interests of society command that it should be contracted. But let the species of charity here adverted to interpose with its assistance, and affairs will resume their healthy progress: lives will be saved where living men are wanted, and the stream of existence preserved at an uniform level.

Surely this is no unpleasing instance of the manner in which Providence adapts the laws which regulate the progress of society to the moral expediency of those commands which he has imposed upon mankind.

I trust that the different practical conclusions deducible from the arguments of this treatise and those to which they are opposed, with respect to the general exercise of charity, are sufficiently obvious without further illustration :-that those here maintained have at least the advantage of being consistent with themselves, with the commands of God, with the known precepts of morality, and with true benevolence. I am pretty confident also, that there will be no necessity to advise a departure from the principles of conduct laid down, in order to make the practice square with precepts which every enlightened Christian must allow to be reasonable.

From the whole of the argument, then, we seem justified in concluding that, in so far as the exercise of real charity is concerned, there is nothing which can materially interfere with the natural tendency of population to keep within the limits of the productive powers of the soil. I cannot but think, however, that we are entitled to go farther, and to assert that the rational exercise of this virtue is calculated to give additional force to that natural ten

dency: 1st, by the impulse which it affords to industry, in the manner just explained, and thereby to the progress of society towards its higher stages; and 2dly, by the moral sensibility and mutual intercourse which it establishes among all ranks of the community, whereby the habits, which repress any tendency to a mischievous increase of population, are made to operate preventively with a force more than sufficient to counteract the positive encouragement which is supposed to be afforded by charitable donations. That these habits are the offspring of the charitable intercourse of the rich and enlightened with the poor and ignorant, is well known to all those who are practically conversant with the subject. It is the neglected and degraded poor man, abandoned to the solitary reflections of an uninformed mind upon his cheerless prospects and situation, who ceases to respect himself, or to feel any of that enlivening principle within him, which diverts his attention from the mere sensual and physical wants of his nature, to the comparative decencies and comforts of life. It is this man, who, feeling himself an object of indifference to others, is actuated by the same feeling towards the rest of the world. He becomes morose, brutal, and selfish, in the lowest sense of the term. His natural feelings in these respects not being corrected by intercourse with more enlightened men, nor softened by a sense of obligation to his superiors, and of the interest hè has in their approbation, he becomes careless of his future conduct, and is driven at the impulse of the first temptation that is offered to his passions. Restrained by no check, moral or natural, by no sense

of respect towards others or himself, he is impelled to the multiplication of his species like the brutes that perish. And I am ready to acknowledge that the population thus raised is checked only by the rule which regulates the number of the brutes; viz. by the perpetual contest between the powers of procreation and the principle of destruction-a rule which, when applied to the human species, involves almost every modification of vice and misery.

But let the fair form of charity be introduced, and society assumes an aspect altogether different. The sullen and hardened heart of the previously neglected individual is awakened to the sympathies of our common nature. Finding that he is respected by others he begins to feel some respect for himself, and to acquire an indistinct notion of the moral equality of mankind. He learns by degrees that the poorest tenant of the meanest cottage possesses a soul of equal value, in the eye of its Maker, with the lord of the surrounding districts; and if he be the inhabitant of a free country, that he possesses also a body of equal value in the eye of the legislature. Having a powerful friend that feels an interest in his proceedings, his reflections on his temporal condition are also cheered and enlivened. Gratitude will sometimes find a place in his heart; and from this seed alone, with judicious culture, may spring up a plant in the shelter of whose branches all the gentle and moral qualities incident to his situation may repose. But should that sentiment be too refined for his perceptions, the bare conviction that a man more powerful than himself has taken charge of his welfare, and has assumed some responsibility that his exertions to better his own condition shall

not be altogether fruitless, elevates the tone of his feelings, invigorates his efforts, and imparts a glow of hope to his heart, and of satisfaction to his countenance. The whole man, in short, is changed, and his habits are renewed with him. The principle of respect to his superior, and the wish for his approbation, will aid the principle of respect for himself, in restraining him within the bounds of decency and morality; and the population which he is the instrument of raising, being produced in conformity to the laws of God and the moral institutions of his country, will, as we shall perceive in a following chapter, be a sound and substantial addition to the powers of the commonwealth. Thus it is that the moral virtues act and re-act upon each other; and if the general exercise of charity has, on the one hand, a tendency to extend the limits of population beyond the natural boundary, it has also, on the other, qualities inherent in its very nature sufficient either to counteract that tendency or to convert it into a blessing.

I have seen a poor deformed cripple in a workhouse attain his 20th year with not a spark of moral culture, with ears through which the accents of kindness and encouragement were never directed to his heart; the object of complete neglect, if not of scorn and contempt, to all by whom he was surrounded. His mind not highly endowed by nature, completely blunted by hard usage, approached to idiotcy, and his countenance exhibited a mixture of sullenness, envy, and despair. I have seen this miserable object taken by the hand of a benevolent individual, his rags exchanged for decent clothing, strange words of kindness and encouragement ad

dressed to his astonished ear, a spelling-book placed in his hand, his steps directed to a sunday-school, and flattering approbation bestowed upon his earnest but quite abortive effects to learn to read. Although little actual knowledge was imparted, a more complete moral revolution was never observable in man. The eye before dejected was lighted up with joy and hope; the countenance, distorted with envy and furrowed with the deep lines of despair, relaxed into a cheerful smile; an interest for his own improvement was excited in his mind, and kept alive by the consciousness that his benefactor cared for him. The smile of pleasure, with which that benefactor was constantly greeted, imparted a joy only to be equalled by his humble thankfulness for having been the instrument of such a change in the heart of a fellowcreature. But if these were his feelings as a philanthropist and a Christian, I think that he might also fairly indulge some sense of gratification as a politician. The dirty and vicious habits, to which this poor creature was formerly a prey, were far from incapacitating him from becoming the father of a family as wretched and denuded as himself. He would have been satisfied to lie down with his partner in the hovel of the workhouse, and to pullulate without control. But feelings of decency and self-respect have now induced better habits. His mind is diverted towards objects more remote from the brutal part of his nature, and it is probable that he will, at least, become a harmless if not an useful member of society.

I trust that one serious reflection will not be considered by fastidious readers to be here misplaced. It is intimately connected with the direction of our