THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN AND CIVIC ECONOMY 
 
 LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D., 
 
 THREE VOLUMES IN ONE. 
 
 GLASGOW: 
 
 PRINTED FOR WILLIAM COLLINS; 
 
CVS 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CI-IAP I. 
 
 The Advantage and Possibility of Assimilating a Town to 
 a Country Parish,.- 3 
 
 CHAP II. 
 
 On the Influence of Locality in Towns,- 53 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 Application of the Principle of Locality to the Work of a 
 Christian Minister,- 89 
 
 CHAP IV. 
 
 The Effect of Locality in adding to the Useful Establish¬ 
 
 ments of a Town,_129 
 
 CHAP. V. AND VI. 
 
 On Church Patronage,- 169 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 On Church Offices, --249 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 On Sabbath Schools,-— 305 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 There is a great deal of philanthropy afloat 
 in this our day. At no period, perhaps, in 
 the history of the human mind, did a desire 
 of doing good so earnest, meet with a spirit 
 of inquiry so eager, after the best and like¬ 
 liest methods of carrying the desire into 
 accomplishment. Amid all that looks dark 
 and menacing, in the present exhibitions of 
 society, this, at least, must be acknowledged, 
 —that never was there a greater quantity of 
 thought embarked on those speculations 
 which, whether with Christian, or merely 
 economical writers, have the one common 
 object of promoting the worth and comfort 
 of our species. 
 
 It must be confessed, at the same time, 
 that much of this benevolence, and more 
 particularly, when it aims at some fulfilment, 
 by a combination of many individuals, is 
 rendered abortive for want of a right direc¬ 
 tion. Were the misleading causes to which 
 
2 
 
 philanthropy is exposed, when it operates 
 among a crowded assemblage of human 
 beings, fully understood, then would it cease 
 to be a paradox,—why there should either be 
 a steady progress of wretchedness in our land, 
 in the midst of its charitable institutions; or 
 a steady progress of profligacy, in the midst 
 of its churches, and Sabbath schools, and 
 manifold reclaiming societies. 
 
 The Author of the following work has 
 been much in the way of comparing the 
 habitudes of a city, with those of a country 
 population; and he cannot more fitly express 
 its subject than by assigning to it the title of 
 “The Christian and Civic Economy of our 
 Large Towns.” 
 
 Though he counts himself in possession of 
 materials ample enough for an immediate 
 volume, yet it suits better with his other 
 engagements, to come forth in quarterly num¬ 
 bers, with the successive chapters of it. 
 
THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN & CIVIC ECONOMY 
 
 LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 THE ADVANTAGE AND POSSIBILITY OP ASSIMILATING 
 A TOWN TO A COUNTRY PARISH. 
 
 There are two classes of writers, whose prevailing 
 topics stand intimately connected with the philoso¬ 
 phy of human affairs, but who, in almost all their 
 habitudes of thinking, have hitherto maintained 
 an unfortunate distance from each other. There 
 are political economists, who do not admit Chris¬ 
 tianity, as an element, into their speculations; and 
 there are Christian philanthropists, who do not 
 admit political science, as an element, into theirs. 
 The former very generally regard the professional 
 subject of the latter, if not with contempt, at 
 least with unconcern; and the latter as generally 
 regard the professional subject of the former, with 
 a somewhat sensitive kind of prejudice, bordering 
 upon disapprobation and dislike. It is thus, that 
 two classes of public labourers, who, with a mu¬ 
 tual respect and understanding, might have, out of 
 
4 
 
 their united contributions, rendered a most impor¬ 
 tant offering to society—have, in fact, each in the 
 prosecution of their own separate walk, so shut 
 out the light, and so rejected the aid, which the 
 other could have afforded, as either, in many in¬ 
 stances, to have merely amused the intellectual 
 public, with inert and unproductive theory, on 
 the one hand, or as to have misled the practically 
 benevolent public, into measures of well-mean¬ 
 ing, but mischievous, and ill-directed activity, on 
 the other. 
 
 And indeed, it is only in the later walks of 
 political science, that the aid of Christianity has 
 obviously become of practical importance to her; 
 nor did this aid appear to be at all requisite for 
 the purpose of giving effect to her earlier specu¬ 
 lations. Till within these last fifteen years, the 
 great topic of inquiry among our abstract politi¬ 
 cians, was the theory of commerce; and the moral 
 habit of the labouring classes, as founded on their 
 religion, did not enter, as an element, or as a 
 component part, into that theory. By the simple 
 fiat of an enlightened parliament, the freedom of 
 trade could be established; and every artificial re¬ 
 straint or encouragement, alike be done away; 
 and all intermeddling with a concern, which is 
 best provided for on the part of government, by 
 its being simply let alone, could henceforth be 
 left to the operation of nature’s own principles, 
 and nature’s own processes. And thus, without 
 borrowing any other aid from the religion of the 
 
5 
 
 New Testament, than that general benefit which 
 she has conferred upon society, by the greater 
 currency she has given to the virtues of truth, 
 and justice, and liberality, among men, may all 
 that is sound in the political economy of Smith, 
 and his immediate followers, have been carried 
 into accomplishment, by a series of enactments, 
 or rather of repeals, on the part of a country’s 
 legislature, without any concurrence of principle 
 and habit whatever, either sought after or obtained, 
 on the part of a country’s population. 
 
 But the case is widely different, with respect 
 to the later contributions, which have been ren¬ 
 dered to this science. We allude more especially 
 to the Essay of Mr. Malthus, whose theory of 
 population, had it been present to the mind of 
 Mr. Smith, would, we think, have modified cer¬ 
 tain of those doctrines and conclusions, which he 
 presented to the world, in his Essay on the Theory 
 of Commerce. It is true, that government, by her 
 obtrusive interferences, has put the country into 
 a worse condition, in respect of her population, 
 than it would have been in, had this branch of its 
 economy been left altogether to itself—just as she 
 has put the country into a worse condition, in re¬ 
 spect of its trading prosperity, than it. would have 
 been in, had this branch of its economy been also 
 left to itself. There are certain artificial encour¬ 
 agements to population, which government ought 
 never to have sanctioned, and which it were the 
 wisdom of government, with all prudent and 
 
6 
 
 practicable speed, to abolish. There are certain 
 bounties that the law has devised upon marriage, 
 in every way as hurtful and impolitic, as her 
 bounties upon trade, and which it were greatly 
 better for the interest of all classes, and more 
 especially of the labouring classes, that she should 
 forthwith recal. There is a way, in which, by 
 stepping beyond her province, and attempting 
 to provide for that which would have more ef¬ 
 fectually been provided for without her, by the 
 strong principle of self-preservation, on the one 
 hand, and the free, but powerful sympathies of 
 individual nature, on the other—there is a way, 
 in which she has lulled the poor into improvi¬ 
 dence, and frozen the rich into apathy towards 
 their wants and their sufferings; and this way, 
 it were surely better that she had never entered 
 upon, and better now, that she should retrace, 
 with all convenient expedition. Now, all this may 
 be done, and with a certain degree of benefit, 
 even in the midst of an unchristian population. 
 Their comfort would be advanced so far, merely 
 by the principles of nature being restored to their 
 unfettered operation; and this is desirable, even 
 though we should fall short of that additional 
 comfort, which would accrue from the principles 
 of Christianity being brought more prevalently 
 amongst them, than before. And thus, it is a 
 possible thing, that government, acting exclusively 
 in the temper, and with the views of the wisdom 
 of this world, may exert herself, with beneficial 
 
7 
 
 influence, on that great branch of political eco¬ 
 nomy, which relates to the population of a state, 
 just as she may on that other great branch of it, 
 which relates to the commerce of a state. She may 
 at least erase her own blunders from the statute- 
 book, and conclusively do away the whole of that 
 mischief, which the erroneous policy of our an¬ 
 cestors has entailed on the present generation. 
 
 But there is one wide and palpable distinction 
 between the matter of commerce, and the matter 
 of population. Government may safely withdraw 
 from the former concern altogether, and abandon 
 it to the love of gain, and the spirit of enterprise, 
 and the sharp-sighted sagacity, that guides almost 
 all the pursuits of interest, and the natural secu¬ 
 rities for justice, between man and man in society. 
 Let her simply commit the cause of commerce to 
 the joint operation of these various influences, and 
 she will commit it to the very elements which are 
 most fitted to prosper it forward to the pitch of 
 its uttermost possible elevation. And it were also 
 well, that government withdrew from the concern 
 of ordinary pauperism altogether, which stands so 
 nearly associated with the question of population. 
 She would, in this way, do much to call forth a 
 resurrection of those providential habits, which 
 serve both to restrain the number, and to equalise 
 the comforts of our people; and she would also 
 do much to bring out, those otherwise checked 
 and superseded sympathies, that, in the flow of 
 their kindly and spontaneous exercise, are more 
 
8 
 
 fitted to bind the community in gentleness to¬ 
 gether, than all the legalised charities of our land. 
 But though she may thus do much, she cannot 
 do all; and there will still be left a mighty rever¬ 
 sion of good, that can only be achieved by the 
 people themselves. For, though the unfettered 
 principles of nature, may suffice for carrying all 
 that interest which is connected with the state of a 
 country’s commerce, onwards to the condition that 
 is best and safest for the public weal; the mere 
 principles of nature will not suffice for carrying 
 the interest that is connected with the state of a 
 country’s population; onwards to the condition 
 that is best and safest for the public weal. It is 
 very true, that a compulsory provision for the 
 poor, aggravates the poverty of the land, by aug¬ 
 menting the pressure of its population upon its 
 subsistence, and that by the repeal of such a sys¬ 
 tem, the whole amount of this aggravation would 
 be reduced. But the reduction were only partial. 
 For, so long as profligacy remains, the pressure in 
 question, will, though lessened in amount, remain 
 along with it. So long as the sensual predomi¬ 
 nates over the reflective part of the human con¬ 
 stitution, will there be improvident marriages, 
 and premature families, and an overdone compe¬ 
 tition for subsistence, and a general inadequacy 
 in the wages of labour, to the fair rate of human 
 enjoyment, and, in a word, all the disorder and 
 discomfort of an excessive population. So long 
 as there is generally a low and grovelling taste 
 
among the people, instead of an aspiring tendency 
 towards something more in the way of comfort, and 
 cleanliness, and elegance, than is to be met with 
 in the sordid habitations of a rude and demi-bar- 
 barous country, will they rush, with precipitation, 
 into matrimony, and care not how unable they 
 are to meet its expenses, and forfeit the whole 
 ease and accommodation of the future, to the 
 present ascendency of a blind and uncalculating 
 impulse. And thus, while government may re¬ 
 duce this pressure, up to the amount of what it 
 has brought on by its own mismanagement, it is 
 a pressure which it can never wholly, and never 
 nearly extinguish. The tendency to excessive 
 population, can only find its thorough and decisive 
 counteraction, among the amended habits, and 
 the moralised characters, and the exalted prin¬ 
 ciples, of the people themselves. To bring the 
 economy of a nation’s wealth into its best possible 
 condition, it may suffice to go up to the legisla¬ 
 ture, and beg that she may withdraw her inter¬ 
 meddling hand from a concern, which her touch 
 always mars, but never medicates. To bring the 
 economy of its population into the best possible 
 condition, it is right to go up to the legislature, 
 and beg that she may recal the mischief of her 
 own interferences. But it is further necessary, to 
 go forth among the people, and there to superin¬ 
 duce the principles of an efficient morality, on 
 the mere principles of nature—and there to work 
 a transformation of taste and of character—and 
 
10 
 
 there to deliver lessons, which, of themselves, will 
 . induce a habit of thoughtfulness, that must insen¬ 
 sibly pervade the whole system of a man’s desires 
 and his doings; making him more a being of 
 reach, and intellect, and anticipation, than he 
 was formerly—raising the whole tone of his mind, 
 and infusing into every practical movement, along 
 with the elements of passion and interest, the 
 elements of duty, and of wisdom, and of self¬ 
 estimation. 
 
 It is thus, that the disciples of political science, 
 however wisely they may speculate upon this 
 question, are, if without the element of character 
 among the general population, in a state of impo- 
 tency as to the practical effect of their speculation. 
 So long as the people remain either depraved or 
 unenlightened, the country never will attain a 
 healthful condition in respect of one of the great 
 branches of her policy. This is an obstacle which 
 stands uncontrollably opposed to the power of 
 every other expedient for the purpose of mitigating 
 the evils of a redundant population; and, till this 
 be removed, legislators may devise, and economists 
 may demonstrate as they will, they want one of 
 the data, indispensable to the right solution of a 
 problem, which, however clear in theory, will, upon 
 trial, mock the vain endeavours of those who over¬ 
 look the moral principles of man, or despise the 
 mysteries of that faith, which can alone inspire them. 
 
 It is thus that our political writers, if at all 
 honestly desirous of obtaining a fulfilment for 
 
11 
 
 their own speculation, should look towards the 
 men who are fitted to expatiate among the people, 
 in the capacity of their most acceptable and effi¬ 
 cient moralists. It is evident that they themselves 
 are not the best adapted for such a practical 
 movement through a community of human beings. 
 
 It is not by any topic or any demonstration of 
 theirs, that we can at all look for a general wel¬ 
 come and admittance amongst families. Let one 
 of their number, for example, go forth with the 
 argument of Malthus, or any other of the lessons 
 of political economy, and that, for the purpose of 
 enlightening the practice and observation of his 
 neighbourhood. The very first reception that 
 he met with, would, in all likelihood, check the 
 farther progress of this moral and benevolent ad¬ 
 venture, and stamp upon it all the folly and all the 
 fruitlessness of Quixotism. People would laugh, 
 
 or wonder, or be offended, and a sense of the_ 
 
 utterly ridiculous, would soon attach itself to this 
 expedition, and lead him to abandon it. Now, 
 herein lies the great initial superiority which the 
 merely Christian has over the merely civil phil¬ 
 anthropist. He is armed with a topic of ready 
 and pertinent introduction, with which he may 
 go round a population, and come into close and 
 extensive contact with all the families. Let his 
 errand be connected with religion, and, even 
 though a very obscure, and wholly unsanctioned 
 individual, may he enter within the precincts of 
 nearly every household, and not meet with one act 
 
12 
 
 of rudeness or resistance during the whole of his 
 progress. Should he only, for example, invite 
 their young to his Sabbath-School, he, with this 
 for his professed object, would find himself in 
 possession of a passport, upon which, and more 
 especially among the common ranks of society, 
 he might step into almost every dwelling-place— 
 and engage the inmates in conversations of piety— 
 and leave, at least, the sensations of cordiality and 
 gratitude behind him—and pave the way for suc¬ 
 cessive applications of the same influence—and 
 secure this acknowledgment in favour of his sub¬ 
 ject, that it is worthy of being proposed on the 
 one side, and worthy of being entertained and 
 patiently listened to, on the other. It is not of 
 his final success that we are now speaking. It is 
 of his advantageous outset. It is of that wide and 
 effectual door of access to the population, which 
 the Christian philanthropist has, and which the 
 civil philanthropist has not—and from which it 
 follows, that if the lessons of the former are at all 
 fitted to induce a habit favourable to the objects 
 of the latter, the economist who underrates the 
 gospel of Jesus Christ, and the zeal of its devoted 
 labourers, is deposing from their rightful estima¬ 
 tion, the best auxiliaries of his cause. 
 
 And it would save a world of misconception, 
 were it distinctly kept in mind, that, for the pur¬ 
 pose of giving effect to the lessons of the econ¬ 
 omist, it is not necessary for him who labours in 
 the gospel vineyard, either to teach, or even so 
 
13 
 
 much as to understand, these lessons. Let him 
 simply confine himself to his own strict and peculiar 
 business—let him labour for immortality alone— 
 let his single aim be to convert and to christianise, 
 and, as the result of prayer and exertion, to suc¬ 
 ceed in depositing with some, the faith of the New 
 Testament, so as that they shall hold forth to the 
 esteem and the imitation of many, the virtues of 
 the New Testament—and he does more for the 
 civil and economical well-being of his neighbour¬ 
 hood, than he ever could do by the influence of 
 all secular demonstration. Let his desire and his 
 devotedness be exclusively towards the life that 
 is to come, and without borrowing one argument 
 from the interest of the life that now is, will he 
 do more to bless and to adorn its condition, than 
 can be done by all the other efforts of patriotism 
 and philosophy put together. It were worse than 
 ridiculous, and it most assuredly is not requisite 
 for him to become the champion of any economic 
 theory, with the principles of which he should 
 constantly be infusing either his pulpit or his 
 parochial ministrations. His office may be upheld 
 in the entire aspect of its sacredness—and the main 
 desire and prayer of his heart towards God, in 
 behalf of his brethren, may be that they should be 
 saved—and the engrossment of his mind with the 
 one thing needful, may be as complete as was that 
 of the Apostle, who determined to know nothing 
 among his hearers, save Jesus Christ, and him 
 crucified—and yet, such is the fulness of the 
 
14 
 
 blessing of the gospel with which he is fraught, 
 that while he renders the best possible service to 
 the converts whom, under the spirit of God, he 
 has gained to its cause; he also, in the person of 
 these converts, renders the best possible contribu¬ 
 tion to the temporal good of society. It is enough, 
 that they have been rescued from the dominion of 
 sensuality;—it is enough, that they have become 
 the disciples of that book, which, while it teaches 
 them to be fervent in spirit, teaches them also to 
 be not slothful in business;—it is enough, that the 
 Christian faith has been formed with such power 
 in their hearts, as to bring out the Christian morals 
 into visible exemplification upon their history;—it 
 is enough, that the principle within them, if it do 
 not propagate its own likeness in others, can at 
 least, like the salt to which they have been com¬ 
 pared, season a whole vicinity with many of its 
 kindred and secondary attributes. There is not a 
 more familiar exhibition in humble life, than that 
 alliance, in virtue of which a Christian family is 
 almost always sure to be a well-conditioned family. 
 And yet its members are utterly unversant either 
 in the maxims or in the speculations of political 
 science. They occupy the right place in a rightly 
 constituted and well-going mechanism; but the 
 mechanism itself is what they never hear of, and 
 could not comprehend. Their Christian adviser 
 never reads them a lesson from the writings of any 
 economist, and yet the moral habit to which the 
 former has been the instrument of conducting them. 
 
15 
 
 is that which brings them into a state of practical 
 conformity with the soundest and most valuable 
 lessons which the latter can devise. And now, that 
 habit, and character, and education, among the 
 poor, have become the mighty elements of all that 
 is recent in political theory, as well may the in¬ 
 ventor of a philosophical apparatus, disown the aid 
 of those artizans, who, in utter ignorance of its 
 use, only know how to prepare and put together its 
 materials, as may the most sound and ingenious 
 speculator in the walks of civil economy, disown 
 the aid of those Christian labourers, who, in utter 
 ignorance of the new doctrine of population, only 
 know how to officiate in that path of exertion, by 
 which the members of our actual population may 
 be made pure, and prudent, and pious. 
 
 And if we revert to the habit of the last genera¬ 
 tion in Scotland, which is still fresh in the remem¬ 
 brance of many who are now alive, we shall find 
 an ample verification of all these remarks. At that 
 time, Malthus had not written, and his speculation 
 had little more than an embryo existence in the 
 pages of Wallace; and, certain it is, that, in the 
 minds of our solid, and regular, and well-doing 
 peasantry, it had no existence at all. It was acted 
 upon, but without being at all counted upon. It 
 was one of the cherished and domestic decencies 
 of a former age, transmitted from every matron to 
 her daughters, not to marry without a costly and 
 creditable provision; and the delay of years, was 
 often incurred, in the mighty work of piling to- 
 
16 
 
 gether, the whole materiel of a most bulky and 
 laborious preparation—and the elements of future 
 comfort and future respectability, behoved to be 
 accumulated to a very large extent, ere it was 
 lawful, or, at least, reputable, to enter upon the 
 condition of matrimony—and thus the moral pre¬ 
 ventive check of our great economist, was in full 
 and wholesome operation, long before it was of¬ 
 fered by him to public notice, in the shape of a 
 distinct and salutary principle. And, if we wish 
 to revive its influence among the people, this will 
 not be done, we apprehend, by cheapening the 
 currency of his doctrine, and bringing it down to 
 the level of popular understanding. It must be 
 by other tracts than those of political economy, 
 that we shall recover the descending habit of our 
 countrymen. It must be by addresses of a more 
 powerful character, than those which point to the 
 futurities of an earthly existence. It must be, 
 not by men labouring, however strenuously, after 
 some great political achievement, but by men 
 labouring for the good of imperishable spirits— 
 by men who have their conversation in heaven, 
 and who, with their eye full upon its glories, feel 
 the comparative insignificance of the pilgrimage 
 which leads to it. And not, till we recal the Chris¬ 
 tianity, shall we ever recal the considerate sobriety, 
 the steady equalised comfort, the virtuous indepen¬ 
 dence of a generation, the habit and the memory 
 of which are so fast departing away from us. 
 
17 
 
 Let me finish my observations on this part of 
 the subject, with adverting to the way in which 
 the re-action of a people’s turbulence is ever sure 
 to follow the neglect of a people’s Christianity— 
 how, of all modes of intolerance, that intolerance 
 of irreligion, which denounces the faith of the 
 New Testament as fanaticism, brings, in its train, 
 the most woful forfeiture of all civil and all poli¬ 
 tical advantages; insomuch, that the deadliest 
 enemy of our state, is not what has been called 
 a methodistical spirit among the people; but its 
 deadliest enemy, by far, is a persecuting church, 
 which would thwart all that is serious and evan¬ 
 gelical in the desires of the people—and which, in 
 so doing, tramples on those sacred accommodations 
 that God has established between the longings 
 of an awakened heart, and the truth that is unto 
 salvation. 
 
 So much for the prevailing tendency of the civil 
 to underrate or disregard the labours of the Chris¬ 
 tian philanthropist. But there is no less prevailing 
 a tendency, on the part of the latter, to neglect 
 many of the principles, and to underrate many of 
 the propositions of the former. 
 
 It is certainly to be regretted, that many of our 
 most pious, and even our most profound theolo¬ 
 gians, should be so unfurnished as they are with 
 the conceptions of political economy. But it is 
 their active resistance to some of its clearest and 
 most unquestionable principles—it is their blindly 
 sentimental dislike of a doctrine, which stands 
 
 D 
 
18 
 
 on the firm basis of arithmetic—it is their misre¬ 
 presentation of it, as hostile to the exercise of our 
 best feelings, when, in fact, all its hostility is 
 directed against such perverse and unfortunate 
 arrangements, as have served to chill and to coun¬ 
 teract the sympathies of our nature—it is the dog¬ 
 matism of their strenuous asseverations, against 
 that which experience and demonstration are ever 
 obtrudingupon the judgment as irrefragable truth— 
 it is this which is mainly to be regretted, for it has 
 enlisted the whole of their high and deserved in¬ 
 fluence on the side of institutions pernicious to 
 society—and what, perhaps, is still worse, it has led 
 a very enlightened class in our land, to imagine a 
 certain poverty of understanding as inseparable 
 from religious zeal—thus bringing down our Chris¬ 
 tian labourers, from that estimation, which, on 
 their own topic, so rightfully belongs to them, and 
 deducting from the weight of that professional 
 testimony, which it were the best interest of all 
 classes most patiently to listen to, and most re¬ 
 spectfully to entertain. 
 
 But the mischief which has thus been inflicted 
 on the good of humanity, is not to be compared 
 with the still deadlier mischief of a certain error, 
 which has received the utmost countenance and 
 support from a large class of religionists. What 
 we allude to, is their distaste towards all kinds of 
 external machinery, for the furtherance of any 
 Christian enterprise—founded on their misapplica¬ 
 tion of an undoubted doctrine, that all the ebbs 
 
19 
 
 and all the revivals of Christianity, are primarily 
 to be traced to the alternations of a direct influ¬ 
 ence from heaven. They look, and they rightly 
 look, to the Spirit of God, as the agent of every 
 prosperous revolution in the Christianity of our 
 land. When there is a general torpor of irreligion 
 amongst us, it is because there is a famine of 
 spiritual nourishment, and God has withdrawn 
 the manifestations of the Holy Ghost, from a 
 careless, and thoughtless, and worldly generation. 
 When there is the awakening of a thoughtful and 
 repentant seriousness, it is because the Spirit of 
 it has been poured out of that upper Sanctuary, 
 into which prayer has ascended from beneath, and 
 from which a regenerating influence has come 
 down, as a descending return, for the intercessions 
 of the devoted few, in behalf of a world lying 
 in wickedness. All this is sacred and substantial 
 truth, which no speculation can impair; and it 
 were folly to think, that, by the mere erection of 
 a material frame-work, the cause of Christianity 
 can be advanced, by a single hair-breadth, should 
 there be a withholding of that especial and sanc¬ 
 tifying grace, without which, the builders labour 
 in vain, and the watchmen wake but in vain. 
 And hence, with many, is there a total indolence 
 and unconcern as to all outward arrangements; 
 and every thing like a visible apparatus, appears 
 insignificant in their eyes; and with something 
 like the complacency of one who fancies himself 
 in possession of the recondite principle of a given 
 
operation, do they view with contempt, all that 
 man can do externally, and with his hands, for 
 the purpose of achieving it: and thus do they 
 hold in a kind of ineffable disdain, the proposal 
 of building more churches, for the increase of 
 Christianity in our land; and this is only one out 
 of the many instances, in which, under a sense of 
 the utter impotency of all mechanism, they would 
 restrain human activity from putting itself forth 
 on any palpable subject, and would sit in a sort 
 of mystic and expectant quietism, till there come 
 down upon us from the skies, the visitation of that 
 inspiring energy, which is to provide for all, and 
 to do all. 
 
 It may serve to reconcile these people, and 
 perhaps to engage them in the work of outward 
 arrangements, if we point their regards to that 
 season, in the history of the world, which was 
 most signalised by- the visitations of a moral and 
 spiritual energy from heaven. We instance the 
 apostolic age, when living water flowed more 
 abundantly than it has ever done since, among 
 those who wear the denomination of Christians; 
 and yet, if we may extend the simile, did the 
 leaders of the church give much of their earnest¬ 
 ness to the work of providing it with ducts of 
 conveyance. There never was perhaps so goodly 
 and so various an external apparatus, for the 
 transmission of Christianity from one human being 
 to another, as at that period, when the Spirit de¬ 
 scended most plentifully, and that, too, for the 
 
21 
 
 purpose of depositing Christianity in the hearts 
 of men. Paul, who prayed without ceasing for the 
 supply of this essential influence, also pondered 
 without ceasing such a constitution of offices, 
 and such a routine of services, as would ensure 
 the right distribution of it. The falling of rain 
 from the clouds, no more supersedes the prepara¬ 
 tion of receptacles for gathering, and of channels 
 for conveying it, than the descent of living water, 
 as the aliment of all that is acceptable in human 
 virtue and spiritual in human discernment, super¬ 
 sedes the question of the best and fittest construc¬ 
 tion of an external system, for the circulation of 
 it through a neighbourhood. The Apostle, who 
 felt most his dependence on the Spirit for the 
 conversion of the souls of men, laboured most in 
 the rearing of an outward and a T, isible agency, 
 for the furtherance of the cause. And whether 
 we read of the great variety of offices in the 
 Christian church, as of prophets, and interpreters, 
 and evangelists, for the edifying of the body of 
 Christ, or observe the labour of the great Apostle 
 to set things in order, and the provision he made 
 for ordaining elders in every city, we may per¬ 
 ceive, that the age of greatest spiritual influence, 
 was also an age of busy external regulation. Nor 
 does it follow, that he who places all his confi¬ 
 dence on the former, should neglect and under¬ 
 value the latter, or that he who expends thought 
 and judgment upon the machinery of a Christian- 
 
22 
 
 ising process, thereby disowns to the Holy Spirit 
 that supremacy which belongs to him. 
 
 It was at a period when the religious spirit run 
 high, that schools were instituted in Scotland, and 
 such a system of education was devised and esta¬ 
 blished, as has at least struck out a fountain of 
 scholarship in every parish, which has been the 
 place of uniform repair for the young of many 
 successive generations. In this we see the good 
 of what may be called a material organization. 
 It survives all the ebbs and alternations of the 
 spirit which gave it birth; and who can fail to 
 perceive, that in virtue of its existence, when this 
 spirit re-appears in the country, it finds channels 
 for a readier and more abundant access into all the 
 families, than it would do in a country where there 
 was no parochial endowment, and no regular or 
 universal habit of scholarship among the popula¬ 
 tion? But what is more, the religious spirit may 
 decline in a country, when, of course, it will move 
 scantily through those conveyances which have 
 been established in it, between the teacher and the 
 taught. And yet it must not be denied, that there 
 continues to move such an influence, as is still 
 favourable to the temporal well-being of society. 
 Even in seasons of the greatest abandonment, as 
 to the light and faith of the gospel, there is an 
 intelligence, and an enlargement, and a reflective 
 sobriety, gotten at these schools, all of which have 
 stamped a great civic and economic superiority of 
 character on the peasantry of Scotland. Such a 
 
23 
 
 machinery, witli its numerous rills of distribution, 
 is well adapted to the object of propagating the 
 dominant spirit of the times through the nation 
 at large. When that happens to be the warm, and 
 affectionate, and evangelical spirit of the New 
 Testament, there will be a far wider and more 
 effectual door of access for it through the families 
 of that land which has the apparatus, than of that 
 land which has it not. So that it is well for the 
 Christian economy of every country to have such 
 an establishment. And even where the evangeli¬ 
 cal spirit has declined, there is still in the quiet 
 and ordinary tenor of every nation’s history, a 
 spirit among the public functionaries, on the side 
 of order and good conduct; so that, with the 
 softening and humanising effect of scholarship, on 
 the habit of the mind, it is further well, for the 
 civic economy of every country, to have such an 
 establishment. 
 
