The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.
(The Wealth of Nations, 1776)
Adam Smith
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Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. The landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
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