Note 125 — Chapter XL · THE HOPES OF THE WORLD

‘Besides all these evils of modern times which I have mentioned, there is in some countries of Europe, and particularly in England, another evil peculiar to civilised countries, but quite unknown in barbarous nations. The evil I mean is indigence, and the reader will be surprised when I tell him that it is greatest in the richest countries; and, therefore, in England, which I believe is the richest country in Europe, there is more indigence than in any other; for the number of people that are there maintained on public or private charity, and who may therefore be called beggars, is prodigious. What proportion they may bear to the whole people, I have never heard computed: but I am sure it must be very great. And I am afraid in those countries they call rich, indigence is not confined to the lower sort of people, but extends even to the better sort: for such is the effect of wealth in a nation, that (however paradoxical it may appear) it does at last make all men poor and indigent; the lower sort through idleness and debauchery, the better sort through luxury, vanity, and extravagant expense. Now, I would desire to know from the greatest admirers of modern times, who maintain that the human race is not degenerated, but rather improved, whether they know any other source of human misery, besides vice, disease, and indigence, and whether these three are not in the greatest abundance in the rich and flourishing country of England? I would further ask these gentlemen, whether, in the cities of the ancient world, there were poor’s houses, hospitals, infirmaries, and those other receptacles of indigence and disease which we see in the modern cities? And whether, in the streets of ancient Athens and Rome, there were so many objects of disease, deformity, and misery to be seen as in our streets, besides those which are concealed from public view in the houses above mentioned? In later times, indeed, in those cities, when the corruption of manners was almost as great as among us, some such things might have been seen as we are sure they were to be seen in Constantinople, under the later Greek Emperors.’—Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iii. p. 194.