 We hold the very same principles to be appli¬ 
 cable to the question of religious establishments. 
 It is true, that our present goodly apparatus of 
 churches and parishes was reared and perfected in 
 days of thickest darkness. But when the light of 
 reformation arose, it broke its way with greater 
 force and facility, because of the very passages 
 which Popery had opened; and let our ecclesias¬ 
 tical malcontents ascribe what corruption they 
 may to the establishments of England and Scot¬ 
 land, we hold them to be the destined instruments 
 both for propagating and for augmenting the Chris- 
 
tianity of our land, and should never cease to 
 regret the overthrow of this mighty apparatus, as 
 a catastrophe of deadliest import to the religious 
 character of our nation. 
 
 We are the more in earnest upon this subject, 
 that we believe the difference, in point of moral 
 and religious habit, between a town and country 
 population, to be more due to the difference, in 
 point of adequacy, between the established provi¬ 
 sion of instruction, for the one and the other, than 
 to any other cause which can be assigned for it. 
 The doctrine of a celestial influence does not 
 supersede, but rather calls, for a terrestrial me¬ 
 chanism, to guide and to extend the distribution 
 of it; and it is under the want of the latter, that 
 a mass of heathenism has deepened, and accu¬ 
 mulated, and attained to such a magnitude and 
 density in our large towns. The healing water is 
 a treasure which must be looked for and prayed for 
 from heaven; but still, it is put into earthen vessels, 
 and is conveyed through the whole body of corrup¬ 
 tion by earthen path-ways. Nor do we think it 
 more rational to look for the rise of Christianity in 
 Pagan lands, without a missionary equipment, and 
 missionary labour, than to look for its revival 
 among the enormous and now unpervaded de¬ 
 partments of the city multitude, without such a 
 locomotive influence, as shall bring the Word of 
 God into material contact with its still, and slug¬ 
 gish, and stationary families. 
 
25 
 
 We hold the possibility, and we cannot doubt 
 the advantage of assimilating a town to a country 
 parish. We think that the same moral regimen, 
 which, under the parochial and ecclesiastical 
 system of Scotland, has been set up, and with 
 so much effect, in her country parishes, may, by 
 a few simple and attainable processes, be intro¬ 
 duced into the most crowded of her cities, and 
 with as signal and conspicuous an effect on the 
 whole habit and character of their population—that 
 the simple relationship which obtains between a 
 minister and his people in the former situation, may 
 be kept up with all the purity, and entireness of 
 its influences in the latter situation; and be equally 
 available to the formation of a well-conditioned 
 peasantry; in a word, that there is no such dissimi¬ 
 larity between town and country, as to prevent the 
 great national superiority of Scotland, in respect 
 of her well-principled and well-educated people, 
 being just as observable in Glasgow or Edinburgh, 
 for example, as it is in the most retired of her dis¬ 
 tricts, and these under the most diligent process 
 of moral and religious cultivation. So that, while 
 the profligacy which obtains in every crowded and 
 concentrated mass of human beings, is looked upon 
 by many a philanthropist as one of those helpless 
 and irreclaimable distempers of the body politic, 
 for which there is no remedy—do we maintain, 
 that there are certain practicable arrangements 
 which, under the blessing of God, will stay this 
 growing calamity, and would, by the perseverance 
 
26 
 
 of a few years, land us in a purer and better 
 generation. 
 
 One most essential step towards so desirable an 
 assimilation in a large city parish, is a numerous 
 and well-appointed agency. The assimilation does 
 not lie here in the external frame-work; for, in 
 a small country parish, the minister alone, or with 
 a very few coadjutors of a small session, may bring 
 the personal influence of his kind and Christian 
 attentions to bear upon all the families. Among 
 the ten thousand of a city parish, this is impossi¬ 
 ble; and, therefore, what he cannot do but par¬ 
 tially and superficially in his own person, must, if 
 done substantially, be done in the person of others. 
 And he, by dividing his parish into small manage¬ 
 able districts—and assigning one or more of his 
 friends, in some capacity or other, to each of 
 them—and vesting them with such a right either 
 of superintendence or of inquiry, as will always be 
 found to be gratefully met by the population— 
 and so, raising, as it were, a ready intermedium of 
 communication between himself and theinhabitants 
 of his parish, may at length attain an assimilation 
 in point of result to a country parish, though not 
 in the means by which he arrived at it. He can 
 in his own person maintain at least a pretty close 
 and habitual intercourse with the more remarkable 
 cases; and as for the moral charm of cordial and 
 Christian acquaintanceship, he can spread it abroad 
 by deputation over that part of the city which has 
 been assigned to him. In this way, an influence, 
 
27 
 
 long unfelt in towns, may be speedily restored to 
 them; and they, we affirm, know nothing of this 
 department of our nature, who are blind to the 
 truth of the position—that out of the simple ele¬ 
 ments of attention, and advice, and civility, and 
 good-will, conveyed through the tenements of the 
 poor, by men a little more elevated in rank than 
 themselves, a far more purifying and even more 
 gracious operation can be made to descend upon 
 them, than ever will be achieved by any other of 
 the ministrations of charity. 
 
 And here, let it be remarked, that just as the 
 material apparatus of schools subserves the civic 
 as well as the Christian economy of a nation, by its 
 operating as a medium for other good influences 
 than those which are purely sacred—so, this emi¬ 
 nently holds true of every such arrangement as 
 multiplies the topics and the occurrences of inter¬ 
 course between the higher and the lower orders 
 of society. There is no large city which would not 
 soon experience the benefit of such an arrangement. 
 But when that city is purely commercial, it is just 
 the arrangement which, of all others, is most fitted 
 to repair a peculiar disadvantage under which it 
 labours. In a provincial capital, the great mass 
 of the population are retained in kindly and im¬ 
 mediate dependence on the wealthy residenters of 
 the place. It is the resort of annuitants, and 
 landed proprietors, and members of the law, and 
 other learned professions, who give impulse to a 
 great amount of domestic industry, by their ex- 
 
28 
 
 penditure; and, on inquiring into the sources of 
 maintenance and employment for the labouring 
 classes there, it will be found that they are chiefly 
 engaged in the immediate service of ministering 
 to the wants and luxuries of the higher classes in 
 the city. This brings the two extreme orders of 
 society into that sort of relationship, which is 
 highly favourable to the general blandness and 
 tranquillity of the whole population. In a manu¬ 
 facturing town, on the other hand, the poor and 
 the wealthy stand more disjoined from each other. 
 It is true, they often meet, but they meet more 
 on an arena of contest, than on a field where the 
 patronage and custom of the one party are met 
 by the gratitude and good will of the other. When 
 a rich customer calls a workman into his presence, 
 for the purpose of giving him some employment 
 connected with his own personal accommodation, 
 the general feeling of the latter must be altogether 
 different from what it would be, were he called 
 into the presence of a trading capitalist, for the 
 purpose of cheapening his work, and being dis¬ 
 missed for another, should there not be an agree¬ 
 ment in their terms. We do not aim at the most 
 distant reflection against the manufacturers of our 
 land; but it must be quite obvious, from the 
 nature of the case, that their intercourse with the 
 labouring classes is greatly more an intercourse 
 of collision, and greatly less an intercourse of 
 kindliness, than is that of the higher orders in such 
 towns as Bath, or Oxford, or Edinburgh. In this 
 
way, there is a mighty unfilled space interposed 
 between the high and the low of every large manu¬ 
 facturing city, in consequence of which, they are 
 mutually blind to the real cordialities and attrac¬ 
 tions which belong to each of them; and a resentful 
 feeling is apt to be fostered, either of disdain or 
 defiance, which it will require all the expedients 
 of an enlightened charity effectually to do away. 
 Nor can we guess at a likelier, or a more imme¬ 
 diate arrangement for this purpose, than to mul¬ 
 tiply the agents of Christianity amongst us, whose 
 delight it may be to go forth among the people, 
 on no other errand than that of pure good-will, 
 and with no other ministrations than those of re¬ 
 spect and tenderness. 
 
 There is one lesson that we need not teach, for 
 experience has already taught it, and that is, the 
 kindly influence which the mere presence of a hu¬ 
 man being has upon his fellows. Let the attention 
 bestowed upon another, be the genuine emanation 
 of good-will, and there is only one thing more to 
 make it irresistible. The readiest way of finding 
 access to a man’s heart, is to go into his house, and 
 there to perform the deed of kindness, or to acquit 
 ourselves of the wonted and the looked for ac¬ 
 knowledgment. By putting ourselves under the 
 roof a poor neighbour, we in a manner put 
 ourselves under his protection—we render him 
 for the time our superior—we throw our recep¬ 
 tion on his generosity, and we may be assured 
 that it is a confidence which will almost never 
 
30 
 
 fail us. If Christianity be the errand on which 
 the movement is made, it will open the door of 
 every family; and even the profane and the pro¬ 
 fligate will come to recognise the worth of that 
 principle, which prompts the unwearied assiduity 
 of such services. By every circuit which is made 
 amongst them, there is attained a higher vantage 
 ground of moral and spiritual influence; and, in 
 spite of all that has been said of the ferocity of a 
 city population, in such rounds of visitation there 
 is none of it to be met with, even among the low¬ 
 est receptacles of human worthlessness. This is 
 the home walk in which is earned, if not a proud, 
 at least a peaceful popularity—the popularity of 
 the heart—the greetings of men, who, touched 
 even by the cheapest and easiest services of kind¬ 
 ness, have nothing to give but their wishes of 
 kindness back again; but, in giving these, have 
 crowned such pious attentions with the only po¬ 
 pularity that is worth the aspiring after—the popu¬ 
 larity that is won in the bosom of families, and at 
 the side of death-beds. 
 
 We must refer to the following chapter, on the 
 effect of locality in towns, for a more full elucida¬ 
 tion of this influence, and of its beneficial opera¬ 
 tion. And, indeed, we can do little more at 
 present, than clear and open our way to the task 
 of demonstrating the various facilities by which 
 a city may be likened, in constitution and effect, 
 to a country parish. We shall therefore confine 
 ourselves to what, in the main, may be regarded 
 
31 
 
 as preliminary. And as we have already adverted 
 to the trivial estimation in which the work of 
 purely Christian labourers is apt to be held by 
 our political theorists, let us now expose a very 
 sore and hurtful invasion that has been actually 
 made upon them by our political practitioners, by 
 which their religious usefulness has been grievously 
 impaired, and even their civil and political useful¬ 
 ness has been impaired along with it. It is indeed 
 a topic altogether pertinent to the title of our 
 present chapter, as standing intimately associated 
 with the cause of one of the greatest dissimilarities 
 that obtains between a town and a country parish. 
 It is an example of the slender homage which is 
 rendered to Christianity by our political econo¬ 
 mists, embodied into shape and practice by our 
 political functionaries, and in virtue of which, the 
 best objects of all civil and legislative policy are 
 in danger of being entirely frustrated. 
 
 What we allude to, is, the mischief of those secu¬ 
 larises, which have been laid on the clerical office; 
 and for the purpose of exposing it, do we offer a 
 short narrative of the way in which the sanctity of 
 a profession, that ought ever to have been held 
 inviolable, has been laid open to all the rude and 
 random invasions which are now ready to over¬ 
 whelm it,—though we shall find it impossible to 
 advert to every one item in that strange medley 
 of services, by which the minister of a large city 
 parish now feels himself plied at every hour, and 
 beset at every path, and every turning point, in 
 the history of his movements. 
 
Among the people of our busy land, who are 
 ever on the wing of activity, and, whether in cir¬ 
 cumstances of peace or of war, are at all times 
 feeling the impulse of some national movement or 
 other, it is not to be wondered at, that a series of 
 transactions should be constantly flowing between 
 the metropolis of the empire, and its distant 
 provinces. There are the remittances which pass 
 through our public offices, from soldiers and sailors, 
 to their relatives at home;—there are letters of 
 inquiry sent back again from these relatives;— 
 there is all the correspondence, and all the busi¬ 
 ness of drafts, and other negotiations, which ensue 
 upon the decease of a soldier, or a sailor;—there 
 is the whole tribe of hospital allowances, the pay¬ 
 ment of pensions, and a variety of other items, 
 which, all taken together, would make out a very 
 strange and tedious enumeration. 
 
 The individuals with whom these transactions 
 are carried on, need to be verified. They live in 
 some parish or other; and who can be fitter for 
 the required purpose, than the parish minister? 
 He is, or he ought to be, acquainted with every 
 one of his parishioners; and this acquaintance, 
 which he never can obtain in towns, but by years 
 of ministerial exertion amongst them, is turned 
 to an object destructive of the very principle on 
 which he was selected for such a service. It 
 saddles him with a task which breaks in upon his 
 ministerial exertions—which widens his distance 
 from his people; and, in the end, makes him as 
 
33 
 
 unfit for certifying a single clause of information 
 about them, as the most private individual in his 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 Yet so it is. The minister is the organ of many 
 a communication between his people and the 
 offices in London,—and many a weary signature 
 is exacted from him,—and a world of management 
 is devolved upon his shoulders,—and, instead of 
 sitting like his fathers in office, surrounded by the 
 theology of present and of other days, he must now 
 turn his study into a counting-room, and have his 
 well-arranged cabinet before him, fitted up with 
 its sections and its other conveniences, for notices, 
 and duplicates, and all the scraps and memoranda 
 of a manifold correspondence. 
 
 But the history does not stop here. The 
 example of Government has descended, and is 
 now quickly running through the whole field of 
 private and individual agency. The regulation of 
 the business of prize-moneys, is one out of several 
 examples that occur to us. The emigration of 
 new settlers to Canada, was another. The business 
 of the Kinloch bequest, is a third. It does not 
 appear, that there is any act of Government 
 authorising the agents in this matter to fix on the 
 clergy, as the organs either for the transaction of 
 their business, or the conveyance of their informa¬ 
 tion to the people of the land. But they find it 
 convenient to follow the example of Government, 
 and have accordingly done so; and, in this way, 
 a mighty host of schedules, and circulars, and 
 
printed forms, with long blank spaces, which the 
 minister is required to fill up, according to the best 
 of his knowledge, come into mustering competition 
 with the whole of his other claims, and his other 
 engagements. It is true, that the minister may, 
 in this case decline; but, then, the people are 
 apprised of the arrangement, and, trained as they 
 have been, too well, to look up to the minister as 
 an organ of civil accommodation, will they lay siege 
 to his dwelling-place, and pour upon him with 
 their inquiries; and the cruel alternative is laid 
 upon him either to obstruct the convenience of his 
 parishioners, and bid them from his presence, or to 
 take the whole weight of a management that has 
 been so indiscreetly and so wantonly assigned to 
 him. 
 
 If, for the expediting of business, we are made 
 free with, even by private individuals, it is not to 
 be wondered at, if charitable bodies should, at all 
 times, look for our subserviency to their schemes 
 and their operations of benevolence. When a 
 patriotic fund, or a Waterloo subscription, blazons 
 in all the splendour of a nation’s munificence, and 
 a nation’s gratitude, before the public eye,—who 
 shall have the hardihood to refuse a single item of 
 the bidden co-operation that is expected from him? 
 Surely, such a demand as this is quite irresistible; 
 and, accordingly, from this quarter too, a heavy 
 load of consultations and certificates, with the 
 additional singularity of having to. do with the 
 drawing of money, and the keeping of it in safe 
 
35 
 
 custody, and the dealing of it out in small discre¬ 
 tionary parcels according to the needs and circum¬ 
 stances of the parties;—all, all is placed upon the 
 shoulders of the already jaded and overborne 
 minister. 
 
 We know not where this is to end, or what new 
 and unheard-of duties are still in reserve for us. 
 But this much we know, that they are in the way 
 of an indefinite augmentation. We have heard 
 obscurely of some very recent additions to our 
 burdens; but of what it particularly is, we have 
 not got the distinct or the authentic information. 
 We are not civilians enough to know, if even an 
 Act of Parliament carry such an omnipotence 
 along with it, as to empower this strange series of 
 wanton and arbitrary infringements on the indi¬ 
 vidual homes and liberties of clergymen. But we 
 are patriots enough to feel, that the rulers of our 
 country are, for an accommodation which might 
 be easily rendered to them by another method, 
 bartering away the best interests of its people,— 
 that, through the side of its public instructors, 
 they are reaching a blow to the morality and prin¬ 
 ciple of the commonwealth,—that, by every such 
 impolitic enactment as we have now attempted 
 to expose, they are slackening the circulation 
 of Christianity, and of all its healthful and elevat¬ 
 ing influences amongst our towns and families,— 
 that they are sweeping away from the face of every 
 large city, the best securities for order, and con¬ 
 tentment, and loyalty;—nor should we wonder, 
 
if, in some future period of turbulence and dis¬ 
 order, they shall rue the infatuation which led 
 them to tamper so with the religion of our land, by 
 the inroads they are now making, and the cruel 
 profanation they are now inflicting, on the sacred¬ 
 ness of its officiating ministers. 
 
 It is needless to expatiate on the mischievous 
 effect of all this upon the great mass of our 
 population. In virtue of the grievous desecration 
 that has thus been inflicted on the office, we hold 
 out, in their eyes, a totally different aspect from the 
 ministers of a former age. We are getting every 
 year more assimilated, in look and in complexion, 
 to surveyors, and city-clerks, and justices, and 
 distributors of stamps, and all those men of place, 
 who have to do with the people, in the matters of 
 civil or municipal agency. Every feature in the 
 sacredness of our character is wearing down, amid 
 all the stir, and hurry, and hard-driving, of this 
 manifold officiality. And thus it is, that our 
 parishioners have nearly lost sight of us altogether, 
 as their spiritual directors, and seldom or never 
 come near to us, upon any spiritual errand at all— 
 but, taking us, as they are led by the vicious 
 system that is now in progressive operation to find 
 us—they are, ever and anon, overwhelming us 
 with consultations about their temporalities; and 
 the whole tact of a spiritual relationship between 
 the pastor and his flock is thus dissipated and done 
 away. There is little of the unction of Christi¬ 
 anity, at all, in the intercourse he holds with 
 
31 
 
 them—and every thing that relates to the soul, 
 and to the interests of eternity, and to the religious 
 care of themselves, and of their families, is elbowed 
 away by the work of filling up their schedules, 
 and advising them about their moneys, and shuf¬ 
 fling, along with them, amongst the forms and the 
 papers of a most intricate correspondence. 
 
 The principle which we lay down is,—that the 
 work of a Christian teacher is enough, by itselfi 
 to engross and take possession of the entire powers 
 of any single man. The business of meditation 
 is a fatiguing business, and leaves a general ex¬ 
 haustion behind it. There is such a thing as a 
 weariness of the mind; and surely, if the right 
 ministration for weariness be repose—then, there 
 must be an overworking of the mind, when after 
 having taken exercise up to the limits of its 
 strength, it is plied with a multiplicity of other 
 and overbearing demands on its attention, and its 
 memory, and its judgment, and the various facul¬ 
 ties which belong to it. The likest thing to it, 
 in the experience of ordinary citizens, which we 
 can imagine, is the case of a merchant exhausting 
 himself by the forenoon labours of his desk, or 
 his counting-house, and retiring to the sweets of 
 a comfortable home, and there solacing himself 
 with the conversations of friendship, or recruiting 
 the languor of his worn-out spirits among the 
 endearments of a family. There is a wall of de¬ 
 fence, which, we understand, many of them have 
 thrown around their persons, and, in virtue of 
 
38 
 
 which, no one application about business is at all 
 entertained, or listened to, excepting on business 
 hours. Let them just guess, then, how much 
 they would be teased, and jaded, and positively 
 enfeebled, were this wall of defence broken down; 
 and there regularly passed through the breach, in 
 force and in frequency, every evening, upon them, 
 a host of invaders, armed with their miscellany of 
 mixed and multiform applications. Let them take 
 this back to the case of a man, whose business is 
 meditation. They, perhaps, may never have en¬ 
 gaged to any great extent in this business. Then, 
 we do not wait for the conviction of their per¬ 
 sonal experience on the subject; but we demand 
 it as a right, that the man who has the experience 
 should be believed. His positive testimony should 
 be made to outweigh all that inexperience may 
 conceive, or may utter, on such a case. If he 
 happen to stand confronted with a public, who are 
 utter strangers to the labour of intense thought¬ 
 fulness, the voice of such a public, if lifted in 
 condemnation against him, should not be sustained 
 as a voice of authority. They are not a competent 
 jury upon this question. And, having premised 
 this, we assert what we are not afraid to carry, by 
 appeal, to the higher reason of the. country—that 
 the labour of intense study, if persisted in, for a 
 few hours, is just as exhausting as the busiest and 
 most lengthened forenoon of an ordinary citizen. 
 He who has borne this labour through the day, 
 has purchased by it, as good a right to exemption 
 
39 
 
 from all that can disturb or annoy him—and if, 
 nevertheless, these annoyances shall be obstinately 
 presented to him, he is put into a state of mental 
 and bodily suffering. There is a pressure upon 
 his whole constitution, greater than the strength of 
 it can enable him to carry. And, under these cir¬ 
 cumstances, he must cast about for relief, in some 
 change of his daily and habitual arrangements. . 
 
 We are all aware of the restless appetite of a 
 sentient being, for a comfortable state of existence. 
 In the case which we have now specified, this 
 principle must tell. If a student was in the habit 
 of labouring at his own peculiar exercise, up to 
 the measure of his constitutional ability, then the 
 additional labour that is thus laid upon him, lays 
 also upon him the necessity of an abridgement 
 upon his studies. He must just make a curtail¬ 
 ment upon his business hours. There is a familiar 
 advice, that is often given to a man under hard¬ 
 ship, and which will come upon him with all the 
 power of a most insinuating temptation: “Take 
 matters easily.” Are you busied with foreign 
 applications? Take them easily. Are you cum¬ 
 bered with official patronage? Take it easily. Are 
 you plied for your personal attendance on the 
 work of secularities? Take it easily. Are you put 
 into requisition, through the week, for a variety 
 of manifold engagements? Take them all easily. 
 Are you, in addition to other things, burdened 
 with the duty of Sabbath preparation? It is true, 
 that there is something in this employment, which 
 
40 
 
 may well weigh a man down with a feeling of its 
 importance. He is to address a number of im¬ 
 perishable creatures, about the affairs of immor¬ 
 tality. But he has no other resource, than just 
 to do with them what he does with the crowd and 
 the frequency of his other affairs. He must throw 
 together such thoughts as he can, and get up a 
 half-hour exhibition, in some way or other; but, 
 in self-defence, and as he values the great objects 
 of comfort and endurance, he must, by all means, 
 take the matter easily. 
 
 We need not say more about the direct blow 
 which the prevailing system of our towns must, at 
 length, in this way, give to the cause of practical 
 Christianity, in our congregations and parishes. 
 We proceed to another effect, still more palpable, 
 if not more prejudicial, than the former. It will 
 keep back and degrade the theological literature 
 of Scotland. 
 
 There is nothing in the contrast which we are 
 now to offer, between the theology of one age 
 and that of another, which is not highly honour¬ 
 able to the present race of clergymen. The truth 
 is, that they have kept their ground so well, 
 against the whole of this blasting and degenerating 
 operation, as to render it necessary, for the pur¬ 
 pose of giving full effect to our argument, that 
 we should look forward, in perspective, to the 
 next age, and compute the inevitable difference 
 which must obtain between its literature and that 
 of the last generation. 
 
41 
 
 On looking back to the distance of half a cen¬ 
 tury, we behold the picture of a church adorned 
 by the literature of her clergy. It is of no conse¬ 
 quence to the argument, that the whole of this 
 literature was not professional. Part of it was 
 so; and every part of it proved, at least, the fact, 
 that there was time, and tranquillity, and full 
 protection from all that was uncongenial for the 
 labours of the understanding. We cannot but 
 look back with regret, bordering upon envy, to 
 that period in the history of our church—when 
 her ministers companied with the sages of phi¬ 
 losophy, and bore away an equal share of the 
 public veneration—when the levities of Hume, as 
 he sported his unguarded hour, among the circles 
 of the enlightened, were met by the Pastors of 
 humble Presbyterianism, who, equal in reach and 
 in accomplishment to himself, could repel the 
 force of all his sophistries, and rebuke him into 
 silence—when this most subtle and profound of 
 infidels aimed , his decisive thrust at the Christian 
 testimony, and a minister of our church, and he, 
 too, the minister of a town, dared all the hazards 
 of the intellectual warfare, and bore the palm of 
 superiority away from him—In a word, we look 
 back, as we do upon a scene of departed glory, to 
 that period, when the clergy of our cities could 
 ply the toils of an unbroken solitude, and send 
 forth the fruits of them, in one rich tide of moral 
 and literary improvement over our land. It is 
 true, that all the labours of that period were not 
 
42 
 
 rendered up, in one consecrated offering, to the 
 cause of theology. It is true, that among the 
 names of Wallace, and Henry, and Robertson, 
 and Blair, and Macknight, and Campbell, some 
 can be singled out, who chose the classic walk, or 
 gave up their talent to the speculations of general 
 philosophy. Yet the history of each individual 
 amongst them, proves that, in these days, there 
 was time for the exercise of talent—that these 
 were the days, when he, among the priesthood, 
 who had an exclusive taste for theology, could 
 give the whole force of his mind to its contempla¬ 
 tions—that these were the days, when a generous 
 enthusiasm for the glories of his profession, met 
 with nothing to stifle or vulgarise it—that these 
 were the days, when the man of prayer, and the 
 man of gospel ministrations, could give himself 
 wholly to these things, and bring forth the evi¬ 
 dence of his profiting, either in authorship to all, 
 or in weekly addresses to the people of his own 
 congregation. It is true, that the names which 
 we have now gathered, are all from the field of 
 a lofty and conspicuous literature. Yet we chiefly 
 count upon them, as the tokens of such a leisure, 
 and of such a seclusion, and of such an habitual 
 opportunity, for the exercises of retirement, as 
 would give tenfold effect to the worthiest and 
 most devoted ministers of a former generation—as 
 enabled the Hamilton and Gillies of our own city, 
 to shed a holier influence around them, and have 
 throned, in the remembrance of living men, the 
 
43 
 
 Erskine, and Walker, and Black, of our metropolis, 
 who maintained, throughout the whole of their 
 history, the aspect of sacredness, and gave every 
 hour of their existence to its contemplations and 
 its labours. 
 
 What is it that must cause all resemblance of 
 this to disappear from a future generation? Not 
 that their lot will be cast in an age of little men. 
 Not that Nature will send forth a blight over the 
 face of our establishment, and wither up all the 
 graces and talents, which, at one time, signalised 
 it. Not that some adverse revolution of the ele¬ 
 ments will bring along with it some strange deso¬ 
 lating influence on the genius and literature of 
 the priesthood. The explanation is nearer at hand, 
 and we need not seek for it among the wilds or 
 the obscurities of mysticism. Nature will just be 
 as liberal as before; and bring forth the strongest 
 and the healthiest specimens of mind, in as great 
 abundance as ever; and will cast abroad no killing 
 influence at all, to stunt any one of its aspiring 
 energies; and will just, if she have free play, be 
 as vigorous with the moral as with the physical 
 productions of a former generation. This change, 
 of which the fact will be unquestionable, however 
 much the cause may elude the public observation, 
 will not be the work of Nature, but of man. 
 There will be no decay of talent whatever, in 
 respect to the existence of it. The only decay 
 will be in the exercise of talent. It will be— 
 that her solitudes have all been violated—that her 
 
44 
 
 claims have all been unheeded and despised—that 
 her delicacies have all been overborne—above 
 every thing, that her exertions and her capabilities 
 have been grossly misunderstood—it not being 
 known how much restraint stifles her—and the 
 employments of ordinary business vulgarise her— 
 and distraction impedes the march of her greater 
 enterprises—and the fatigue she incurs by her 
 own exercises, if accumulated by the fatigue of 
 other exercises, which do not belong to her, may, 
 at length, enervate and exhaust her altogether. 
 Thus it is, that an unlearned public may both 
 admit the existence of the mischief, and lament 
 the evils of it, and yet be utterly blind to the fact, 
 that it is a mischief of their own doing. They 
 lay their own rude estimate on a profession, of 
 the cares and the labours of which they have no 
 experience—and, instead of cheering, do they 
 scowl upon the men who vindicate the privileges 
 of our order. They are perpetually measuring 
 the habits and the conveniences of literary busi¬ 
 ness, of which they know nothing, by the habits 
 and the conveniences of ordinary business, of 
 which they know something. And thus it is, that 
 instead of the blind leading the blind, the blind, 
 in the first instance, turn upon their leaders—they 
 give the whole weight of their influence and 
 opinion to that cruel process, by which the most 
 enlightened priesthood in the world, if they submit 
 to it, may, by the lapse of one generation more, 
 sink down into a state of contentment with the 
 
45 
 
 tamest, and the humblest, and the paltriest attain¬ 
 ments. Nor will it at all alleviate, but fearfully 
 embitter, the whole malignity of this system, 
 should its operation be such, that, in a succeeding 
 age, both our priests and our people will sit down 
 in quietness, and in great mutual satisfaction with 
 each other—the one, fired by no ambition for pro¬ 
 fessional excellence; the other, actuated by no 
 demand for it—the one, peaceably leaning down to 
 the business of such services as they may be called 
 to bear; the other, not seeking, and not caring for 
 higher services. 
 
