propertied and landed democracy, heavily
burdened with taxes and interest on mortgages, pinched by necessity,
and pinching itself by thrift. No class is so hard to want, so ruthless
to idleness, as a peasantry which wins for itself a bare subsistence by
constant toil, and provides for the future by constant self-denial.

The temper of a progressive and prosperous democracy is very different.
Many, perhaps most of the American States, are without a Poor Law.
Slavery dispensed with it, and the race antagonism consequent on the
manner and circumstances of emancipation has rendered a thorough
revision of social relations--a systematic attempt to meet the new and
very exceptional conditions of Southern society in its present
form--hitherto impossible. Yet, by the confession of one of their
bitterest enemies, no people are so tender, so generous, so lavish of
active sympathy towards the sick, the bereaved, and the unfortunate. In
States which, probably from an instinct under their circumstances just
and wise, refuse to recognize the right to subsistence by a legal
provision for the poor, whereby the idle and vicious would chiefly
benefit, nevertheless paupers by the visitation of God--the aged and
infirm, the blind, the deaf, and dumb, lunatics and idiots--are amply
provided by public and private charity with all that can alleviate their
lot: or teach them, as far as possible, the means of self-dependence.
American charity towards the victims of great natural catastrophes, far
more common there than here--communities burned out by a forest fire, or
ruined by a flood--and yet more the personal sacrifices made, the
readiness with which men and women devote their leisure thought, and
energy to the supervision of public institutions, the efficient
distribution of public subscriptions, the succour and nursing of a
community stricken by pestilence, are above praise. A careful study of
Transatlantic examples might put our own boasted lavishness of charity
to shame.

Even in England, organized private charity, wisely directed, might
surely contrive to effect a discrimination between those who are paupers
by vice, unthrift, and idleness, and those whom God has striken for no
fault that humanity is entitled to pass judgment upon; between the
fitting inmates of the workhouse, and those--helpless from age,
infirmity, accident, and disease--to whom the associations of the
workhouse are humiliating, painful and demoralizing. Nothing is mo