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THE RELATIVE DUTIES OF MANKIND. [Part III.

to idleness, pride, or vanity ; or to luxurious and intemperate ap-petites ; —■ when it encroaches in any degree upon the feelingsof a healthy self-respect, or a regard to character ; — and Whenit in any degree lessens in the receiver the feeling, that it is dis-graceful to depend upon almsgiving, as long as a capacity ofself-support is retained.

It would he easy to enumerate specific abuses both of publicand private almsgiving. We all must have met with but toomany of them, even in the small circles in which we have moved.There are, in every country, individuals and heads of families,capable of labor, who will not toil themselves, while they canlive upon the toil of others. They are indisposed to any effortwhich they can avoid. Rather than work, they will live uponalms. There are those, too, who might live in great comfortupon their earnings, if they were willing to live within the com-pass of their earnings. In other words, they might live in greatcomfort upon their earnings, if they would deny themselves whatthey cannot afford, and were willing to appear to be simplywhat they are. But they aim at appearances, which their cir-cumstances do not justify. They would not only find their con-dition to be a very comfortable one, but they would revolt fromthe thought of dependence upon alms, if they felt a proper self-respect, and were under the guidance of a higher principle ofright, honor, and duty. To give alms to such persons as these,I say, is an abuse of almsgiving. They need rather a minis-tration to their self-respect and sense of duty.

Again, there are those, and they are not a few, who, in casesof occasional and even considerable failures of employment,might pass through those seasons entirely without the aid of alms,if they would, while they have employment, but look to the sea-sons when employment will probably fail them, and appropriate,for these seasons, what might well be spared from their earnings.And would not almsgiving here be at least a ministration to thrift-lessness ? I need not say, also, what multitudes there are, who,if they would but wholly relinquish the use of spirituous liquors,would never require the aid of alms for their comfortable subsis-tence. Nay, it may be, that they are in no small degree in-duced to continue in their intemperance and wastefulness, by their