 Every thing that is said for the evils of such a 
 system, should elevate, in public estimation, all our 
 living clergymen. It came upon them in the way 
 of gradual accumulation; and, at each distinct 
 step, it wore the aspect of a benevolent and kind 
 accommodation to the humbler orders of society. 
 They are not to blame that it has been admitted; 
 and we call upon the public to admire, that they 
 have stood so well its adverse influence on all their 
 professional labours. But there is one principle 
 in human nature, which, if the system be not 
 done away, will, in time, give a most tremendous 
 certainty to all our predictions. It does not bear 
 so hard on the natural indolence of man, to spend 
 his life in bustling and miscellaneous activity, as to 
 spend his life in meditation and prayer. The for¬ 
 mer is positively the easier course of existence. 
 The two habits suit very ill together; and, in 
 some individuals, there is an utter incompatibility 
 
46 
 
 betwixt them. But should the alternative be pre¬ 
 sented, of adopting the one habit or the other, 
 singly, the position is unquestionable, that it were 
 better for the ease, and the health, and the general 
 tone of comfort and cheerfulness, that a man 
 should lend out his person to all the variety of 
 demands for attendance, and of demands for ordi¬ 
 nary business, which are brought to bear upon him, 
 than that he should give up his mind to the labours 
 of a strenuous and sustained thoughtfulness. Now, 
 just calculate the force of the temptation to 
 abandon study, and to abandon scholarship, when 
 personal comfort and the public voice, both unite 
 to lure him away from them—when the popular 
 smile would insinuate him into such a path of em¬ 
 ployment, as, if he once enter, he must bid adieu to 
 all the stem exercises of a contemplative solitude; 
 and the popular frown glares upon that retirement, 
 in which he might consecrate his best powers to 
 the best interests of a sadly misled and miscalcu¬ 
 lating generation—when the hosannahs of the 
 multitude cheer him on to what may be compara¬ 
 tively termed, a life of amusement; and the con¬ 
 demnation both of unlettered wealth and unlet¬ 
 tered poverty, is made to rest upon his name, 
 should he refuse to let down the painful discipline 
 of his mind, by frittering it all away amongst those 
 lighter varieties of management, and of exertion, 
 which, by the practice of our cities, are habitually 
 laid upon him. Such a temptation must come, in 
 time, to be irresistible; and, just in proportion as 
 
47 
 
 it is yielded to, must there be a portion of talent 
 withdrawn from the literature of theology. There 
 must be the desertion of all that is fine, and exqui¬ 
 site, and lofty, in its contemplations. There must 
 be a relapse from the science and the industry of 
 a former generation. There must be a decline of 
 theological attainments, and theological authorship. 
 There must be a yearly process of decay and of 
 deterioration, in this branch of our national litera¬ 
 ture. There must be a descending movement 
 towards the tame, and the feeble, and the common¬ 
 place. And thus, for the wretched eclat of getting 
 clergy to do, with their hands, what thousands can 
 do as well as they, may our cities come, at length, 
 to barter away the labour of their minds, and give 
 such a blow to theology, that, amongst men of 
 scholarship and general cultivation, it will pass for 
 the most languishing of the sciences. 
 
 And here we cannot but advert to the observa¬ 
 tion of Hume, who, be his authority in religion 
 what it may, must be admitted to have very high 
 authority in all matters of mere literary experience. 
 He tells us, in the history of his own life, that a 
 great city is the only fit residence for a man of 
 letters; and his assertion is founded on a true 
 discernment of our nature. In the country, there 
 may be leisure for the pursuits of the understand¬ 
 ing; but there is a want of imp n lse. The mind 
 is apt to languish in the midst of a wilderness, 
 where, surrounded perhaps, by uncongenial spirits, 
 it stagnates and gathers the rust of decay, by its 
 
48 
 
 mere distance from sympathy and example, and 
 the animating converse of men who possess a kin¬ 
 dred taste, and are actuated by a kindred ambition. 
 Transport the possessor of such a mind to a town, 
 and he there meets with much to arouse him out 
 of all this dormancy. He will find his way to men, 
 whose views and pursuits are in harmony with his 
 own—and he will be refreshed for action, by 
 the encouragement of their society—and he will 
 feel himself more linked with the great literary 
 public, by his personal approximation to some of 
 its most distinguished members—and communi¬ 
 cations from the eminent, in all parts of the 
 country, will now pour upon him in greater a- 
 bundance—and above all, in the improved facil¬ 
 ities of authorship, and from his actual position 
 within the limits of a theatre, where his talents are 
 no sooner put forth into exercise, than the fruits 
 of them may be brought out into exhibition—in 
 all this, we say, there is a power and a vivacity of 
 excitement, which may set most actively agoing, 
 the whole machinery of bis genius, and turn to its 
 right account, those faculties which, else, had with¬ 
 ered in slothfulness, and, under the bleak influences 
 of an uncheered and unstimulated solitude, might 
 finally have expired. 
 
 This applies, in all its parts, to the literature of 
 theology, and gives us to see, how much the cities 
 of our land might do for the advancement of its 
 interests. They might cast a wakeful eye over 
 the face of the country—and single out all the 
 
49 
 
 splendour and superiority of talent which they see 
 in our establishment—and cause it to emerge out 
 of its surrounding obscurity—and deliver it from 
 the chill and langour of an uncongenial situation 
 —and transplant it into a kindlier region, where, 
 shielded from all that is adverse to the play or 
 exercise of mind, and encouraged to exertion by 
 an approving and intelligent piety, it may give 
 its undivided labour to things sacred, and have its 
 solitude for meditation on these things, varied only 
 by such spiritual exercises out of doors, as might 
 have for their single object the increase of Christian 
 worth and knowledge amongst the population. 
 
 This is what cities might do for Theology. But 
 what is it that they in fact do for it? The two 
 essential elements for literary exertion, are excite¬ 
 ment and leisure. The first is ministered in abund¬ 
 ance out of all those diversities of taste and under¬ 
 standing which run along the scale of a mighty 
 population. The second element, if we give way 
 much longer to the system which prevails among 
 them—if we lay no check upon their exertions, 
 and make no stand against the variety of their 
 inconsiderate demands upon us—if we resign our 
 own right of judgment upon our own habits and 
 our own conveniencies, and follow the impulse of 
 a public, who, without experience on the matter, 
 can feel no sympathy and have no just calculation 
 about the peculiarities of clerical employment— 
 then should we be robbed of this second element 
 altogether. We should lie under the malignity of 
 
50 
 
 an Egyptian bondage,—bricks are required of us, 
 and we have no straw. The public would like to 
 see all the solidities of argument, and all the graces 
 of persuasion, associated with the cause of sacred 
 literature. But then they would desolate the sanc¬ 
 tuaries of literature. They would drag away mind 
 from the employments of literature. They would 
 leave not one moment of time or of tranquillity 
 for the pursuits of literature. They would con¬ 
 sume, by a thousand preposterous servilities, all 
 those energies of the inner man, which might, 
 every one of them, be consecrated with effect, to 
 the advancement of literature. In one word, they 
 would dethrone the guardians of this sacred cause 
 from the natural eminency of their office altogether; 
 —and, weighing them down with the burden of 
 other services, they would vulgarise them out of 
 all their taste and all their generous aspirings after 
 literature. 
 
 Here, then, is the whole extent of this sore and 
 two-edged calamity. In the country, there is time 
 for the prosecution of a lofty and laborious walk; 
 but there is not the excitement. In the town, 
 there is the excitement; but under the progress of 
 such a system as we have attempted to expose, 
 there will not be the time. There is a constant 
 withdrawment of the more conspicuous members 
 of our establishment from the solitude of their first 
 parishes. But it is withdrawment into a vortex 
 which stifles and destroys them. Those towns, 
 which, with a few most simple and practicable 
 
51 
 
 reformations, might be the instruments of sustain¬ 
 ing the cause of theology, and of sending abroad 
 over the face of our country, a most vigorous and 
 healthful impulse towards the prosecution of theo¬ 
 logical learning, may, under that yearly process of 
 extinction, which is now going forward, depress 
 the whole literature of our profession, and by every 
 translation from the country, may, in fact, absorb 
 so much of promise and ability from the cause of 
 the gospel. The atmosphere of towns, may at 
 length become so pestilential, as to wither up the 
 energies of our church, and shed a baleful influence 
 over all that lustre of ministerial accomplishment, 
 which otherwise might adorn it. And we have only 
 to look to the last fifty years, and think of the 
 new direction to our habits which has taken place 
 in that period, in order to compute how soon our 
 national establishment may, by the simple cause of 
 its ministers being turned to the drudgery of other 
 services, be shorn of her best and most substantial 
 glories, and how soon that theology of which she 
 is the appointed guardian, may come to sink both 
 in vigour and illustration, beneath the spirit, and 
 literature, and general philosophy, of the times. 
 
 Should no arrest be laid on this mischievous 
 operation, then, by another age, will we behold two 
 great absorbing eddies for the theology of our 
 land. An Argus is stationed at each of them, 
 whose office now, is to watch for all the rising 
 excellence that shoots into visibility on the face of 
 our establishment—and whose office then, will be 
 
to lure it to inevitable destruction. In the short¬ 
 lived whirl of some fair and even brilliant exhibi¬ 
 tions, may it be able, in each individual case, to 
 sustain itself for a few circling years above the 
 surface of mediocrity, when it will at length touch 
 the brink of its final engulfment, and disappear 
 for ever. 
 
 Should any reader think that We have drawn the 
 above picture with too faithful, or even with too 
 strong a hand, we ask him further to think, that 
 it is such a picture, as, by its very exhibition, may 
 scare away the realities which it anticipates. The 
 case, we are persuaded, requires only to be under¬ 
 stood, and then will it be provided for, since the 
 restoration of the clergy to their own proper and 
 peculiar influence over the hosts of a city popula¬ 
 tion, must appeal- both to the Christian and the 
 general philanthropist, one of the most important 
 all our national desiderata. 
 
53 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 ■ ON THE INFLUENCE OF LOCALITY IN TOWNS. 
 
 We do not know how the matter is ordered in 
 London 5 but, in the second-rate towns of our 
 empire, it will often be found, that, when a phi¬ 
 lanthropic society is formed in them for any 
 assigned object, it spreads its operations over the 
 whole field of the congregated population. This 
 holds generally true both of the societies for relief, 
 .and of the societies for instruction. Take a cloth¬ 
 ing society, or an old man’s friend society, or a 
 destitute sick society, as examples of the former 
 —or take a Sabbath school society, as an example 
 of the latter—and, in by far the greater number 
 of instances, will it be seen, that, instead of con¬ 
 centrating their exertions upon one district or 
 department of the city, they expatiate at large, 
 and over the . face of its entire territory, recog¬ 
 nising no other boundary, than that which lies 
 indefinitely but fully beyond the final outskirts of 
 the compact and contiguous dwelling-places. 
 
 We do not offer at present to discuss the specific 
 merits of any of these societies; and though, in 
 the remarks which immediately follow, we attach 
 ourselves chiefly to the last of them—yet it is 
 not with the view of appreciating or vindicating 
 Sabbath schools; but, through them, to illustrate 
 a principle of philanthropic management, for 
 
54 
 
 which we can find no better designation, than the 
 influence of locality in large towns. 
 
 In most of the Sabbath school societies with 
 which we are acquainted, this principle is disre¬ 
 garded. The teachers are indiscriminately sta¬ 
 tioned in all parts of the city, and the pupils are 
 as indiscriminately drawn from all parts of the 
 city. Now, what we affirm, is, that the effective¬ 
 ness of each individual teacher is greatly aug¬ 
 mented, if a definite locality be given to him; and 
 that a number of teachers spread over any given 
 neighbourhood on this principle, is armed, in con¬ 
 sequence of it, with a much higher moral power, 
 over the habits and opinions of the rising genera¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Let a small portion of the town, with its geo¬ 
 graphical limits, be assigned to such a teacher. 
 Let his place of instruction be within this locality, 
 or as near as possible to its confines. Let him re¬ 
 strain his attentions to the children of its families, 
 sending forth no invitations to those who are 
 without, and encouraging, as far as it is proper, 
 the attendance of all who are within. Under such 
 an arrangement, he will attain a comfort and an 
 efficiency in his work, which, with the common 
 arrangement, is utterly unattainable. And, we 
 farther conceive, that, if this local assignation of 
 teachers were to become general, it would lead to 
 far more precious and lasting consequences of 
 good to society. 
 
 However thoroughly we may be convinced of 
 
55 
 
 the benefit that would result from the influence 
 of locality, we feel that it is not an easy task 
 didactically to set forth this influence, by any pro¬ 
 cess of argument or explanation. The conviction 
 is far more readily arrived at by the tact of real 
 and living experience, than by the lessons of any 
 expounder. There is a charm in locality, most 
 powerfully felt by every man who tries it; but 
 which, at the same time, it is most difficult so to 
 seize upon as to embody it in language, or to bring 
 it forth in satisfying demonstration to the public 
 eye. We do not know an individual who has 
 personally attached himself to a manageable por¬ 
 tion of the civic territory, and has entered with 
 taste and spirit upon its cultivation—and who 
 does not perceive, with something like the force 
 and the clearness of intuition, that, if this way of 
 it were spread over an assembled million of human 
 beings, it would quickly throw a new moral com¬ 
 plexion over the teeming expanse that is on every 
 side of him. But what he feels, it is not easy to 
 make others see. For, however substantial the 
 influence of locality is, there is a certain shadowy 
 fineness about it, in virtue of which it eludes the 
 efforts of an observer to lay hold of it, and to 
 analyse it. It is no bad evidence, however, of the 
 experimental soundness of 'this operation, that the 
 incredulity about it, is all on the side of those 
 who stand without the field of local management; 
 and the confidence about it, on the side of those 
 who stand within; and that, while the former 
 
56 
 
 regard it as a mystic and undefinable fancy, the 
 latter find in it as much-of sureness and solidity, 
 as if their eyes saw it, and their hands handled it. 
 
 Let us attempt,,however, in the face of all these 
 difficulties, to offer some development of the pre¬ 
 cise character and tendency of the arrangement 
 which we have now recommended. 
 
 The first effect of it which falls to be considered, 
 is that which it has upon the teacher. He, with a 
 select and appropriate vineyard thus laying before 
 him, will feel himself far more powerfully urged, 
 than when under the common arrangement, to go 
 forth among its families. However subtle an exer¬ 
 cise it may require from another, faithfully to ana¬ 
 lyse the effect upon his mind, he himself has only 
 to try it, and he will soon become sensible of the 
 strong additional interest that he acquires, in virtue 
 of having a small and specific locality assigned to 
 him. When, the subject oh which he is to operate 
 thus offers itself to his contemplation, in the shape 
 of one unbroken field, or of one entire and con¬ 
 tinuous body, it acts as a more distinct and imper¬ 
 ative call upon him, to go out upon the enterprise. 
 He will feel a kind of property in the families; and 
 the very circumstance of a material limit around 
 their habitations, serves to strengthen this impres¬ 
 sion, by furnishing to his mind a sort of association 
 with the hedges and the landmarks of property. 
 At all events, the very visibility of the limit, by 
 constantly leading him to perceive the length and 
 the breadth of his task, holds out an inducement 
 
57 
 
 to his energies, which, however difficult to explain, 
 will be powerfully felt and proceeded on. There 
 is a very great difference, in respect of its practical 
 influence, between a task that is indefinite, and a 
 task that is clearly seen to be overtakeable. The 
 one has the effect to paralyze; the other, to 
 quicken exertion. It serves most essentially to 
 spirit on his undertaking, when, by every new 
 movement, one feels himself to be drawing sensi¬ 
 bly nearer to the accomplishment of it—when, by 
 every one house that he enters, he can count the 
 lessening number before him, through which he 
 has yet to pass with his proposals for the attend¬ 
 ance of their children—and when, by the distinct 
 and definite portion which is still untravelled, he 
 is constantly reminded of what he has to do, ere 
 that district, which he feels to be his own, is 
 thoroughly pervaded. He can go over his families 
 too, with far less expense of locomotion, than 
 under the common system of Sabbath schools; 
 and, for the same reason, can he more fully and 
 frequently reiterate his attentions; and it will 
 charm him onwards, to find that he is sensibly 
 translating himself into a stricter and kinder rela¬ 
 tionship with the people of his district; and, if he 
 have a taste for cordial intercourse with the fellows 
 of his own nature, he will be gladdened and en¬ 
 couraged by his growing familiarity with them 
 all; and thus will he turn the vicinity, which he 
 has chosen, into a home-walk of many charities; 
 and recognised as its moral benefactor, will his 
 
58 
 
 kindness, and his judgment, and his Christianity, 
 be put forth, with a well-earned and well-estab¬ 
 lished influence, in,behalf of a grateful popula¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Thus one great benefit of such an arrangement, 
 is, its effects in calling out the exertion of the 
 teachers; the next, is, its effect in calling out the 
 attendance of the taught. The invitation comes 
 upon them with far greater power, when it is to 
 attend the weekly lessons which are given out in 
 the close vicinity of their own habitations, than 
 were it to attend at some distant place, where 
 children are assembled from all quarters of the 
 city. And the vicinity of the place of instruction 
 to the taught, is not the only point of juxtaposition 
 which goes to secure and to perpetuate their at¬ 
 tendance. There is also much in the juxtaposition 
 of the taught to one another. This brings what 
 may be called the gregarious principle into fuller 
 play. What children will not do singly, they will 
 do with delight and readiness in a flock. This 
 comes powerfully to the aid of the other advan¬ 
 tages which belong to the local system—where the 
 teacher will not only experience a kind reception 
 at his first outset among the families, but will find, 
 that in the course of a very few rounds, he en¬ 
 gages, for his scholars, not a small proportion of 
 the young, but a great majority of those in the 
 district. And if he just follow up each act of 
 absence, on the part of the children, by a call of 
 inquiry upon their parents, he will succeed in con- 
 
59 
 
 trolling them to regular and continued attendance 
 —a habit, which, with a slight exertion of care upon 
 his part, may be so kept up and strengthened, as 
 to obtain, in the little vicinage over which he pre¬ 
 sides, all the certainty of a mechanical operation. 
 
 The third peculiar benefit of this local arrange¬ 
 ment, is, its effect on the population of the district. 
 That very influence which binds the teacher to the 
 families, does, though by a looser and feebler tie, 
 bind the families to each other. One great desi¬ 
 deratum in large towns, is acquaintanceship among 
 the contiguous families. And to promote this, 
 every arrangement in itself right, should be pro¬ 
 moted, which brings out the indwellers of one 
 vicinity to one common place of repair, and brings 
 upon them one common ministration. We believe, 
 that the total want of parish schools, and the total 
 neglect of the right of parishioners, to a preference 
 for seats in parish churches, have, in addition to a 
 mischief of a deadlier and more direct character, 
 withheld from our population, the great, though 
 collateral advantage that we are now insisting on. 
 It is an advantage, which is, to a certain degree, 
 made up by the local arrangement of Sabbath- 
 schools—where, by next-door neighbours being 
 supplied with one common point of reference; and 
 their children being led to meet in each other’s 
 houses, at one common work of preparation; and 
 all being furnished with one common topic of 
 simple, but heart-feltgratitude—thatmoral distance 
 is somewhat alleviated, which obtains in our great 
 
60 
 
 cities, without any counteraction whatever, even 
 among those living under the same roof, and which 
 powerfully contributes, among other causes, to 
 stamp a louring, and unsocial aspect, on a city 
 population. 
 
 The common system of Sabbath-schooling, has 
 none of these advantages. The families that fur¬ 
 nish children to the same teacher, may lie at a 
 wide physical distance from each other; and it is 
 therefore seldom that he holds any week-day in¬ 
 tercourse at all, with the few and scattered houses 
 out of which his scholars repair to him—or that 
 he maintains any common understanding with the 
 parents about their young—or that he joins his 
 guardianship with theirs, in calling the absentees 
 to account for their acts of non-attendance—or 
 that he forms acquaintance with them upon that 
 most gratifying and welcome of all intimations, 
 that their children are doing well. The close and 
 oft-repeated influences, in virtue of which, a local- 
 teacher may incorporate his school, with the habit 
 of all the families that are allotted to him, are 
 wanting to the general teacher. The latter may 
 still, however, head a most numerous and respect¬ 
 able school; but this is more in virtue of a pre¬ 
 existent desire for Christian instruction, than of 
 any desire which he himself has excited among 
 the families. Attendance upon a general teacher, 
 in spite of distance and other disadvantages, gen¬ 
 erally argues, and is indeed the fruit of a certain 
 value and pre-disposition for the lessons of Chris- 
 
61 
 
 tianity. Attendance on a local teacher, is oftener 
 the fruit, not of an original, but of a communicated 
 taste for his instructions. It is a produce of his 
 own gathering. It is the result, not of a spon¬ 
 taneous, but of a derived movement, to which he 
 himself gave the primary impulse, by going aggre- 
 sively forth upon a given territory; and which he 
 perpetuates and keeps up by his frequent calls and 
 his unremitting vigilance, and his oft-repeated 
 applications, brought to bear upon one and the 
 same neighbourhood. 
 
 Under a local system, the teachers move towards 
 the people. Under a general system, such of the 
 people as are disposed to Christianity, move to¬ 
 wards them. To estimate the comparative effect 
 of these two, take the actual state of every mixed 
 and crowded population, where there must be 
 many among whom this disposition is utterly 
 extinguished. The question is, how shall the 
 influence of a Sabbath school be brought most 
 readily and most abundantly into contact with 
 their families? Which of the two parties, the 
 teacher or those to be taught, should make the 
 first advances to such an approximation ? To meet 
 this question, let it ever be remembered, that 
 there is a wide and a mighty difference between 
 the wants, of our physical, and those of our moral 
 and spiritual nature. In proportion to our want 
 of food, is our desire for food; but it is not so 
 with our want of knowledge, or virtue, or reli¬ 
 gion. The more destitute we are of these last, the 
 
 VOL. i. k 
 
more dead we are as to any inclination for them. 
 A general system of Sabbath schooling may attract 
 towards it all the predisposition that there is for 
 Christian instruction, and yet leave the majority 
 as untouched and as unawakened as it found them. 
 In moving through the lanes and the recesses of a 
 long-neglected population, will it be found of the 
 fearful multitude, that not only is their acquaint¬ 
 ance with the gospel extinguished, but their wish to 
 obtain an acquaintance with it is also extinguished. 
 They not only have no righteousness; but they 
 have no hungering nor thirsting after it. A general 
 teacher may draw some kindred particles out of 
 this assemblage. He may bring around him such 
 families as are of a homogeneous quality with him¬ 
 self. Those purer ingredients of the mass, which 
 retain so much of the etherial character as to have 
 an etherial tendency, may move towards a place 
 of central and congenial attraction, though at 
 a considerable distance from them; and, even 
 though, in so doing, they have to come separately 
 out from that overwhelming admixture with which 
 they are encompassed. But the bulky sediment 
 remains untouched and stationary; and, by its 
 power of assimilation, too, is all the while adding to 
 its own magnitude. And thus it is both a possible 
 thing that schools may multiply under a general 
 system, and that out of the resources of a mighty 
 population, an overflowing attendance may be 
 afforded to each of them, while an humble fraction 
 of the whole is all that is overtaken; and below 
 
63 
 
 the goodly superficies of a great apparent stir and 
 activity, may an unseen structure of baser materials 
 deepen and accumulate underneath, so as to fur¬ 
 nish a solution of the fact, that with an increase of 
 Christian exertion amongst us, there should, at one 
 and the same time, be an increase of heathenism. 
 
 It is the pervading operation of the local system, 
 which gives it such a superior value and effect 
 in our estimation. It is its thorough diffusion 
 through that portion of the mass in which it ope¬ 
 rates. It is that movement, by which it traverses 
 the whole population, and by which, instead of 
 only holding forth its signals to those of them who 
 are awake, it knocks at the doors of those who are 
 most profoundly asleep, and, with a force far more 
 effective than if it were physical, drags them out 
 to a willing attendance upon its ministrations. In 
 this way, or indeed in any way, may it still be im¬ 
 possible to reach the parents of our present gener¬ 
 ation. But the important practical fact is, that, 
 averse as they may be to Christianity on their own 
 account, and negligent as they often are, in their 
 own persons, of the Christianity of their children, 
 still, there is a pride and a satisfaction felt in their 
 attendance upon the Sabbath schools, and their 
 proficiency at the Sabbath schools. Let the sys¬ 
 tem be as impotent as it may in its efficiency upon 
 the old, still it comes into extensive contact with 
 the ductile and susceptible young; and, from the 
 way in which it is fitted to muster them nearly all 
 into its presence, is it fitted, in proper hands, to 
 
64 
 
 wield a high and a presiding influence over the 
 destinies of a future age. 
 
 The schools, under a general system, are so 
 many centres of attraction for all ftie existing 
 desire that there is towards Christianity; and 
 what is thus drawn, is, doubtless, often bettered 
 and advanced by the fellowship into which it has 
 entered. The schools, under a local system, are 
 so many centres of emanation, from which a vivi¬ 
 fying influence is actively propagated through a 
 dead and putrid mass. It does not surprise us to 
 be told, that, under the former operation, there 
 should be an increase of youthful delinquency, 
 along with an increase of public instruction for the 
 young. Should the latter operation become uni¬ 
 versal in cities, we would be surprised if there were 
 still an increase of youthful delinquency; and it 
 were a phenomenon we would be unable to explain. 
 
 The former, or general system, draws around 
 it the young of our more decent and reputable 
 families. It can give an impulse to all the mat¬ 
 ter that floats upon the surface of society. It is 
 the pride of the latter, or local system, while it 
 refuses not these, that it also fetches out from 
 their obscurities, the very poorest and most profli¬ 
 gate of children. It may have a painful encounter 
 at the outset, with the filth, and the raggedness, 
 add the other rude and revolting materials, which 
 it has so laboriously excavated from those mines 
 of depravity, that lie beneath the surface of com¬ 
 mon observation. But it may well be consoled 
 
65 
 
 with the thought, that, while much good has been 
 done by its predecessor, which, we trust, that it 
 is on the eve of supplanting, it holds in its own 
 hands the materials of a far more glorious trans¬ 
 formation. 
 
 This is an age of many ostensible doings, in 
 behalf of Christianity. And it looks a paradox to 
 the general eye, that, with this feature of it stand¬ 
 ing out so conspicuously, there should also be an 
 undoubted increase of crimes, and commitments, 
 and executions, all marking an augmented depra¬ 
 vity among our population. A very slight degree 
 of arithmetic, we are persuaded, can explain the 
 paradox. Let it simply be considered, in the case 
 of any Christian institution, whether its chief office 
 be to attract or to pervade. Should it only he 
 the former, we have no doubt, that a great visible 
 exhibition may be drawn around it—and that 
 stationary pulpits and general Sabbath schools, 
 and open places of repair for instruction indiscri¬ 
 minately to all who will, must give rise to a great 
 absolute amount of attendance. And whether we 
 look at the streets, when all in a fervour with 
 church-going—or witness the full assemblage of 
 children, who come from all quarters, with their 
 weekly preparations, to a pious and intelligent 
 teacher—or compute the overflowing auditory, that 
 Sabbath after Sabbath, some free, evening sermon 
 is sure to bring out from among the closely peopled 
 mass—or, finally, read of the thousands which find 
 a place in the enumerations of some great philan- 
 
thropic society—we are apt, from all this, to think 
 that a good and a religious influence is in full and 
 busycirculation on every side of us. And yet, 
 there is not a second-rate town in our empire, 
 which does not afford materials enough, both for 
 all this stir and appearance, on the one hand, and 
 for a rapid increase, in the quantum of moral 
 deterioration, on the other. The doings to which 
 we have adverted, may bear, with a kind of mag¬ 
 netic influence, on all that is kindred in charac- 
 • ter to their own design and their own principle. 
 They may communicate a movement to the mi¬ 
 nority who will, but leave still and motionless the 
 majority who will not. Whole streets and whole 
 departments may be nearly untouched by them. 
 There is the firm and the obstinate growth of a 
 sedentary corruption, which will require to be 
 more actively assailed. It is certainly cheering to 
 count the positive numbers on the side of Chris¬ 
 tianity. But, beyond the ken of ordinary notice, 
 there is an outnumbering both on the side of week¬ 
 day profligacy, and of Sabbath profanation. There 
 is room enough for apparent Christianity, and 
 real corruption, to be gaming ground together, 
 each in their respective territories; and the delu¬ 
 sion is, that, while many are rejoicing in the symp¬ 
 toms of our country’s reformation, the country it¬ 
 self may be ripening for some awful crisis, by 
 which to mark, in characters of vengeance, the 
 consummation of its guilt. 
 
