Ch. xiii. Of the Necessity of general Principles. 4 1 3 



nagement of his own little farm, or the details of 

 the workhouse in his neighbourhood, he draws a 

 general inference, as is frequently the case, he 

 then at once erects himself into a theorist; and is 

 the more dangerous, because, experience being 

 the only just foundation for theory, people are 

 often caught merely by the sound of the word, 

 and do not stop to make the distinction between 

 that partial experience which, on such subjects, is 

 no foundation whatever for a just theory, and that 

 general experience, on which alone a just theory 

 can be founded. 



There are perhaps few subjects on which hu- 

 man ingenuity has been more exerted than the 

 endeavour to meliorate the condition of the poor ; 

 and there is certainly no subject in which it has 

 so completely failed. The question between the 

 theorist who calls himself practical, and the ge- 

 nuine theorist, is, whether this should prompt us 

 to look into all the holes and corners of work- 

 houses, and content ourselves with mulcting the 

 parish officers for their waste of cheese-parings 

 and candle-ends, and with distributing more soups 

 and potatoes; or to recur to general principles, 

 which shew us at once the cause of the failure, 

 and prove that the system has been from the be- 

 ginning radically erroneous. There is no subject 

 to which general principles have been so seldom 

 applied; and yet, in the whole compass of human 

 knowledge, I doubt if there be one in which it is 

 so dangerous to lose sight of them; because the 

 partial and immediate effects of a particular mode 



