I'm going to analyse "The rich despise the poor" that is an extract from Pamela, a novel written by Samuel Richarson. It is organized by two letters: Pamela wrote a letter to her parents in which she includes another letter written by Lady Davers to her brother Mr B. that she had casually discovered.
Pamela included Lady Davers's letter to inform her parents that she was a virtuous girl and there was someone, Mr B.'s sister, who was ready to help her. Lady Davers invited her brother to let Pamela in peace ("and keep her a prisoner") because she was a maid: it was not respectable for the nobleman Mr B. to love a poor girl, his dead mother's maid. As a consequence, the intelligent reader understands that Lady Davers was not glad that her brother loved her because they were a very famous aristocratic family and Pamela was a wench. Lady Davers provided the reader three argumentations to support her invitation not to stay with her: "I suppose that's over with her now, or soon will", "without running a poor wench that my mother loved", "ours is no upstart family, but is abcient as the best in the kingdom". In Samuel Richardson's period it was common for an aristocratic man to have a wife and a lover: it follows that it was an ordinary event for the noblemen to behave in such a way with young girl of the lower class. Lady Davers said it because she loved her brother and she did not want to lose her honour, as you can understand from the quotation "they have a greater regard for your honuor, than, I am sorry to say it, you have yourself" (it was a bad thing for "one of the best families of the nation" to have a son who loved a wench).
The second letter was written by Pamela to her parents: thanks to it she wanted to make clear that "the rich despise the poor". The functions of the  letters are similar: Pamela used it to make her argumentation. In fact, Lady Davers told to her brother that Pamela was a poor girl: poor people were not well considerated and it follows that it is not respactable for the aristocracy to marry them. In the second letter she underlined the theme of the relationship between the poor and the rich: she affirmed that we are all equal originally and that the life is short. She explained that at the end of life everybody would be judged as the same way and God would not distinguish the poor with the rich. It follows that it was not relevant to be rich or poor. She quoted also philosophy to demonstrate that she was in right. Everything she said was linked to Puritanism: this was her religion and she had to get the initial purity.
The last two lines were useful to communicate her pray to be kept from the pride of a high estate. So she prefers to be poor rather than have a "sinful pride".