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THE

RIGHTS OF THE POOR,

AND THE

PUNISHMENT OF OPPRESSORS.

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"Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make "the poor of the land to fail: saying, when will the new moon "be gone that we may sell corn? And the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the Ephah small and the Shekel 66 great, and falsifying the balances by deceit; that we may 46 "buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? Shall not the land "tremble for this; and every one mourn that dwelleth there"in? I will turn your feasting into mourning, saith the Lord "God, and your songs into lamentations."

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AMOS, ch. viii. v. 4 to 10.

SEEING that man is what we find him to be, the existence of poverty seems indispensible, whether a people be in a wild or in a civilized state. God does not actually furnish us with food and raiment: he only tenders us the means of furnishing ourselves with even the bare necessaries of life. He sends the fowls, the fishes, the beasts, the fruits, the trees, the rocks; but, Defore we can apply them to our sustenance or our co vering, we must perform labour upon them. The means are, indeed, most abundantly supplied; labour is sure to be repaid a hundred fold for every movement

it duly makes; but, still, there must be labour performed before any thing in the way of food or raiment can be obtained.

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Man, and, indeed, it is the same with every living thing, delights in ease; and labour, though conducive to health, and, therefore, in the end, to pleasure, does, in itself, partake of the nature of pain; it fatigues the body, or the mind, and, therefore, to cause it to be performed a motive is requisite, and a motive, too, sufficient to outweigh the natural love of ease. proportion as the labour is of a nature to cause fatigue, to give pain, to place the body in a state of risk, the motive to undertake and perform it must be strong. And the fear of poverty; that is to say, the fear of being destitute of food and raiment, appears to be ab solutely necessary to send the savage forth to hunt for the flesh of the deer and the skin of the bear, and to induce mèn to perform all the various functions necessary to their support in civil society, and not less ne cessary to the existence of civil society itself.

This motive is, too, the great source of the virtues and the pleasures of mankind. Early-rising, sobriety provident carefulness, attentive observation, a regard for reputation, reasoning on causes and effects, skill in the performance of labour, arts, sciences, even public spirit and military valour and renown, will all be found, at last, to have had their foundation in a fear of poverty; and, therefore, it is manifest, that the existence of poverty is indispensably necessary, whether a people be in a wild or in a civilized state; because without its existence mankind would be unpossessed of this salu tary fear.

But, we are not to look upon poverty as necessarily arising from the fault of those who are poor, there being so many other causes continually at work to pro duce poverty amongst every people. The man who is born an ideot, or who has been stricken blind by lightning, and who, in consequence of either of these calamities, is destitute of the means of obtaining food and raiment, is poor without any fault. Feebleness of frame, ailments of the body, distress of mind, may all produce poverty without fault in the afflicted party. There may be misfortunes, the impoverishing effects of which no human industry, care or foresight could have prevented. Poverty may arise from the faults of parents. In all such cases the poor are clearly entitled to the compassion, the tender consideration, the active charity, out of which relief instantly springs. Nay, even when poverty manifestly proceeds from unhappy disposition, from untractable temper, from our own passions, it ought not to be visited with a very severe chastisement. And, as to starvation and nakedness, they are too heavy a punishment for any crime short of wilful murder.

This being the view, whica common sense, which natural justice, which the unenlightened mind of even the savage in the wilderness, takes of the matter, what are we to think of those, too many of whom are, alas! to be found, who, in the possession of a superabundance of good things of all kinds, affect to make the bare fact of poverty a presumption of the exist ence of crime; who drive the poor from the gate; and who, in the insolence arising from that opulence which ought to make them grateful to God and kind

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to man, not only deny the poor to be their brethren, but look on them, speak of them, and, in some respects treat them, as a distinct and degraded kind of beings? And, if this insolence fills us with indignation and calls aloud for punishment, are even the thunders of Omnipotence too terrible for those, who thus think and act, while they are adding to their opulence by means like those described in the words of my text? Here is oppression. This is the very worst of oppression too, because practised by fraudulent

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If robbery, in all its forms is wicked; if robbery of even the most wealthy merits the chastisement of the law, and is, by the laws of a community, punished with death, what must those deserve who rob the labouring man, make him poor by means of robbery committed on him, and then treat him as a slave? The Ephah was the measure by which wheat was sold ; the Shekel, a piece of money of gold or of silver. The oppressors, spoken of by the prophet Amos, and against whom God's vengeance was by him denounced, diminished the measure while they augmented the price. By the aid of this double-handed fraud; by the aid of false balances, and that of vending, at the same time, the refuse of the wheat, they would soon reduce the defenceless labourer to beggary, and that would naturally be succeeded by his abject slavery; they would soon "buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair "of shoes."

"Shall not the land tremble for this?" Aye, and ustly too. With justice will the feastings of the oputant in such a state of things be turned into mourning,

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