After all, have we not reason to be thankful to the Giver of all Good?  In our history, and when “the laborer of England is said to have been once happy,” we find constantly, after certain intervals, a period of real famine, by which a melancholy havoc was made among the human race.  The price of provisions fluctuated dreadfully, demonstrating a deficiency very different from the worst failures of the present moment.  Never, since I have known England, have I known more than a comparative scarcity.  The price of wheat, taking a number of years together, has had no very considerable fluctuation; nor has it risen exceedingly until within this twelvemonth.  Even now, I do not know of one man, woman, or child that has perished from famine:  fewer, if any, I believe, than in years of plenty, when such a thing may happen by accident.  This is owing to a care and superintendence of the poor, far greater than any I remember.

The consideration of this ought to bind us all, rich and poor together, against those wicked writers of the newspapers who would inflame the poor against their friends, guardians, patrons, and protectors.  Not only very few (I have observed that I know of none, though I live in a place as poor as most) have actually died of want, but we have seen no traces of those dreadful exterminating epidemics which, in consequence of scanty and unwholesome food, in former times not unfrequently wasted whole nations.  Let us be saved from too much wisdom of our own, and we shall do tolerably well.

It is one of the finest problems in legislation, and what has often engaged my thoughts whilst I followed that profession,—­What the state ought to take upon itself to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual discretion.  Nothing, certainly, can be laid down on the subject that will not admit of exceptions,—­many permanent, some occasional.  But the clearest line of distinction which I could draw, whilst I had my chalk to draw any line, was this:  that the state ought to confine itself to what regards the state or the creatures of the state:  namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to everything that is truly and properly public,—­to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.  In its preventive police it ought to be sparing of its efforts, and to employ means, rather few, unfrequent, and strong, than many, and frequent, and, of course, as they multiply their puny politic race, and dwindle, small and feeble.  Statesmen who know themselves will, with the dignity which belongs to wisdom, proceed only in this the superior orb and first mover of their duty, steadily, vigilantly, severely, courageously:  whatever remains will, in a manner, provide for itself.  But as they descend from the state to a province, from a province to a parish, and from a parish to a private house, they go on accelerated in their fall.  They cannot do the lower duty; and in proportion as they try it, they will certainly fail in the higher.  They ought to know the different departments of things,—­what belongs to laws, and what manners alone can regulate.  To these great politicians may give a leaning, but they cannot give a law.