Mrs. Grant to Mrs. Brown-Bishop Porteus and the Prince of Wales. cellent abilities and pleasing and popular manners, may do much more. It is impossible for you to remain stationary in this awful crisis; you must rise to true glory and renown, and lead millions in the same path by the power of your example, or sink to sudden and perpetual ruin, aggravated by the great numbers whom your fall will draw with you to the same destruction. And now, were I able to rise, or were any one here who would assist me, I should, with the awful feeling of a dying man, give my last blessing to your Royal Highness." The Prince, upon this, burst into tears, and fell on his knees before the Bishop, who bestowed upon him, with folded hands, his dying benediction; the Prince then, in the most gracious and affecting manner, assisted him himself to go down, and put him into his carriage. The Bishop went home, never came out again, and died the fifth day after. On hearing of his death, the Prince shut himself up, and was heard by his attendants to sob as under deep affliction. I think I have now given you a brief but faithful account of this transaction as I heard it. * B * * I can easily believe that a mind so well regulated as yours, has in itself resources that make "quiet, though sad, the remnant of your days." But I think that a life somewhere balanced between your pensive tranquillity and my ever-during bustle would be preferable to either. Such is that of our dear friend and sister at Jordanhill, whose felicities I have been celebrating ever since I returned here. Remember me in all kindness to your mother and aunt, and believe me, most affectionately, dear old friend, yours always, ANNE GRANT. Dr. Thomas Arnold to Rev. Augustus Hare-Duty of the Clergy, etc. XIV.-DUTY OF THE CLERGY TOWARD THE TWO ORDERS OF SOCIETY. Dr. Thomas Arnold to Rev. Augustus Hare. December 24th, 1830. I have longed very much to see you, over and above my general wish that we could meet oftener, ever since the fearful state of our poor has announced itself even to the blindest. My dread is that when the Special Commissioners shall have done their work (necessary and just I most cordially agree with you that it is), the richer classes will relapse into their old callousness, and the seeds be sown of a far more deadly and irremediable quarrel hereafter. If you can get Arthur Young's "Travels in France," I think you will be greatly struck with their applicability to our own times and country. He shows how deadly was the hatred of the peasantry toward their lords, and how in 1789 the chateaux were destroyed and the families of the gentry insulted, from a common feeling of hatred to all who had made themselves and the poor two orders, and who were now to pay the penalty of having put asunder what God had joined. At this moment, Carlyle tells the poor that they and the rich are enemies, and that to destroy the property of an enemy, whether by fire or otherwise, is always lawful in war. A devil's doctrine certainly, and devilishly applied; but unquestionably, our aristocratical manners and habits have made us and the poor two distinct and unsympathizing bodies, and from want of sympathy I fear the transition to enmity is but too easy, when distress embitters the feelings, and the sight of others in luxury makes that. distress still more intolerable. This is the plague spot, to my mind, in our whole state of society, which must be removed or Dr. Thomas Arnold to Rev. Augustus Hare-Duty of the Clergy, etc. the whole must perish. And, under God, it is for the clergy to come forward boldly and begin to combat it. If you read Isaiah, ch. v., 3–32 v.; Jeremiah, ch. v., 22–30 v.; Amos, ch. iv.; Habakkuk, ch. ii.; and the Epistle of St. James, written to the same people, a little before the second destruction of Jerusalem, you will be struck, I think, with the close resemblance of our own state to that of the Jews; while the state of the Greek churches to whom St. Paul wrote is wholly different, because, from their thin population and better political circumstances, poverty among them is hardly noticed, and our duties to the poor are consequently much less prominently brought forward. And unluckily, our Evangelicals read St. Paul more than any other part of the Scriptures, and think very little of consulting most those parts of Scripture which are addressed to persons circumstanced most like ourselves. I want to get up a real "Poor Man's Magazine," which should not bolster up abuses, nor veil iniquities, nor prose to the poor as children; but should address them in the style of Cobbett, plainly, boldly, and in sincerity, excusing nothing, concealing nothing, misrepresenting nothing, but speaking the very whole truth in love, Cobbett-like in style, but Christian in spirit. Now you are the man, I think, to join with me in such a work, and most earnestly do I wish that you would think of it. * * I should be for putting my name * to whatever I wrote of this nature, for I think it is of great importance our addresses should be those of substantive and tangible persons, and not of anonymous shadows. Alexander Knox to Bishop Jebb-Moral Uses of a Poor Class. XV.-MORAL USES OF A POOR CLASS. Alexander Knox to Bishop Jebb. December 28th, 1802. MY DEAR MR. JEBB: I received your letter on Christmas day, in my bed; not being able to rise, in consequence of bilious sickness, until after the post hour. As to your charity sermon, I fear the text in Isaiah would be too far about. I happened to be looking into a pamphlet, sent me a day or two before from London, and I thought I saw some topics which would furnish a good body for such a dis course. "No large community can long subsist without a considerable part of its members being destined to laborious situations and dependent circumstances; it cannot long subsist without food and clothing; and these cannot be attained without labor; and men generally will not labor but upon the urgency of necessity. If every man was provided with a stock of the necessaries of life, and had wealth to purchase them, we should see few shuttles in motion, and few ploughs turning up the soil, till the time came when, having wasted their resources, distress would compel some to the loom, others to the field." "In a civilized state, besides food and clothing, much domestic service is necessary; of which a great part being neither elegant nor unlaborious, will not commonly be performed by those who can avoid it, which all may do who are under no immediate pressure or fear of want. Therefore, without such a degree of indigence in society as may dispose some to undergo the daily drudgery of life, and such a degree of affluence as may enable others to reward them for it, we could expect to Alexander Knox to Bishop Jebb-Moral Uses of a Poor Class. find but little either of domestic neatness or comfort. Want, in the political machine, is the weight necessary to keep it in motion; and all that can or ought to be done is duly to regulate it." Hence, it will follow, that, to preserve society from sinking into its savage state, in which every man must be content to fish and hunt for himself, and to wear the skin of the beast he has slain, a large proportion of the people must depend for their subsistence on the toils of husbandry or useful manufactures and domestic service; which implies the relation of master and servant, of those who have nothing but their labor to bring to market; and of those who come with a price in their hands to purchase it." * * Now, I cannot help thinking that the above paragraphs contain a very satisfactory view of at least the political final cause of poverty. And, I conceive, it might be expanded into a much larger detail of the benefits arising to the higher classes from this. providential arrangement. In short, to this arrangement the higher classes, as such, owe their civil existence. The text, then, out of which such remarks might best grow, would, perhaps, be Deut. xv., 11: "The poor shall never cease out of the land. Therefore, I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thy hands wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy in thy land." "The poor shall never cease,” etc. Why? because the ceasing of poverty would be taking the weight off the great machine; and because the ceasing of the poor would be the annihilation of all the instrumental agency subserving to civil comfort. Is not, then, such an appointment worthy of eternal wisdom? |