ld, undoubtedly, confer
considerable pleasure, while it continued to be a novelty, but their
improved circumstances, when they became accustomed to them, would soon
be out-balanced by the _ennui_ produced by want of employment; while,
the motive to exertion being removed, and the taste for luxuries
stimulated, they or the next generation would probably lapse again into
poverty, which would be all the more keenly felt for their temporary
enjoyment of prosperity. Moreover, I should be injuring the community at
large, by withdrawing a number of persons from industrial employments
and transferring them to the non-productive classes. Again, if the five
thousand a year were withdrawn not from my personal expenditure, but
from industrial enterprises in which I was engaged, I should be actually
depriving the families of many workmen and artisans of the fruits of
their honest labour for the purpose of enabling a smaller number of
families to live in sloth and indolence. But, now, suppose the case I
have imagined to become a general one, and that it was a common
occurrence for rich men to dispense their superfluous wealth amongst
their poorer neighbours, without demanding any return in labour or
services. The result would inevitably be the creation of a large class
of idle persons, who would probably soon become a torment to themselves,
while their descendants, often brought up to no employment and with an
insufficient income to support them, would probably lapse into
pauperism. The effect on the community at large, if the evil became
widely spread, would be the paralysis of trade and commerce. Of course,
I am aware that these evils would be, to a certain extent, modified in
practice by the good sense of the recipients, some of whom might employ
their money on reproductive industries instead of on merely furnishing
themselves with the means of living at their ease; but that the general
tendency would be that which I have intimated no one, I think, who is
acquainted with the indolent propensities of human nature, can well
doubt. Similar results might be shewn to follow from an indiscriminate
distribution of charity on a smaller scale. It seems hard-hearted to
refuse a shilling to a beggar, or a guinea to a charitable association,
when one would hardly miss the sum at the end of the week or the month.
But, if we could trace all the consequences, direct and remote, of these
apparent acts of benevolence, we should often see that the sm