'This is an evil of which the world has for ages been complaining: but for which I see no remedy.'
'You mean no remedy which laws or governments, by the inflicting of pains and penalties, can afford: at which, to do them justice, they have been much too often aiming; but have as continually failed.'
'And you imagine, sir, you are possessed of a more effectual prescription?
'I dare not prescribe: it would be an arrogant assumption of wisdom. But I may advise a regimen which has numerous probabilities in its favour. Yet what I must advise has been so many thousand times advised before that it seems impertinence to repeat it; if not mockery. To tell the rich that they seek enjoyment where it is not to be found, that the parade by which they torment themselves to gain distinction renders them supremely ridiculous, that their follies, while they are oppressive and hateful to the poor, are the topics of contempt and scandal even in their own circles, and that the repetition of them inevitably proves that they bring weariness, disgust, ruin, pain, and every human misery, is mere common-place declamation.
'But there is one truth of which they have not been sufficiently reminded. They are not, as they have too long been taught to suppose themselves, placed beyond the censure of the multitude. It is found that the multitude can think, and have discovered that the use the wealthy too often make of what they call their own is unjust, tyrannical, and destructive.
'This memento will come to them with the greater force the oftener they are made to recollect that the spirit of enquiry is abroad, that their voluptuous waste is daily becoming more odious, and that simplicity of manners, a benevolent economy, a vigorous munificence, and a comprehensive philanthropy, can alone redeem them; and preserve that social order which every lover of the human race delights to contemplate, but of which they arrogate to themselves the merit of being the sole advocates.
'It is the moral system of society that wants reform. This cannot be suddenly produced, nor by the efforts of any individual: but it may be progressive, and every individual may contribute: though some much more powerfully than others. The rich, in proportion as they shall understand this power and these duties, will become peculiarly instrumental: for poverty, by being subjected to continual labour, is necessarily ignorant; and it is well known how dangerous it is for ignorance to turn reformer.
'Let the rich therefore awake: let them encourage each other to quit their pernicious frivolities, and to enquire, without fear or prejudice, how they may secure tranquillity and promote happiness; and let them thus avert those miseries at which they so loudly and so bitterly rail, but into which by their conduct a majority of them is so ready to plunge.
'The intentions of those among them who think the most are excellent: to assert the contrary is equally false and absurd. But, when they expect to promote peace and order by irritating each other against this or that class of men, however mistaken those men may be, and by disseminating a mutual spirit of acrimony between themselves and their opponents, they act like madmen; and, if they do not grow calm, forgiving, and kind, the increasing fury of the mad many will overtake them.'
'They are like the brethren of Dives. They pay but little regard to
Moses and the prophets.'