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Untitled Article
There has been a coldness , a reserve ,, an assumption of superiority , in the general bearing of the higher classes towards the poor in this country , and even in the very mode in which moral and religious instruction has been dispensed to them , but too much calculated to produce such effects . It must be the object of the
future exertions of an enlightened philanthropy to counteract the impressions of the long continuance of a too aristocratical form of society , by promoting a more easy and friendly intermingling of different classes , and by sending out into the midst of our alienated and demoralized population an active and benevolent ministry , to cooperate with the effects of a well-organized and
national system of popular education ; to probe the moral sources of the vice and wretchedness which exist ; to bring within the influence of a refined and humanizing civilization the half-barbarous multitudes who form the heaving base of the social edifice ; and to restore health and vigour to the empire by strengthening the friendly sympathies which knit the hearts of thousands in a community of interest and happiness .
The necessity for exertions of this kind in the present state of society , has been felt in other countries besides our own . France and America have set the example to England in this work of philanthropy . We have referred at the foot of our first page to a little work , translated from the French of De Gerando , with an introduction by an American clergyman , which has lately been republished in England . Its object is to point out the moral duties
of the rich towards the poor ; and it possesses a strong interest , not only from the spirit in which it is written , and from the reputation of its author , so well known by his philosophical works , but also from the strong evidence which it affords of the deep interest now felt by the most enlightened men on the continent in those vast moral questions which affect the condition and happiness of millions , and of the juster appreciation which is beginning to be
entertained of the reciprocal duties of the different classes of society . The work , we think , will be found rather too sentimental and declamatory for the present taste of English readers ; it wants that earnest and practical tone , that plain and business-like encountering of the immediate matter in hand , which belongs to most of our productions on such subjects , and which , with all our prejudice and our backwardness to learn any thing from our neighbours , may be taken as a tolerably decisive earnest that ,
when we once set about a work of philanthropy , we shall proceed in it with vigour , and accomplish it effectually . We think , too , that De Gerando , in his anxiety to explain the uses of poverty , and to justify its occurrence in the plans of Providence , has assumed too absolutely the permanence of its causes ; so that the reasoning involved in his work almost amounts to this , that there must always be poor , in order that good people may have objects on which to exercise their compassion and beneficence . It is not
Untitled Article
730 On the Relation of the Wealthy and
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 730, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/70/
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