By keeping their stomachs just at desperation-point? By starving
them out here, to march off, starving all the way, to some town, in
search of employment, of which, if they find it, they know no more
than my horse? Likely! No, Sir, to make men of them, put them not
out of the reach, but out of the need, of charity.

3d Count. And how, prithee? By teaching them, like our fair
Landgravine, to open their mouth for all that drops? Thuringia is
become a kennel of beggars in her hands.

C. Wal. In hers? In ours, Sir!

Abbot. Idleness, Sir, deceit, and immorality, are the three
children of this same barbarous self-indulgence in almsgiving.
Leave the poor alone. Let want teach them the need of self-
exertion, and misery prove the foolishness of crime.

C. Wal. How? Teach them to become men by leaving them brutes?

Abbot. Oh, Sir, there we step in, with the consolations and
instructions of the faith.

C. Wal. Ay, but while the grass is growing the steed is starving;
and in the meantime, how will the callow chick Grace stand against
the tough old game-cock Hunger?

3d Count. Then how, in the name of patience, would you have us
alter things?

C. Wal. We cannot alter them, Sir--but they will be altered, never