miserable class. I feel no temptation to be drunken, but if I were
always miserable, cold, hungry, naked, so ignorant that I did not know
the result of violating God's laws, had I been surrounded from youth
with the worst examples, not respected by other men, but a loathsome
object in their sight, not even respecting myself, I can easily
understand how the temporary madness of strong drink would be a most
welcome thing. The poor are the prey of the rum-seller. As the lion in
the Hebrew wilderness eateth up the wild ass, so in modern society the
rum-seller and rum-maker suck the bones of the miserable poor. I never
hear of a great fortune made in the liquor trade, but I think of the
wives that have been made widows thereby, of the children bereft of
their parents, of the fathers and mothers whom strong drink has brought
down to shame, to crime, and to ruin. The history of the first barrel of
rum that ever visited New England is well known. It brought some forty
men before the bar of the court. The history of the last barrel can
scarcely be much better.
Such are the natural and organic causes which make poverty.
With the exception of laws which allow the sale of intoxicating drink, I
think there are few political causes of poverty in New England, and they
are too inconsiderable to mention in so brief a sketch as this. However,
there are some social causes of our permanent poverty. I do not think we
have much respect for the men who do the rude work of life, however
faithfully and well--little respect for work itself. The rich man is
ashamed to have begun to make his fortune with his own hard hands; even
if the rich man is not, his daughter is for him. I do not think we have
cared much to respect the humble efforts of feeble men; not cared much
to have men dear, and things cheap. It has not been thought the part of
political economy, of sound legislation, or of pure Christianity, to
hinder the increase of pauperism, to remove the causes of poverty, yes,
the causes of crime--only to take vengeance on it when committed!
Boston is a strange place; here is energy enough to conquer half the
continent in ten years; power of thought to seize and tame the
Connecticut and the Merrimack; charity enough to send missionaries all
over the world; but not justice enough to found a high school for her
own daughters, or to forbid her richest citizens from letting bar-rooms
as nurseries of poverty and crime, from opening wide gates which lead to
the almshouse, the jail, the gallows, and earthly hell!
* * * * *
Such are the causes of poverty, organic, political, social. You may see
families pass from the comfortable to the miserable class, by
intemperance, idleness, wastefulness, even by feebleness of body and of
mind; yet while it is common for the rich to descend into the
comfortable class, solely by lack of the eminent thrift which raised
their fathers thence, or because they lack the common stimulus to toil
and save, it is not common for the comfortable to fall into the pit of
misery in New England, except through wickedness, through idleness, or
intemperance.
It is not easy to study poverty in Boston. But take a little inland
town, which few persons migrate into, you will find the miserable
families have commonly been so, for a hundred years; that many of them
are descended from the "servants," or white slaves, brought here by our
fathers; that such as fall from the comfortable classes, are commonly
made miserable by their own fault, sometimes by idleness, which is
certainly a sin, for any man who will not work, and persists in living,
eats the bread of some other man, either begged or stolen--but chiefly
by intemperance. Three fourths of the poverty of this character, is to
be attributed to this cause.
Now there is a tendency in poverty to drive the ablest men to work, and
so get rid of the poverty, and this I take it is the providential design
thereof. Poverty, like an armed man, stalks in the rear of the social
march, huge and haggard, and gaunt and grim, to scare the lazy, to goad
the idle with his sword, to trample and slay the obstinate sluggard. But
he treads also the feeble under his feet, for no fault of theirs, only
for the misfortune of being born in the rear of society. But in poverty
there is also a tendency to intimidate, to enfeeble, to benumb. The
poverty of the strong man compels him to toil; but with the weak, the
destruction of the poor is his poverty. An active man is awakened from
his sleep by the cold; he arises and seeks more covering; the indolent,
or the feeble, shiver on till morning, benumbed and enfeebled by the
cold. So weakness begets weakness; poverty, poverty; intemperance,
intemperance; crime, crime.
Every thing is against the poor man; he pays the dearest tax, the
highest rent for his house, the dearest price for all he eats or wears.
The poor cannot watch their opportunity, and take advantage of the
markets, as other men. They have the most numerous temptations to
intemperance and crime; they have the poorest safeguards from these
evils. If the chief value of wealth, as a rich man tells us, be
this--that "it renders its owner independent of others," then on what
shall the poor men lean, neglected and despised by others, looked on as
loathsome, and held in contempt, shut out even from the sermons and the
prayers of respectable men? It is no marvel if they cease to respect
themselves.
The poor are the most obnoxious to disease; their children are not only
most numerous, but most unhealthy. More than half of the children of
that class, perish at the age of five. Amongst the poor, infectious
diseases rage with frightful violence. The mortality in that class is
amazing. If things are to continue as now, I thank God it is so. If
Death is their only guardian, he is at least powerful, and does not
scorn his work.
