reduced to destitution, for the purpose of having one man endowed with a wealth which he, perhaps, knows not how to use, nor even to retain.*

But what, after all, is the practical conclusion to which we come? What system is it that would obliterate pauperism? On this we do not intend to enter in the present volume. We must first show the probability (a probability which, taken altogether, amounts to a reasonable expectation) that man, placed as he is on the globe, is not necessarily condemned to pauperism and degradation; but that a period will come, ere long, when the natural laws which govern society shall be discovered, and, being discovered, shall lead to a condition of prosperity altogether inconceivable at the present time. Two systems are open to us: —

Either pauperism and degradation are the work of the Creator of our system, the ALLPOWERFUL, who has placed present man in circumstances where the natural capabilities of the earth are insufficient for his support;

Or, pauperism and degradation are the work of fallen man, who through ignorance has based

* A fact. The greater part of an island, the rental of which part was about £20,000 a year, has recently been found insufficient to support a family. The capital was spent, and the estate is for sale. On that same island we have seen the native population in numbers gathering their daily food on the shore. This island, in miniature, is a very exact representation of the social condition of Great Britain. It may take a little time for the mass of the population to see exactly how things really do stand; but they will discover the truth at last.

his arrangements of the earth on superstitious propositions, and thereby necessarily has rendered it impossible that the amount of good intended by the Creator can

be extracted from the earth.

Of these two schemes we may take our choice. We may blasphemously rush to the conclusion, that the earth is for man a terrible prison, with necessary horrors, from which, do what we will, we cannot escape. Or we may believe, with humble reverence, that, notwithstanding man's transgression, the Almighty God has yet, in the abundance of his compassion, plentifully provided him with the means of terrestrial existence. That man's doings are the cause of man's distress; that man's ignorance, and man's error, and man's injustice, and man's wrong arrangement of the world, is the true and only cause why man is afflicted with poverty, and thereby placed in circumstances almost incompatible with his proper existence as a moral agent and an accountable creature. And if we admit that moral degradation does, for the most part, accompany physical degradation, then must we admit, that if any new arrangement of the natural world, which man did not create, would have the effect of obliterating poverty, and, consequently, of obliterating the necessary evils of poverty, that new arrangement is right, just, and good, and ought to be carried into execution, whatever the present arrangements, inherited from past generations, may actually be.

And we affirm, without the slightest hesitation, that the very same kind of improvements that have

followed the mathematical and physical sciences, will follow social science, and achieve in the world of man far greater wonders than have yet been achieved in the world of matter. It is not trade Britain wants, nor more railroads, nor larger orders for cotton, nor new schemes for alimenting the poor, nor loans to landlords, nor any other mercantile or economical change. It is social change. New social arrangements, made on the principles,of natural equity. No economical measure whatever is capable of reaching the depths of the social evils. Ameliorations may, no doubt, be made for a time; but the radical evil remains, still generating the poison that corrupts society.

The evil is expressed in a few words; and, sooner or later, the nation will appreciate it and rectify it. It is "the alienation of the soil from the state, and the consequent taxation of the industry of the country." Britain may go on producing with wonderful energy, and may accomplish far more than she has yet accomplished. She may struggle as Britain only can struggle. She may present to the world peace at home, when the nations of Europe are filled with insurrection. She may lead foremost in the march of civilization, and be first among the kingdoms of the earth. All this she may do, and more. But as certainly as Britain continues her present social arrangements, so certainly will there come a time when other questions being cleared on this side and on that side, and the main question brought into the arena-the labor of Britain will emancipate itself from thraldom. Gradually and surely has the separation been taking place between the privileged land owner and

the

the unprivileged laborer. And the time will come at last that there shall be but two parties looking each other in the face, and knowing that the destruction of one is an event of necessary occurrence. That event must come. Nor is it in man to stay it or to produce it. It will come as the result of the laws that govern nature and that govern man. As in the island we have spoken of, the population must be destroyed or the land must be open to their cultivation, and not accorded to the landlord. Of the two parties, one must give way. One must sink to rise no more; one must disappear from the earth. Their continued existence is incompatible. Nature cannot support both. Nature cannot afford to support the population in plenty, and over and above to pay, on a small island, £20,000 a year to the proprietor. Such things cannot be. We may as well attempt mechanical impossibilities as political impossibilities; and, notwithstanding the almost universal prevalence of the current superstition about the rights of landed property, we have no hesitation in affirming that a very few years will show that superstition destroyed, and the main question of England's welfare brought to a serious and definite discussion.*

* The theory of Highland pauperization is one of the simplest things imaginable. Nature has only so many sources of wealth; and if these are taken away, by the laws, from the inhabitants of a district, it stands to reason that the inhabitants must be poor. Were the wealth produced in the Highlands to remain in the Highlands, the inhabitants would be rich; but the annual profits, for the most part, go away and never return. There is a perpetual drain outwards an export without a corresponding import, either of money or goods. If the money produced by the sheep, cattle,

In politics, there are only two main questions-first, personal liberty; second, natural property. England has been at work for centuries in the endeavor to settle the first, and when that is definitively settled, she will give her undivided attention to the second.

grouse, and salmon, actually returned in any form to the districts producing them, the inhabitants would receive the remuneration intended by nature. As it is, pauperism is the natural and necessary result.

"Since the period that the Highlands were brought under the dominion of the law, the inhabitants have been found by all who have visited them from other quarters of the country to be a people annually on the brink of starvation, and annually, to a greater or less degree, feeding on shellfish or seaware. Their indolence and their dirtiness have also been observed by all observers during this whole period. Their ignorance of the arts of bettering their condition, and of the comforts enjoyed in other quarters of the kingdom, have also been uniformly taken notice of. Their destitution was an annual thing; but the usual and ordinary distress was every now and then aggravated by a recurrence of a bad season for the crops on which they principally lived. They were cheerful in the years when they could get any thing like a fair supply of the coarsest and meanest food, but they never labored for any thing more; and hence an unfavorable season, when it came, found them with nothing, and reduced them to starvation. When the season was what might be called good, they never taxed their industry to devise measures for warding off the fatal effects of the bad season which might be close at hand. Such a season was that of 1836, in which, if the potatoes were not a total failure, there was a more general failure of crops in the country. It was followed by the destitution of 1836-7, which called forth the bounty of the other parts of the kingdom, and directed much attention to the state of the Highlands. When I ask the people here, whether the present destitution of 1847 or that of 1837 was the worst, they all declare that the present is far the worst; but when I inquire how those people lived in 1837, I find good reason to believe that it was about as bad as 1847." Scotsman, February 17, 1847.