tural laborer be justified in destroying the threshing machine, the weaver has a right to destroy the power loom; the printers' pressman would be right in destroying the steam press; the waterman would be right in dismantling the steam vessel; and so, throughout the whole compass of society, we should be thrown back into a state of privation, helplessness, and utter barbarism.

It is one of the most deplorable results of ignorance, that any such notion should be entertained, and that it has not been seen in what way the amelioration of the condition of the operative classes is to be advanced (and this advance ought to be the object of all philanthropists, of all statesmen, of all moralists) in connexion with the continually increasing employment, and not by the disuse, of that machinery which is as the multiplication of human thought and power.

So we ascribe to ignorance that mis-direction, or that non-regulation of the feelings and passions of a man's own breast; the irritation of his conduct towards others, generating similar annoyance towards himself, and keeping up that wretched reaction of needless suffering which is so often to be found in dwellings that might become scenes of mutual affection and enjoyment. It is from want of acquaintance with himself-from want of the habit of analyzing his own motives, and the tendency of his own words and deeds, that a man is led to the indulgence of anger; to the cherishing of vindictiveness; to a blindness to the means, the many means, by which one kind heart may alleviate the sorrows, and increase and strengthen the enjoyment of another kind heart; and by which even the dreariest hovel may be made the abode of peace, of the peace of God. It is from the same cause

that men are led to low and brutal means of enjoying themselves to enjoyments which one can scarcely bear to designate by that name; that lower the nature of man towards the brute, and that go to the destruction not only of all comfort, but of all morality, and of all intelligence even. These are the fruits, the pernicious fruits, that ignorance has been bearing from age to age.

Another unfavorable circumstance is, the pressure of

want.

In extreme cases, the operation of this is much the same upon all classes. The most educated man is a savage under the pangs of continued hunger. A boat full of philosophers turned adrift upon the Atlantic for a week, without any stock of provisions, would feel at length something like the longings of the cannibal arise in their bosoms. But if, in extreme cases, such is the effect on the best instructed, how wearying, how irritating, how destructive of whatever is beautiful and good, must be the continual pinching and stinting from day to day to which so many thousands, uneducated thousands, in this city, and in this country, are necessarily subjected. The constantly finding the meal come short of the desires, of the craving desires, of the family-the continually having to submit to sensations which in their continuation are torture-what can this produce but irritation, ceaseless irritation, tending to the destruction of every feeling of gentleness and kindness, and sometimes aggravated into the darkest emotions of which the human frame is сараble. What must it be where these sensations are felt in the midst of eternal plenty-where he who is craving for want, sees the golden fields stretching around him in all the richness and beauty of autumn, bending to the sickle, and inviting the reaper, and promising the largest accumulations to the stores of those in whom is vested the Possession of the land? We are told, that sometimes in

Ireland whole districts have been reduced to the very lowest state of existence; and while they have been on the brink of starvation, while they have even been glad to stop the cravings of their stomachs with sea-weed, or with any unnutritious diet that may have been thrown in their way—that even at this moment their ships have been loading with wheat to be exported to other countries, and cattle have been driven through ranks, through staring and starving ranks of peasantry, in order to be sold and sent to other lands. All this may be unavoidable in certain conjunctures, as things are at present ordered, but it exhibits a condition of humanity fruitful in moral mischief of the worst description. Such a state of misery at once indicates a cause, and furnishes a palliation that must reach every heart, for whatever species of vice those subjected to it may unhappily plunge into.

Another unfavorable circumstance continually operating on poverty, is the sense of inferiority-a deep sense of inferiority unconnected with that respect for others which makes inferiority not painfully felt. There is no more holy or moral principle of the human mind than reverence. The philosopher who told his pupil to own no superior in the world but the God who made the world, gave him, in my judgment, an erroneous lesson. That he was right in the exception, is an indication that he was wrong in the rule. By the same reason that it is good for us to look up reverentially to a Being who is infinitely exalted above all humanity, it is good for us also to look up to, appreciate, and feel reverence, for what ever is great and glorious in human nature, for whatever has been displayed of wisdom and moral grandeur by in dividuals.

But in contrast with the beneficent operation on the greatest minds, of that reverence which they have ever

been foremost to indulge, tracing in others a greatness beyond their own, whether in the same, or some other sphere of mind or morals, is the feeling of servility, or the sense of inferiority in the mind which does not see superior wisdom, which does not trace superior worth, which does not associate mental or moral qualities with their condition, who yet, by virtue of that condition, are raised above them, and are their superiors, if not their masters. The condition of a man existing in one of the subordinate castes of the East must be considered as unfavorable to morality. He looks around him, and sees, in every direction, men living in comparative ease and on the resources of others, whilst he himself is subjected to the same toil in which his father dragged through life before him, and which his sons must drag through life after him. And though we are told that in this country any man may better his condition-that there is here no distinction of caste-that any man may rise in life-yet it is to be remembered that rising in the world is too often a process which does not tend to disarm the immoral tendency in question, but on the contrary, gives it greater strength, being accomplished by means of the very servility which is the curse of ignorance and poverty in their degradation; and if so, it carries a blight along with it into the ranks which are above, and spreads through them all either a false estimate of worth, or a conscious and base postponement of moral good to external appearance, which ought only to be found, and there is only to be deplored, in those whose situation is of the most abject description.

Must it not be traced to the operation of some of the causes which have been mentioned, perhaps in some de gree to the influence of all conjointly, that in some classes of the poor of this country, natural feeling has been

but

triumphed over in a way that deserves our reprobation, and which should be a stimulus to every philanthropic mind to endeavor to produce a different state of things? I allude to that dictate of ignorance, that pressure of want, or that demonstration of inferiority, by any one of which, or by all of which, so many of the poor especially in the northern countries of this kingdom are led to bargain for the labor, for the continued, the depressing, the exhausting labor of their wives and of their children. For, whatever may be said of the hardness of overseers, or of the tyranny of masters, the plain fact is, in the case of a woman or child being consigned to such Jabor, that they are sold to it by the husband or by the father-sold to it, it may be, and assuredly it generally is, under the biting pressure of want, a pressure which is felt most severely by him and by all from day to day still that does not change the character of the transaction; that can only be traced either to a tyranny that becomes the savage, or to a want that ought not to be experienced, that ought not to be allowed, within the regions of civilized life. It was justly said by Mr Cobbett, that the Factory Bill was a bill for the protection of children against their parents; and most deplorable is it that any child, at least under ten or twelve years of age, should be allowed to work, or any female to work at all in such a way. Still more deplorable is it that this should be by the will, though it be the hardly extorted will, of the parent, in whom the very name and attributes of humanity are thus degraded; and who, as knowledge d feeling open in upon his mind, must blush at such a record of the past, and regard it as one of the darkest blots that has ever been stamped upon the surface of humanity Society ought in such a case assuredly to interpose,