may belong. If so, what church or sect could save its members? Not one!—but least of all, perhaps, the church of England. A natural result of this wicked neglect of the poor in England by the church, has been, that the poor in that country are regarded differently, and treated differently, from what they are in any other nation. What is not deemed the duty of the church has ceased to be regarded as the duty of individuals. The poor are restrained to the limits of their own parishes, under penalty of starvation or being carried back by the authorities to their own limits. They are not permitted to ask alms. They are turned off the land in England, and obliged to take refuge in the cities, working at wages which barely sustain life, to swell the products of the manufactories. They are, without judge or jury, convicted of poverty, sent to the poor-house, where husband and wife and children are separated and put to hard labour. The severity of this sentence is fully as great as that which awaits criminals 150 THE PRACTICES WORKED INTO A THEORY. under the present improved system of prison discipline. The poor are regarded as a burden upon society, to be diminished or got rid of by any course short of murder. They are not deemed to have any claims as fellow-men or fellow-christians, in a Christian land. England has a blessed constitution. She has long enjoyed the most wise and vigorous administration in the world, under all the advantages of a mild climate and productive soil, and yet paupers not only exist, but have greatly increased. It is plain they are an inevitable evil: nothing more can be done but by all proper means to prevent the increase of those who are only born to be burdens upon the community. This is the English feeling in regard to the poor. It was reserved for a clergyman of the established church to work up this feeling and these views into a system of philosophy. The sum of the Rev. Mr. Malthus's work on population is thus given in his own words:"A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents, on whom he has a just demand, and if the society does not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast there is no cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he do not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear, demanding the same favour. The report of a provision for all that come fills the hall with numerous claimants. order and harmony of the feast is disturbed: the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those who are justly enraged at not finding the provision they had been taught to expect. The guests learn too late their error in counteracting those strict The 152 THE REMEDY PROPOSED BY MALTHUS. orders to all intruders issued by the great mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all her guests should have plenty, and knowing that she could not provide for unlimited numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full."* Can inhumanity go a step farther? Can disobedience and contempt of the Divine command to love our neighbour as ourself imagine a farther step? It is a total denial of "the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man,” and consequently a total abjuration of Christianity. The remedial measure proposed by the Rev. Mr. Malthus is in strict accordance with his theory. He proposes that, notice being given, all children begotten afterwards should in every event be denied all official and private relief, or charity of any kind. If they perish, the responsibility will rest with the parents who brought them into the world after due warning of the consequences. * Malthus on Population, first edition; and see sixth edition, vol. ii. p. 337. By this means, the intruders into the hall of the great feast of life would be rapidly starved out of existence, the order and harmony of the feast restored, and the "happiness of the guests be no longer destroyed by the spectacle of misery" around them. If this is not the doctrine of the church of England in regard to the poor, it is the philosophy which has grown out of her neglect to teach and exemplify the great duty of Christian charity if it is not her doctrine, it is the : very essence and theory of her practice. THE SPIRIT OF PROTESTANTISM AT LARGE.-ENGLISH PROTESTANTISM. THIS subject might justly be swelled into volumes. We might proceed to show that other Protestants besides those of England have fallen short of their duty to the poor; that they have not apprehended, taught, nor |