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.