against which one's senses are not proof, and benevolence itself revolts
at the appearance of the poor of Arras.--These are not the cold and
fastidious reflections of an unfeeling mind--they are not made without
pain: nor have I often felt the want of riches and consequence so much as
in my incapacity to promote some means of permanent and substantial
remedy for the evils I have been describing. I have frequently enquired
the cause of this singular misery, but can only learn that it always has
been so. I fear it is, that the poor are without energy, and the rich
without generosity. The decay of manufactures since the last century
must have reduced many families to indigence. These have been able to
subsist on the refuse of luxury, but, too supine for exertion, they have
sought for nothing more; while the great, discharging their consciences
with the superfluity of what administered to their pride, fostered the
evil, instead of endeavouring to remedy it. But the benevolence of the
French is not often active, nor extensive; it is more frequently a
religious duty than a sentiment. They content themselves with affording
a mere existence to wretchedness; and are almost strangers to those
enlightened and generous efforts which act beyond the moment, and seek
not only to relieve poverty, but to banish it. Thus, through the frigid
and indolent charity of the rich, the misery which was at first
accidental is perpetuated, beggary and idleness become habitual, and are
transmitted, like more fortunate inheritances, from one generation to
another.--This is not a mere conjecture--I have listened to the histories
of many of these unhappy outcasts, who were more than thirty years old,
and they have all told me, they were born in the state in which I beheld
them, and that they did not remember to have heard that their parents
were in any other. The National Assembly profess to effectuate an entire
regeneration of the country, and to eradicate all evils, moral, physical,
and political. I heartily wish the numerous and miserable poor, with
which Arras abounds, may become one of the first objects of reform; and