Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/173

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¬all her regulations, would then enact a system of equal and local contribution from all who, from any source of property or industry, could spare it ; a contribution which the wealthy would not feel, and which would be felt even by the lowest orders not as a burthen, but as a protection from ever being themselves the objects of a degrading and corrupting relief. — Those mischievous receptacles of vice and misery, which you so justly and feelingly re- probated, would then be everywhere rased to the foundations ;, the poor would be restored to their domestic comforts, and contributing millions to an useless and devouring taxation, would be enabled to relieve the public as they became themselves relieved. — When by such a new system of laws, as wise and protective as the present is absurd and oppressive, the mites of almost the poorest came to be dropped into the boxes of so blessed an institution throughout every district in your country, pauperism would soon entirely disappear. — It often indeed exists in its most wretched and degraded forms, when ¬m 2 what ¬