Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

toil, step by step, with patient drudgery; several rounds of the ladder are broken away and gone. A farm of some hundred acres, requiring for their due cultivation a large capital, would be a day-dream too gaudy ever to mix itself with the visions of the most ambitious labourer. Earning, on an average, probably less than nine shillings a-week, the agricultural workman's horizon is bounded by the high red brick walls of the union-house; his virtual marriage settlement can only point to such a refuge, if troubles arise; his old age may there have to seek its last shelter. None can starve in England, thanks to the benevolence of our laws; but would we could indulge some hope of the poor labourer rising to comparative independence, by thrift, industry, and a proper regard to the moral duties of his station. As his case now stands, his choice vacillates between the union and the prison." This indeed is terrible, for the truest way, the only way of aiding the labouringclasses, in the village or the city, is by impressing upon them the importance of prudence, but prudence with such a prospect as Mr. Worsley exhibits; the termination of prudence should be property; and at the same time that we call to prudence, in order to give any value to the call as far as possible, all existing difficulties should be removed which stand in the way. We know there are instances of the truest and highest character with no property; but we are looking to the elevation of a class, and we must not expect the greater bulk of the class to be influenced by feelings and motives more exalted than those which influence the ordinary and average members of society

in raising the people. In speaking to these, we must not indulge in speculative opinions; we can only expect a man to lay by his present gratification when the motive presented to him to do so is stronger in the amount of physical comfort it promises than the strength of the gratification removed. There is a mighty vitality in the term mine, there is independence in it, there is the belief of right in it; and again, we say, you may estimate the progress of a man in civilization, in all progress, by his power to use that word. Travel through the whole world, and notice everywhere how property, and the industry it induces, gives to a man and to a state power; there lies a radical error beneath all our accumulations, if the result is only to grasp from the many, and to hoard for the few. Dr. Southey relates, that, "Some years ago, a traveller who took shelter in a cottage by one of the Scotch lakes, saw that the rain ran in, and lay in pools upon the uneven floor, which consisted only of the bare earth on which the hovel had been built; during the great part of the year, therefore, the hovel must be wet and dirty, making it both uncomfortable and unwholesome. He observed to the man with how little trouble the inconvenience might be removed; the man shook his head, and answered, it was very true, but that if he were to do this, the cottage would be thought worth more for having been made comfortable, and the rent would in consequence be raised."* This circumstance has not so much reference to our own country, still it is beau

* Southey's "Political Essays."

I

tiful to notice what will be done for a cottage by a man who feels it to be his own; he will trim its garden, he will patch up its walls, he will take a delight in placing successive improvements around it ; it is his own, and he expects to die there, and to leave it to his children, and every moment of his spare time is dedicated to the making it more beautiful and lovely. It is most important, if a man is to take an interest in his work, that he should have a stake in it, that he should feel that his happiness in some considerable degree depends upon the interest of such labour and work: the power of labour, when it feels that it is performing for itself, is immense-the desert yields before it the very rock gives up the contest-the most wild waste is reclaimed—the solitary moor, where the heath-fowl only flew, re-echoes with the sound of human voices and the heavy tread of human feet; nature smiles, for this is like her own work, and increases her produce and her gifts an hundred-fold; poverty shuns the scene, scared not only by the presence of present happiness, but by the conservative influences which are preparing for long years of future enjoyment, toil, though it be when the morning lines the sky with its first blazing tinge of crimson and of gold, or after the last evening beam, is unrepining, because it is not unrewarded. Labour then, for the first time, becomes a sacrament and a psalm, and life glides on in the happy round of duties which all bring their own sweet reward. Sorrow is chastened in some degree by hope, and even present distress finds the tools are left with which it may yet work out its pathway among the difficult hills.

CHAPTER III.

THE PHYSIQUE AND MORALE OF A GREAT CITY.

PROLOGUE OF QUOTATIONS.

"There is no law, no principle based on past experience, which may not be overthrown in a moment by the arising of a new condition, or the invention of a new material; and the most rational, if not the only mode of averting the danger of an utter dissolution of all that is systematic and consistent in our practice, or of ancient authority in our judgment, is to cease for a little while our endeavours to deal with the multiplying hosts of particular abuses, restraints, or acquirements; and endeavour to determine as the guides of every efforts, some constant, general, and irrefragable laws of right; laws which, based upon man's nature, not upon his knowledge, may possess so far the unchangeableness of the one, as that neither the increase nor imperfection of the other may be able to assault or invalidate them."

JOHN RUSKIN.-Seven Lamps of Architecture.

"In times past great minds led a host, and gave their names to the regions that had been opened or conquered under their guidance. But now it seems task enough if we can bring ourselves to contemplate with serenity, and to comprehend the giddy tossings-the reeling to and fro— of the social system. In presence of these vast and ominous convulsions, what is the pulpit, or the press even, or what the consultations of good men in committee? They are little more than what the very same means of influence would be, if opposed to the storm-borne swell of the Atlantic! Ominous convulsions we may call them, and yet are they not auspicious?"

ISAAC TAYLOR.- Loyola.

« ZurückWeiter »