In consequence Count Rumford wrote to Thomas Bernard, Esq., from Germany:
I feel myself very highly honoured by the distinguished mark of esteem and regard which the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor has conferred on me, and I beg leave through you to return the Society my respectful and grateful acknowledgments.
This flattering proof of the approbation of those most respectable persons who compose the Society will tend very powerfully to encourage me to persevere in those endeavours to promote the important objects they have in view, by which I first obtained their notice and esteem.
I am very sanguine in my expectations of the good which will be done by this Society; they will, however, be able to do much more by examples--by _models_ that can be seen and felt--than by anything that can be said or written.
The rapid progress you are making in your most interesting and laudable undertakings affords me a high degree of satisfaction. It proves that I was not mistaken when I concluded that, notwithstanding the alarming progress of luxury and corruption of taste and of morals in England, there is still good sense and energy to be found, even in the highest classes of society, where the influx of wealth has operated most powerfully. Go on, my dear sir, and be assured that when you shall have put _doing good_ in fashion, you will have done all that human wisdom can do to retard and prolong the decline of a great and powerful nation that has arrived at, or passed, the zenith of human glory.
I have received your letter from Brighton of the 12th ult. You can hardly imagine the high degree of pleasure and satisfaction which I feel at your success in your most laudable undertakings. Go on, my dear sir, and be assured that you will contribute more essentially to the revival of taste and morals, of energy, industry, benevolence, and _prosperity_ in your favoured country than all the speculators and reformers in the three kingdoms.
When society is arrived at a certain degree of torpid indifference and enervation of mind and body, which are the unavoidable effects of wealth, luxury, and inordinate indulgence, mankind must either be _allured_ or _shamed_ into action. Precepts and admonitions have no effect on them.