 . In these circumstances, do we know of no ex- 
 
67 
 
 pedient, by which this woful degeneracy can be 
 arrested and recalled, but an actual search and 
 entry upon the territory of wickedness. A mere 
 signal of invitation is not enough. In reference 
 to the great majority, and in reference to the 
 most needful, this were as powerless as was the 
 bidding .to the marriage-feast of the parable. We 
 must have recourse, at last, to the final expedient 
 that was adopted on that occasion; or, in other 
 words, go out to the streets and the highways, 
 and by every fair measure of moral, and personal, 
 and friendly application, compel the multitude to 
 come in. We must do with the near, what we are 
 doing with the distant world. We do not expect 
 to Christianise the latter, by messages of entreaty, 
 from the regions of paganism. But we send our 
 messages to them. Neither do we give a roving 
 commission to the hearer, but assign to each of 
 them their respective stations in that field, which 
 is the world. And we most assuredly need not 
 expect to Christianise any city of nominal Chris¬ 
 tendom, by waiting the demand of its various 
 districts, for religious instruction, and acting upon 
 the demands, as they arrive. There must just be 
 as aggressive a movement in the one case as in the 
 other. There is not the same physical distance, 
 but there is nearly the same moral distance, to be 
 described with both; and they who traverse this 
 distance, though without one mile of locomotion 
 to the place of their labour, do, in effect, maintain 
 the character, and fulfil the duty of missionaries. • 
 
Any one, or, at most, two philanthropists, may 
 set forth upon such an experiment. They will 
 soon, in the course of their inquiries, be enabled 
 to verify the actual state of our city families, and, 
 at the same time, their openness to the influence 
 of a pervading operation. Let them, for this 
 purpose, make their actual entrance upon a dis¬ 
 trict, which they have previously chalked out as 
 the ground of their benevolent enterprise; and it 
 were better, that it should be in some poor and 
 neglected part of the city. Let the one introduce 
 the other to every family; and on the simple er¬ 
 rand, that he meant to set up a Sabbath school, 
 to be just at hand, and for the vicinity around him. 
 With no other manner than that which Christian 
 kindness would dictate, and just such questions 
 as are consistent with the respect which every 
 human being should entertain for another, we 
 promise him, not merely a civil, but a cordial re¬ 
 ception in almost every house, and a discreet an¬ 
 swer to all his inquiries. The first thing which, 
 in all likelihood, will meet his observation, is the 
 mighty remainder of good that is left for him to 
 do, amid the number and exertion of the general 
 Sabbath schools that are on every side of him. It 
 may be otherwise, in some few accidental districts. 
 But, speaking generally, he will assemble a suffi¬ 
 cient school out of a population of three hundred. 
 Parents of all characters will accept his proposition 
 with gratitude. And if, on his first meeting with 
 their children in some apartment of the district. 
 
69 
 
 he should be disappointed by the non-attendance 
 of some whom he was counting on, a few calls of 
 inquiry on the subject, will generally, at length, 
 secure the point of their attendance; and, by fol¬ 
 lowing up every case of absence with a week-day 
 inquiry at the parents, he will secure the regularity 
 of it; and thus may he bring his moral and per¬ 
 sonal influence into contact' with their young, for 
 a few hours of every recurring Sabbath; and also 
 keep up an influence through the whole week, 
 by the circulation of books from a small library 
 attached to his institution. It will prove a mighty 
 accession to the good that he is doing, if he hold 
 frequent intercourse with the families. Their 
 kindness and his enjoyment will grow with the 
 growth of their mutual acquaintanceship. And 
 should he, in the spirit of a zealous philanthropy, 
 resolve to cultivate the district as his own—should 
 he fill up every opening to usefulness which oc¬ 
 curs in it—should he mix consideration with sym¬ 
 pathy—and, in all Jiis services and all his distri¬ 
 butions, bear a respect to their character as well 
 as to their comfort—we cannot confidently say, 
 that he will turn many from Satan unto God, but 
 he will extinguish many an element, both of moral 
 and political disorder. 
 
 A few months of perseverance will thoroughly 
 engage him to the cause that he has undertaken. 
 He will feel a comfort in this style of philanthropy, 
 which he does not feel in the bustle and distraction 
 of manifold societies. He will enjoy both the 
 
70 
 
 unity and the effectiveness of his doings. And, 
 instead of pacing, as he does now, among dull 
 committees, and perplexing himself among the 
 questions of a large and laborious superintendence, 
 will he expatiate, without encumbrance, upon his 
 own chosen field, and rejoice in putting forth his 
 immediate hand, on the work of reclaiming it, 
 from that neglected waste of ignorance and im¬ 
 providence by which it is surrounded. 
 
 To be effective in such a walk of benevolence 
 as this, it is not necessary to be rich. Should, for 
 example, the defective education of a whole dis¬ 
 trict be repaired by one individual, without the 
 expense of a single shilling; and that, by the mere 
 force of moral suasion, he, prevailing on every 
 parent who required urgency upon the subject, to 
 send all the children of a right age, to a week-day 
 school upon their own charges—or, should another 
 individual, standing in the relation that we are 
 now explaining, to a particular district, put a debt, 
 which bears most oppressively over one of the 
 families, into a sure and rapid process of liquida¬ 
 tion, and that, not by advancing one fraction, 
 but by simply recommending the expedient of a 
 small weekly deposite—and such instances as these, 
 be varied and multiplied to the extent that is con¬ 
 ceivable, would not this be enough to prove, that 
 it is not in the influence which lies in wealth, but 
 by the power which resides in the moral elements 
 of intelligence and affection, that the good is to 
 be accomplished? The weapons of this warfare 
 
71 
 
 are, advice—and friendship?—and humanity, at all 
 times ready, without being at any time imper¬ 
 tinent-—and the well-earned confidence, which is 
 ever sure to follow, in the train of tried and de¬ 
 monstrated worth—these, when wielded for a time 
 by the same individual, on the same contiguous 
 families, will work an effect of improvement, which 
 never can be attained by all the devices and la¬ 
 bours of ordinary committeeship. 
 
 There are so many philanthropists in this our 
 day, that if each of them, who is qualified, were 
 to betake himself, in his own line of usefulness, to 
 one given locality, it would soon work a great and 
 visible effect upon society. One great security 
 for such an arrangement being propagated , is the 
 actual comfort which is experienced by each, after 
 he has entered on his own separate portion of it. 
 But there is, at the same time, a temporary hin- 
 derance to it, in the prevailing spirit of the times. 
 The truth is, that a task so isolated as that which 
 we are now prescribing, does not suit with the pre¬ 
 sent rage for generalising. There is an appetite 
 for designs of magnificence. There is an impa¬ 
 tience of every thing short of a universal scheme, 
 landing in a universal result. Nothing will serve 
 but a mighty organization, with the promise of 
 mighty consequences; and, let any single person 
 be infected with this spirit, and he may decline 
 from the work of a single court or lane in a city, 
 as an object far too limited for his contemplation. 
 He may like to share, with others, in the enter- 
 
72 
 
 prise of subordinating a whole city to the power 
 of some great and combined operation. And we 
 may often have to deliver a man from this ambi¬ 
 tious tendency, ere we can prevail upon him to 
 sit humbly and perseveringly down to his task— 
 ere we can lead him to forget the whole, and 
 practically give himself to one of its particulars— 
 ere we can satisfy him, that, should he moralise 
 one district of three hundred people, he will not 
 have lived in vain—ere we can get him to pervade 
 his locality, and quit his speculation. 
 
 This spirit has restrained the march of philan¬ 
 thropy as effectually, as, in other days, it did that 
 of philosophy. In the taste for splendid generali¬ 
 ties, it was long ere the detail and the drudgery 
 of experimental science were entered upon. There 
 is a sound and inductive method of philanthropy, 
 as well as a sound and inductive method of philo¬ 
 sophising. A few patient disciples of the experi¬ 
 mental school, have constructed a far nobler and 
 more enduring fabric of truth, than all the old 
 schoolmen put together could have reared. And 
 could we prevail on those who are unwearied in 
 well-doing, each to take his own separate slip, or 
 portion of the vast territory that lies before us, 
 and to go forth upon it with the one preparation 
 of common sense and common sympathy; and, 
 resigning his more extended imaginations, actu¬ 
 ally to work with the materials that are put into 
 his hand—would we, in this inductive way of it, 
 arrive at a far more solid, as well as striking con- 
 
13 
 
 summation, than ever can be realised by any so¬ 
 ciety of wide and lofty undertakings. 
 
 The individual who thus sits soberly down to a 
 work, that is commensurate with the real medio¬ 
 crity of the human powers, will soon meet with 
 much to reconcile him to the enterprise. He will 
 not fail to contrast the impotency of every general 
 management, in reference to the whole, with the 
 efficacy of his own special management, in refer¬ 
 ence to a part. His feeling of the superior com¬ 
 fort of his own walk, and his conviction of its 
 superior productiveness, will soon make up to him 
 for the loss of those more comprehensive surveys 
 that are offered to his notice by Societies, which, 
 however gigantic in their aim, are so inefficient in 
 their performance. He loses a splendid deception, 
 and he gets, in exchange for it, a solid reality, 
 and a reality too, which will at length grow and 
 brighten into splendour, by the simple apposition 
 of other districts to his own—by the mere summa¬ 
 tion of particulars—by each philanthropist betak¬ 
 ing himself to the same path of exertion, and 
 following out an example that is sure to become 
 more alluring by every new act of experience. 
 
 There is an impatience on the part of many a 
 raw and sanguine philanthropist, for doing some¬ 
 thing great; and, akin to this, there is an impa¬ 
 tience for doing that great thing speedily. They 
 spurn the condition of drivelling amongst littles; 
 and unless there be a redeeming magnificence in 
 the whole operation, of which they bear a part, 
 
74 
 
 are there some who could not be satisfied with a 
 humble and detached allotment in the great vine¬ 
 yard of Human usefulness. A Sabbath school so¬ 
 ciety for one city parish, has a greatly more limited 
 aim, than a Sabbath school society for the whole 
 city, or than a similiar society for the whole of 
 Scotland. And yet, in opposition to the maxim, 
 that union is power, would we strongly advise the 
 managers of: every parochial society, to refuse 
 every other alliance than that of good will, with 
 any wider association—to maintain, within its own 
 limits, the vitality and the spirit of a wholly inde¬ 
 pendent existence—to resist every offered exten¬ 
 sion of its mechanism, and rather leave the con¬ 
 tiguous parish to follow its example, than lay upon 
 it a chain of fellowship, which will only damp the 
 alacrity and impede the movements of both. Not 
 that we at all admire the narrowness of an unsocial 
 spirit, which cares for nothing beyond the confines 
 of its own territory. It is simply, that we hold it 
 to be bad moral tactics, thus to extend the field 
 of management—thus to bring a whole city or a 
 whole province under one unwieldy jurisdiction— 
 thus to weaken, by dispersion, the interest which 
 we think is far more vivid and effective when 
 concentrated upon one given locality—thus to ex¬ 
 change the kindliness of a small appropriated home 
 for the cold lustre of a wider and more public 
 management—thus to throw ourselves abroad, over 
 an expanse of superficiality, instead of thoroughly 
 pervading and filling up each of its subordinate 
 
75 
 
 sections. We have, in fact, somewhat of the same 
 antipathy to a general society for matters spiritual, 
 that we have to a general session for matters tem¬ 
 poral; and are most thoroughly persuaded, that 
 the less we are linked and hampered with one an¬ 
 other, the more effective will be all our operations. 
 
 In the work of filling up a parish with Sabbath 
 schools, we would recommend the local system in 
 its purest form; that is, that a small separate dis¬ 
 trict should be assigned to each teacher, and that 
 it should no more be his practice to draw the 
 young from all parts of the parish indiscriminately, 
 than to draw them from all parts of the city in¬ 
 discriminately. There are many parishes in the 
 empire, of a population, that would require fifty 
 teachers for their thorough cultivation; and the 
 danger is, that in the hurry of an ambitious desire 
 to get up a complete apparatus, there may be a 
 rapidity, and a regardlessness of qualification, in 
 the admissions of new agency. It were greatly 
 better, that the promoters of such an undertaking, 
 should begin with one extremity of the ground 
 upon which they have entered—cautiously pro¬ 
 vide for each department as they move onwards 
 to the other extremity—and leave a portion, for 
 a time, in an outfield state, rather than precipitate 
 the appointments, or assign to any, a larger allo¬ 
 cation than he can comfortably or effectually per¬ 
 vade. 
 
 It was a matter of speculation, some months 
 ago, to subordinate the whole of Glasgow to this 
 local system, and that, by a simultaneous move-. 
 
76 
 
 raent on the part of many individuals. It is greatly 
 better that this was abandoned. The projectors 
 of such a scheme never could have found their way 
 through the conflict and perplexity of many opi¬ 
 nions, to its accomplishment. To muster a force, 
 in any way adequate to the commencement of such 
 an enterprise, there behooved to be a very wide and 
 crowded arena of consultation upon the subject; 
 and this, to a moral certainty, would have turned 
 out an arena of controversy, where, after a very 
 great deal of unproductive speechifying, the parties 
 would have neutralized each other’s propositions, 
 and the project been given up in despair. Even 
 though it had been possible to institute a society 
 for this object, the work of filling up the city with 
 local schools, would have gone on most languidly 
 —the agency would have sunk under the conscious¬ 
 ness of a burden too heavy for them—it would 
 have been utterly impossible to send, over this 
 wide extent, the impetus of such a common spirit 
 as is often observed to animate a more small and 
 select band of philanthropists—in proportion to 
 the sublimity of the aim, would have been the 
 shortness and slenderness of the execution: and 
 one delusion more would have been added to the 
 number of others, by which the public have been 
 blinded to the fact, that, amid all the zeal and 
 variety of our apparent doings in behalf of Chris¬ 
 tianity, we live at a time when irreligion is multiply¬ 
 ing her proselytes every day, and vice, and-igno¬ 
 rance, and ferocity, are making their most frightful 
 advances over a rapidly degenerating population. 
 
77 
 
 But we have to record a far more, fortunate at¬ 
 tempt that was made some time ago, to institute a 
 society of the same kind, on a more limited scale. 
 We allude to the Saltmarket Sabbath School So¬ 
 ciety. The field of its operations takes in both 
 sides of the street, with the deep, and narrow, and 
 numerous lanes which branch off from them. It 
 bears a population of 3624; and to cultivate this 
 extent, there were only four individuals, at the 
 outset of the undertaking, who, instead of spread¬ 
 ing themselves over the whole, appropriated each 
 a small locality, and waited for more agents, ere 
 they proceeded to lay out the remainder. And, 
 such is the impulse that lies in a field of exertion, 
 with its boundaries lying visibly before you—such 
 is the excitement given to human power, when 
 linked with a task that may be surmounted, in¬ 
 stead of being left to expatiate at random, over an 
 obscure and fathomless unknown—such is the 
 superior charm of a statistical over an extended 
 territory, and such the more intense sympathy of 
 a devoted few, in the prosecution of their common 
 and defined object, than that of the scattered 
 many, who have spread beyond the limits either 
 of mutual inspection or of general control, that, 
 in a few months, did this little association both 
 complete its numbers, and thoroughly allocate and 
 pervade the whole ground of its projected opera¬ 
 tions. It has now opened fourteen schools, and 
 provided them with teachers. The number of 
 
78 
 
 scholars is 420, amounting to more than a ninth 
 of the whole population. This is a very full pro¬ 
 portion indeed; for, on pretty extensive surveys, 
 is it found, that the whole number of children, 
 from the age of six to fifteen, comes to about one- 
 fifth of the population. Certain it is, that all the 
 general societies in previous operation, had brought 
 out but a very slender fraction, indeed, of the 
 number brought out by this local and pervading 
 society—that many a crowded haunt of this dis¬ 
 trict, was as complete!]' untouched by the ante¬ 
 cedent methods, as are the families in the wilds 
 of Tartary—that hundreds of young, never in 
 church, and without one religious observation to 
 mark and to separate their Sabbath from the other 
 days of the week, have thus been brought ™itliin 
 an atmosphere, which they now breathe for the 
 first time in their existence—that, with a small 
 collection of books attached to each humble semi¬ 
 nary, there is a reading of the purest and most 
 impressive character, in full circulation amongst 
 both the parents and the children who belong to 
 it; and, what is not the least important effect of 
 all, that, by the frequent recurrence of week-day 
 visitations, there is both a Christian and a civiliz¬ 
 ing influence sent forth upon a whole neighbour¬ 
 hood, and a thousand nameless cordialities are con¬ 
 stantly issuing out of the patriarchal relationship, 
 which has thus been formed between a man of 
 worth, and so many outcast and neglected families. 
 
79 
 
 We know that there are many who look coldly 
 and suspiciously to the whole system of Sabbath 
 schools. We postpone, to some future number of 
 this work, our direct vindication of them,—our 
 sole object at present being to illustrate, by a re¬ 
 ference to them, a principle which will afterwards 
 v be seen to bear, with effect, on a number of other 
 questions, that respect both the Christian and the 
 civic economy of our towns. But thus much we 
 may it least say, that many of the objections pro¬ 
 ceed on an ignorance of the actual state of a 
 crowded society; it not being sufficiently known, 
 how utterly alienated the great majority of our 
 young are from all Christian opportunities; and 
 that there is an unobserved heathenism amongst 
 us, which stands as much in need of being aggres¬ 
 sively entered upon from without, as the heathenism 
 of antiquity stood in need of apostles. Such is 
 the lack of churches, and such is the dreary and 
 unprovided extent of our city parishes, that the 
 majority of our people may be said to live in a 
 state of excommunication from all the privileges 
 of a Christian land. The disgrace of their present 
 habits is not theirs alone, but must be shared with 
 them by others. And, if they have sunk in moral 
 or religious worth, under a treatment, the neces¬ 
 sary effect of which was thus to degrade them, let 
 us not utter one sentence of disrespect, till we first 
 try the effect of a treatment, the natural effect of 
 which is to raise and to transform them. We 
 could not, without this preliminary remark, have 
 
adverted to the outset of one of these Saltmarket 
 schools, or looked back on the first raw exhibition 
 bf the children, or revealed thus publicly what 
 they once were, if we had hot been enabled fur¬ 
 ther to relate what, under the energetic superin¬ 
 tendence of one of the teachers, they have actually 
 become. Certain it is, that we never witnessed 
 so rapid a cultivation; and when, on visiting the 
 school a few months after its establishment, we 
 beheld the dress and decency of their exterior, 
 and marked the general propriety of their manners, 
 and observed the feeling that was evident in the 
 replies of some, and the talent and promptitude 
 that shone forth in the replies of many—when, 
 along with all this, we were made to rejoice in the 
 greetings of the assembled parentage, and shared 
 their triumph and satisfaction in the proficiency 
 of their own offspring, whom, poor as they were, 
 they, out of their own unaided resources, had so 
 respectably arrayed—when we further reflected, 
 that the living scene before us, was not made up 
 of the scantlings of a whole city, but was formed 
 by the compact population of one small but tho¬ 
 roughly explored vicinage,—with our eyes open 
 to what had thus been done by the moral force of 
 care and kindness on the part of one individual, 
 we could not miss the inference, that, with a right 
 distribution, it was in the power of a number of 
 individuals, to throw another aspect over the habit 
 and character of another generation. 
 
 There is much of experimental wisdom to be 
 
81 
 
 gathered, we think, from the circumstances atten¬ 
 dant on the origin and progress of this little asso¬ 
 ciation. We learn, by its history, first, what un¬ 
 sanctioned and wholly unofficial individuals can 
 do. They had no superior to introduce or to ac¬ 
 company them in their rounds; and yet did they 
 find their way to a gracious reception, and a firm 
 practical concurrence with their scheme, on the 
 part of the general population. They have also 
 proved how much more stimulating a manageable 
 section of tbe city is, than a mighty whole, over 
 which there hangs the feeling of a weight and a 
 difficulty insuperable. From the very outset of 
 their undertaking, they were within clear sight of 
 its termination, and felt themselves urged onwards 
 at every new step, by a new inspiration of hope and 
 energy, till, in a very few weeks, their establish¬ 
 ment was completed. Their lists, furthermore, 
 teach us how this is the effectual system for most 
 thoroughly pervading any given space. The Sab¬ 
 bath sch( lars amount to more than a ninth of the 
 whole population. There is one district, consist¬ 
 ing of 264) people, which furnishes no less than 50 
 pupils; and before they are admitted, they must 
 previously be able to read the New Testament. 
 For the object of such, institutions is greatly dif¬ 
 ferent from their general object in England. It 
 is not to teach them the reading of the Scriptures; 
 but to exercise their memory, and judgment, and 
 conscience, on the lessons of Scripture. The 
 Sabbath schools of our country do not supersede, 
 
82 
 
 but stimulate the processes of week-day educa¬ 
 tion. This has been their effect, in many instances, 
 under the society in question. Were it otherwise, 
 it might lead to the substitution of a worse for a 
 better scholarship. But, as it is actually conduct¬ 
 ed, scholarship is not the fruit of attendance on 
 these little seminaries, but the essential preparation 
 for entering them. And thus have we the pleasure 
 of recording, that, under the care and vigilance of 
 a few associated individuals, an impulse, not merely 
 on the side of Christianity, but on the side of 
 ordinary learning, has been sent abroad among 
 the families of a department, that, in both respects, 
 was fast languishing into utter degeneracy. The 
 machinery which they have so speedily raised, 
 need only to be diligently wrought; and even the 
 performance of a few months, warrants the largest 
 expectation of good from their steady and unfal¬ 
 tering perseverance. 
 
 The number of scholars from this part of the 
 town, in attendance upon the general schools, at 
 the erection of this Society, was 128, being greatly 
 less than a third of the number who attend the 
 present schools. But the most cheering part of 
 the whole operation, was, the great and immediate 
 effect of the local interest, in calling out a well 
 qualified agency for the work of this association. 
 It consists of fourteen teachers, ten of whom were 
 never employed in this capacity before; and who 
 were allured to the enterprise by the peculiar 
 motives and facilities which were attached to it. 
 
83 
 
 In other words, to multiply and extend the good 
 which has been done on this portion of the terri¬ 
 tory, we do not need to starve any one department 
 of public usefulness that is now in operation. In 
 answer to the prayers and the pains of Christians, 
 will labourers come forth, as the work of the har¬ 
 vest is entered upon; and an influence, which 
 never could have emanated from any one fountain 
 of general superintendence, will spread itself among 
 the contiguous districts, by a mere process of dis¬ 
 tinct and successive imitations. 
 
 It is the feeling of the writer of these remarks, 
 that, for the purposes both of good superintend¬ 
 ence and good workmanship, the extent of the 
 Saltmarket district, is perhaps the most desirable 
 that can be fixed upon, as being about the right 
 extent of field, for a separate and independent 
 management. It is scarcely possible to proceed 
 far beyond such limits, without a growing! sense 
 of unwieldiness, and a proportional deadening of 
 that interest and activity, which are far better 
 kept up among the members of a small association. 
 Certain it is, that the present size of our parishes 
 in Glasgow, is greatly beyond the fittest magni¬ 
 tude, either for this or for any other operation, 
 which points to the moral and religious welfare of 
 our people. But there is a comfortable hope, that 
 there will be a reduction and a splitting down of 
 these enormous masses—that the process which 
 clergymen, of late years, have had to undergo, 
 will be altogether inverted; and, instead of over- 
 
84 
 
 grown charges, where the care of souls, and the 
 care of secularities were mingled together, into 
 one disgusting compound, and laid upon their 
 persons—that they will be disengaged, in toto, 
 from the latter care; and, to prosecute the former 
 with effect, will, by the multiplication of churches, 
 have their respective managements then rendered 
 strictly ecclesiastical, and gradually so lessened, 
 as at length to be brought each within the grasp 
 of one individual. 
 
 Strong, however, as our partialities are for the 
 Saltmarket Society, we are not sure but that we 
 feel a still greater interest in the solitary, yet 
 eminently successful, attempt of a gentleman in 
 our city, whose name, from motives of delicacy, 
 we forbear to mention. It is now about a year 
 and a half ago, since he assumed a district to 
 himself, which he resolved to cultivate, on the 
 system of local philanthropy. We believe that, in 
 respect of the rank and condition of those who 
 live in it, it is greatly beneath the average of 
 Glasgow. It comprises a population of 996; 
 whom he, in the first instance, most thoroughly 
 surveyed, and all of whom, we are confident, he 
 has now most thoroughly attached, and that, by 
 a series of the most friendly and enlightened 
 services. He has found room, within its limits, 
 for four Sabbath schools, which he provided with 
 teachers of his own selecting, and who, like him¬ 
 self, labour, of course, gratuitously in the cause; 
 
85 
 
 as, indeed, we believe, do all the other Sabbath 
 teachers in the city. The scholars amount to 110; 
 which is, also, in very full proportion to the num¬ 
 ber of inhabitants. He has also instituted a Savings 
 Bank, which takes in deposites only from those 
 who live, and from those who work, within the 
 bounds of this little territory. With this last ex¬ 
 tension of his plan, the bank may embrace a po¬ 
 pulation of 1200; and, from its commencement, 
 in December 19th, 1818, to December 18th, 1819, 
 the whole sum deposited is £235 12s. 3d. During 
 the twelvemonth, sixty families of this small dis¬ 
 trict, have opened their accounts with the bank, 
 and received an impulse from it, on the side of 
 economy and foresight. This, in such a year, 
 proves what might be made of the neglected 
 capabilities of our labouring classes. Any general 
 Savings Bank for the town at large, would not 
 have called out one-tenth of this sum, from the 
 obscure department which this gentleman occu¬ 
 pies, and which, with the doings and the devices 
 of a most judicious benevolence, he is so fast 
 rescuing from all the miseries which attach to a 
 crowded population. We hold this to be one of 
 the most signal triumphs of locality. The sum de¬ 
 posited in this local bank, is about proportional 
 to the sum of £80,000 for the town and suburbs 
 of Glasgow; and forms another proof, among the 
 many others which multiply around us, of the 
 superiority, in point of effect, which a small and, 
 at the same time, distinct and unfettered mana° , e- 
 Vol. i. n & 
 
86 
 
 ment holds, over a wide and ambitious superin¬ 
 tendence. 
 
 We read, in the hook of Genesis, how few the 
 righteous men were, that would have sufficed to 
 save a city from destruction. It is cheering to 
 calculate on the powers of human agency, and 
 how much even an individual may do, when those 
 powers are wisely and steadily directed, and, above 
 all, what is the number of individuals required, 
 who, if each, labouring in his own duteous and 
 devoted walk, would altogether assure the magni¬ 
 ficent result of a country recovered from vice and 
 violence, and placed conclusively beyond the 
 reach of all moral and all political disorders. 
 
 This result, will, at length be arrived at, not by 
 the working of one mighty organization, for the 
 achievement of great things, but by the accu¬ 
 mulation of small things—not by men, whose 
 taste it is to contemplate what is splendid in phi¬ 
 lanthropy, but by men whose practical talent it is, 
 to do what is substantial in philanthropy—not by 
 men, who eye, with imaginative transport, the 
 broad and boundless expanse of humanity, but by 
 men, who can work in drudgery and in detail, at 
 the separate portions of it. But, before we can sit 
 down and be satisfied with doing thoroughly and 
 well, that which lies within the compass of our 
 strength—there must be a conquest over the pride of 
 our nature—there must be a calling in of the fancy, 
 from those specious generalities, which have lured 
 so many from the path of sober and productive 
 
87 
 
 exertion—we must resign the glory of devising a 
 magnificent whole, and count it enough to have 
 rendered, in our narrow sphere, and in our little 
 day, the contribution of a part to the good of 
 human society. The whole it is only for Him to 
 contemplate fully, whose agents we are, and who 
 assigns a portion of usefulness to each severally, 
 as he will. It is our part to follow the openings 
 of his Providence, and to do, with our might, that 
 work which he hath evidently put into our hands. 
 Any great moral or economical change in the 
 state of a country, is not the achievement of one 
 single arm, but the achievement of many; and 
 though one man walking in the loftiness of his. 
 heart, might like to engross all the fame of it, it 
 will remain an impotent speculation, unless thou¬ 
 sands come forward to share among them all the 
 fatigue of it. It is not to the labour of those who 
 are universalists in science, that she stands indebted 
 for her present solidity, or her present elevation, 
 but to the separate labours of many—each occupy¬ 
 ing his own little field, and heaping, on the basis 
 of former acquisitions, his own distinct and pecu¬ 
 liar offering. And it is just so in philanthropy. 
 The spirit of it has gone marvellously abroad 
 amongst us of late years; but still clouded and 
 misled by the bewildering glare which the fancy 
 of ambitious man is apt to throw around his own 
 undertakings. He would be the sole creator of a 
 magnificent erection, rather than a humble contri¬ 
 butor to it, among a thousand more, each as ne- 
 
88 
 
 cessaryand important as .himself. And yet, would' 
 he only resign his speculations, and give himself 
 to the execution of a task, to which his own per¬ 
 sonal faculties were adequate, he would meet with 
 much to compensate the loss of those splendid 
 delusions,, which have hitherto engrossed him. 
 There would be less of the glare of publicity, but 
 there would be more of the kindliness of a quiet 
 and sheltered home. He could not, by his own 
 solitary strength, advance the little stone into a 
 great mountain, but the worth and the efficacy of 
 his labours, will be sure to recommend them to 
 the imitation of many—and the good work will 
 spread by example, from one individual, and from 
 one district to another—and, though he may be 
 lost to observation, in the growing magnitude of 
 the operations, which surround him, yet will he 
 rejoice even in his very insignificance, as the be¬ 
 fitting condition for one to occupy, among the 
 many millions of the species to which he belongs 
 —and it will be enough for him, that he has added 
 one part, however small, to that great achieve¬ 
 ment, which can only be completed by the exer¬ 
 tions of an innumerable multitude—and the fruit 
 of which is to fill the whole earth. 
 
