But not only is this charge founded upon a wrong conception of the character and habits of the poor, but upon a mistaken view of the real political and moral influence of these Associations.
It is admitted on all hands, that the best remedy for national distress would be to create in the poor a spirit of independence; to raise them above a state, in which they would stoop to receive from the public, that support which ought to be procured by their own industry and foresight. On this ground, we establish clubs to provide against sickness; banks to deposit savings; and there is reason to conclude, from the example of Scotland, that if the principle of honest independence were duly cultivated, and means supplied for its full operation, an almost total subduction of our Poor Rate might take place. Bible Associations have, then, a direct tendency to teach and to set at work this very principle. They teach the poor economy, a habit of foresight, the benefit of order and christian co-operation. They raise the poor from the rank of beggars to that of benefactors; and, whilst in common with clubs, they cherish a habit of prudence, they root out the habit of selfishness, which clubs have, perhaps, a tendency to produce.
I may be permitted to say in conclusion, that although we may lament that such controversies should arise, because, as the author of these Reasons states, our divisions are by these means made greater, still it is our comfort to know, that the effect of such controversies is to create inquiry into the facts upon which they are founded. And this inquiry, all that love truth, must most earnestly desire. The friends of the Bible Society wish to lay open every fact, to offer every plan for investigation, conscious of the simplicity and purity of their object and conduct.
When the members of this Society, those of them, at least, who are not under an error of judgment, are said in this pamphlet to “have the aim and ambition to puritanize the whole community, and to raise the fabric of enthusiasm upon the ruins of church and state,” I look to _fact_, which our author will at least allow to be as good a weapon as hypothesis, and having used in vain all my faculties to discover any ground for the assertion, I venture to conclude, either that the author has in his study dreamt of enemies whom he cannot have seen, or that he has inserted this passage for the purpose of concluding his work with a flourish, even at the expence of truth.