for the poor. That provision should be large, and
not disgraceful to them. At present there are very strange notions in
the public mind respecting the receiving of alms: most people are
willing to take them in the form of a pension from government, but
unwilling to take them in the form of a pension from their parishes.
There may be some reason for this singular prejudice, in the fact of the
government pension being usually given as a definite acknowledgment of
some service done to the country;--but the parish pension is, or ought
to be, given precisely on the same terms. A labourer serves his country
with his spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with
his sword, pen, or lancet: if the service is less, and therefore the
wages during health less, then the reward, when health is broken, may be
less, but not, therefore, less honourable; and it ought to be quite as
natural and straight-forward a matter for a labourer to take his
pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as
for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because
he has deserved well of his country.

130. If there be any disgrace in coming to the parish, because it may
imply improvidence in early life, much more is there disgrace in coming
to the government: since improvidence is far less justifiable in a
highly educated than in an imperfectly educated man; and far less
justifiable in a high rank, where extravagance must have been luxury,
than in a low rank, where it may only have been comfort. So that the
real fact of the matter is, that people will take alms delightedly,
consisting of a carriage and footmen, because those do not look like
alms to the people in the street; but they will not take alms consisting
only of bread and water and coals, because everybody would understand
what those meant. Mind, I do not want any one to refuse the carriage who
ought to have it; but neither do I want them to refuse the coals. I
should indeed be sorry if any change in our views on these subjects
involved the least lessening of self-dependence in the English mind: but
the common shrinking of men from the acceptance of public charity is
not self-dependence, but mere base and selfish pride. It is not that
they are unwilling to live at their neighbours' expense, but that they
are unwilling to confess they do: it is not dependence they wish to
avoid, but gratitude. They will take places in which they know ther