89 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 APPLICATION OF TIIE PRINCIPLE OF LOCALITY IN 
 TOWNS TO TIIE WORK OF A CHRISTIAN MINISTER. 
 
 It is perhaps the best among all our more general 
 arguments for a religious establishment in a coun¬ 
 try, that the spontaneous demand of human beings 
 for religion, is far short of the actual interest which 
 they have in it. This is not so, with their demand 
 for food or raiment, or any article which ministers 
 to the necessities of our physical nature. The 
 more destitute we arc of these articles, the greater 
 is our desire after them. In every case, where 
 the want of any thing serves to whet our appetite, 
 instead of weakening it, the supply of that thing 
 may be left, with all safety to the native and 
 powerful demand for it, among the people them¬ 
 selves. Thej sensation of hunger is a sufficient 
 guarantee for there being as many bakers in a 
 country, as it is good and necessary for the coun¬ 
 try to have, without any national establishment of 
 bakers. This order of men will come forth, in 
 number enough, at the mere bidding of the people; 
 and it never can be for want of them, that society 
 will languish under the want of aliment for the 
 human body. It is wise in government to leave 
 the care of the public good, wherever it can bo 
 left safely, to the workings of individual nature ; 
 and, saving for the administration of justice be- 
 o 
 
90 
 
 tween man and man, it were better that she never 
 put out her hand either with a view to regulate or 
 to foster any of the operations of common mer¬ 
 chandise. 
 
 But the case is widely different, when the ap¬ 
 petite for any good, is short of the degree in which 
 that good is useful or necessary; and, above all, 
 when just in proportion to our want of it, is the 
 decay of our appetite towards it. Now this is, 
 generally speaking, the case with religious instruc¬ 
 tion. The less we have of it, the less we desire 
 to have of it. It is not with the aliment of the 
 soul, as it is with the aliment of the body. The 
 latter will be sought after; the former must be 
 offered to a people, whose spiritual appetite is in a 
 state of dormancy, and with whom it is just as ne¬ 
 cessary to create a hunger, as it is to minister a 
 positive supply. In these circumstances, it were 
 vain to wait for any original movement on the 
 part of the receivers. It must be made on the 
 part of the dispensers. Nor does it follow, that 
 because government may wisely abandon to the 
 operation of the principle of demand and supply, 
 all those interests, where the desires of our nature, 
 and the necessities of our nature, are adequate the 
 one to the other, she ought, therefore, to abandon 
 all care of our interest, when the desire, on the 
 part of our species, is but rare, and feeble, and in¬ 
 operative, while the necessity is of such a deep and 
 awful character, that there is not one of the con¬ 
 cerns of earthliness which ought, for a moment, to 
 be compared with it. 
 
91 
 
 This we hold to be the chief ground upon which 
 to plead for the advantage of a religious establish¬ 
 ment. With it, a church is built, and a teacher is 
 provided, in every little district of the land. With¬ 
 out it, we should have no other security for the 
 rearing of such an apparatus, than the native 
 desire and demand of the people for Christianity, 
 from one generation to another. In this state of 
 things, we fear, that Christian cultivation would 
 only be found in rare and occasional spots over 
 the face of extended territories; and instead of 
 that uniform distribution of the word and ordi¬ 
 nances, which it is the tendency of ah establish¬ 
 ment to secure, do we conceive that in every 
 empire of Christendom, would there be dreary, 
 unprovided blanks, where no regular supply of in¬ 
 struction was to be had, and where there was no 
 desire after it, on the part of an untaught and ne¬ 
 glected population. 
 
 We are quite aware, that a pulpit may be cor¬ 
 ruptly filled, and that there may be made to 
 emanate from it, the evil influence of a false or 
 mitigated Christianity on its surrounding neigh¬ 
 bourhood. This is an argument, not against the 
 good of an establishment, but for the good of 
 toleration. There is no frame-work reared by 
 human wisdom, which is proof against the fre¬ 
 quent incursions of human depravity. But if 
 there do exist a great moral incapacity on the 
 part of our species, in virtue of which, if the 
 lessons of Christianity be not constantly obtruded 
 
92 
 
 upon them, they are sure to decline in taste and 
 in desire for the lessons of Christianity; and if an 
 establishment he a good device for overcoming 
 this evil tendency of our nature, it-were hard to 
 visit, with the mischief of its overthrow, the future 
 race either of a parish or of a country, for the 
 guilt of one’ incumbency, or for the unprincipled 
 patronage of one generation. We trust, there¬ 
 fore, in the face of every corruption which has 
 been alleged against them, that our parochial 
 establishments will stand, so as that churches shall 
 be kept in repair, and ministers in constant suc¬ 
 cession, shall be provided for them. At the same 
 time, we hope that no restriction whatever will be 
 laid on the zeal and exertion of dissenters; and 
 that any legal disability, under which they still 
 labour, will, at length, be done away. The truth 
 is, that we know not a better remedy against the 
 temporary and incidental evils of an establishment, 
 than a free, entire, and unexcepted toleration; 
 nor how an endowed church can be more effec¬ 
 tually preserved, either from stagnation or decay, 
 than by being ever stimulated and kept on the 
 alert, through the talent, and energy, and even 
 occasional malignity and injustice of private ad¬ 
 venturers. Still, however, such is our impression 
 of the overwhelming superiority of good done by 
 an establishment, that, in addition to the direct 
 Christian influence which it causes to descend 
 upon the country from its own ministers, we 
 regard it as the instrument of having turned the 
 
93 
 
 country into a fitter and more prepared field, for 
 the reception of a Christian influence from any 
 other quarter. Insomuch, that had the period of 
 the reformation from Popery, in Britain, been also 
 the period for the overthrow and cessation of all 
 religious establishments whatever, we apprehend 
 that there would not only have been no attendance 
 of people upon churches, hut a smaller attendance 
 of people upon meeting-houses than there is at 
 this moment. They are our establishments, in 
 fact, which have nourished and upheld the taste 
 of the population for Christianity; and when that 
 taste is accidentally offended, they are our estab¬ 
 lishments which recruit the dissenting places of 
 worship with such numbers as they never would 
 have gotten out of that native mass which had 
 been previously unwrought, and previously unen¬ 
 tered on. 
 
 In order that men may become Christians, 
 there must either be an obtruding of Christianity 
 on the notice of the people, or the people must be 
 waited for, till they move themselves in quest of 
 Christianity. We apprehend that the former, or 
 what may be called the aggressive way of it, is 
 the most effectual. Nature does not go forth in 
 search of Christianity, but Christianity goes forth 
 to knock at the door of nature, and, if possible, 
 awaken her out of her sluggishness. This was the 
 way of it at its first promulgation. It is the way 
 of it in every missionary enterprise. And seeing, 
 that the disinclination of the human heart to en- 
 
94 
 
 tertain the overtures of the gospel, forms a mightier 
 obstacle to its reception among men, than all the 
 oceans and continents which missionaries have to 
 traverse, there ought to be a series of aggressive 
 measures in behalf of Christianity, carried on from 
 one age to another, in every clime and country of 
 Christendom. To wait till the people shall stir so 
 effectually, as that places of worship shall be built 
 by them, and the maintenance of teachers shall be 
 provided by them, and that, abundantly enough 
 for all the moral and spiritual necessities of our 
 nation, is very like a reversal of the principle on 
 which Christianity was first introduced amongst 
 us, and on which, we apprehend, Christianity 
 must still be upheld amongst us. We, therefore, 
 hold it to be wise, in every Christian government, 
 to meet the people with a ready-made apparatus 
 of Christian education. It is like a constant and 
 successive going forth amongst them with those 
 lessons which they never would have sought after, 
 through all the sacrifices that they else would have 
 had to make, and all the obstacles that they else 
 must have overcome. It is in order to perpetuate 
 the religion of the people, keeping up the same 
 aggressiveness of operation, which first originated 
 the religion of the people. We are aware that 
 itinerancy is an aggressive operation, and that 
 dissenters do itinerate. But we are mistaken if, 
 in this way, there is more of the gospel brought 
 into contact with the inhabitants of our country, 
 throughout the space of a year, than is heard on 
 
95 
 
 every single Sabbath within the pale of its two 
 establishments. This is not fastening the con¬ 
 tempt of insignificance upon dissenters; for, in 
 truth, the good done by their locomotive proceed¬ 
 ings, forms, we believe, a very humble fraction, 
 indeed, of the good that emanates from their 
 pulpits, and is performed through the week, and 
 around the vicinity of their pulpits, by the minis¬ 
 ters who fill them. It is a mere question of moral 
 and spiritual tactics, which we are at present 
 engaged with. The ability and the Christian 
 worth of dissenters, and the precious contributions 
 which they have rendered to sacred literature, 
 should ever screen them from being lightly or 
 irreverently spoken of. And yet, among all their 
 claims to the gratitude of the public, we think that 
 they have a higher still, iu their wholesome re¬ 
 action on the establishments of the land, in their 
 fresh and vigorous, and ever-recurring impulses on 
 a machinery, the usefulness of which they may 
 disown in words, while, in fact, they are among the 
 most effective instruments of its usefulness. 
 
 So much for the question of a religious establish¬ 
 ment over a country at large. But we think that 
 it has a special advantage in towns, which has been, 
 in a great measure, overlooked, or, at least, been 
 wofully defeated in the practical management of 
 towns. 
 
 In our last chapter, we made a comparison be¬ 
 tween local and general Sabbath schools. Now, 
 a church is, or easily might be, in effect, a local 
 
Sabbath school. Its district is, or ought to be, 
 the parish with which it stands nominally asso¬ 
 ciated, and its sitters ought to be the inhabitants 
 of that parish. The established ministers of a large 
 town, should be enabled, each to concentrate the 
 foil influence of his character and office, on his 
 own distinct and separate portion of the whole 
 territory. Any thing that can disturb the reitera¬ 
 tion of his attentions to the same local quarter of 
 the city, should be resisted as a detraction from 
 his real usefulness. And what we affirm, is, that 
 the united influence of the exertions of all the 
 clergy, when generalised and extended over the 
 town, will never nearly amount to the sum of their 
 separate influences, when each is permitted to give 
 the whole both of his Sabbath and week-day labour 
 to the people of his own geographical vineyard. 
 
 To demonstrate this at length, we would just 
 have to repeat the argument of the last chapter, 
 with the substitution of other terms. We could 
 not offer a complete analysis of that influence 
 which lies in parochial locality, without a frequent 
 recurrence to the very considerations upon which 
 we have already decided in favour of Sabbath- 
 school locality. We shall, therefore, at present, 
 study to observe all the brevity that is consistent 
 with the importance of the subject. 
 
 The influence of locality may be resolved into 
 two influences; first, that which operates on the 
 agent to whom the locality is assigned; and, 
 secondly, that which operates 011 the people who 
 reside within the field of his undertaking. 
 
In the first place, then, it is not so likely that a 
 minister will go forth on his share of the popula¬ 
 tion, when spread at random over the whole city, 
 as when they lie within the limits of a space that 
 is overtakable. He feels an incitement to move 
 in the latter way of it, which he does not feel when 
 his attentions are dispersed over a wide and be¬ 
 wildering generality. He, under the one arrange¬ 
 ment, may have rare, and rapid, and transient 
 intercourse with the individuals of a diffused 
 multitude; but this can never ripen into solid 
 acquaintanceship with more than a very few. 
 Under the other arrangement, he may, at a greatly 
 less expense, attain to terms of confidence with 
 some, and of familiarity with many. And it would 
 add prodigiously to this operation, were his hearers, 
 on the Sabbath, also his parochial acquaintances 
 through the week. By this simple expedient alone, 
 he would attain such an establishment of himself in 
 his parish, in a single month, as he will not other¬ 
 wise reach, but by the labour and assiduity of years. 
 The very consciousness that, in a certain quarter 
 of the city, lay the great body of his congrega¬ 
 tion, would be enough to assure him of a welcome 
 there, and a friendship there, that would ever be 
 inclining his footsteps to his parish, as the fittest 
 scene of promise and of preparation for all his 
 enterprises. And he would soon find, that the 
 business of the Sabbath and the business of the 
 week, had a most wholesome, reciprocal influence 
 the one upon the other. The former business 
 
would immediately open a wide and effectual door 
 of intercourse with the people, and the latter 
 business would not only retain their people in 
 attendance upon their minister, hut would rapidly 
 extend their demand of attendance upon him, when¬ 
 ever there was room for it. So that, like as the 
 local Sabbath school teacher recruited his seminary 
 out of the families of the district that was assigned 
 to him; so may the local minister, with far less 
 fatigue and locomotion, than are now incurred by 
 the distractions of too manifold and scattered a con¬ 
 cern, not only recruit his church out of the parish 
 to which it has been appropriated, but keep up an 
 effective demand for seats, which shall press on the 
 existing accommodation, and must at length be 
 provided with more. 
 
 But the second influence of locality in this mat¬ 
 ter, is perhaps of greater efficacy still. The first is, 
 that by which the minister obtains a more intense 
 feeling of his relationship to his people. The second 
 is, that by which the people obtain a more in¬ 
 tense feeling of their relationship to their minister. 
 It is incalculable how much this last is promoted, 
 by the mere juxta-position of the people to one 
 another. There is a great deal more than perhaps 
 can be brought out by a mere verbal demonstra¬ 
 tion, in a number of contiguous families, all related 
 by one tie to the same place of worship, and the 
 same minister. It would go to revive a feeling, 
 which is now nearly obliterated in towns, whereby 
 the house which a man occupies, should be con- 
 
99 
 
 nected, in his mind, with the parish in which it is 
 situated, and an ecclesiastical relationship he re¬ 
 cognized with the clergyman of the parish. In 
 these circumstances, where there was no interference 
 of principle, and no personal disapprobation of the 
 clergyman, attendance upon the parish church, 
 would at length pass into one of the habitual and 
 established proprieties of every little vicinage. 
 Old families would keep it up, and new families 
 would fall into it; and the demand for seats, in¬ 
 stead of slackening under such an arrangement, 
 would become more intense every year, so as to 
 form a distinct call for more churches, whenever they 
 were called for by the exigencies of a growing 
 population. 
 
 There is nothing fanciful in the charm which 
 we thus ascribe to locality. It is the charm of 
 tact and of experience. It is better, when the 
 people who live beside each other, are under one 
 common impression of good from their minister, 
 than when these same people live asunder from 
 each other. It is not known how much that im¬ 
 pression is heightened by sympathy. Did each 
 of the thousand who attend a dramatic perform¬ 
 ance, satisfy himself with reading the composition 
 at home, the total impression among them were 
 not half so powerful, as when, within the infection 
 of one another’s feelings, they sit together, at its 
 representation in a theatre. This is, in part, due 
 to the power of sensible exhibition in the acting. 
 But it is also due, in great part, to the operation 
 
100 
 
 of sympathy. And when contiguous families hear 
 the same minister on the Sabbath, or come within 
 the scope of the same household attentions on other 
 days, there is between them, through the week, a 
 prolonged, and often a cherished sympathy which, 
 were the families widely apart in distant places 
 of the town, would have no operation. Such a 
 common topic, too, of reference and attention, 
 would have a cementing influence on every little 
 neighbourhood. It would draw next-door families 
 into closer and nearer relationship with each 
 other, and shed a mild, moral lustre, over many 
 vicinities, now crowded with human beings, but 
 desolate in respect of all those feelings which 
 go to sweeten and to solace human bosoms. It 
 would, in fact, go a certain way, to transplant 
 into our larger towns, the kindliness of select and 
 limited intercourse; so that, even though the 
 minister could be the visitant of as many families, 
 and the friend of as many individuals, on the 
 general, as on the local system, yet the very 
 circumstance of their being scattered, instead of 
 being contiguous, makes a heavy deduction from 
 the amount of his influence upon them. And, on 
 these various accounts, do .we think, that a city 
 clergy would be greatly more effective under an 
 arrangement, where, instead of the hearers of all 
 churches being intermingled in every direction 
 over the town, they were as much as may be, 
 recalled from this state of dispersion, so as that 
 they may be found together in their respective 
 
101 
 
 parishes, aucl there offer to each of the ministers 
 one separate and compact body of acquaintance¬ 
 ship. 
 
 But, after all, the argument of greatest strength 
 for a strictly parochial system in towns, is identical 
 with the argument for a religious establishment all 
 over the country. People will not be drawn in 
 such abundance to Christianity, by a mere pro¬ 
 cess of attraction, as Christianity can be made to 
 radiate upon them, by a process of emanation. We 
 have not yet heard of any dissenting minister in 
 towns, who assumed to himself a locality for the 
 purpose of its moral and religious cultivation. We 
 think, that it would greatly add to the power of his 
 ministrations, if he did so. But, as the case stands, 
 his pulpit operates on the neighbourhood, chiefly 
 as a centre of attraction; and the people move, in 
 the first instance, towards him, instead of him, in 
 the first instance, going forth among the people. 
 We can see, how he may form his congregation 
 out of the pre-disposition for Christianity, that 
 there already is in the place; and, in this way, 
 how dissenters have, in fact, rendered this im¬ 
 portant service to the nation, that they have re¬ 
 tarded the decline of its religious spirit and char¬ 
 acter. But we do not see, in their system, what 
 the forces are, by which the nation can be recalled 
 from the declension into which it has actually sunk. 
 We do not see, how the torpid, and lethargic, and 
 ever-augmenting mass, can be effectually wrought 
 upon. Many will continue to attend their meet- 
 
102 
 
 ing-houses, and thus be retained by them on the 
 side of Christianity. But we do not see, how it 
 is likely that many will he recovered and brought 
 over from the side of practical Heathenism. And 
 thus it is, that, along with the multiplication of 
 their pulpits, and the undoubted zeal and ability 
 of those who fill them, there has been, in our 
 chief towns, an increasing alienation from the 
 word and ordinances, on the part of the inhabi¬ 
 tants, and that, greatly beyond the rate of the 
 increasing population. 
 
 The pulpit of an established minister, may, like 
 a local sabbath-school, be turned into a centre of 
 emanation. Instead of having a merely attractive 
 influence, which can operate only where a taste 
 for Christianity already exists, there may, in the 
 person of him who fills it, and in virtue of the 
 peculiar advantages which we have just explained, 
 go forth a pervading influence, which may be 
 made to spread itself through every portion of the 
 space that he occupies, and be reiterated upon it 
 at short intervals, and with successive applications. 
 He, and the auxiliaries with whom he stands asso¬ 
 ciated, may keep up an incessant locomotion 
 among the families, and they will scarcely meet 
 with one solitary exception in the way of a cordial 
 and universal welcome. This is the way in which 
 a local teacher recruits his school out of families 
 that felt no moving inclination whatever towards 
 a general teacher; and this, in effect, is the way 
 in which a parochial clergyman, had he room and 
 
103 
 
 space for it, may reclaim to congregational habits, 
 a -whole multitude that have sat motionless for 
 years, and grown most alarmingly in number, 
 under all that churches and meeting-houses have 
 yet done for them. 
 
 The ideas of rest, and stillness, and stagnancy, 
 have long been associated with an establishment. 
 But the truth is, that they are its facilities for a 
 busy movement of circulation over a given space, 
 which confer upon it, in our apprehension, a 
 mighty superiority over a mere system of dissen- 
 terism. It is true, that the movement is, in a 
 great measure, internal; and for this reason, it does 
 not hear ostensibly upon it the character of a mis¬ 
 sionary enterprise. But surely, a missionary object 
 is as much fulfilled by the movement that com¬ 
 prehends all who are within, as by the movement 
 that extends to all who are without. The precept 
 of “Go and preach the gospel to every creature,” 
 includes an application to the outcasts at home, 
 as well as to the outcasts abroad ; and, on the very 
 principle which inclines us to the frame-work of 
 a missionary society, do we feel inclined to the 
 frame-work of a national establishment. 
 
 It will readily be asked, why, if an establishment 
 he an engine of such mighty operation, it has done 
 so little. Is it at all palpable, that, with the same 
 talent and professional ardour, an established 
 clergyman does more to stay the declension of a 
 religious habit in towns, than the dissenting mini¬ 
 ster who labours on the same field along with him ? 
 
104 
 
 And would the difference, in point of result, have 
 been great, from the state of matters as it now 
 exists around us, though, instead of so many en¬ 
 dowed churches with territorial portions of the 
 city annexed to them, there had just been the 
 same number of additional meeting-houses, all 
 drawing snch hearers as they could out of a com¬ 
 mon population? 
 
 It is quite true that the establishment has been 
 greatly more powerless in cities, than, with care and 
 vigilance on the part of our rulers, it might have 
 been. It is not merely of the inadequate number 
 of churches that we complain, though these, in 
 some of the chief cities of our empire, could not 
 harbour more than a tenth part of the inhabitants. 
 Neither is it of the manner in which the clergy 
 have been loaded with such extra-professional 
 work, as in fact, has reduced their usefulness as 
 ministers, greatly beneath the level of that of their 
 dissenting brethren. But, in addition to all this, 
 the most precious advantages of an establishment, 
 have been virtually thrown away, and its ministers 
 disarmed of more than half their influence, by a 
 mere point of civic practice and regulation. By 
 what may be called a most unfortunate blunder in 
 moral tactics, an apparatus that might have borne 
 with peculiar effect on the hosts of a rapidly de¬ 
 generating population, has been sorely thwarted 
 and impeded in the most essential part, of the me¬ 
 chanism which belongs to it. Not by the fault of 
 any, but through the mere oversight of all, a wide 
 
disruption has been made between city ministers, 
 and the people of their respective localities; and 
 we should esteem it a truly important epoch in 
 the Christian economy of towns, were effectual 
 measures henceforth taken, to repair gradually, and 
 without violence, the mischief alluded to. 
 
 What we complain of is, the mode which has 
 obtained hitherto of letting the vacant church- 
 seats. They are. open to applications from all 
 parts of the town and neighbourhood, and that, 
 till very lately, without any preference given to 
 the inhabitants of the parish. 
 
 It is this, which, trifling as it may appear, has 
 struck with impotency our church establishment 
 in towns, and brought it down from the high 
 vantage ground it might else have occupied. In 
 this way each church is made to operate, by a 
 mere process of attraction, over an immense field, 
 instead of operating by a process of emanation, on 
 a distinct and manageable portion of it. With the 
 exception of his civil immunities, and his civil 
 duties, which last form a heavy deduction from his 
 usefulness, there remains nothing to signalise an 
 established over a dissenting minister, though the 
 capabilities of his office ought to give him the very 
 advantage which a local has over a general Sabbath 
 school. That which, in argument, forms the main 
 strength of our establishment, has, in practice, been 
 so utterly disregarded, as, in fact, to have brought 
 every city of our land under a mere system of 
 dissenterism. It is not of the powerful influence 
 
106 
 
 of dissenters that we complain. It is of the feeble 
 influence of their system. It is not that they are 
 become so like unto us, as to have gained ground 
 upon the establishment. It is, that we have be¬ 
 come so like unto them, as both of us to have 1 lost 
 ground on the general population. Locality, in 
 truth, is the secret principle wherein our great 
 strength lieth; and our enemies could not have 
 devised more effectual means of prevailing against 
 us, in order to hind us and to afflict us, than just 
 to dissever this principle from our establishment. 
 Our city rulers, without the mischievous intent, 
 have inflicted upon us the mischievous operation 
 of Delilah; and since we are asked, why it is that, 
 with all the strength and superiority which we 
 assign to an establishment, we put forth so power¬ 
 less an arm on the general community—we reply, 
 that it is, because, under this operation, our 
 strength has gone from us, and we have become 
 weak, and are like unto other men. 
 
 It is well enough that every article of ordinary 
 sale is to be had in stationary shops, for the general 
 and indiscriminate use of the public at large; for 
 all who need such articles, also feel their need, and 
 have a moving force in themselves to go in quest 
 of them. But this is no reason why the same 
 thing should have been done with Christianity. 
 It is: what all men need, but what few feel the 
 need of; and, therefore it is, that, under our pre¬ 
 sent arrangement in towns, there are many thou¬ 
 sands who will never move towards it, but where 
 
107 
 
 still it is in our power to reclaim and to engage 
 did we obtrude it upon them. We cannot think 
 of a more effectual device, by which to send a 
 reaching and a pervading influence to this sedentary 
 part of our population, than by binding one church, 
 with one minister, to one locality. Under the 
 opposite, and, unfortunately, the actual system, 
 the result, that is now visibly before us, was quite 
 unavoidable. All the activity of dissenters, aided 
 by the established church, whose activity and in¬ 
 fluence have been, in fact, reduced to that of 
 dissenters, could not have prevented it. It is not 
 mere Sabbath preaching that will retain, or, far 
 less, recal a people to the ordinances of Chris¬ 
 tianity. It is not even this preaching, seconded 
 by the most strenuous week-day attentions, to 
 hearers lying thinly and confusedly scattered over 
 a wide and fatiguing territory. With such a bare 
 and general superintendence as this, many are the 
 families that will fall out of notice; and there will 
 be the breaking out of many intermediate spaces, 
 in which there must grow and gather, every year, 
 a wider alienation from all the habits of a country 
 parish; and the minister, occupied with his extra- 
 parochial congregation, will be bereft of all his 
 natural influence over a locality which is but 
 nominally his. The reciprocal influence of his 
 sabbath and week-day ministrations on each other, 
 is entirely lost under such an arrangement. The 
 truth is, that let him move through his parish, he 
 may not find so much as a hundred hearers within 
 
108 
 
 its limits, out of more than ten times that number, 
 who attend upon him. And conversely, however 
 urgent might he the demand in his parish for room 
 in his church, which, under the existing practice, 
 it is not likely to be, he has not that room that is 
 already in foreign occupation, to bestow upon them. 
 A parochial congregation would have, at the very 
 outset, throned him in such a moral ascendancy 
 over his district of the town, as the assiduities of a 
 whole life will not he able to earn for him. But, 
 as the matter stands, he is quite on a level, in 
 respect of influence, with his dissenting brethren; 
 and the whole machinery of an establishment, in 
 respect of its most powerful and peculiar bearings 
 upon the people, is virtually dissolved. On the 
 system of each minister feeding his church from 
 his parish, he could not only have crowded his own 
 place of worship, but stirred up such an effective 
 demand for more accommodation, as might have 
 caused the number of churches and the number 
 of people to keep in nearer proportion to each 
 other. But, under the paralyzing influence of the 
 present system, it is not to be wondered at, that 
 the urgency for seats should have fallen so greatly 
 in the rear of the increasing rate of population; 
 and that the habit of attendance on any place of 
 religious instruction whatever, should have gone 
 so wofally into desuetude — and that the feeble 
 operation of waiting a demand, instead of stimu¬ 
 lating, should be so incompetent to reclaim this 
 habit; and that the labouring classes in towns, 
 
109 
 
 should hare thus become so generally alienated 
 from the religious establishment of the land—and, 
 what is greatly worse than the desertion of estab¬ 
 lishments, that a fearful majority should be now 
 forming, and likely to increase every year, who 
 are not merely away from all churches, but so far 
 away, as to be beyond the supplementary operation 
 of all meeting-houses—a majority that is fast thick¬ 
 ening upon our hands, and who will be sure to 
 return all the disorders of week-day profligacy 
 upon the country, because that country has, in 
 fact, abandoned them to the ever-plying incite¬ 
 ments and opportunities of Sabbath profanation. 
 
 Before setting forth those expedients for the 
 alleviation of this mischief, which we shall venture 
 to recommend, we shall offer numerical estimates 
 of the extent of it, taken from the actual survey 
 of small slips and portions of the territory, but 
 which, we are confident, do not exceed a fail- 
 average reckoning for the whole. 
 
 Let it be premised, that, in a country parish, 
 the nnmber who should be in attendance upon 
 church, is computed at one-half of the whole 
 population. In towns where the obstacle of dis¬ 
 tance is not to be overcome, a larger proportion 
 than this is generally fixed upon. We think it, 
 however, overrated at two-thirds, and shall there¬ 
 fore assign the intermediate fraction of five-eighths, 
 as the ratio which the church-going inhabitants 
 of a town should bear to the total number of them. 
 
