Herald of the times, and Rhode Islander. [volume] (Newport, R.I.) 1846-1849, 1848-01-06
Fourth Lecture before The Newport Us

by JOHN &. PARK, ESQ, of Boston, was
delivered to large and highly gratifed
audience, on Thursday evening the 3Oil
ult., 'greeably to the published notice o.
the Associations committee the sub
ject of the lecture being the Dioisipn Of
property, and the causes and effects Of
its unequal division. Mr.. Park, who
has had great experience,w we believe, as d
public speaker, and is highly favored
with gifts and attainments for that duty,
made most agreeable impression on his
hearers by his ready and apt illustration
of his subject, and a statement Of the
great truths involved in it so familiar and
ineligible as to be level TO the compre-
hension Of all.
! Mr.. p. began by history of the rise
and progress Of public lectures in Bos-
ton, in which, so far back as 1922, he
had earnestly co-operated, and which
had resulted in the conviction, that a
course Of lectures on any giren subject,
was to be preferred to a series Of insuia-
ted Lectures on different subjects, which
mus, be necessarily superficial, and i'm
part a smat,ering Of information rather
than any full aud well digested knowl-
edge. Nevertheless, a series Of lectures
on variety of subjects had in many pla-
ces in New England been found to be
useful, if in nothing else, in bringing the
different portions Of society together,
and breaking up the narrow cliques and
coteries, which too often infested them
In course Of this kind the lecture should
be plain and practical, and in this man
ner he would endeavor to treat the sub
ject of this evenings discourse, which
was the DirisiOn of property.
Mr. p. then related an affecting Incl
dent, which occurred to him when re-
turning on severely cold night from
friends house in the city Of Boston
which directed his thoughts to some of
the startling effects of the division of
property, and made him, for a moment,
repine at the order Of providence, which
had seemingly with so unequal hand
distributed the possession and enjoyment
of this worlds goods. When he turned
his attention to our ancestral home, the
rich, enterprising, and all powerful Eng
land, this great disparity in the distribu-
ton of the means and appliances of life
was still more striking. For who could
look but moment OH her lordy palaces,
and the magnificent grounds which en-
vironed them, and OH their owners and
occupants filled to safety with superAu-
Gus wealth, and not shudder to think of
the mass of misery and suffering beneath
the surface of these grounds, where, day
and night, deep in the mines, hundreds
OF men, women, and children, without a
rag to cover them, crawled with baskets
of coal on their backs to the mouth of the
pit, which gave them the single glance
they attained of the suns light. or the
privilege of inhaling the free air of Heav-
en-, which God, in his mercy, had vouch-
safed to all. When he thought of these
things, and remembered there was
providence above, he confessed he dread
ed to hear ,on the arrival ofevery steamer,
Of some terrible convulsion and outbreak
in the land Of our fathers, which should
come to avenge outraged humanity
But what were the causes of this state Of Il
things in country apparently so rich
and thriving as England, and why was it
that in our own favored land, though
differences Of condition existed, and in
stances of suffering were no doubt fire.
quent. on the whole, every able bodied
man. with proper industry and spirit,
could command the neccssaries and most
of the conveniences Of life i! This was
lue, he thought, chiefly to the operation
of the law Of primogeniture in England;
which accumulated wealth in a few hands,
md which had operated for centuries,
md to our wiser provision for the de-
scent and distribution of estates which
rave to each child and heir its equal
portion. liz
Mr.. p. contended tina, the appropriation of
property, and its consequent inequality Of
distribution, was as old as the race itself and
ted the instances Of Cain and Abel to ex
mpifyh. II was recognized also in those
prohibitions OF the Decaloguc, which said,-I
Thou shaft not steai,"-" Thou shalt not i
opet Thy neighbor's house, Sc, nor anything '
hat is Thy neighbor's." 1t grew out of the {
ssenlial differences in men, intellectually
nd morally considered, and was wisely per. I