3d Count. Ask her to take on the thirty families, who were just
going to tramp off those three hundred acres into the Rhine-land, if
she had not kept them in both senses this winter, and left them on
my hands--once beggars, always beggars.

C. Hugo. Well, I'm a practical man, and I say, the sharper the
famine, the higher are prices, and the higher I sell, the more I can
spend; so the money circulates, Sir, that's the word--like water--
sure to run downwards again; and so it's as broad as it's long; and
here's a health--if there was any beer--to the farmers' friends, 'A
bloody war and a wet harvest.'

Abbot. Strongly put, though correctly. For the self-interest of
each it is which produces in the aggregate the happy equilibrium of
all.

C. Wal. Well--the world is right well made, that's certain; and He
who made the Jews' sin our salvation may bring plenty out of famine,
and comfort out of covetousness. But look you, Sirs, private
selfishness may be public weal, and yet private selfishness be just
as surely damned, for all that.

3d Count. I hold, Sir, that every alms is a fresh badge of slavery.

C. Wal. I don't deny it.

3d Count. Then teach them independence.

C. Wal. How? By tempting them to turn thieves, when begging fails?