110 
 
 The first result that wes shall give, is the fruit of 
 a larger survey, made in one of the extreme dis¬ 
 tricts of Glasgow, and comprehending a popula¬ 
 tion of 10,304. The number of Sabbath-hearers 
 ought, at the rate now specified, to have been 
 6240. The number of seats actually taken, in all 
 the churches and meeting-houses put together, 
 was only 2930. This survey becomes more in¬ 
 structive, when regarded in the separate portions 
 of it. As it passes onwards to the limits of the 
 royalty, where the people become poorer, and the 
 space which they occupy is in contact with that 
 enormous parish, the Barony, whose population 
 by a recent survey, is found to be 51,861, the pro¬ 
 portion of non-attendance becomes much greater. 
 There are, along the line of separation between 
 the city and the suburbs, contiguous populations 
 of 377, 400, 500, 475, 469, and 468, where the 
 numbers that ought to attend a place of worship 
 are 236,250, 322,297,293, and 293, respectively; 
 and where the sittings actually taken, which cor¬ 
 respond to these numbers, are 76, 74,131, 87, 103, 
 jand 113. Thus, in some instances, is it found, 
 that the church-going population bear only the 
 proportion of less than one-fifth to the whole, and 
 than one one-third to that part of the whole, who 
 would, in a well-ordered state of things, be in a 
 regular habit of attendance upon ordinances., It 
 is remarkable, that in one of those spaces which 
 comprised a population of 875, there were not 
 above 4 individuals who had a sitting in an estab- 
 
Hi 
 
 lislied church; so that, were it not for dissenters, 
 who take up at least 148 out of the whole, and 38 
 in chapels of ease, there would have been a dis¬ 
 trict of the city, with' a larger population than is 
 to be found in many of our country parishes, in a 
 state nearly of entire Heathenism. The country, 
 in fact, lies under the deepest obligation to the 
 dissenting clergy; and let no petty jealousies 
 interfere with the ackowledgments due to men 
 who have' done so much to retard the process of 
 fiioral deterioration^ and whose abilty and zeal 
 have carried onward to the limit of its utmost' 
 possible operation, the high function that they 
 fulfil in the commonwealth. 
 
 This survey was not carried beyond the limits 
 of the Royalty; but we are sure, if it had, that all 
 the results would have been aggravated. In a 
 parish of upwards of 50,000 people, where one 
 church, and three subsidiary chapels, form the 
 whole amount of accommodation provided by the 
 establishment, we confidently aver, that not one- 
 fifth of those who live in it, and not one-third of 
 those who should have sittings, are in the habit of 
 attendance upon any ordinances whatever; and 
 that this computation holds, after dissenterism has 
 put forth all its resources, and it has been free to 
 expatiate over every neighbourhood of human 
 beings for several generations. Such is the tried 
 inefficiency of its mechanism. It will never, of 
 itself, do the work of an establishment, however 
 essential it may be in a country, to stimulate and 
 
112 
 
 to supplement an establishment. And wheii we 
 I contemplate the magnitude of those suburb wastes, 
 I which have formed so rapidly around the metro¬ 
 polis, and every commercial city of our land— 
 when we think of the quantity of lawless spirit 
 which, has been permitted to ferment and to mul¬ 
 tiply there, afar from the contact of every, sof¬ 
 tening. influence, and without one effectual hand 
 put forth to stay the great and the growing dis¬ 
 temper—when we estimate the families which, 
 from infancy to manhood, have been unvisited 
 by any message from Christianity, axtd on whose 
 consciences the voice of him who speaketh the 
 word that is from heaven has never descended, we 
 cannot but charge that country, which, satisfied 
 if it neutralize the violence, rears no preventive 
 barrier against the vices of the people, with the 
 guilt of inflicting upon itself a moral, if not a 
 political suicide. 
 
 It is to be presumed, that, in the central dis¬ 
 tricts of the city, the rate of attendance upon 
 places of worship is not so deficient. It is observa¬ 
 ble, that the mere juxta-position of a church or 
 a meeting-house, stimulates, to a certain degree, 
 the attendance of those who live in its immediate 
 vicinity. The Very sight of a fabric for Christian 
 instruction, is, in itself, an obtrusion of Christi¬ 
 anity on the notice of the people. But this circum¬ 
 stance singly, will not do much. The mere erec¬ 
 tion of fabrics for the accommodation of the 
 inhabitants of a town, will have no sensible effect, 
 
113 
 
 without an aggressive operation upon the inhabi¬ 
 tants themselves. There are interior departments 
 of population in Glasgow, where the amount of 
 church-going is greatly less than all that we have 
 yet specified. In that short street called the 
 Goose- Dubbs, with the few lanes and closses 
 which belong to it, there are 945 people, only 106 
 of whom have seats any where. The deficiency 
 is as great in some of the sub-districts of the Salt- 
 market.* Dissenterism has done something for 
 these families. It has done much more for them than 
 the establishment has done, and yet but a humble 
 fraction of what an establishment might do, and 
 is best fitted to do. But the mere building and 
 opening of a new church, will not attract them. 
 They who are connected with the church, must 
 go forth upon them. The sluggishness of the ex¬ 
 isting habit, will not be so easily overcome as those 
 may imagine, who have only observed the readiness 
 with which a place of worship is filled, where there 
 is the glare of novelty, or the attraction of a little 
 more eloquence than usual, or even the solid re¬ 
 commendation that attaches to him who is a firm 
 and faithful expounder of the Hew Testament. All 
 this will impress a preference and a locomotion on 
 the part of those who have a pre-existent taste for 
 
 * In one district of the Saltmarket, there are 387 people, and only 61 of 
 them who have seats in any place of worship. In Clay-Braes, there are 64 
 seats among 319 people. And in one continuous space of the Bridgegate. are 
 there 209 people, only 7 of whom have seats any where. 
 
 It 
 
114 
 
 Christianity ; and thus a new congregation may 
 immediately be formed, out of shreds and detach¬ 
 ments from all the previous ones. But it will he 
 a mixed, and not a local congregation. There is no 
 portion of what may he called the outfield popula¬ 
 tion, that will he sensibly reclaimed hy it. And 
 little do they know of this department of human 
 experience, who think that it is on the mere 
 strength of attractive preaching, that this is to 
 he done. 
 
 An experiment may often he as instructive hy 
 its failure, as by its success. We have here to 
 record the fate of a most laudable endeavour, 
 made to recal a people alienated from Christian 
 ordinances, to the habit of attendance upon them. 
 The scene of this enterprise was Calton and 
 Bridgeton—two suburb districts of Grlasgow which 
 lie contiguous to each other, hearing together, a 
 population of above 29,000, and with only one 
 chapel of ease for the whole provision, which the 
 establishment has rendered to them. Itwas thought 
 that a regular evening sermon might be instituted 
 in this chapel, and that for the inducement of a 
 seat-rent so moderate as from 6d. to Is. 6d. a- 
 year, to each individual, many who attended no 
 where through the day, might be prevailed upon 
 to become the regular attendants of such a con¬ 
 gregation. The sermon was preached, not by one 
 stated minister, but by a succession of such min¬ 
 isters as could be found; and as variety is one of 
 the charms of a public exhibition, this also might 
 
115 
 
 have been thought a favourable circumstance. 
 But besides, there were gentlemen who introduced 
 the arrangement to the notice of the people, not 
 merely by acting as their informants, but by going 
 round among them with the offer of sittings, and, 
 in order to remove every objection on the score of 
 inability, they were authorised to offer seats gra¬ 
 tuitously to those who were unable to pay for 
 them. Had the experiment succeeded, it would 
 have been indeed the proudest and most pacific of 
 all victories. But it is greatly easier to make war 
 against the physical resistance of a people, than 
 to make war against the resistance of an estab¬ 
 lished moral habit. And, accordingly, out of the 
 1500 seats that were offered, not above 50 were 
 let or accepted by those who had before been total 
 non-attendants on religious worship; and then 
 about 150 more were let, not, however, to those 
 whom it was wanted to reclaim, but to those who 
 already went to church through the day, and in 
 whom the taste for church-going had been already 
 formed. And so the matter moved on, heavily and 
 languidly, for some time, till, in six months after 
 the commencement of the scheme, in September 
 1817, it was finally abandoned. 
 
 There were several ingredients of success, how¬ 
 ever, wanting to this experiment. There was no 
 such reiteration of one minister, as would ripen 
 into familiarity or friendship between him and 
 his hearers. There was no reciprocity of opera¬ 
 tion, between the duties of the Sabbath, nnd the 
 
116 
 
 duties of the wee*. The most aggressive part of 
 a minister’s influence upon the people, lies in his 
 being frequently amongst them; the recognised 
 individual, whose presence is looked for at their 
 funerals, and who baptizes their children, and who 
 attends their sick-beds, and who goes round 
 amongst them in courses of religious visitation. 
 There was nothing of all this in the experiment; 
 nor were the Christian philanthropists who did go 
 forth upon the population, so firmly embodied under 
 one head, or so strictly and officially attached to 
 one locality, as fairly to represent the operation of 
 a stated minister, and, where possible, a residing 
 eldership. Above all, in so wide and dispersed a 
 locality in question, it was not by the marvellous 
 doings of one year, that a great or visible change 
 in the habits of the people ought to have been 
 expected. The descent of more than half a cen¬ 
 tury, will not be so easily or so speedily recovered. 
 Such an achievement as this, can never be done 
 without labour and without the perseverance of 
 men, willing to plod and to pioneer their way 
 through the difficulties of a whole generation. 
 
 This may serve to guide our anticipations, re¬ 
 specting the probable effect of new churches, 
 built in places of the most crowded and unpro¬ 
 vided population. A given territory ought, by 
 all means, to be assigned to each of them; and, in 
 letting the seats, a preference should be held out 
 to the residents upon that territory. But we 
 should not be sanguine in our hopes of the pre- 
 
117 
 
 ference being, to any great extent, actually taken 
 by them in the first instance ; and, this, if the 
 cause be not adverted to or counted on, may, for 
 a time, damp and discourage the whole speculation. 
 On our first entrance upon new ground, we must 
 consider that there is a minority already in pos¬ 
 session of sittings elsewhere, and that, nearly up 
 to the existing taste for churcli-going; and that 
 there is a majority in whom that taste must he 
 formed and inspired, ere the church can be re¬ 
 cruited out of their numbers. A congregation, 
 out of these, may be looked for in time, as the 
 fruit and the reward of perseverance; but it cannot 
 be looked for immediately. The best rule of 
 seat-letting, in these circumstances, is, to hold out 
 a preference, in the first instance, to the inhabi¬ 
 tants of the new parish, and then, in as far as that 
 preference is not taken, to expose the remaining 
 seats to the applications of the general public. 
 It is of importance, however, that each of the 
 extra-parochial sittings should be let in the name 
 of one individual, instead of their being let by 
 threes and fours in the name of the head or re¬ 
 presentative of a family, for, in this latter case, 
 they may pass from one member of it to another, 
 and, perhaps, descend to its next and its succeed¬ 
 ing generations. The object of this last regulation 
 is, to secure a more rapid and abundant falling 
 in of extra-parochial vacancies, which should be 
 rigidly and unviolably offered to parishioners from 
 one year to another, as they occur. Under such 
 
118 
 
 a constitution, there may, at the outset of every 
 new church, be but a small proportion of parish¬ 
 ioners attending it; but, with the removal or the 
 dying off of extra-parochial hearers, there will be 
 a certain number of vacancies to dispose among 
 them annually. Meanwhile, the interest of the 
 minister, in his new parish, will be gradually ex¬ 
 tending, and, with veiy ordinary attention on his 
 part, may so keep pace with the disappearance 
 and decay of the exotics among his congregation, 
 as will enable him to replace them by parish appli¬ 
 cants; and thus, in the process of time, will a 
 home be substituted in the place of a mixed con¬ 
 gregation. It were laying an impossibility upon a 
 clergyman, at once to call in from a yet unbroken 
 field, fifteen hundred ready and willing attendants, 
 upon his ministrations. But this, without any 
 colossal energy at all, he might do at the rate of 
 fifty in the year. So that though he begins him¬ 
 self with a mixed auditory made out of hearers 
 from all the parishes of the city, there may be 
 such a silent process of substitution going forward 
 during the course of his incumbency, as shall 
 enable him to transmit to his successor an almost 
 entirely parochial congregation. 
 
 This is the way, in fact, in which all our existing 
 congregations might be at length parochialised. 
 It should be done by an enactment of gradual 
 operation. Were they now broken up, for the 
 purpose of being new-modelled, and that instantly 
 on the local principle, there would be violence 
 
119 
 
 done to the feelings of many an individual. But 
 what is more, it would also he found that after the 
 dispersion of our mixed congregations, there would 
 he a very inadequate number of applicants in the 
 poorer parishes ready to take the places which had 
 thus been dispossessed. It is much better if the 
 existing arrangement can he righted without the 
 soreness of any forced or unnatural separations, 
 and in such a way as that no actual sitter can, on 
 his own account, personally complain of it. Though 
 he retain his right of occupation till death, the 
 substitution of a home for a foreign congregation, 
 will yet go on, and as rapidly perhaps as the paro¬ 
 chial demand for seats can be stimulated. So 
 that the sure result will at length be arrived at, 
 of the parish and congregation being brought 
 within the limits of one influence, and reduced to 
 the simplicity of one management. 
 
 There is a philanthropy more sanguine than it is 
 solid, which, impatient of delay, would think an 
 operation so tardy as this unworthy of being sug¬ 
 gested, and refuse to wait for it. But it is the 
 property of sound legislation to look, to distant 
 results, as well as to near ones—to be satisfied with 
 impressing a sure movement, though it should be 
 a slow one—nor does the wisdom of man ever 
 make a higher exhibition, than when apart from the 
 impulse of a result that is either speedy or splen¬ 
 did, she calmly institutes an arrangement, the 
 coming benefit of which will not be fully realised 
 till after the lapse of our existing generation. 
 
120 
 
 But it is not enough that the demand of each 
 parish, for seats, should be stimulated up to the 
 extent of its present accommodation. The truth 
 is, that all our large towns have so far outgrown 
 the church establishment, that though each church 
 were crowded, and with local congregations too, 
 and each meeting-house already iu existence were 
 also filled to an overflow, there would still be a 
 fearful body of the people in the condition of out¬ 
 casts from the ordinances of Christianity. The 
 mere erection of additional fabrics will do nothing 
 to remedy this, without an operation on the people 
 who should fill them. It must be admitted that 
 the Calton experiment looks rather discouraging. 
 But still,- we think that certain adverse ingredients 
 may be removed from it, and certain favourable 
 ingredients be substituted in its place. It was 
 really not to be expected, that much could be done 
 by an indefinite number of ministers, who each had 
 the transient intercourse of a rare and occasional 
 Sabbath evening with the people, without any week¬ 
 day movement amongst them at all. But is there 
 not a greater likelihood of success, when the same 
 attempt is made by one minister in his own parish, 
 in conjunction, perhaps, with an assistant equally 
 bound to its locality with himself? And what 
 the influence of a few private philanthropists, 
 going forth on so wide and populous a district as 
 the one we are alluding to, could not accomplish 
 by a transient effort, may at length be accomplished 
 by persevering and reiterated efforts on the part of 
 
121 
 
 an official body, raised, perhaps, into existence for 
 the very object of calling out a parochial congre¬ 
 gation, and animated with a sense of the import¬ 
 ance of achieving it. Even with all these ad¬ 
 vantages, the strenuousness of an encounter with 
 previous and established habits will be felt, an en¬ 
 counter which will require to be as assiduously 
 met by moral suasion through the week, as by 
 preaching on the Sabbath. At the same time, it 
 is a very great mistake, to think that any other 
 peculiar power is necessary for such an operation, 
 than peculiar pains-taking. It is not with rare 
 and extraordinary talent conferred upon a few, 
 but with habits and principles which may be culti¬ 
 vated by all, that are linked our best securities 
 for the reformation of the world. This is a work 
 which will mainly be done with every-day instru¬ 
 ments operating upon every-day materials; and 
 more, too, by the multiplication of labourers, than 
 by the gigantic labour of a small number of indi¬ 
 viduals. The arrangement now suggested, may 
 exemplify this. Let a Sabbath evening sermon he 
 preached in the church of a city parish, to a paro¬ 
 chial congregation, distinct from the day-hearers 
 altogether. Let a moderate seat-rent be exacted, 
 and a preference for these seats be held out to 
 those in the locality, who have sittings no where 
 else. Some care and some perseverance will be 
 necessary to ensure the success of such an enter¬ 
 prise. But there is nothing impracticable about 
 it, and no such impediments in the way of its exe- 
 
122 
 
 cation, as to stamp upon it the least degree of a 
 visionary character. There need be no additional 
 labour to the minister, who may, in fact, take full 
 relief to himself, from an assistant. There may, 
 at length, be no additional expense to the city, 
 seeing that out of the produce of the seat-rents, 
 all the charges of the evening arrangement will in 
 time be defrayed. There will even be no addi¬ 
 tional fabrics to build, in the first instance, which 
 the people are not yet in readiness to fill, were 
 they erected in any sensible proportion to the 
 existing deficiency. Thus, by a very cheap and 
 simple arrangement, may the number of ecclesias¬ 
 tical labourers be doubled in every city of our 
 land; and, with the distinctness of the day and 
 evening congregations, the number of sitters be¬ 
 longing to the establishment, at length, be doubled 
 also. We are not aware of a speedier method for 
 reclaiming the outcasts and wanderers of a city 
 population, to congregational habits; nor can we 
 think how an approximation equally rapid, and, 
 at the same time equally practicable, can be 
 made in towns to the parochial system. It would 
 instantly improve the condition of the minister as 
 to his relationship with the parish, who will gain 
 more by it, in point of recognition, within his own 
 locality, in a single month, than he could do by 
 preaching to a mixed congregation for a whole 
 life-time. And it would gradually extend a taste 
 and a demand for the services of Christianity, 
 among a people who had no taste and no demand 
 
123 
 
 for them before. It is altogether a chimerical 
 apprehension, that it may only change day-sitters 
 into evening sitters, and cause those who have 
 now a full participation of ordinances to he satis¬ 
 fied with less. It would change total non-attend¬ 
 ants into attendants upon an evening service, who, 
 at length, not satisfied with their deficiency from 
 others, would have a demand for more. Instead of 
 diminishing the taste which now is, it would create 
 the taste which must still be called into existence. 
 Instead of superseding the use of new churches 
 for the people, it would prepare a people for the 
 new churches, and turn out to be the most effectual 
 nursery of their future congregations. 
 
 And here let it be remarked, how effectually it 
 is, that Sabbath-evening schools subserve the pro¬ 
 spective arrangement which we are now contem¬ 
 plating. It requires a much harder struggle than 
 most are aware of, to prevail on grown-up people, 
 who never have attended church, to become the 
 members, either of a day or an evening congrega¬ 
 tion. But the compliance which cannot be won 
 in manhood, for attendance on a church, we win 
 in boyhood, for attendance on a school; and, when 
 the boy becomes the man, a second effort is not 
 necessary. It were, in fact, a far more congenial 
 transition for him to pass from the evening school 
 to the evening church, than if he never had at¬ 
 tended school at all; and far more congenial for 
 the member of an evening, to become the mem¬ 
 ber of a day congregation, than if, brought up in 
 
124 
 
 the utter want of congregational habits, he never 
 had attended either the one or the other. Thus 
 it is, that the Sabbath school system, which many 
 regret as a deviation from the regularities of an 
 establishment is the very best expedient for feed¬ 
 ing an establishment, and making it at length 
 commensurate with the moral and spiritual neces¬ 
 sities of our population. It connects the suscepti¬ 
 bility of youth with a result, which, but for the 
 possession of an element so manageable, might 
 never be arrived at. It appears like the first and 
 the firmest step to a great moral renovation in 
 our land. And a parochial system, which might 
 never have been reared in towns, out of such stub¬ 
 born materials as the depraved and inveterate 
 habits of our older, is thus likely to be formed 
 and extended out of the softer materials of our 
 younger generation. 
 
 It is felt by many as a deduction from the good 
 of the local system in towns, that the poorer 
 among the families so frequently change their 
 places of residence; and that there must not only 
 be the same parish, but also the same parishioners, 
 else the acquaintanceship which is formed, will he 
 constantly liable to be broken up, by the constant 
 dispersion of its members. The quantity of fluc¬ 
 tuation is greatly over-rated. The district referred 
 to in our last chapter, as having been assumed by 
 a philanthropic individual, for the purpose of its 
 moral and economical cultivation, contains 219 fa¬ 
 milies, of which there were 23 removals at the last 
 
125 
 
 term, or about one-tenth of the whole. It will, 
 speaking generally, he found not to exceed this 
 fraction, in small contiguous districts of such a 
 population; and even from this, there ought to he 
 an abatement, in estimating the number of yearly 
 removals from a parish : for many of the movements 
 are internal, being from one small district of the 
 parish to another. And besides, even though there 
 were removals out of the parish every year, at the 
 rate of one-tenth of all the families in it, we are not 
 to infer, that, in ten years, there is a complete change 
 of families; or that the old parish is thus scooped 
 away by so many liftings of the people who live in 
 it. The truth is, that the movement is far more 
 a vibratory than a successive one. The families 
 that leave a parish this year, are, in a great mea¬ 
 sure, the very families that came to it last year. 
 There is a certain number, and those chefly of 
 the worse-conditioned of the population, who are 
 constantly upon the wing; and they alternate 
 from one parish to another, over the heads of a 
 stable population. A locally parochial system 
 would serve, in the long run, to retain even these ; 
 but, even in their present amount, they leave the 
 great bulk of the inhabitants of every parish, in a 
 fixed and permanent state for any species of culti¬ 
 vation that might be applied to them. We be¬ 
 lieve, indeed, that the families of a city parish are 
 less given to change than those of an agricultural 
 parish, from the expiry of leases, and, above all, 
 the yearly fluctuation of farm-servants. So that, 
 
126 
 
 there is scarcely any department, however poor, 
 of any city, however crowded, which would not, 
 in the course of time, he turned into a home walk; 
 and where the simple perseverance of such eccle¬ 
 siastical attentions as are current in the country, 
 would not, were the parishes sufficiently small, 
 have the effect of binding the minister to the 
 families, and of binding the families to one 
 another. The new comers would soon catch the 
 esprit de corps that was. already formed in the 
 neighbourhood *of their new residence, and be soon 
 so far assimilated by the overwhelming admixture 
 of their superior number, to the tone and habit 
 of the people who were there before them, as at 
 least, to be accessible to all the attentions which 
 are current in the parish, and be trained very 
 shortly, to such a recognition of the parish-church 
 and parish-minister, as, in our large towns at pre¬ 
 sent, is nearly unfelt and unknown altogether. 
 
 There is nothing in the mere circumstance of 
 being bom in a town, or of being imported into it 
 from the country, which can at all obliterate or 
 reverse any of the laws of our sentient nature. 
 That law, in virtue of which a feeling of cordiality 
 is inspired, even by a single act of recognition, 
 and in virtue of which it is augmented into a fixed 
 personal regard by many such acts, operates with 
 just as much vigour in the one situation as it does 
 in the other. In towns, every thing has been done 
 to impede the reiteration of the same attentions 
 upon the same families. The relationship between 
 
127 
 
 ministers and their parishes has, to every moral, 
 and to every civilising purpose, been nearly as 
 good as broken up. Every thing has been per¬ 
 mitted to run at random; and, as a fruit of the 
 utter disregard of the principle of locality, have 
 the city clergyman and his people almost lost 
 sight of each other. It is the intimacy of connec¬ 
 tion between these two parties which has impressed 
 its best and most peculiar features on the Scottish 
 nation; and it were giving way to a mystic 
 imagination altogether, did we not believe that 
 the treatment of human nature, which leads to a 
 particular result in the country, would, if trans¬ 
 planted into towns, lead to the same result on their 
 crowded families. We have no right to allege a 
 peculiar aptitude to moral worthlessness, in the 
 latter situation, when we find that every moral 
 influence, which bears upon the former, has, in 
 fact, been withdrawn from our cities. The moral 
 regimen in the one, is diametrically the reverse of 
 what it is in the other; and, not till they are 
 brought under the operation of the same causes, 
 can we estimate aright the question, whether the 
 town or the country is most unfavourable to _ 
 human virtue. 
 
 It may be long before we are in fair circumstan¬ 
 ces for determining this question experimentally, 
 because it may be long ere our enormous city 
 parishes are so far subdivided, as that one church 
 and one minister shall be commensurate to the 
 population of each of them. But certain it is, 
 
128 
 
 that the mere act, either of building the churches, 
 or of splitting down the parishes, will not suffice 
 for the purpose of reclaiming the people to the 
 habit of their Scottish forefathers. There must 
 be a previous operation upon the people, ere the 
 desire or the demand for Sabbath accommodation 
 can guarantee to the builders of churches, that 
 their churches shall be filled. For this purpose, 
 we hold the strict, and, as nearly as may be, the 
 exclusive union of churches with their parishes, to 
 be indispensable; and, even with this advantage, 
 do we think, that the existing habit of alienation 
 from ordinances, instead of being altogether re¬ 
 claimed by exertion, will, in part, need to be re¬ 
 moved by death; and that it is mainly to an oper¬ 
 ation upon the young, and that through the me¬ 
 dium of Sabbath schools, that we have to look for 
 the coming in of a better order of things, with the 
 coming up of another generation. 
 
129 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 THE EFFECT OF LOCALITY IN ADDING TO THE USEFUL 
 ESTABLISHMENTS OF A TOWN. 
 
 It were, perhaps, a sanguine anticipation to expect, 
 that the gradual process, unfolded in the last chap¬ 
 ter, for reclaiming the people of our cities, to a 
 habit of attendance on the ordinances of Chris¬ 
 tianity, should be completed in the course of one, 
 or even of two generations. For, what a rapid 
 process of church-building would this imply? More 
 would need to be done in this way in several of 
 our towns, than has been done altogether, since 
 the first erection of them. There are many of 
 them, in fact, so unprovided with churches, that 
 it were a great achievement, could these be built, 
 and people be prepared for filling them, to such an 
 extent, as that, out of each five thousand of the 
 inhabitants, there might be a congregation belong¬ 
 ing to the establishment. This would still leave 
 greater room for dissenters than that which they 
 have actually succeeded in occupying, and might, 
 therefore, still leave unfinished, the great work of 
 retrieving a habit which surely may be recalled, 
 seeing that it once existed. The time once was, 
 when, in virtue of the nearer proportion which 
 obtained between a city population, and the places 
 of worship that were provided for them, we saw 
 nearly the present number of churches more 
 
130 
 
 crowded than they are now, out of less than half 
 the number of our present residenters. 
 
 This, by the way, holds out to us another 
 view of the importance of dissenters, and of the 
 increasing demand that may still obtain, through 
 a very lengthened period of years, for their ser¬ 
 vices. The process by which the establishment 
 will gain ground, on the out-field population, that 
 is, on those who at present neither attend church 
 nor meeting-house, must be very gradual; and 
 mean while, if it advance at all, it will not lessen 
 the demand for seats from the dissenters, but 
 rather increase it. There is a direct and arith¬ 
 metical style of computation, which often fails 
 when it is applied to the phenomena, or the prin¬ 
 ciples of human nature. It is thus, for example, 
 that many conceive an alarm, lest one benevolent 
 society should suffer in its revenues, when another 
 benevolent society is instituted in the same town, 
 and among the same people. They calculate by 
 a mere process of subtraction upon the money of 
 subscribers; and they do not calculate on the 
 moral impulse which every new scheme of philan¬ 
 thropy is fitted to send into their hearts. They 
 seem not aware, that the mere habit of liberality, 
 in behalf of one object, renders them more acces¬ 
 sible to the claims of any new object, than if the 
 habit had not been previously called into existence. 
 The truth is, that after all which is given away in 
 liberality, there still is left, in the fund for such 
 luxuries as may easily be dispensed with, and in 
 
131 
 
 the fund which goes to the loose and floating 
 expenses of pocket-money, an ample remainder 
 for meeting fresh and frequent applications. The 
 money is, of course, lessened by the amount that 
 has previously been given; but, if the habit and 
 disposition of giving be increased, this may secure 
 for an indefinite length of time, more than a full 
 compensation. And thus it is, that in starting 
 some new enterprise of philanthropy, one may 
 far more surely count on being liberally supported, 
 in a town teeming with previous charities, and 
 where the fund for benevolence has, therefore, to 
 a certain degree been impaired, but the feeling of 
 benevolence has been strengthened by exercise— 
 than in a town, where, as no encroachment has 
 yet been made upon the means, so no excitement 
 has yet been given to the motives of charity. 
 
 And there is a similarity to this, in the matter 
 before us. The new church which is opened, will 
 not so operate by a process of subtraction upon 
 those who hear in meeting-houses, as it will operate 
 by a process of fermentation upon those who hear 
 no where. It will increase the taste and the 
 demand for church-going. If rightly followed 
 up, by such local and aggressive operations as we 
 have already explained, it will leaven the dead mass, 
 and revive an appetite for the ministrations of 
 Christianity, beyond its own power to meet and 
 to gratify. The population is greater than, per¬ 
 haps, with the most rapid process of church-build¬ 
 ing, which can rationally be counted on, will be 
 
overtaken in the course of a century. And, 
 meanwhile, it were no paradox to those who know 
 the amplitude of the field that is yet unbroken, 
 and who calculate on the power of a living excite¬ 
 ment sent over the face of it, though, for many 
 years to come, churches and meeting-houses were 
 seen to spring up in frequency together, and 
 both the dissenters and the establishment gained 
 ground contemporaneously on the vast unoccupied 
 extent that yet lies before them. 
 
