I cannot conceive of any better rule. But the gentleman is alarmed at the _voluntary_ contributions extorted from the rich. After all, I do not see how the rich would suffer by their great charity, if, as our author says, the poor got nothing by it. I would ask, were the rich ever in danger of starving in the late scarcity, and were not the poor in danger of it, and would they not have starved, but for the assistance given to them? Is it better that the poor should starve than that the rich should be at the expence of relieving them? Or if the pressure in scarce times falls on the middle classes, have they to complain, that they, in whom ‘life and death may always be said to contend for victory,’ are still just kept alive, or that the sleek and pampered continue to fatten on the distresses of others? The false feeling which runs through all Mr. Malthus’s reasonings on this subject is, that the upper classes cannot be expected to retrench any of their superfluities, to lie at the mercy of the seasons, or to contribute any thing to the general necessity, but that the whole burthen of a scarcity ought to fall on those whom Mr. Malthus calls ‘the least fortunate members of the community,’ on those who are most used to distress, and in whom the transition is easy and natural from poverty to famine! ‘They lay heavy burthens on the poor and needy, which they will not touch with one of their fingers.’ Would it not be worth our author’s while to comment on this text, and shew how little it has been understood?—I remember to have heard of but one instance of a real, effectual, and judicious determination in the rich to retrench idle and superfluous waste and expence, some years ago at a time when the poor were _in want of bread_. It originated in a great and noble family, where seventy or eighty servants were kept, and where twenty or thirty guests of the first distinction ‘fared sumptuously every day.’ These humane and enlightened persons, struck with the difference between their own good fortune, and the necessities of others, came to a resolution that the pieces of bread which they left at dinner should neither be thrown nor given away, but that the bread-baskets should be divided into little compartments with each person’s name affixed to them, where he could conveniently put the piece of bread which he left, and have it _saved_ till the next day. This humane example was much talked of in the neighbourhood, and soon after followed by several of the gentry, who got their bread-baskets divided into little compartments with the different names affixed, and eat the pieces of bread which they left one day, the day after—so that the poor were thus placed completely out of the reach of want!