Thoughts and details on scarcity Author:Edmund Burke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: bafe felf-intereft, fupported by the fword of law, efpecially when there is reafon to fuppofe that the very avarice of farmers themfelves has concurred with the ... more »errors of Government to bring famine on the land. In that cafe, my opinion is this. Whenever it happens that a man can claim nothing according to the rules of commerce, and the principles of juftice, he paffes out of that department, and comes within the jurifdiftion of mercy. In that province the magiftrate has nothing at all to do : his interference is a violation of the property which it is his office to protect. Without all doubt, chanty to the poor is a direct and obligatory duty upon all Chriftians, next in order after the payment of debts, full as ftrong, and by nature made infinitely more delightful to us. Puffendorf, and othqr cafuifts do not, I think, denominate it quite properly, when they call it a duty of imperfect obligation. But the manner, mode, time, choice of objects, and proportion, are left to private difcretion; and perhaps, for that very reafon it is performed with the greater fatisfaction, becaufe the difcharge. of it has more the appearance of freedom; recommending us befides very fpecially to the divine favour, as the exercife of a virtue mod fuitable to a being fenfible of it's own infirmity. The cry of he people in cities and towns, though unfortunately (from a fear of their multitude and combination) the nioft regarded, ought, infaft, to be the leaft attended to upon this fubjec'l; for citizens are in a ftate of utter ignorance of the means by which they are to be fed, and they contribute little or nothing, except in an infinitely circuitous manner, to their own maintenance. They are truly " Fruges confumere nati" They are to be heard with great refpedt and attention upon matters within th...« less