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DURING the winter of 1854-55, the Rev. Hugh Stowell Brown delivered a Sunday afternoon Lecture to the working classes of Liverpool. As it contains some very sound and timely remarks we publish it in the hope it will do good among the class to which it was addressed.

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"I am very happy to meet you again my friends. The subject which I announced for to-day, when I last had the pleasure of addressing you, was Proverbs about Work.' Of such proverbs I have collected a large number, something more than sixty, I believe, and there are many of them that contain such lessons of wisdom and encouragement as inspire the hope that, addressed to working men, they may be found of some good service. I know I have often found some of these proverbs valuable to myself, and I trust that they may prove equally serviceable to you all. But I cannot enter upon this topic without adverting to a fact which I contemplate with great sorrow and concern. From all that I can gather, I fear that I am only too correct when I say that very great numbers of working men in Liverpool, and in other towns too, are now out of employment. Some trades, perhaps, are not yet much affected, but others feel very bitterly the pressure of these critical times, and hundreds, indeed thousands, of working men, and especially of labourers, in this town, are in a sad state of destitution, and dont know where to turn to provide food and clothing for themselves and their families at this inclement season of the year.

GOOD TIMES AND BAD TIMES;

I desire to express my sympathy with all such. I wish it were in my power to do more, but more I cannot do than offer a few words of counsel and encouragement. I know it may be said that 'fair words butter no parsnips;' but still, my friends, if one could speak some wise, and encouraging, and cheering words, they might help you in some measure to butter the parsnips for yourselves; and this, I take it, is a great deal better than to have them buttered for you by me or by anybody else.

It seems to be a pretty well ascertained fact that, in this country at least, we have periodical depressions of trade, seasons of stagnation, panic, bankruptcy, and ruin. For a time things go on swimmingly, but at last even the boldest and the best swimmers are seized with cramps, and sink in a stormy ocean of disaster. These commercial crises seem to recur, with a remarkable regularity, every few years. Perhaps it would not be difficult to explain how this is, and to trace these reverses to their origin. Probably many causes conspire to bring about such a state of things. It may be defective legislation; it may be unwarrantable speculation; it may be men s mad haste to be rich, reckless of all consequences; it may be the unsatisfactory character of our relationships with foreign powers-any, or all of these, may tend to produce that panic which always follows closely upon the footsteps of the mania. Possibly a time may come when men, taught by many bitter experiences, may succeed in obviating such disasters, and in giving to the commercial world that regularity and precision which are apparent in the natural world. But bad times, I am afraid, are to a great extent the consequence of the abuse of good times. Whenever there is a very great revival of trade, a roaring state of trade, enormous wages, excessive demand for labour, such a state of things is to be suspected, and wise men will say,Things cannot long continue thus;' but, as after a very fine summer there is often a very hard winter, so there will most assuredly be a tremendous alteration in the state of commercial affairs.

But whatever may be the philosophy of bad times, I am very much afraid that we have to grapple with bad times now, as a stern and stubborn fact. Many, it is true, do not feel the pressure yet; but it is to be feared that things have not yet got to the lowest point of depression; they may become worse before they begin to improve. In the hard experience of many

OR, PROVERBS ABOUT WORK.

in this town, however, the state of things is already bad enough. Provisions are high; the weather is and has been very severe; and labour is, in very many departments, scarce. Multitudes who are not altogether out of work have only two or three days' employment in the week; and just at the period of the year when abundance is most required, the people find themselves on very short allowance. Now that these hard times have come upon us, I cannot but remember that not long ago we were favoured with remarkably good times. No man was out of work, excepting through his own choice or his own folly. Working men had nearly every thing their own way; they arranged about all manner of work, the hours in which, the prices at which, the persons by whom, the work was to be done; how many apprentices there should be; how much overtime was to make a quarter-all these and many other matters were determined by the men, and the masters were compelled to bow, or, at all events, did bow, at their dictation. We heard of artisans getting even a guinea a day, and being carried to and from their work in spring vans-perhaps in Hansom cabs, for aught I know. If the employer complained, if he even ventured to suggest anything, it was no uncommon thing for the men to throw down the tools and walk out of the shop. Now, mark, I do not say that such independence as this was more than the men had a right to; I say a workman has a right to be as independent as ever he can make himself, and has as good a right to dictate terms to the employer as the employer has to dictate terms to him. People said, 'Oh, how monstrous! 10s., 15s., even a guinea a day!' Well, what if it had been five guineas a day, if people will give so much; if the workman found that men would give that price for his work, he had a perfect right to do it. The corn merchant sells his corn at the highest price he can get for it; the iron merchant acts on the same principle; so does the draper; so does the grocer; and why should not the artisan sell his skill, and the labourer his strength, as dearly as they may? It is all nonsense to say that men were too well paid; they were paid what they could get, and so was everybody else. Well, for many persons those were glorious times; but they were intended to be so used as to enable us to stand these bad times; and workmen who acted wisely then have not been distressed much this winter. 'Make hay while the sun shines.' This is a very good old proverb, peculiarly applicable to working men in good

GOOD TIMES AND BAD TIMES;

times. The sun did shine; I do not know when it had shone so brightly before, and it shone for a long time too. That was your chance. Well, did you make the hay, or did you waste your time in folly? Did you consume all the grass, or, as another proverb has it, 'Did you spend the Michaelmas rent in the Midsummer noon?' The man who acted thus, who lost time, and did not work more than four days a week when he ought to have wrought six-the man who spent on himself and his companions ten, twenty, forty, fifty per cent. of his wages, who for so many glasses of gin swapped all the advantages of these times, and, after receiving perhaps 35s. a week, had the audacity to go home to his wife and children with 15s.—that man, unless he is a born fool, cannot be surprised if now he finds himself very hard up. Very few men in many trades can say that they never had the chance of preparing, in some measure at least, against hard times. Are there not multitudes of poor fellows now shivering and shaking, living in the utmost discomfort, and unable to feed their children as they ought to be fed, who are ready to curse their folly, and to say, ' Would to God I had not acted so madly; there for weeks and weeks and months and months I spent, certainly, 10s. a week in such a manner as did me no good, did my family no good, did nobody but the publican and the brewer any good; 10s. a week, something more, something less, perhaps! Many a time have I ordered drink for the good of the house; fool that I was, I ought to have thought of the good of my own house! And while I professed and really thought that I was acting liberally among my companions, and cherishing a companionable spirit, I was wronging, robbing, ruining my own family! If I could only have that money now, and instead of going off for half days and whole days, and losing morning quarters, I had, like a man of sense, worked six days as I might, why, I should have had pounds in this pocket, where now I find it very difficult to discover pence, and I might now be enabled to look the frosty weather, and the east wind, and stagnation of trade, and the bad times to look them all in the face, and say, 'You cannot hurt me much, you cannot strip my bed, you cannot send my watch to the pawnshop, you cannot starve my children, you cannot empty my cupboard, or distress that tidy, economical, thrifty wife of mine; my home, though humble, shall be cheerful and happy; and, instead of begging, I will bear a hand and help poor fellows who have not had so good a chance of getting on.'

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