as it is under their iron rod. I will strip 

 them of this pretext in a few minutes. 



391. Let us take New York, for instance. It is notorious that, 

 whatever may be the number of persons relieved by poor rates, 

 the greater part of them are Europeans, who have come hither, at 

 different periods and under circumstances of distress, different, 

 of course, in degree. There is, besides, a class of persons here of 

 a description very peculiar ; namely ; the free negroes. What 

 ever may have been the motives, which led to their emancipation, 

 it is very certain, that it has saddled the white people with a charge. 

 These negroes are a disorderly, improvident set of beings ; and 

 the paupers, in the country, consist almost zvholly of them. Take 

 out the foreigners and the negroes, and you will find, that the 

 paupers of New York do not amount to a hundredth part of those 

 of Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, or London, population for 

 population. New York is a sea-port, and the only great sea-port 

 of a large district of country. All the disorderly crowd to it. 

 It teems with emigrants ; but, even there, a pauper, who is a 

 white, native American, is a great rarity. 



392. But, do the Borough- villains think, that the word pauper 

 has the same meaning here that it has under their scorpion rod ? 

 A pauper under them means a man that is able and ivilling to work, 

 and who does zvork like a horse : and who is so taxed, has so much 

 of his earnings taken from him by them to pay the interest of their 

 Debt and the pensions of themselves and their wives, children, and 

 dependents, that he is actually starving and fainting at his work. 



1 68 



