"Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law"
About this Quote
A neat couplet of social diagnosis: the law isn’t blind, it’s busy. Goldsmith compresses a whole political economy into two blunt verbs. “Grinds” turns justice into machinery - repetitive, impersonal, and physically violent. It suggests not just punishment but attrition: fines, debt, eviction, the slow chew of procedure that the poor can’t outlast. Then the line flips from passive suffering to active control. The poor are processed; “rich men” don’t merely escape the machine, they “rule” it.
The power move here is grammatical as much as moral. “Law” is made the subject, as if it were a neutral institution, until Goldsmith reveals it has masters. The subtext is that legality and legitimacy have been conflated on purpose: once wealth can purchase influence, the law’s authority becomes a mask for class power. It’s not that the rich break rules; the richer claim is that they write the rules and decide when they apply.
Context matters. Goldsmith writes in 18th-century Britain, a world of harsh penal codes, property-first justice, and a rising commercial class. The “Bloody Code” era made theft by the desperate a hanging offense while elite corruption traveled under more respectable names. Goldsmith, a poet with a keen eye for everyday precarity, isn’t offering a reform pamphlet; he’s delivering a line built to stick in the mind and curdle into suspicion.
It works because it refuses consolation. No appeal to fairness, no faith that courts self-correct. Just a cold symmetry: the poor are crushed by law; the rich crush back, through it.
The power move here is grammatical as much as moral. “Law” is made the subject, as if it were a neutral institution, until Goldsmith reveals it has masters. The subtext is that legality and legitimacy have been conflated on purpose: once wealth can purchase influence, the law’s authority becomes a mask for class power. It’s not that the rich break rules; the richer claim is that they write the rules and decide when they apply.
Context matters. Goldsmith writes in 18th-century Britain, a world of harsh penal codes, property-first justice, and a rising commercial class. The “Bloody Code” era made theft by the desperate a hanging offense while elite corruption traveled under more respectable names. Goldsmith, a poet with a keen eye for everyday precarity, isn’t offering a reform pamphlet; he’s delivering a line built to stick in the mind and curdle into suspicion.
It works because it refuses consolation. No appeal to fairness, no faith that courts self-correct. Just a cold symmetry: the poor are crushed by law; the rich crush back, through it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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