Still, after all these changes have taken place, there remains the difference between the strong and the weak, the active and the idle, the thrifty and the spendthrift, the temperate and the intemperate, and though the term poverty ceases to be so dreadful, and no longer denotes want of the natural necessaries of the body, there will still remain the relatively rich and the relatively poor.
But now something can be done directly, to remove the causes of poverty, something to mitigate their effects; we need both the palliative charity, and the remedial justice. Tenements for the poor can be provided at a cheap rent, that shall yet pay their owner a reasonable income. This has been proved by actual experiment, and, after all that has been said about it, I am amazed that no more is done. I will not exhort the churches to this in the name of religion--they have other matters to attend to; but if capitalists will not, in a place like Boston, it seems to me the City should see that this class of the population is provided with tenements, at a rate not ruinous. It would be good economy to do it, in the pecuniary sense of good economy; certainly to hire money at six per cent., and rent the houses built therewith, at eight per cent., would cost less than to support the poor entirely in almshouses, and punish them in jails.
Something yet more may be done, in the way of furnishing them with work, or of directing them to it; something towards enabling them to purchase food and other articles cheap.
Something might be done to prevent street beggary, and begging from house to house, which is rather a new thing in this town. The indiscriminate charity, which it is difficult to withhold from a needy and importunate beggar, does more harm than good.
Much may be done to promote temperance; much more, I fear, than is likely to be done; that is plainly the duty of society. Intemperance is bad enough with the comfortable and the rich; with the poor it is ruin--sheer, blank and swift ruin. The example of the rich, of the comfortable, goes down there like lightning, to shatter, to blast, and to burn. It is marvellous, that in Christian Boston, men of wealth, and so above the temptation which lurks behind a dollar, men of character otherwise thought to be elevated, can yet continue a traffic which leads to the ruin and slow butchery of such masses of men. I know not what can be done by means of the public law. I do know what can be done by private self-denial, by private diligence.