136 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



objects of almost all governments seem to be the security of life 

 and property, the prevention of crimes which endanger life and 

 property, and the aggrandizement of those in power. I do not 

 know that more can be expected of them in the way of promoting 

 good morals, excepting in the suppression of the direct instruments 

 of vice, the support of religious institutions, and the provision for 

 the education of the people. A citizen of the United States, from 

 habit, if not from principle, at once resists and abjures any inter 

 ference whatever with his religion, whether considered as matter 

 of worship, or faith, or feeling, because, under the government of 

 his own country, with which he has every reason to be satisfied, 

 all such interference is absolutely prohibited. All attempts at 

 enforcing moral duties by legal enactments would be futile and 

 hazardous, since, as it is with human rights, many of them are 

 imperfect, so it is with human duties, many of them are so unde 

 fined that it would be difficult to prescribe them with any prac 

 ticable exactness j and laws of this nature are necessarily of a 

 negative character. They may forbid that which shall not be 

 done ; but it is much more difficult to enjoin that which shall be 

 done. They may determine by law that provision shall be made 

 that no man actually perish of hunger in the streets j but what 

 degree of provision short of absolute starvation, how much relief, 

 and how much comfort, he shall have, is a matter far more diffi 

 cult to be thus arranged. The provision for the education of 

 the people is more clearly within the power and the duty of an 

 enlightened government, on the ground, not simply of moral ob 

 ligation, but of improving the national industry, increasing, 

 consequently, the national wealth, and of elevating generally 

 the character of the people, and so advancing the general 

 improvement, and promoting public happiness and order. 



and descriptions of the rich. They are the pensioners of the poor, and are main 

 tained by their superfluity. They are under an absolute, hereditary, and inde 

 feasible dependence on those who labor, and are miscalled the poor. Nothing- 

 can be so base and wicked as the political canting 1 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, religion, should be recommended to them ; all the rest is downright 

 fraud. It is horrible to call them the once happy laborers. &quot; EDMUND BURKE. 



