In the legal and compulsory assessment for the proclaimed parish pauper, there is nothing of all this.

The alms are extorted from an unwilling hand, and a heart which desires the annihilation, rather than the relief, of the distressed object.

The object of charity, sensible of the ill-will with which the pittance is bestowed, seizes on it as his right, not as a favour.

The manner of conferring it being directly calculated to hurt and disgust his feelings, he revenges himself by becoming impudent and clamorous.

A more odious picture, or more likely to deprave the feelings of those exposed to its influence, can hardly be imagined; and yet to such a point have we been brought by an artificial system of society, that we must either deny altogether the right of the poor to their just proportion of the fruits of the earth, or afford them some means of subsistence out of them by the institution of positive law.
Note III., p.