whole mechanism, even there the iron in value outweighs the gold: or in the social state, beneath the superincumbent weight of luxuries, have we not forgotten the main-spring, or have thought it a trivial matter that the rust and corrosion was there, but this neglect has been fatal to the whole mechanism. Only when the people are virtuous and respected and happy, can the social chronometer keep true time. Have they been respected? Are they virtuous? Are they happy? Our political economy has hitherto been a systematic breaking of them on the wheel our political science has struck them down with the brute mace of power-our religious law has been prompt to take from them tax and rate, but it has offered few consolations to the bowed and broken-spirited man.

Look at it well, this social state of ours; time was when every mouth in the land had a pair of hands; the sad fact of our day is, that there are now three mouths at the very least to one pair of hands; a fact still more sad is, that there are those who are willing enough to acknowledge that they have a mouth, but are ashamed to plead guilty to the charge of feeding themselves. It would be a happy land and happy world, far as human effort could make it so, if every man and every woman would feed themselves, would do work, work of some kind, would sedulously find out what they were fit for, and set about it as soon as the task was found. Time was, when every child was born to labour: the first residents on our globe were neither idlers nor savages, and the eldest

chronicles of history are the records of ancient inventions, and discoveries, and labours. STRENGTH and CUNNING have been the two foes to labour, the two chief tyrants and oppressors of mankind; the one made spears and cannons, the other priests and creeds; the one led on to battle-fields, fostered war, and sang battle-songs; the other invented the mysterious rite, erected the costly temple, the shrine, the vestment, the robe, and the imposing mummery; both have sheltered idleness, both have retarded civilization: the one forged a chain for the hand of the labourer, the other mingled an opiate to blind the eye and lull the senses to sleep, while the chain was rivetting; between these two, the working man, the serf of every age and day, stands petrified and powerless. Strength taxes, imprisons, murders; Cunning cajoles, exercises, and deceives; the one racks and tortures the body in this world, but the other follows into the next with the threat of priestly power.

The happiness and well-being of a people have been entrusted to foresight, labour, and faith, but Strength and Cunning have inverted their intention, until the vision of foresight has been dimmed, and made rather tributary to the tactics of war, than to the teachings of prudence, science, and art; faith has been made subservient to superstition, and labour has either been bound hand and foot, or compelled to contribute to the maintenance of the usurping two.

Oh! reader, is it wonderful that the labourer

should be an irreligious man, when he meditates superficially on what he is in society? Is it wonderful that the thought steals over him frequently, that "he is without hope and without God in the world?" What is his political condition? all things are from him-we have seen that no building can rise, no ship sail, no engine move, no elegancies attend us, without him without him, the whole current of social progress would be arrested: yet the simple position of the labourer is this-he is denied the right of a citizen, he is told that all he has to do with the laws is to obey them; himself the parent cause of the state, he is told that labour has no voice there. He hears of religion, but almost everywhere it is presented to him in such an aspect that it prejudices his mind against it; the minister too frequently has but little sympathy with him, or his pursuits, or class he is generally too proud to know him or to be acquainted with his sorrows; he is perhaps a wealthy priest, the minister at a costly altar, levying unjust taxes by the arm of the law to support his rich and glittering shrines; from him the poor labourer turns to social life, the doom follows him still, he pays more dearly for his provisions than his rich neighbour, gives perhaps a fourth of his poor earnings in rent for his cottage, his poverty is taxed more highly than his master's wealth; broken-hearted he turns away with the impression, that the world is given over entirely into the hands of a minority of men neither the worthiest or noblest, wise as the serpent,

shameless as the vulture. Is it wonderful that the poor man says sometimes in the bitterness of his heart, No God? the unsympathetic rich man, and the selfish priest are both ministers at the altar of atheism.

Yet we hear in all circles of the civilization of the present age, and indeed wherever we go, we are surrounded by what seem to be the evidences of a very advanced and refined state of society. If it be true, that the evidence of advance is in the number of wants created and supplied, then, every shop is a monument of our social progress; go to the most insignificant country town, it seems to be a little metropolis, it has its elegant houses, perhaps its monuments and squares; it has elegant booksellers' shops, abounding with the master-pieces of modern literature, and the best engravings from modern artists, its reading clubs, perhaps its lecture halls; its shops bear the evident stamp of taste and fashion, their exterior in many instances is costly, the order everywhere preserved exhibits respect for law and liberty: when from the merely local province, we ascend to the great metropolis, or to the large manufacturing town, the evidences of social prosperity become still more ample and imposing, refinements and splendours are poured all round with a most unsparing affluence, graceful buildings meet us in every prominent street, the choicest architecture of the Mediterranean or the Rhine, proofs of the most unbounded wealth astonish us; in some places, the factories illuminated in the distance like the fairy

temples of labour and industry; in other districts, the noise of hammers, the smoke of mines and the glare of foundries, deafen and startle ; other places sit on the landscape like ancient, haughty monarchs on their thrones, reposing in solemn ancestral quiet beneath the shadows of minster-turret or castle-tower the old buildings of the Plantagenets or Tudors; these places, if they do not exhibit immense wealth, yet show a stationary and fixed importance worthy of an old realm, proud of its ecclesiastical and feudal heirship. Now, we will be bound to say, if a stranger were to fly through the land he would be amazed by its imposing display of wealth, he would not deny to us great refinement and civilization; he would perhaps say, Have these people any misery? Are there any poor? Where are they?

Ah, there is indeed another aspect in which, looking through the nation, we might well doubt whether as a people we are civilized at all; would it be possible to go through any town without meeting gaunt poverty? behind those gorgeous piles, those structures startling in their magnificence, are clusters of rude huts and hovels; the wigwam of the Indian, the kraal of the Hottentot, are not so sad; looking at the surrounding illustrations of pomp, they are like the slime of the reptile in the temple of the Lord; from these no city is exempt, they may be out of sight, perhaps have to be looked for, but they are at no distant remove from even the most costly productions of the city; there live the city's producers and builders,