you would among yourselves, frankly; and tell me how
you would have me call those classes. Am I to call them--would _you_
think me right in calling them--the idle classes? I think you would feel
somewhat uneasy, and as if I were not treating my subject honestly, or
speaking from my heart, if I went on under the supposition that all rich
people were idle. You would be both unjust and unwise if you allowed me
to say that;--not less unjust than the rich people who say that all the
poor are idle, and will never work if they can help it, or more than
they can help.

For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and idle rich; and
there are busy poor and busy rich. Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had
ten thousand a year; and many a man of large fortune is busier than his
errand-boy, and never would think of stopping in the street to play
marbles. So that, in a large view, the distinction between workers and
idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the very heart
and innermost economies of men of all ranks and in all positions. There
is a working class--strong and happy--among both rich and poor; there is
an idle class--weak, wicked, and miserable--among both rich and poor.
And the worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orders
come of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class habitually
contemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people watched
and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be right; and if the busy
poor people watched and rebuked the idle poor people, all would be
right. But each class has a tendency to look for the faults of the
other. A hard-working man of property is particularly offended by an
idle beggar; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant
of the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the
minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the
unjust--but among the unjust _only_. None but the dissolute among the
poor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage
their houses and divide their property. None but the dissolute among the
rich speak in opprobrious terms of the vices and follies of the poor.

There is, then, no class distinction between idle and industrious
people; and I am going to-night to speak only of the industrious. The
idle people we will put out of our thoughts at once--they are mere
nuisances--what ought to be done with _them_, we'll talk of at another
time. But