Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 1 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 1 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
These two statements will bear examination. The genius of England has
demanded these two things. The genius of America demands neither, but
rejects both; demands the distribution of property, puts the rights of
man first, the rights of things last. Such are the political causes, and
such their effects.
III. Then there are social causes which make a nation poor. Such are the
prevalence of an opinion that industry is not respectable; that it is
honorable to consume, disgraceful to create; that much must be spent,
though little earned. The Spanish nation is poor in part through the
prevalence of this opinion.
Sometimes social causes seem only to affect a class. The Pariahs in
India must not fill any office that is well paid. They are despised, and
of course they are poor and miserable. The blacks in New England are
despised and frowned down, not admitted to the steamboat, the omnibus,
to the school-houses in Boston, or even to the meeting-house with white
men; not often allowed to work in company with the whites; and so they
are kept in poverty. In Europe the Jews have been equally despised and
treated in the same way, but not made poor, because they are in many
respects a superior race of men, and because they have the advantage of
belonging to a nation whose civilization is older than any other in
Europe; a nation specially gifted with the faculty of thrift; a tribe
whom none but other Jews, Scotchmen, or New Englanders, could outwit,
over-reach, and make poor. No Ferdinand and Isabella, no inquisition
could so completely expel them from any country, as the superior craft
and cunning of the Yankee has driven them out of New England. There are
Jews in every country of Europe, everywhere despised and maltreated, and
forced into the corners of society, but everywhere superior to the men
who surround them. Such are the social causes which produce poverty.
* * * * *
Now let us look at the matter on a smaller scale, and see the cause of
poverty in New-England, of poverty in Broad street and Sea street. From
the great mass let me take out a class who are accidentally poor. There
are the widows and orphan children who inherit no estate; the able men
reduced by sickness before they have accumulated enough to sustain them.
Then let me take out a class of men transiently poor, men who start with
nothing, but have vigor and will to make their own way in the world. The
majority of the poor still remain--the class who are permanently poor.
The accidentally poor can easily be taken care of by public or private
charity; the transient poor will soon take care of themselves. The young
man who lives on six cents a day while studying medicine in Boston, is
doubtless a poor man, but will soon repay society for the slight aid it
has lent him, and in time will take care of other poor men. So these two
classes, the accidental and the transient poor, can easily be disposed
of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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