 To make this plain by an example. The num¬ 
 ber of people in Glasgow and its suburbs is about 
 one hundred and fifty thousand; of whom ninety 
 thousand should be in a condition to attend church. 
 Even though our chapels of ease were turned, as 
 they ought to be, into parish churches, there is 
 scarcely accommodation in our establishment for 
 the one-fourth of this number; and, ere it can 
 overtake the one-half, there must be no less than 
 fifteen additional fabrics built; leaving, after all, 
 as large a space for the energies of dissenterism, 
 as the establishment shall itself have overtaken. 
 
 Jn repairing the defects of a great moral ap¬ 
 paratus, it does harm to underrate the magnitude 
 of the object. It is by so doing, that the advisers 
 of public measures are often so sanguine in respect 
 of anticipation, while the measures themselves are 
 so slender in respect of efficiency. The grant, for 
 example, of a million sterling for new churches in 
 England, and the proposal of . a hundred thousand 
 pounds for the same purpose in Scotland, sound 
 
133 
 
 far more magnificently in the public ear, than 
 they will be found adequate to the necessity 
 which they are intended to meet. They have 
 certainly been matters of gratulation to those who 
 are friendly to our national establishments, and 
 who, at the same time, regard Christianity as the 
 alone specific for all the distempers of society. 
 Yet it is not to be disguised, that, even when 
 carried into full accomplishment, they will leave 
 a vast extent of our population unprovided for. 
 And, what is more, Government will positively 
 have retarded the cause which it means to help, 
 if, by its interference, it shall propagate this delu¬ 
 sion—that, as the strength and wisdom of our 
 great national council are now in motion upon the 
 undertaking, all individuals, and all the subordinate 
 bodies of the state, may now wait, suspended in 
 a kind of respectful abeyance on that supreme 
 body, whose function it is to oversee all, and to 
 provide for all. 
 
 This is the precise mischief which is to be 
 apprehended in the case of every wide and general 
 superintendence. The more wide and the more 
 general, the means will be absolutely greater, and 
 the effort for the accomplishment of any given 
 object will also be absolutely greater: and this is 
 enough to fill and to satisfy the imaginations of all, 
 who look no farther than to the measure itself, and 
 have not patience nor arithmetic for computing 
 the proportion which it bears to the evil it is meant 
 to remedy. But, relatively to the whole amount 
 
134 
 
 of what ought to be done, will it come greatly 
 short of what many individuals would do for their 
 own local districts, and many corporations would 
 do for their own townships. For the purpose, 
 however, of calling out these latter to the full 
 stretch of their means and energies, it is necessary 
 that there should be no delusive expectation of 
 aid from a higher quarter, so as that they should 
 feel the full weight of the responsibility which lies 
 upon them. It is thus, that we should like the 
 principle of locality to be brought forth into 
 operation, and directed to the object of multiplying 
 both schools and churches over the face of our 
 land. It works far more intensely and productively 
 within its own limited sphere, than Government, 
 we fear, will soon find itself able to do, over the 
 whole country, or than a great city superintend¬ 
 ence will do in the bulk, for its general population. 
 And, therefore it is, that we contemplate a great 
 national effect, not as the result of any corporate 
 movement, or any legislative operation, but as the 
 result of a slow accumulative process, helped 
 forward mainly by the growth and expansion of 
 Christian philanthropy in our land, and at length 
 completed into a whole, by the simple apposition 
 of parts done separately, and done independently. 
 
 But while it is to be feared, that the movement 
 of our legislature, in behalf of Christian institu¬ 
 tions, (far more showy than it is productive,) has 
 lulled asleep much of the private liberality that 
 else would have operated; it were also to be re- 
 
135 
 
 gretted, as a very mischievous re-action, should 
 the zeal, and the bustle, and the adventure, of 
 individuals in the same cause, have the effect to 
 slacken, rather than to excite our tardy corpora¬ 
 tions. It is exceedingly desirable, that they too 
 should come forward, were it for nothing else than 
 the weight of their testimony, which is eminently 
 fitted to carry the public mind along with it. 
 Only, it were a salutary accompaniment, if, along 
 with their testimony, there also went forth the 
 lesson of their utter inability for more than a small 
 fraction of this great achievement. The resources, 
 in fact, for giving such a national extension to the 
 cause, as will work a national effect on the habits 
 of our people, must be provided in another way 
 than out of the present resources of any corpora¬ 
 tion. Nor can we expect that, with their existing 
 means, any more than a few rare and desultory 
 efforts will be made for an object which, after all 
 they shall do, will still appear to lie at a hopeless 
 and impracticable distance. 
 
 It is well, indeed, that both the council of a city 
 and the great council of a nation, should be told 
 what an arm of impotency it is that they often put 
 forward. It is altogether grievous to remark the 
 satisfaction, with which a magistracy will dwell on 
 the achievement of adding one church more to a 
 city, that stands in need of an additional twenty. 
 It is not the one church that is to be regretted. But 
 it is the repose, or even the triumph of a great ex¬ 
 ploit, which is evidently felt by many of our public 
 
136 
 
 functionaries upon the occasion. It is not even 
 the circumstance of one church only being built 
 in the space of two or three years, that ought to 
 be complained of. It were vain to expect any 
 thing else than a very gradual movement, even 
 though all the applicable energies of society were 
 brought to bear upon it. But the thing to be 
 mainly regretted is, the deceitful imagination that 
 enough is doing, or enough is done, when we see 
 put on their uttermost stretch, the feeble and 
 inadequate energies of a ruling corporation. The 
 glare of magnitude and publicity, which is atten¬ 
 dant upon its proceedings, serves far more to blind 
 the general understanding into the treacherous 
 conclusion, that enough is doing, than it does to 
 enlighten it upon the question, how much is to be 
 done. After the slight and superficial enterprise is 
 over, it may be made out arithmetical!}', that the 
 former proportions of the outfield to the church¬ 
 going population are not sensibly affected by it; 
 that the elements of depravity are nearly in as great 
 force as ever, and the counteractions which have 
 been provided for it, nearly in as great feebleness 
 as ever; and, in a word, that, thoroughly to fill up 
 the neglected spaces, which have so widened and 
 multiplied over the expanse of a town or of a king¬ 
 dom, something far more gigantic must be done, 
 than appears to lie within the means either of 
 Government or of any inferior municipality in 
 the land. 
 
 It is the misfortune both of a civic and of a nation- 
 
137 
 
 al legislator, that he deals so much in generalities. 
 He casts a hurried glance over the whole field of 
 contemplation, and the influence of what he does, 
 or of what he devises, is thinly spread along the 
 face of the territory before him. He is seldom 
 arrested by that dull and humbling arithmetic, 
 which casts up to him the utter insignificance of 
 all that he has attempted on the general mass and 
 habit of society. He vainly tries, by his one 
 enactment, to measure strength with the needs or 
 the immoralities of a vast population. Nor will he 
 submit to the mortification of being told, that 
 though the sound of it has gone forth among all, 
 the sensible and pervading influence of it is scarcely 
 felt among any. It is the wideness of his survey 
 which makes him overlook particulars: and with 
 his habit of largely expatiating, does he neglect 
 completely and minutely to fill up. This it is 
 which accounts for the utter futility of many 
 projects splendid in promise, and vanishing away 
 into a meagre accomplishment. This it is which 
 explains the abortive magnificence of many of our 
 great national undertakings. 
 
 But all this is the natural effect of office and 
 situation; nor can we well expect it to be other¬ 
 wise, either with the members of a legislature, or 
 with the members of a municipality. But it is to 
 be regretted, of our private philanthropists, who are 
 at liberty to begin their own work in their own 
 way, that they should not have entered on the 
 clear path of comfort and just calculation, and, 
 u 
 
138 
 
 ultimately, of sure and complete success. The 
 prevailing tendency, hitherto, has been, to attempt 
 great things rather than to do small things tho¬ 
 roughly and well; to set up a mechanism which will 
 work for the whole city, rather than reduce the 
 city into manageable parts, and seek for the ac¬ 
 complishment that is proposed, by the mere appo¬ 
 sition of these parts to each other; to aspire, and 
 that, by the energies of one grand association, after 
 some universal result, which never will be reached 
 but by the summing up of the separate achieve¬ 
 ments of many lesser associations. It may look a 
 strange way of proposing a universal good, either 
 for a city or for a nation, to bid our active philan¬ 
 thropists never admit the town as a whole, or the 
 nation as a whole, into any of their speculations. 
 But we are quite satisfied, that much of that effort, 
 which would else have been productive, is wasted; 
 and that, merely because of the insuperable mag¬ 
 nitude of the object at which it aims. There 
 are many individuals, whose zeal for the good of 
 humanity is now dissipated and lost among vague 
 generalities that might be turned to a tenfold more 
 beneficial account, could they only be prevailed 
 upon to meddle not with matters that are too high 
 for them—many individuals who have worth enough 
 to live for the good of society, but who have not 
 wisdom enough for suiting their exertions to the 
 real mediocrity of their powers; and who, accord¬ 
 ingly, come forth upon their enterprise, just as if 
 the whole burden of this world’s benevolence lay 
 
139 
 
 upon their shoulders. The best thing they can do 
 is, to gather in their ambitious fancies, and give 
 themselves, instead, to actual and living fulfilments 
 on the sphere which is immediately around them. 
 The eyes of a fool, says Solomon, are towards all the 
 ends of the earth. We cannot join in the hostility 
 that has often been expressed against missionary 
 operations; but certainly there is a vague and va¬ 
 grant philanthropy in our day, which loses much of 
 its energy in its diffusiveness, and which it were 
 far better to fasten, and to concentrate, and to 
 confine, within the limits of a small locality. We 
 leave to those more lofty and adventurous spirits, 
 whom Providence will certainly call forth, the task 
 of devising for the good of the world abroad; and 
 we trust that they will never fail to be supported 
 in this noble cause, by the liberalities of the people 
 at home. But our object, at present, is, to guide 
 to its highest productiveness, the benevolence of 
 him whose station and opportunities restrain him 
 more to his own vicinity; and to engage him, if pos¬ 
 sible, with the near and practicable realities which 
 lie within his reach. His best contribution to the 
 interest of the world, is, to do the humble and 
 practicable task which his hand findeth to do, and 
 to do it with all his might, till he has finished it off. 
 A single obscure street, with its few divergent 
 lanes, may form the length and the breadth of his 
 enterprise; but far better that he, with such means 
 and such associates as are within his reach, should 
 do this thoroughly, than that, merging himself in 
 
140 
 
 Sttrite wider association, he should Vainly attempt 
 iii the gross, that which never can be overtaken 
 but in humble and laborious detail. Let him not 
 think, that the region which lies beyond the limits 
 cif his chosen and peculiar territory, is to wither 
 and be neglected, because his presence is not there 
 to fertilise it. Let him not proudly imagine him¬ 
 self tb be the only philanthropist in the world. 
 Let him do his part, trusting, at the same time, 
 that there are others around him who have zeal 
 ehoiigh, and Understanding enough, to do theirs. 
 The example of a Well-cultured portion of the ter¬ 
 ritory, will do more to spread a beneficent influ¬ 
 ence over the whole, than is done by the misplaced 
 fehergies of men who cannot be tempted to move, 
 till Some design of might and of magnificence is 
 proposed to them. The efficacy of this humbler 
 style of benevolence will, at length, come to be 
 Witnessed; and the comfort of it to be felt; and it 
 frill diffuse itself, by sympathy, over the contigu¬ 
 ous spaces; and the local resources of each space 
 frill be abundantly called forth on the near and 
 exciting object of its own cultivation; and the 
 result Universal will be attained, not by the com¬ 
 bination of all the powers into one effort, but by the 
 summation of many efforts done by these powers 
 apart from, and independent of, each other—not by 
 one stalking society lording it over the whole, 
 but by manifold associations, each assuming its 
 own distinct task, and fulfilling a work commensu¬ 
 rate to its own separate energies. 
 
141 
 
 The institutions which are most wanted in our 
 great towns and populous villages are those, the 
 object of which is, the Christian education of our 
 labouring classes. This object embraces schools 
 for ordinary scholarship through the week, and 
 churches for the delivery of gospel doctrine and 
 exhortation upon the Sabbath. They who are 
 friendly to the religious establishments of our 
 country, can find their way far more immediately 
 to the erectioh and endowment of the former, than 
 of the latter. They who found a school, have the 
 patronage of the school. They who build and 
 endow a church for the establishment, cannot, 
 without many forms, and the concurrence of many 
 authorities, retain the patronage of the church. 
 This is a peculiarity which leads us to postpone 
 to the next Chapter, the most essential explana¬ 
 tions that are connected with the multiplication of 
 churches. And all we shall attempt at present, is, 
 to instruct the friends of general education, in 
 what appears to us the likeliest mode of equalising 
 our schools to the necessities of our population. 
 
 We have already, in a little work which stands 
 separately out from our present series of exposi¬ 
 tions, endeavoured to demonstrate the Scottish 
 system of education, and to prove both the possi¬ 
 bility and the great advantage of its application to 
 large towns. We refer our readers to that small 
 performance*; and shall be satisfied with a short 
 
 * Considerations on the System of Parochial Schools in Scotland, and on 
 the advantage of establishing them in Large Towns. 
 
142 
 
 recapitulation of as much of it as is necessary to 
 our present argument. 
 
 It is with common, as it is with Christian educa¬ 
 tion. There is not such a native and spontaneous 
 demand for it in any country, as will call forth a 
 supply of it at all adequate to the needs of the 
 population. If the people are left to themselves, 
 they will not, by any originating movement of their 
 own, emerge out of ignorance at the first; nor will 
 they afterwards perpetuate any habit of education 
 to which they may have been raised in the course 
 of one generation, if, in all succeeding generations, 
 they are left wholly to seek after scholarship, and 
 wholly to pay for it. To keep up popular learning, 
 there is just the same reason for an establishment, 
 as we have already alleged in behalf of an estab¬ 
 lishment for religion. The article must be ob¬ 
 truded upon them, and, in some degree, offered to 
 them; and if the best way of so obtruding it, is, 
 that there shall be one fabric of general repair for 
 the people of each distinct locality, to which pa¬ 
 rents, under the impulse of near and surrounding 
 example, may send their children for the purposes 
 of education—then let these fabrics be multiplied 
 to a sufficient extent; and under a right manage¬ 
 ment will the security be complete, both for the 
 people attaining a right place in the scale of mental 
 cultivation, and after they have attained it, for 
 never again descending to the low state out of 
 which they had been called. 
 
 We have, in the small work to which we have 
 
143 
 
 just referred, attempted to expose the defects 
 both of a wholly gratuitous, and of a wholly 
 unendowed system of education; affirming that, 
 under the one scheme, the article is undervalued, 
 and that under the other, it is not sought after to 
 the extent to which it would be beneficial. Al¬ 
 most all the education of our great towns is shared 
 between these two methods, and a woeful decline 
 from the habit and accomplishment of our Scottish 
 country parishes, is the undeniable consequence. 
 To restore the mass of our population in towns, 
 to the degree of scholarship that has shed so proud 
 a moral glory over the face of the country at large, 
 there seems no other expedient than that of erecting 
 Schools and School-houses, and salarying teachers 
 for each little district of a town and suburb popu¬ 
 lation; establishing a local connection between 
 each fabric and a given portion of the vicinity 
 around it; and announcing it as the privilege of 
 all the families which reside within its limits, that 
 in that fabric a good and a cheap education is to 
 be had for their children*. 
 
 It is a moderate computation, that one-fifteenth 
 of the whole population should be at school; and 
 that a school, therefore, where a hundred children 
 are taught, should serve the demand of a popula- 
 
 * We arc aware that Lancastrianism undertakes a more economic plan of 
 education. It may do very well at the first breaking up of a country, where 
 there was no habit of scholarship before. But we hold it to be a bad substi¬ 
 tute for the old Scottish method, which provides a local and residing school¬ 
 master, and brings such a number of scholars around him as do not exceed the 
 range of his own minute and personal superintendence. 
 
144 
 
 tion of fifteen hundred. It is an equally moderate 
 computation, that permanently to provide for the 
 endowment of such a school, would require the 
 sum of a thousand pounds sterling; or, in other 
 words, that ere such a system could be completed 
 for Glasgow and its suburbs, the sum of a hundred 
 thousand pounds behoved to be expended on it. 
 
 We are quite prepared here for the epithets of 
 visionary and theoretical, as ready to fall in most 
 impetuous denunciation on all those who should 
 affirm, that, for the cause of popular education 
 amongst us, a sum so mighty ever will be raised, 
 or an object so vast ever will be overtaken. We 
 are aware of the discredit which this charge has 
 inflicted, and of the damp and discouragement 
 which it has thrown over many of the best projects 
 of benevolence; and we, therefore, count it worth 
 while to pause a little here, and examine somewhat 
 attentively what the grounds are on which a charge 
 of this sort may be soundly preferred, and what 
 the schemes are which most abundantly deserve it. 
 
 It does not bring down the imputation of vi¬ 
 sionary upon a man, when he simply affirms of 
 any state or condition of things which has not yet 
 been attained by society, that it were a desirable 
 attainment. It were truly desirable that all men 
 were virtuous. It were desirable that such were 
 the providential habits of our poor, as that the 
 country should not be liable, through any mis¬ 
 management of theirs, to the burden of an exces¬ 
 sive population. It were desirable that such a 
 
145 
 
 habit of education as would tend both to exalt 
 their individual character, and to raise them above 
 the influence of those delusions which might array 
 them in hatred and turbulence against the cause 
 of order, had a universal establishment among 
 their families. There seems to be no imputation 
 of the visionary, incurred by simply affirming all 
 these things to be desirable. There is full permis¬ 
 sion to express our wishes on the subject, whatever 
 ridicule or resistance may be awaiting our specu¬ 
 lations. It is not the mere expression of that to 
 be desirable, which all men feel to be desirable, 
 that provokes the charge of visionary; and the 
 question still remains, what distinctly and precisely 
 the provocative is? 
 
 The imputation of visionary, then, seems spe¬ 
 cifically to fall on him, who affirms that to be 
 practicable, which they, who advance the imputa¬ 
 tion, think to be impracticable. Both parties may 
 equally feel the object in question, to be desirable. 
 The man of sanguine temperament, thinks that it 
 is not merely a thing to be desired, but a thing 
 that may be done. The man of slow and sober 
 reflection, thinks too, that it were a matter to be 
 desired, but that it cannot be done. 
 
 There is, at the same time, a distinction to be 
 attended to here. One may barely affirm an object 
 to be practicable, without specifying the means 
 that he has in contemplation. If no adequate 
 means occur to those who hear the affirmation, 
 he lays himself open to the imputation of being 
 x 
 
146 
 
 a visionary. Or he may propose the means, and, 
 if they appear to the others inadequate to the ac¬ 
 complishment, then, with a contempt which may be 
 seen to leer under a front of conscious sagacity, 
 will they again pronounce him to be a visionary. 
 
 Let us apply these very obvious preliminary 
 remarks to the topic that is now before us. 
 
 All the friends of universal education will agree 
 in thinking it very desirable that an apparatus 
 were raised for providing it. It is quite obvious, 
 that, in none of our great towns, is there such 
 an apparatus; and the question simply is, what 
 appears the likely and the practicable way of 
 arriving at it? 
 
 We have heard, that, among the legal and con¬ 
 stituted bodies of the place, various movements 
 have been made towards such an object; but we 
 never heard that more than one school was in 
 contemplation for each of the parishes. Such an 
 achievement we are sure would satisfy the great 
 bulk of our practical men, and the signal effort 
 that Glasgow had made for the education of her 
 citizens, would be talked of and approven, and set 
 the public imagination at rest upon the subject 
 for half a century. 
 
 Now, to such a measure as this, and the antici¬ 
 pations that are connected with it, let us apply the 
 test for determining whether it be of a visionary 
 character. The test is, the inadequacy of proposed 
 means to a proposed object. This measure, then, 
 instead of providing a school for each fifteen hun- 
 
147 
 
 dred of our people, would only provide a school for 
 about each twelve thousand of them. We doubt 
 whether the advantage rendered to education, by 
 such a proceeding, would not be more than neu¬ 
 tralised by the disguise that it might serve to 
 throw over the nakedness of the land. We fear, 
 that it would operate for ages as a sedative upon 
 a far more efficient philanthropy, than ever can 
 be exerted through the medium of any corporation. 
 The goodly apparatus of twelve established schools, 
 with the usual accompaniment of a yearly exa¬ 
 mination, and a published statement of the appear¬ 
 ance and proficiency of scholars, would so fill and 
 satiate the eye of our citizens, that even the 
 arithmetic of the subject, however obvious, might 
 not disturb their complacency. To propose any 
 thing, with the view of supplementing that which 
 looked so ample already, would appear to be quite 
 uncalled for, and thus might the holders of our 
 wealth be lulled into a profounder apathy than 
 before. Meanwhile, the people, with this frac¬ 
 tional attempt upon their habits, would, to all sense 
 and observation, exhibit about the same ignorance 
 as ever. And the men who glowed with the fond 
 anticipation of a more exalted and enlightened 
 peasantry, and were confident of carrying it into 
 effect by means so inadequate—these would turn 
 out to be the visionaries. 
 
 We have also heard of various consultations 
 upon this subject, with the Government of the 
 country. There is one way, that we shill explain 
 
148 
 
 afterwards, in which we think that its interposition 
 might in time be rendered effective. But we fear 
 that any hand which it proposes to put forth at 
 present, will be a hand of impotency. One school 
 for each parish, and one parish for each ten or 
 twelve thousand of many a city population, will 
 be an apology for a good thing, but it will not be 
 the good thing itself. And those who count upon 
 a renovating influence on our people, from an 
 apparatus so meagre as this, whether they be the 
 public functionaries of the state, or the men whom 
 the functionaries advise with, are indeed the most 
 egregious of all visionaries. 
 
 There are certain of our mere operatives in 
 public business, who, however plentiful their re¬ 
 proach of others as visionaries, never dream that 
 they are visionaries themselves. They seem to re¬ 
 gard it as their sufficient exemption from such 
 a charge, that their hand is so wholly occupied in 
 practice, and their mind so little, if at all, occupied 
 with principle. It would look, as if to escape from 
 being a theorist upon any given topic, it were 
 altogether necessary to abstain from thinking of 
 it; and that, to stamp a sound and experimental 
 character on a man’s notions, it is quite enough 
 that he personally bustle and spend all his time 
 among the mere matters of manipulation and 
 detail. Such men never, perhaps, in the whole 
 course of their lives, have given one hour of 
 meditative solitude to the question at issue; and, 
 perhaps, think that the whole effect of such a sea- 
 
149 
 
 son of loneliness, would be to gather around them 
 the spectres of vain imagination. They have no 
 other conception of a student, than as of one who 
 muses all day long, over the inapplicable abstrac¬ 
 tions of an ideal and contemplative region; nor 
 do they see how, in calm and collected retirement, 
 it is possible for the mind to calculate and to 
 recollect, and to be altogether conversant among 
 the realities of the living world, over which it may 
 have cast a most observant regard, and the well 
 known familiarities of which, it is able to turn into 
 the materials of a just view, and a just anticipation. 
 In these circumstances, it ought not to be won¬ 
 dered at, that practical men have engrossed the 
 credit of all the practical wisdom that there is in 
 society; and that they have missed the self-dis¬ 
 cernment which might have led them to perceive, 
 that the possessor of a body, which moves its dull 
 and unvarying round through the duties of public 
 office, and of a mind that is either profoundly 
 asleep to the rationale of public affairs, or catches 
 its occasional view of them by rapid and confused 
 glances—that he, with all the confidence which a 
 kind of coarse and hackneyed experience has 
 given to him, may, very possibly, be the most 
 blundering and bewildered of all visionaries. 
 
 The thing to be chiefly dreaded from the deed 
 of Government, or the deed of a city corporation, 
 in this matter, is, that it may overbear the public 
 into the conclusion, that enough has been done, 
 because they have done it. There is an imposing 
 
150 
 
 magnitude in the measures of a public body, which 
 can only be reduced to its correct estimation, by 
 being arithmetically compared with the magnitude 
 of the subject over which it operates. It is seldom, 
 when a boon is thus conferred upon a country, 
 that it is accompanied with the proclamation of 
 its insignificance, relative to the whole need of 
 a country. But it were well, both in the case of 
 schools and churches, that such a proclamation 
 were made. In this way, the very partial endow¬ 
 ment, instead of acting as a soporific, would act 
 as a stimulus on the benevolence of individuals. 
 If, when the rulers of the nation, or the rulers of 
 a city, did something, (and it is most desirable that 
 they should,) they made a full demonstration of its 
 inadequacy to the object; this would effectually 
 be leading the way to its full accomplishment. 
 Such a high testimony would call forth the means 
 and energies of many voluntary associations; which, 
 instead of being superseded into downright in¬ 
 action, as they else might have been, would be 
 excited to follow the paternal example, that had 
 thus been set before them. 
 
 But voluntary associations have come forward 
 in the cause of education, without waiting for 
 any such signal. And if, to look confidently 
 forward to a proposed end, with feeble and dispro¬ 
 portionate means, be to incur the character of 
 visionary, then we fear that this imputation must 
 be made to rest upon them also. They have all 
 been greatly less efficient than they might have 
 
151 
 
 been, from their neglect of the principle of 
 locality. There are many associations which, by 
 their resources, could have done that permanently 
 and substantially for a district of the town, which 
 they have vainly attempted, and have, therefore, 
 done partially and superficially for the whole. The 
 money which could have built a local school, 
 and emanated enough of interest for ever to have 
 kept it in repair, and provided the teacher with 
 a perpetual salary, has been dissipated in transient 
 and ineffectual exertions for the accomplishment 
 of a universal object. The error is, to have been 
 led away, by the splendour of a conception, far 
 greater than it was able to realise. It is this 
 ambition, to plan beyond the ability to execute, 
 which has involved in failure and misdirection, so 
 many of the efforts of philanthropy. And they 
 who have so precipitately counted on any general 
 result, that would be at all sensible, from the pro¬ 
 ceedings of any one society, however magnificent 
 in its scale, and however princely the offerings 
 that were rendered to it, have evinced themselves 
 well entitled to the character of visionaries. 
 
 The great mischief of any such society, is, that 
 it blinds the public eye to the utter inadequacy of 
 its own operations. It sends a feeble emanation 
 over the whole city; which were doing an import¬ 
 ant benefit, had it only the effect of making the 
 darkness visible. But, instead of this, we fear, 
 that the light which it thus diffuses, imperfect as 
 it is, is rated, not according to the intensity with 
 
152 
 
 which it shines upon our population, but according 
 to the extent in which it is thinly and obscurely 
 spread over them. The very title of a school for 
 all, is enough to deceive a miscalculating public, 
 into the imagination, that all are provided with 
 schooling. If, instead of trying to engross the 
 whole, the society in question had concentrated its 
 means and its energies upon a part, and upon such 
 a part, too, as it could overtake most thoroughly, 
 there would have been no such pernicious delusion 
 in the way of rendering a solid and entire benefit 
 to the labouring classes. The very contrast it had 
 produced between the districtitso effectually bright¬ 
 ened, and the total darkness of the surrounding or 
 contiguous spaces, would have forced that lesson 
 upon the public notice, which, under the general¬ 
 ising system, is thrown into disguise altogether. 
 Instead of a semblance of education for tbe whole, 
 let there be the substance of it in one part; and 
 this will at length, spread and propagate its own 
 likeness over all the other parts. It will serve 
 like the touch of a flame to kindle the whole mass 
 into a brilliancy as luminous as its own. It never 
 would be permitted to stand a barren and solitary 
 memorial. Other men would soon feel a respon¬ 
 sibility in other quarters, who now feel none at 
 all. Other societies would speedily arise in other 
 districts; and the whole effect, which was so 
 vainly looked for, as the result of one great 
 organization, will at length be made out, by the 
 apposition of successive parts to one another. 
 
153 
 
 Our earnest advice, for these reasons, is, that 
 no benevolent society for education shall under¬ 
 take a larger space of the city than it can provide 
 for, both completely and perpetually; by reclaiming 
 its families to a habit of scholarship for ever, 
 through the means of a permanent endowment, 
 attached exclusively to the district of its operations. 
 It is far better to cultivate one district well, though 
 all the others should be left untouched, than to 
 superficialise over the whole city. It is far better, 
 that these other districts be thrown as unprovided 
 orphans, upon a benevolence that is sure to be 
 called out at other times, and in other circles of 
 society. Instead of casting upon them a feeble 
 and languid regard, it is infinitely better to aban¬ 
 don them to the fresh, and powerful, and unex¬ 
 pended regards of other men. Let none of us 
 think to monopolise all the benevolence of the 
 world, or fear that no future band of philanthropists 
 shall arise, to carry the cause forward from that 
 point at which we have exhausted our operations. 
 If education is to be made universal in towns by 
 voluntary benevolence, it will not be by one great, 
 but by many small and successive exertions. The 
 thing will be accomplished piecemeal; and what 
 never could be done through the working of one 
 vast and unwieldy mechanism, may thus be com¬ 
 pleted most easily, in the course of a single 
 generation. 
 
