Lawyers

Population Inwards

"Oh! if (sic) those who rule the destinies of nations would but remember this - if they would but think how hard it is for the very poor to have engendered in their hearts, that love of home from which all domestic virtues spring, when they live in dense and squalid masses where social decency is lost, or rather never found - if they would but turn aside from the wide thorough-fares and great houses, and strive to improve the wretched dwellings in byways where only Poverty (sic) may walk - many low roofs would point more truly to the sky, than the loftiest steeple that now rears proudly from the midst of guilt, and crime, together with horrible disease, to mock them by its contrast. In love of home, the love of country has its rise; and who are the truer patriots or the better in time of need - those who venerate the land, owning its wood, stream, earth and all they produce? Or those who love their country boasting not a foot of ground in all its wide domain?" Charles Dickens in Chapter 38 of The Old Curiosity Shop, 1841

Dickens had a strong grasp of the faults of humanity and did not hesitate to show them through his characters. He clearly pitied the poor - especially the working poor - and sometimes brings readers to conflict over those who drove themselves to poverty through their vices. In The Old Curiosity Shop, for example, a kindly old grandfather has his house taken from him and chooses homelessness with his granddaughter because he is a bad gambling addict.

Before Dickens wrote the quote above he devoted 37 chapters to developing the idea that not all poor people are virtuous nor all rich people greedy. The long literary trek allowed Dickens to show that some people were better able to control their vices than others. In Dickens’ universe some wealthy folk could be kind and generous, but some poor people could be devious and foolish. Dickens’ wrote about the world that is much as we know it.

Community influence on culture and political thought is being further eroded by the ambivalence that government is showing toward controlling immigration. Neighborhoods are fragmented by language and custom. Children of immigrants - particularly adolescent children - retain allegiance to their homeland and, at times, even express animosity for this country. These factors, among others, pose a threat to the stability of neighborhoods and the nation, but immigration - especially "undocumented, or illegal, immigration - helps to reduce labor costs in this country. Consequently, those who "rule the destinies" of corporate balance sheets support open borders immigration policies.