tyranny, but of the system of letting alone, and therefore its remedy is the most difficult problem ever submitted to civilized man; nor can the solution be obtained without shocking many favourite prejudices and involving some painful sacrifices. But the slave trade was overthrown; and shall an evil equal abstractedly and to us far greater than that of the slave trade be allowed to exist unchecked for ever? What Bible or Missionary Society can propose to itself an object so great as the redemption of the labouring population of England from their present wretched state, wretched alike to body and mind and soul? And if the work is to be done by combined efforts, will no society be formed for this highest and holiest of all purposes? If it is to be accomplished by individual energy, will there be no new Howard, or Clarkson, or Fry, to lay bare this evil in all its enormity, and to resolve with God's help that it shall no longer remain unremedied? If the aid of the legislature be needed, will the Government or will Parliament refuse their assistance to the most glorious and most blessed undertaking which ever immortalized the memory of a statesman or a legislator? It is not for an individual to prescribe in presumptuous ignorance what is to be done: but he may implore all his countrymen to apply their best thoughts to the question, to consider the present evil in all its length and breadth, and then to ask. themselves, in the sight of God, whether any difficulties ought to deter them from resolving at any price to remove it.

XII. STATE OF THE MANUFACTURING AND LABOURING POPULATION.

[From the Paper dated July 20, 1839.]

SIR, It is very natural that you should expect from me, after having dwelt so much on the evils of the actual state of our manufacturing and labouring population, that I should attempt to suggest something as a remedy. But

if I were to do so, I should virtually belie the representation which I have made of the magnitude of the evil. That could be no deep and wide-spreading disorder in the political system, for which a common observer like myself, with no particular sources of information at his command, could confidently recommend a cure. It is in fact the common error committed by unprofessional men,-by those who are laymen, if I may so speak, with regard to the subject which they are discussing,-that not contented with calling attention to the evil, they venture also to prescribe a remedy for it. And by thus unwisely stepping beyond their proper province, they often defeat their own object. If from want of practical familiarity with the working of a system they propose, as often happens, some awkward or impossible alteration in it, not only do they furnish a triumph to the interested supporters of old abuses, but even good and wise practical men are so shocked at the evident presumption and ignorance of the proposed reform, that they do not listen to the really true statement of grievances, which abundantly showed that some reform was needed.

But although incompetent to suggest the most proper remedies, yet a bystander may do good service by calling the attention of those who are competent to do so, but who in their turn labour under a disadvantage of another kind; namely that their long familiarity with the actual state of things makes them less apt to perceive and to dread its dangers. The practical man is often wanting in this, that the practice with which he is well acquainted is merely his own, or that of those immediately around him; the practice of other times and countries he often does not know ;-and what he calls experience is therefore delusive, because it is too partial to furnish any safe general conclusions. "There have been riots in the manufacturing districts often without any serious consequences: -why should the danger be greater now ?—It is no new thing in England for a large portion of the population to

be dependent merely on their labour,-why should we regard it a state so fraught with evil?" And sometimes if we speak of the great number of poor persons in England as compared with the rich, we are answered by a text from Scripture, misapplied as stray texts generally are,—and are told that God Himself has said "that the poor shall never cease out of the land." Now (not to dwell upon the false impression conveyed to an English reader by the word "shall" in this passage, which in the time of our translators expressed mere futurity, but now in our present language expresses also the will or intention of the speaker;)—yet it is one thing to say that the poor shall never cease out of the land altogether, and another, that they shall form the greatest proportion of its inhabitants. And this, so far from being according to the intention of the Mosaic law, was one of the things which it most laboured to obviate: the Israelitish people were to be a nation of landed proprietors: poverty was to be the occasional exception, but not the rule.

Lord Lansdowne, in the late debate in the House of Lords on the Government scheme of education, expressed a benevolent wish that education, if generally introduced amongst our manufacturing population, might greatly reduce the amount of crime. God forbid that I should speak or think slightingly of the blessings of education; but I greatly fear that we are expecting more from it in the actual state of our society than it can alone by possibility accomplish. Most wisely has Mr. Laing said in his most instructive account of Norway, that "a man may read and write and yet have a totally uneducated mind; but that he who possesses property, whether he can read and write or not, has an educated mind: he has forethought, caution, and reflection guiding every action; he knows the value of self-restraint and is in the constant habitual practice of it." What we commonly call education is invaluable when it is given in time to a people possessing the education of property;-when it opens to them

intellectual enjoyments whilst they are yet in a condition to taste them, and so, by accustoming them to raise their standard of happiness, it prevents them from recklessly sinking to a lower condition. Education, in the common sense of the word, is required by a people before poverty has made havoc amongst them;-at that critical moment when civilization makes its first burst, and is accompanied by an immense commercial activity. Then is the time for general education, to teach the man of smaller means how to conduct himself in the coming fever of national development :-to make him understand the misery of sinking from the condition of a proprietor to that of a mere labourer; and if this cannot be avoided at home, then to dispose him to emigrate to a new country whilst he still retains the habits which will make him a valuable element in a new society there. But can what is called education, can book learning really educate beggars, or those whose condition is so low that it cannot become lower? Our population want book knowledge, and they also want the means in point of social well-being to render this knowledge available. This is the difficulty of the problem, that we know not where to begin. And we shall have gained something, if we are well convinced that no single measure, whether of so called education, or of emigration, or of an improved poor-law,-and far less any political privilege which, when given to men unfit to use it, is an evil to themselves rather than a good,-will be of real efficacy to better our condition.

If I can impress your readers with this conviction, I shall do more good than by proposing any remedy of my own, to which there might be serious practicable objections; and then he who makes these objections would be supposed to have overthrown all that I had been urging. I cannot tell by myself how to mend the existing evil, but I wish to call attention to its magnitude. I wish to persuade men that a prodigious effort is required: we want every man's wisdom and every man's virtue to con

sider carefully the state in which we are now living, and to shrink from no sacrifices which may be called for to correct it.

XIII. THE EVILS OF OUR NATIONAL

STATE.

[From the Paper dated November 9, 1839.]

SIR,-If I have not troubled you lately with any of my communications, it is not that my interest is at all abated in these great questions to which I have tried to awaken the attention of your readers; nor yet that the present apparent slumber of Chartism encourages me to hope that the symptom of the great national evil which afflicts us are really wearing a more favourable aspect; but it is much rather because the contrast between the magnitude of the disease, and the feebleness of my efforts to check its progress, is so absolutely startling, that to hope to do good by such means in such a matter seems at once ridiculous and desperate.

I feel, Sir, but too truly that it is so. And I could often find it in my heart to turn away my eyes altogether from the prospect of our national state, and solacing myself with the hope that the dreaded evil may after all not come in my life-time, to occupy myself wholly with private interests and duties. Many I believe do this; the supposed desperateness of the case veiling to their consciences the blameableness of thus abandoning it. But, Sir, although things as they now are may last out my time, can we persuade ourselves that they will last out the time of our children? And it is surely no very romantic patriotism to dread for one's own immediate children the arrival of a season of crime and misery, such as I will believe the whole preceding experience of the human race will have never seen paralleled.

What no individual efforts could compass,-I am not