e paupers was drawn up by
the most conspicuous political economists in England. It is low in
quantity, but it is sufficient to support nature; yet within ten years
of the passing of the Poor Law Act, we heard of the paupers in the
Andover Union gnawing the scraps of putrid flesh and sucking the marrow
from the bones of horses which they were employed to crush.'

You see my reason for thinking that our Lazarus of Christianity has some
advantage over the Jewish one. Jewish Lazarus expected, or at least
prayed, to be fed with crumbs from the rich man's table; but _our_
Lazarus is fed with crumbs from the dog's table.

Now this distinction between rich and poor rests on two bases. Within
its proper limits, on a basis which is lawful and everlastingly
necessary; beyond them, on a basis unlawful, and everlastingly
corrupting the framework of society. The lawful basis of wealth is, that
a man who works should be paid the fair value of his work; and that if
he does not choose to spend it to-day, he should have free leave to keep
it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an industrious man working daily, and
laying by daily, attains at last the possession of an accumulated sum of
wealth, to which he has absolute right. The idle person who will not
work, and the wasteful person who lays nothing by, at the end of the
same time will be doubly poor--poor in possession, and dissolute in
moral habit; and he will then naturally covet the money which the other
has saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of
his well-earned wealth, there is no more any motive for saving, or any
reward for good conduct; and all society is thereupon dissolved, or
exists only in systems of rapine. Therefore the first necessity of
social life is the clearness of national conscience in enforcing the
law--that he should keep who has JUSTLY EARNED.

That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction between rich and
poor. But there is also a false basis of distinction; namely, the power
held over those who earn wealth by those who levy or exact it. There
will be always a number of men who would fain set themselves to the
accumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily,
that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, and
more or less cowardly. It is physically impossible for a well-educated,
intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of his
thoughts; as physically impossible as it is for h