370 Of the Direction of our Charity. Bk. iv. 



relieving all, and making the degree of distress 

 alone the measure of our bounty. But as expe- 

 rience has proved, I believe, without a single ex- 

 ception, that poverty and misery have always- 

 increased in proportion to the quantity of indis- 

 criminate charity, are we not bound to infer, rea- 

 soning as we usually do from the laws of nature, 

 that it is an intimation that such a mode of dis- 

 tribution is not the proper office of benevolence ? 



The laws of nature say, with St. Paul, " If a 

 " man will not work, neither shall he eat." They 

 also say that he is not rashly to trust to Providence. 

 They appear indeed to be constant and uniform 

 for the express purpose of telling him what he is 

 to trust to, and that, if he marry without 'a rea- 

 sonable prospect of supporting a family, he must 

 expect to suffer want. These intimations appear 

 from the constitution of human nature to be ab- 

 solutely necessary, and to have a strikingly bene- 

 ficial tendency. If in the direction either of our 

 public or our private charity we say that though 

 a man will not work, yet he shall eat; and though 

 he marry without being able to support a family, 

 yet his family shall be supported ; it is evident 

 that we do not merely endeavour to mitigate the 

 partial evils arising from -general laws, but regu- 

 larly and systematically to counteract the obviously 

 beneficial effects of these general laws themselves. 

 And we cannot easily conceive, that the Deity 

 should implant any passion in the human breast 

 for such a purpose. 



In the great course of human events, the best- 