In addition to the poor, whom these causes have made and kept in
poverty, the needy of other lands flock hither. The nobility of old
England, so zealous in pursuing their game, in keeping their entails
unbroken, and primogeniture safe, have sent their beggary to New
England, to be supported by the crumbs that fall from our table. So, in
the same New England city, the extremes of society are brought together.
Here is health, elegance, cultivation, sobriety, decency, refinement--I
wish there was more of it; there is poverty, ignorance, drunkenness,
violence, crime, in most odious forms--starvation! We have our St.
Giles's and St. James's; our nobility, not a whit less noble than the
noblest of other lands, and our beggars, both in a Christian city. Amid
the needy population, Misery and Death have found their parish. Who
shall dare stop his ears, when they preach their awful denunciation of
want and woe?
Good men ask, What shall we do? Foreign poverty has had this good
effect; it has shamed or frightened the American beggar into industry
and thrift.
Poverty will not be removed till the causes thereof are removed. There
are some who look for a great social revolution. So do I; only I do not
look for it to come about suddenly, or by mechanical means. We are in a
social revolution, and do not know it. While I cannot accept the
peculiar doctrines of the Associationists, I rejoice in their existence.
I sympathize with their hope. They point out the evils of society, and
that is something. They propose a method of removing its evils. I do not
believe in that method, but mankind will probably make many experiments
before we hit upon the right one. For my own part, I confess I do not
see any way of removing poverty wholly or entirely, in one or two, or in
four or five generations. I think it will linger for some ages to come.
Like the snow, it is to be removed by a general elevation of the
temperature of the air, not all at once, and will long hang about the
dark and cold places of the world. But I do think it will at last be
overcome, so that a man who cannot subsist, will be as rare as a
cannibal. "Ye have the poor with you always," said Jesus, and many who
remember this, forget that he also said, "and when soever ye will, ye
may do them good." I expect to see a mitigation of poverty in this
country, and that before long.
It is likely that the legal theory of property in Europe will undergo a
great change before many years; that the right to bequeathe enormous
estates to individuals will be cut off; that primogeniture will cease,
and entailments be broken, and all monopolies of rank and power come to
an end, and so a great change take place in the social condition of
Europe, and especially of England. That change will bring many of the
comfortable into the rich class, and eventually many of the miserable
into the comfortable class. But I do not expect such a radical change
here, where we have not such enormous abuses to surmount.
I think something will be done in Europe for the organization of labor,
I do not know what; I do not know how; I have not the ability to know;
and will not pretend to criticize what I know I cannot create, and do
not at present understand. I think there will be a great change in the
form of society; that able men will endeavor to remove the causes of
crime, not merely to make money out of that crime; that intemperance
will be diminished; that idleness in rich or poor will be counted a
disgrace; that labor will be more respected; education more widely
diffused; and that institutions will be founded, which will tend to
produce these results. But I do not pretend to devise those
institutions, and certainly shall not throw obstacles in the way of such
as can or will try. It seems likely that something will be first done in
Europe, where the need is greatest. There a change must come. By and by,
if it does not come peaceably, the continent will not furnish "special
constables" enough to put down human nature. If the white republicans
cannot make a revolution peacefully, wait a little, and the red
republicans will make it in blood. "Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we
must," says mankind, first in a whisper, then in a voice of thunder. If
powerful men will not write justice with black ink, on white paper,
ignorant and violent men will write it on the soil, in letters of blood,
and illuminate their rude legislation with burning castles, palaces and
towns. While the social change is taking place never so peacefully, men
will think the world is going to ruin. But it is an old world, pretty
well put together, and, with all these changes, will probably last some
time longer. Human society is like one of those enormous boulders, so
nicely poised on another rock, that a man may move it with a single
hand. You are afraid to come under its sides, lest it fall. When the
wind blows, it rocks with formidable noise, and men say it will soon be
down upon us. Now and then a rude boy undertakes to throw it over, but
all the men who can get their shoulders under, cannot raise the
ponderous mass from its solid and firm-set base.
Still, after all these changes have taken place, there remains the
difference between the strong and the weak, the active and the idle, the
thrifty and the spendthrift, the temperate and the intemperate, and
though the term poverty ceases to be so dreadful, and no longer denotes
want of the natural necessaries of the body, there will still remain the
relatively rich and the relatively poor.
But now something can be done directly, to remove the causes of poverty,
something to mitigate their effects; we need both the palliative
charity, and the remedial justice. Tenements for the poor can be
provided at a cheap rent, that shall yet pay their owner a reasonable
income. This has been proved by actual experiment, and, after all that
has been said about it, I am amazed that no more is done. I will not
exhort the churches to this in the name of religion--they have other
matters to attend to; but if capitalists will not, in a place like
Boston, it seems to me the City should see that this class of the
population is provided with tenements, at a rate not ruinous. It would
be good economy to do it, in the pecuniary sense of good economy;
certainly to hire money at six per cent., and rent the houses built
therewith, at eight per cent., would cost less than to support the poor
entirely in almshouses, and punish them in jails.
Something yet more may be done, in the way of furnishing them with work,
or of directing them to it; something towards enabling them to purchase
food and other articles cheap.
Something might be done to prevent street beggary, and begging from
house to house, which is rather a new thing in this town. The
indiscriminate charity, which it is difficult to withhold from a needy
and importunate beggar, does more harm than good.
Much may be done to promote temperance; much more, I fear, than is
likely to be done; that is plainly the duty of society. Intemperance is
bad enough with the comfortable and the rich; with the poor it is
ruin--sheer, blank and swift ruin. The example of the rich, of the
comfortable, goes down there like lightning, to shatter, to blast, and
to burn. It is marvellous, that in Christian Boston, men of wealth, and
so above the temptation which lurks behind a dollar, men of character
otherwise thought to be elevated, can yet continue a traffic which leads
to the ruin and slow butchery of such masses of men. I know not what can
be done by means of the public law. I do know what can be done by
private self-denial, by private diligence.
Something also may be done to promote religion amongst the poor, at
least something to make it practicable for a poor man to come to church
on Sunday, with his fellow-creatures who are not miserable--and to hear
the best things that the ablest men in the church have to offer. We are
very democratic in our State, not at all so in our church. In this
matter the Catholics put us quite to shame. If, as some men still
believe, it be a manly calling and a noble, to preach Christianity, then
to preach it to men who stand in the worst and most dangerous positions
in society; to take the highest truths of human consciousness, the
loftiest philosophy, the noblest piety, and bring them down into the
daily life of poor men, rude men, men obscure, unfriended, ready to
perish; surely this is the noblest part of that calling, and demands the
noblest gifts, the fairest and the largest culture, the loftiest powers.
It is no hard thing to reason with reasoning men, and be intelligible to
the intelligent; to talk acceptably and even movingly to scholars and
men well read, is no hard thing if you are yourself well read and a
scholar. But to be intelligible to the ignorant, to reason with men who
reason not, to speak acceptably and movingly with such men, to inspire
them with wisdom, with goodness and with piety, that is the task only
for some men of rare genius who can stride over the great gulf betwixt
the thrones of creative power, and the humble positions of men ignorant,
poor and forgot! Yet such men there are, and here is their work.
Something can be done for the children of the poor--to promote their
education, to find them employment, to snatch these little ones from
underneath the feet of that grim Poverty. It is not less than awful, to
think while there are more children born in Boston of Catholic parents
than of Protestant, that yet more than three fifths thereof die before
the sun of their fifth year shines on their luckless heads. I thank God
that thus they die. If there be not wisdom enough in society, nor enough
of justice there to save them from their future long-protracted
suffering, then I thank God that Death comes down betimes, and moistens
his sickle while his crop is green. I pity not the miserable babes who
fall early before that merciful arm of Death. They are at rest. Poverty
cannot touch them. Let the mothers who bore them rejoice, but weep only
for those that are left--left to ignorance, to misery, to intemperance,
to vice that I shall not name; left to the mercies of the jail, and
perhaps the gallows at the last. Yet Boston is a Christian city--and it
is eighteen hundred years since one great Son of Man came to seek and to
save that which was lost!
I see not what more can be done directly, and I see not why these things
should not be done. Still some will suffer: the idle, the lazy, the
proud who will not work, the careless who will voluntarily waste their
time, their strength, or their goods--they must suffer, they ought to
suffer. Want is the only schoolmaster to teach them industry and
thrift. Such as are merely unable, who are poor not by their fault--we
do wrong to let them suffer; we do wickedly to leave them to perish. The
little children who survive--are they to be left to become barbarians in
the midst of our civilization?
Want is not an absolutely needful thing, but very needful for the
present distress, to teach us industry, economy, thrift and its creative
arts. There is nature--the whole material world--waiting to serve. "What
would you have thereof?" says God. "Pay for it and take it, as you will;
only pay as you go!" There are hands to work, heads to think; strong
hands, hard heads. God is an economist: He economizes suffering; there
is never too much of it in the world for the purpose it is to serve,
though it often falls where it should not fall. It is here to teach us
industry, thrift, justice. It will be here no more when we have learned
its lesson. Want is here on sufferance; misery on sufferance; and
mankind can eject them if we will. Poverty, like all evils, is amenable
to suppression.
Can we not end this poverty--the misery and crime it brings? No, not
to-day. Can we not lessen it? Soon as we will. Think how much ability
there is in this town, cool, far-sighted talent. If some of the ablest
men directed their thoughts to the reform of this evil, how much might
be done in a single generation; and in a century--what could not they
do in a hundred years? What better work is there for able men? I would
have it written on my tombstone: "This man had but little wit, and less
fame, yet he helped remove the causes of poverty, making men better off
and better," rather by far than this: "Here lies a great man; he had a
great place in the world, and great power, and great fame, and made
nothing of it, leaving the world no better for his stay therein, and no
man better off."
* * * * *
After all the special efforts to remove poverty, the great work is to be
done by the general advance of mankind. We shall outgrow this as
cannibalism, butchery of captives, war for plunder, and other kindred
miseries have been outgrown. God has general remedies in abundance, but
few specific. Something will be done by diffusing throughout the
community principles and habits of economy, industry, temperance; by
diffusing ideas of justice, sentiments of brotherly love, sentiments and
ideas of religion. I hope every thing from that--the noiseless and
steady progress of Christianity; the snow melts, not by sunlight, or
that alone, but as the whole air becomes warm. You may in cold weather
melt away a little before your own door, but that makes little
difference till the general temperature rises. Still while the air is
getting warm, you facilitate the process by breaking up the obdurate
masses of ice and putting them where the sun shines with direct and
unimpeded light. So must we do with poverty.
It is only a little that any of us can do--for any thing. Still we can
do a little; we can each do by helping towards raising the general tone
of society: first, by each man raising himself; by industry, economy,
charity, justice, piety; by a noble life. So doing, we raise the moral
temperature of the whole world, and just in proportion thereto. Next, by
helping those who come in our way; nay, by going out of our way to help
them. In each of these modes, it is our duty to work. To a certain
extent each man is his brother's keeper. Of the powers we possess we are
but trustees under Providence, to use them for the benefit of men, and
render continually an account of our stewardship to God. Each man can do
a little directly to help convince the world of its wrong, a little in
the way of temporizing charity, a little in the way of remedial justice;
so doing, he works with God, and God works with him.
X.
A SERMON OF THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON.--PREACHED AT THE MELODEON, ON
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1849.
1 SAMUEL VII. 12.
Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.
A man who has only the spirit of his age can easily be a popular man; if
he have it in an eminent degree, he must be a popular man in it: he has
its hopes and its fears; his trumpet gives a certain and well-known
sound; his counsel is readily appreciated; the majority is on his side.
But he cannot be a wise magistrate, a just judge, a competent critic, or
a profitable preacher. A man who has only the spirit of a former age can
be none of these four things; and not even a popular man. He remembers
when he ought to forecast, and compares when he ought to act; he cannot
appreciate the age he lives in, nor have a fellow-feeling with it. He
may easily obtain the pity of his age, not its sympathy or its
confidence. The man who has the spirit of his own, and also that of
some future age, is alone capable of becoming a wise magistrate, a just
judge, a competent critic, and a profitable preacher. Such a man looks
on passing events somewhat as the future historian will do, and sees
them in their proportions, not distorted; sees them in their connection
with great general laws, and judges of the falling rain not merely by
the bonnets it may spoil and the pastime it disturbs, but by the grass
and corn it shall cause to grow. He has hopes and fears of his own, but
they are not the hopes and fears of men about him; his trumpet cannot
give a welcome or well-known sound, nor his counsel be presently heeded.
Majorities are not on his side, nor can he be a popular man.
To understand our present moral condition, to be able to give good
counsel thereon, you must understand the former generation, and have
potentially the spirit of the future generation; must appreciate the
past, and yet belong to the future. Who is there that can do this? No
man will say, "I can." Conscious of the difficulty, and aware of my own
deficiencies in all these respects, I will yet endeavor to speak of the
moral condition of Boston.
* * * * *
First, I will speak of the actual moral condition of Boston, as
indicated by the morals of Trade. In a city like Rome, you must first
feel the pulse of the church, in St. Petersburg that of the court, to
determine the moral condition of those cities. Now trade is to Boston
what the church is to Rome and the imperial court to St. Petersburg: it
is the pendulum which regulates all the common and authorized machinery
of the place; it is an organization of the public conscience. We care
little for any Pius the Ninth, or Nicholas the First; the dollar is our
emperor and pope, above all the parties in the State, all sects in the
church, lord paramount over both, its spiritual and temporal power not
likely to be called in question; revolt from what else we may, we are
loyal still to that.
A little while ago, in a sermon of riches, speaking of the character of
trade in Boston, I suggested that men were better than their reputation
oftener than worse; that there were a hundred honest bargains to one
that was dishonest. I have heard severe strictures from friendly
tongues, on that statement, which gave me more pain than any criticism I
have received before. The criticism was, that I overrated the honesty of
men in trade. Now, it is a small thing to be convicted of an error--a
just thing and a profitable to have it detected and exposed; but it is a
painful thing to find you have overrated the moral character of your
townsmen. However, if what I said be not true as history, I hope it will
become so as prophecy; I doubt not my critics will help that work.