 Let us now attempt to trace the character of 
 the process that we have just recommended, from 
 
154 
 
 the first beginning of it, and along that line of 
 conveyance, by which it is finally brought onward 
 to the result of an adequate provision for the en¬ 
 tire and universal scholarship of our city families. 
 We see nothing of the visionary at its commence¬ 
 ment. One society, that should propose to raise 
 a hundred thousand pounds for a project so 
 gigantic, may well be denounced as visionary; 
 but not so the society that should propose to 
 raise one or two thousand pounds for its own 
 assumed proportion of it. There is many an 
 individual, who has both philanthropy enough, 
 and influence enough, within the circle of his own 
 acquaintanceship, for moving forward a sufficiency 
 of power towards such an achievement. All that 
 he needs, is the guidance of his philanthropy at 
 the first, to this enterprise. When once fairly 
 embarked, there are many securities against his 
 ever abandoning it till it is fully accomplished. 
 For, from the very first moment, will he feel a 
 charm in his undertaking, that he never felt in 
 any of those wide and bewildering generalities of 
 benevolence, which have hitherto engrossed him. 
 To appropriate his little vicinity—to lay it down 
 in the length and the breadth of it—to measure 
 it off as the manageable field within which he can 
 render an entire and a lasting benefit to all its 
 families—to know and be known amongst them, 
 and thus have his liberality sweetened by the 
 charm of acquaintanceship with those who are 
 the objects of it—instead of dropping, as hereto- 
 
155 
 
 fore of his abundance, into an ocean where it was 
 instantly absorbed and became invisible, to pour 
 a deep, and a sensible, and an abiding infusion 
 into his own separate and selected portion of that 
 impracticable mass which has hitherto withstood 
 all the efforts of philanthropy—instead of grasp¬ 
 ing in vain at the whole territory, to make upon 
 it his own little settlement, and thus to narrow, 
 at least, the unbroken field, which he could not 
 overtake—to beautify one humble spot, and there 
 raise an enduring monument, by which an example 
 is lifted up, and a voice is sent forth to all the 
 spaces which are yet unentered on—this is bene¬ 
 volence, reaping a reward at the very outset of its 
 labours, and such a reward, too, as will not only 
 ensure the accomplishment of its own task, but, as 
 must, from the ease, and the certainty, and the 
 distinct and definite good which are attendant 
 upon its doings, serve both to allure and to guar¬ 
 antee a whole host of imitations. 
 
 And, to redeem this initiatory step still further 
 from the charge of visionary, it ought to be re¬ 
 marked, that even though not followed up by any 
 imitation, it is not lost. A certain good will have 
 been rendered to society, and a good too, fully 
 proportionate to the labour and expense that have 
 been bestowed upon it. If permanently to cover 
 the whole city with education, be an enterprise 
 worth a hundred thousand pounds, then, to cover 
 a hundredth part of it, is an enterprise worth a 
 thousand pounds. The purchase and the pur- 
 
156 
 
 chase-money are equivalent to each other; and if 
 not a magnificent operation, it is, at least, not like 
 many of the magnificent projects of our day—it 
 is not an abortive one. 
 
 Viewed, indeed, in the light of one isolated 
 effort—of one single feat of liberality, there is 
 something altogether, independent of its being a 
 likely stepping-stone to many similar undertak¬ 
 ings by other hands and in other places, that is 
 well calculated to engage the kindly affections of 
 our nature. It is vesting one’s self with the noblest 
 of all property, when he can point to a certain 
 geographical district in a great city, on which he 
 has stamped a visible impress of his benevolence, 
 which it will wear to the end of time, and be a 
 blessing to its future families throughout all gene¬ 
 rations. Some may regard this more in the light 
 of a solace to the vanity of his constitution—but 
 surely it is fitted to soothe and to satisfy his better 
 feelings, that the objects of his liberality come so 
 distinctly under his notice; that the good he has 
 rendered, survives the exertion he has made in so 
 separate and visible a form; that the families he 
 has benefited, can be so specifically pointed to, and 
 the children, who, through him, are brought under 
 the wholesome ministration of a sound and a cheap 
 scholarship, may be met, as often as he will, to 
 witness the progress of his own experiment, and 
 cheer them on to the attainments which he himself 
 has provided for them. There is in all this, a con¬ 
 centrated charm, which were dissipated into thin 
 
1 51 
 
 air, had the same cost and the same exertion been 
 incurred among some of the heartless and unpro¬ 
 ductive generalities of a more extended operation. 
 
 But more than this. It is felt by every man as 
 a stronger pull, both on his liberality and his exer¬ 
 tion, when he sees the end of what he is embarked 
 upon, than when that end lies at an obscure and 
 indefinite distance from him. The moment that 
 an exhausted crew come within sight of land, a 
 new energy is felt to revisit and revive them. An 
 enterprise of charity may be so vast that this sight 
 may never be attained; or, it may be so circum¬ 
 scribed within distinct and narrow boundaries, 
 that it may never fail, from the very outset, to en¬ 
 liven the hope, and spirit on the progress of bene¬ 
 volent adventurers. Under the local system, this 
 principle comes into full play, and works a mighty 
 increment of good to society. Insomuch, that 
 even with the same number of philanthropists, 
 a greater amount both of money and of exertion is 
 rendered to the cause, by separate bands of them, 
 each of them expatiating on its own local and 
 limited province, than by the whole body of them 
 putting forth one gigantic effort on the whole field 
 of operation that lies before them. 
 
 And again. The very same system does call 
 forth a greater number 'of philanthropists. This 
 is due, not merely to the superior practicability 
 of its object, but also to the strength of that local 
 interest with which it is associated. When the 
 good proposed to be done, is for the special behoof 
 
158 
 
 of one city parish, or even one department of a 
 city parish, this carries a far more forcible appeal 
 than any general object would, to all those con¬ 
 nected with it, either by office, or by property, or 
 by residence. It is felt by ail such, as a directly 
 pertinent application, and so, both in respect of 
 agency and of subscription, calls forth a host of 
 latent capabilities, that, under a general system, 
 would never have been reached, and never have 
 been entered upon. There can be no doubt, that 
 the more you subdivide a territory into districts, the 
 more intense, and the more productive, will be the 
 operation in each of them; so as to draw out a far- 
 greater number of supporters, and to raise a far 
 greater sum than ever could have been raised out 
 of the same district, for any scheme of universal 
 education. Better that this scheme should never 
 be entertained, than that it should so float in the 
 imaginations of the sanguine, as to lead them 
 away from the alone path of practical wisdom, 
 which can conduct to its accomplishment. Better- 
 far, surely, that it should at length come out in 
 exhibition as the actual result of each particular 
 body labouring assiduously for its own particular- 
 object, than that, in the shape of an airy dream, to 
 which the public eye is generally and collectively 
 drawn, it should call forth the one ostentatious, 
 but futile movement that will never realise it. 
 
 It is not known how precious and how produc¬ 
 tive a thing the operation of this local interest is, 
 even in the very poorest of our districts. The 
 
159 
 
 capabilities of humble life are yet far from being' 
 perfectly understood, or turned to the full account 
 of which they are susceptible. We certainly in¬ 
 vite, and with earnestness too, the man of fortune 
 and philanthropy, to assume a locality to himself, 
 and head an enterprise for schools, in behalf of its 
 heretofore neglected population. But little is it 
 known to what extent the fund may be augmented 
 by pains and perseverance among the population 
 themselves. With a little guidance, in fact, may 
 the poor be made the most effective instruments of 
 their own amelioration. The system which could 
 raise a single penny in the week from each family, 
 would, of its own unaided self, both erect and per¬ 
 petuate a sufficient apparatus for schooling over 
 the whole empire, or over any part into which it 
 was introduced, in about twelve years. This is a 
 mine which has lately been entered upon, for the 
 purpose of aiding those excellent religious charities 
 that have so signalised our nation; and more is ex¬ 
 tracted from it than from all the liberalities of the 
 opulent. In a cause so near and so exciting as 
 that of home education, it could, by dint of stren¬ 
 uous cultivation, be made to yield much more 
 abundantly. So that, should the rich refuse a 
 helping hand to a cause so closely associated with 
 the best interests of our country, we do not de¬ 
 spair of the poor being at length persuaded to take 
 it upon themselves, and of thus leaving the higher 
 classes behind them in the career of an enlightened 
 patriotism. 
 
160 
 
 Yet it were well, that the rich did step forward 
 and signalise themselves in this matter. Amid all 
 the turbulence and discontent which prevail in 
 society, do we believe, that there is no rancour so 
 fiery or so inveterate in the heart of the labouring 
 classes, but that a convincing demonstration of good 
 will, on the part of those who are raised in circum¬ 
 stances above them, could not charm it most effec¬ 
 tually away. It is a question of nicety, how 
 should this demonstration be rendered? Not, we 
 think, by any public or palpable offering to the 
 cause of indigence, for this we have long conceived 
 should be left, and left altogether to the sympa¬ 
 thies of private intercourse; it being, we believe, 
 a point of uniform experience, that the more 
 visible the apparatus is for the relief of poverty, 
 the more is it fitted to defeat its own object, and 
 to scatter all the jealousies attendant upon an 
 imaginary right among those who might else have 
 been sweetened into gratitude by the visitations of 
 a secret and spontaneous kindness. Not so, how¬ 
 ever, with an offering rendered to the cause of 
 education, let it be as public or as palpable as it 
 may. The urgency of competition for such an 
 object, is at all times to be hailed rather than re¬ 
 sisted; and on this career of benevolence, there¬ 
 fore, may the affluent go indefinitely onward, till 
 the want be fully and permanently provided for. 
 We know no exhibition that would serve more to 
 tranquillise our country, than one which might 
 convince the poorer classes, that there is a real 
 
161 
 
 desire, on the part of their superiors in wealth, to 
 do for them any thing, and every thing, which they 
 believe to be for their good. It is the expression of 
 an interest in them, which does so much to soothe 
 and to pacify the discontents of men; and all that is 
 wanted, is, that the expression shall be of such a 
 sort, as not to injure, but to benefit those for whom 
 it is intended. To regulate the direction of our 
 philanthropy, with this view, all that needs to be 
 ascertained, is, an object, by the furtherance of 
 which, the families of the poor are benefited most 
 substantially, and, at the same time, for the ex¬ 
 penses of which, one is not in danger of contrib¬ 
 uting too splendidly. We know no object which 
 serves better to satisfy these conditions, than a 
 district school, which, by the very confinement of 
 its operation within certain selected limits, will 
 come specifically home with something of the im¬ 
 pression of a kindness done individually to each of 
 the householders. It were possible, in this way, 
 for one person, at the head of an associated band, 
 to propitiate towards himself, and, through him, 
 towards that order in society with which he stands 
 connected, several thousands of a yet neglected 
 population. He could walk abroad over some 
 suburb waste, and chalk out for himself the limits 
 of his adventure; and, amid the gaze and inquiry 
 of the natives, could cause the public edifice 
 gradually to arise in exhibition before them; and 
 though they might be led to view it at first as a 
 caprice, they would not be long of feeling that it 
 
162 
 
 was. at least a caprice of kindness towards them— 
 some well-meaning quixotism, perhaps, which, 
 whether judicious or not, was pregnant, at least, 
 with the demonstration of good will, and would 
 call forth from them, by a law of our sentient na¬ 
 ture, which they could not help, an honest emotion 
 of good will back again; and, instead of the envy 
 and derision which so often assail our rich when 
 charioted in splendour, along the more remote 
 and outlandish streets of the city, would it be 
 found, that the equipage of this generous, though 
 somewhat eccentric visitor, bad always a comely 
 and complaisant homage rendered to it. By such 
 a movement as this, might an, individual, through¬ 
 out a district, and a few individuals throughout 
 the city at large, reclaim the whole of our present 
 generation, to a kindliness for the upper classes 
 that is now urifelt; and this too, not by the mini¬ 
 stration of those beggarly elements, which serve 
 to degrade and to impoverish the more; but by the 
 ministration of such a moral influence among the 
 young, as would serve to exalt humble life, and 
 prepare for a better economy than our present, 
 the habits of the rising generation. 
 
 We know not, indeed, what could serve more 
 effectually to amalgamate the two great classes of 
 society together, than their concurrence in an ob¬ 
 ject which so nearly concerns the families of all. 
 We know not how a wealthy individual could work 
 a more effectual good, or earn a purer and more 
 lasting gratitude, from the people of his own se- 
 
lected district, than by his splendid donative in the 
 cause of education. Whatever exceptions may be 
 alleged against the other schemes of benevolence, 
 this, at least, is a charity whose touch does not 
 vilify its objects; nor will it, like the aliment of 
 ordinary pauperism, serve to mar the habit and 
 character of our population. Here, then, is a walk 
 on which philanthropy may give the rein to her 
 most aspiring wishes for the good of the world; 
 and while a single district of the land is without 
 the scope of an efficient system for the schooling 
 of its families, is there room for every lover of his 
 species to put forth a liberality that can neither 
 injure nor degrade them. 
 
 Every enlightened friend of the poor ought to 
 rejoice in such an opportunity, amid the coarse 
 invectives which assail him, when led by his honest 
 convictions to resist the parade and the publicity 
 of so many attempts as are made in our day, in 
 behalf of indigence. It may sometimes happen, 
 that selfishness, in making her escape from the 
 applications of an injudicious charity, will be glad 
 to shelter herself under some of those maxims of 
 a sounder economy, which are evidently gaining in 
 credit and currency amongst us. And hence the 
 ready imputation of selfishness upon all, who 
 decline from the support of associations which 
 they hold to be questionable. And thus is it 
 somewhat amusing to observe, how the yearly 
 subscriber of one guinea to some favourite scheme 
 of philanthropy, thereby purchases to himself the 
 
164 
 
 right of stigmatizing every cold-blooded speculator 
 who refuses his concurrence; while the latter is 
 altogether helpless, and most awkwardly so, under 
 a charge so very disgraceful. In avowing, as he 
 does, the principle, that all the public relief which 
 is ministered to poverty, swells and aggravates 
 the amount of it in the land, and that it is only 
 by efforts of unseen kindness, that any thing 
 effectual can be done for its mitigation—he cannot 
 lay bare the arithmetic of private benevolence, 
 and more especially of his own—he cannot drag 
 it forth to that ground of visibility, on which he 
 believes that the whole of its charm and efficacy 
 would be dissipated—he cannot confront the un¬ 
 told liberalities which pass in secret conveyance 
 to the abodes of indigence, with the doings and 
 the doqueted reports of committeeship—he cannot 
 anticipate the disclosures of that eventful day, 
 when He who seeth in secret shall reward openly, 
 however much he may be assured, that the drop¬ 
 pings of individual sympathy, as far outweigh in 
 value the streams of charitable distribution, which 
 have been constructed by the labour and the 
 artifice of associated men, as does the rain from 
 heaven, which feeds the mighty rivers of our world, 
 outweigh in amount, the water which flows through 
 all the aqueducts 6f human workmanship that 
 exist in it. From all this, he is precluded, by the 
 very condition in which the materials of the ques¬ 
 tion are situated; and silent endurance is the only 
 way in which he can meet the zealots of public 
 
165 
 
 charity, while they push and prosecute the triumph 
 of their widely blazoned achievement—even though 
 convinced all the while, that, by their obtrusive 
 hand, they have superseded a far more productive 
 benevolence than they ever can replace; that they 
 have held forth a show of magnitude and effort 
 which they can in no way realise; and with a 
 style of operation, mighty in promise, but utterly 
 insignificant in the result, have deadened all those 
 responsibilities and private regards, which, if suf¬ 
 fered, without being diverted aside, to go forth 
 on their respective vicinities, would yield a more 
 plentiful, as well as a more precious tribute, to 
 the cause of suffering humanity, than ever can be 
 raised by loud and open proclamation. 
 
 The disciples of the Malthusian philanthropy,who 
 keep back when they think that publicity is hurt¬ 
 ful, should come forth on every occasion when 
 publicity is harmless. That is the time of their 
 vindication; and then it is in their power to meet, 
 on the same arena, with those Lilliputians in 
 charity, who think that they do all, when, in fact, 
 they have done nothing but mischief. We hear 
 much of the liberality of our age. But it appears 
 to us to be nearly as minute in respect of amount, 
 as much of it is misplaced in respect of direction; 
 nor can we discover, save among the devoted 
 missionaries of Serampore and a few others, any 
 very sensible approximations to the great standard 
 of Christian charity, set forth in the gospel for 
 our imitation. The Saviour was rich, and for our 
 
166 
 
 sakes he became poof; and ere the world he 
 died for, shall be reclaimed to the knowledge of 
 himself, many must be his followers, who regard 
 their wealth, not as a possession but as a steward¬ 
 ship. We anticipate, in time, a much higher rate 
 of liberality than obtains at present in the Christian 
 world; hor do we know a cause more fitted to 
 draw it onwards, than one which may be supported 
 visibly, without attracting a single individual to 
 pauperism, and which, when completed, perman¬ 
 ently and substantially, will widen, and that for 
 ever, the moral distance of our people, from a state 
 so corrupt and degrading. Ere the apparatus 
 shall be raised, which is able, not faintly to skim, 
 but thoroughly to saturate the families of our poor 
 with education, there will be room for large sums 
 and large sacrifices; nor do We know on whom 
 the burden of this cause can sit so gracefully and 
 so well, as on those who have speculated away 
 their feelings of attachment from all societies for 
 the relief of indigence—and who are now bound 
 to demonstrate, that this is not because their 
 judgment has extinguished their sensibilities; but 
 because they only want an object set before them 
 which may satisfy their understanding, that, with¬ 
 out doing mischief, they may largely render of 
 their means to the promotion of it. 
 
 We are sensible, that, to look for a universal 
 result, in the way that we have now recommended, 
 is to presuppose a very wide extension of Christian 
 zeal, Seconded by an equal degree of Christian 
 
167 
 
 liberality all over the land. If it be visionary to 
 look for this, then do we hold it alike visionary, 
 to look for any great moral improvement in the 
 economy of our national institutions without this. 
 We see not our way to any public or extended 
 amelioration, save, through the medium of greater 
 worth in the character of individuals, and a greater 
 number of such individuals in the country; and 
 but for this, would we give up in despair, that 
 cause on which both politicians and moralists have 
 embarked so many sanguine, speculations. It is 
 not, we think, on the arena of state partizanship, 
 that a victory for this cause is to be decided; but 
 that, similarly to the growth of the small prophetic 
 stone, which at length attained to the size of a 
 mountain that filled the whole earth, will it grad¬ 
 ually proceed onwards, just as the spirit and 
 principles of the gospel find a numerical way 
 through human hearts, and multiply their pro¬ 
 selytes among human families. If it be here, that 
 a contemptuous scepticism discovers the weak side 
 of our argument, and proclaims it accordingly; it 
 is also here, that Prophecy lifts up the light of 
 its cheering countenance on all our anticipations. 
 Meanwhile, its best and brightest fulfilments are 
 not to be without human agency, but by human 
 agency; and even already do we see a rising 
 philanthropy in our day, which warrants our 
 fondest hopes both of the increase of learning and 
 virtue amongst our population. For a time, it 
 may waste a portion of its energies among the 
 bye-paths of inexperience. Ambition may be- 
 
168 
 
 wilder it. Impatience may cause it to overrun 
 itself. A taste for generalities may dazzle it into 
 many fond and foolish imaginations; and the 
 ridicule of an incredulous public may await the 
 mortifying failures, which will ever mark the enter¬ 
 prise of him, whose aim is beyond the means of his 
 accomplishment. But the spirit of benevolence 
 will not be evaporated among all these difficulties: 
 It will only be nurtured into greater strength, and 
 guided into a path of truer wisdom, and sobered 
 into a habit of more humble, and, at the same 
 time, far more effective perseverance. Man will 
 at length learn to become more practical and less 
 imaginative. He will hold it a worthier achieve¬ 
 ment to do for a little neighbourhood, than to 
 devise for . a whole world. He will give himself 
 more assiduously to the object within his reach, 
 and trust that there are other men and other 
 means for accomplishing the objects that are 
 beyond it. The glory of establishing in our world, 
 that universal reign of truth and of righteous¬ 
 ness which is coming, will not be the glory of any 
 one man; but it will be the glory of Him who 
 sitteth above, and plieth his many millions of 
 instruments for bringing about this magnificent 
 result. It is enough for each of us to be one of 
 these instruments, to contribute his little item to 
 the cause, and look for the sum total as the pro¬ 
 duct of innumerable contributions, each of them 
 as meritorous, and many of them, perhaps, far 
 more splendid and important than his own. 
 
169 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 ON CHURCH PATRONAGE. 
 
 In the case of a district school, where the appoint¬ 
 ment of the teacher lies with those who built and 
 whopartially endowed it, matters may be so ordered, 
 as that we shall not have much tofearfrom a corrupt 
 exercise of the patronage. It were well, we think, 
 for the purpose of securing a local and a residing 
 patronage, that a voice in the election of the teacher 
 should be given to two or three of the ecclesiastical 
 functionaries of the parish in which the school was 
 situated. These would feel a responsibility for their 
 choice to the district families with whom they stood 
 so closely associated. And should their propensity 
 to favouritism not be overruled by the force of pub¬ 
 lic opinion, the patrons by subscription, by whom 
 they, in most instances, would be far outnumbered, 
 were enough to neutralize it. And lest there still 
 were an unity of disposition, among the majority of 
 electors, in behalf of an unworthy candidate, it 
 wouli l go far to check this tendency, that the school, 
 though endowed to a certain extent, is endowed but 
 partially. The office, in fact, if it be rightly consti¬ 
 tuted, is only an object of ambition to those who are 
 qualified. The teacher may have a dwelling-house 
 and a salary, and still have his main dependence 
 on the scholars’ fees. It will thus be an object of 
 keenest competition to those who hope most san- 
 
guinely for a crowded attendance; and amid the 
 quantity of known and aspiring talent that will 
 come forth upon every vacancy, it is not to be 
 conceived, that, in the face of a vigilant neigh¬ 
 bourhood, and when parents, by the simple with- 
 drawment of their young, could reduce the teacher 
 to starvation, the patrons will disgrace themselves, 
 and thatwithout essentially benefitting their client, 
 by a glaringly unfit nomination. 
 
 And, in the very same way, might not a district 
 chapel be raised as well as a district school, and 
 With still greater securities even, for a right exer¬ 
 cise of the patronage? How often, for example, 
 do we observe a meeting-house, built at the ex¬ 
 pense of so many adventurers, and with the pro¬ 
 spect of such a return from the seat rents, as, after 
 defraying the salary of the minister, and all other 
 charges, will yield them a full indemnification? 
 Here the effective patronage is as good as shared 
 between the electors and the hearers, and the hold 
 is in every way as strong as human interest can 
 make it for a pure, or at least for a popular ap¬ 
 pointment. And, with such an appointment, all 
 the expenses of the institution may be covered; 
 so that though at first sight it looks a more ardu¬ 
 ous enterprise to found a chapel than a school, 
 the truth is, that the latter may require a stretch 
 of benevolence which the former may not. To 
 make common education universal among the 
 children of the operative class, it seems necessary 
 that there should be a gratuitous erection, and a 
 
171 
 
 gratuitous salary; enabling the teacher to meet 
 the whole population with scholarship on reduced 
 fees: in which case a part only of the whole ex¬ 
 pense is laid upon the attendance. To meet the 
 same class with Christian education, we have ample 
 and repeated experience, that the whole expense 
 may be charged upon the attendance; provided 
 only, that right measures be taken to secure an 
 attendance. This is done simply by a popular 
 appointment; by holding forth instruction to the 
 people from a man of acceptable doctrine, and of 
 esteemed ability and character. That the house 
 be well filled, the great and sufficient step is, that 
 the pulpit be well filled. This, therefore, will be 
 the first care of those who have a direct interest 
 in the attendance: and it is a care which is often 
 so abundantly repaid, as to make the chapel in¬ 
 demnify itself, and that out of a congregation 
 chiefly made up of the families of labourers. 
 
 If, then, the process that we have already re¬ 
 commended for pervading a city with common 
 education, through the week, be at all practicable, 
 there appears to be a still smoother and more 
 practicable way of pervading it as thoroughly 
 with Christian education, on the Sabbath. By the 
 simple and successive apposition of chapel-districts 
 to each other, may a sufficient apparatus at length 
 be reared in a town for the religious instruction 
 of all its families; and such we conceive to be the 
 efficiency of a wisely exercised patronage in draw¬ 
 ing out the attendance of the people, that we 
 
172 
 
 think a system of this kind may at length be com¬ 
 pleted 'without any draught whatever on the libe¬ 
 rality of the public. This great achievement lies, 
 we think, within the power and scope of dissen- 
 terism; and if so little progress has yet been 
 made towards it, it is only because dissenters have 
 riot localised.. They have attracted a few scattered 
 families towards them, but they have not sent 
 forth an emanating influence upon the whole. 
 They have not yet found their way to that strong 
 reciprocal influence which lies between the week¬ 
 day atteritions of one man reiterating upon one 
 neighbourhood, and the Sabbath instructions that 
 are delivered by the same man in the heart of the 
 same neighbourhood. They have not penetrated 
 or transfused the mass of our population. They 
 have only drawn together a few of its particles. 
 That principle of locality, of the truth and power 
 of which, the trial of a single month will give more 
 satisfying evidence than the argumentation of 
 many volumes, has not yet by them been pro¬ 
 ceeded on to any extent; and we know not how 
 long it may continue to be regarded both by them 
 and by the general public, as a mere imaginative 
 charm of no force and no efficacy. Did an asso¬ 
 ciation of Christian philanthropists only try this ex¬ 
 periment on any suburb and neglected portion of a 
 city multitude, we are persuaded that they would 
 soon find themselves in possession of a new power 
 for calling forth the people to the ministrations of 
 the gospel. Let them simply rear their taber- 
 
nacle, and assume for it a locality, to the families 
 of which they might grant a preference for seats, 
 and restrict the week-day services of the minister 
 whom they have chosen. At first, in a rude and 
 heathenish district, the preference would not be 
 extensively taken; in which case the remaining 
 seats would be held forth to general competition. 
 Now, it is not yet known how surely and how 
 speedily the assiduities of the minister, within the 
 limits of his territorial district, would spread die 
 desire among its people to sit under him; nor 
 how readily the very obtrusion of his chapel upon 
 then - notice, as a chapel appropriated for the use 
 of their little vicinity, would hasten forward then- 
 attendance; nor how powerfully, by the force of 
 contiguous and increasing example, next door fa¬ 
 milies would be drawn into the common relation¬ 
 ship of parishioners and hearers with the man 
 who preached so near them every Sabbath, and 
 was daily observed to be plying amongst them, 
 during the week, the sacred and benevolent atten¬ 
 tions of his office. There might, at the outset of 
 such an enterprise, be only a partial attendance 
 from the district, supplemented by hearers from all 
 parts of the city. But should the vacancies that 
 occur by the death or removal of these hearers, be 
 rigidly held forth, in. the first instance, to local 
 applicants; a single generation would not elapse, 
 ere this chapel-minister, though a dissenter, stood 
 vested with all that ascendency over his little 
 neighbourhood, which a parochial congregation 
 
174 
 
 is fitted to give to a minister in the Establishment. 
 He would soon ascertain the comfort and the 
 power of operating within a locality, occupied 
 by the people of his own congregation; and would 
 find that in such a concentration of all his forces, 
 there lay an efficacy tenfold greater than what 
 lies in the diffuseness and variety of his present 
 movements. It is thus that dissenters may gain by 
 territorial conquest, upon an Establishment which 
 either provides inadequately, or patronizes care¬ 
 lessly, for the religious welfare of a city population. 
 They may not only draw people, but recover 
 ground from the church, and bring, if they will, 
 every inch of the domain they have thus wrested 
 under a parochial economy. They might at length 
 work themselves into an arrangement of high in¬ 
 fluence, which, by the existing practice of our 
 cities, is still denied to the established clergy, who 
 are compelled to sit loose to their parishes, from 
 the influx of extra-parochial hearers upon their 
 congregations. The ministers of the Establish¬ 
 ment would thus become mere congregational 
 teachers, whereas those of the dissent would at¬ 
 tain, through the medium of locality, a close and 
 intimate relationship with the great mass of our 
 city families. Should the present wretched mode 
 of seat-letting be perpetuated, it lies with the dis¬ 
 senters themselves to become, if they will, the 
 stable and recognized functionaries of religion 
 in our great towns; and, by a fair usurpation, 
 
175 
 
 to change places with the Establishment altoge¬ 
 ther. 
 
 If it be possible to cover the face of a city 
 with district-schools, for the expense of which 
 there must be a draught on the liberality of the 
 public, it is surely as possible to cover it with 
 district-chapels, which, with the benefit of locality, 
 and a wise exercise of the patronage together, 
 may at all times be made to pay themselves. The 
 former advantage is little understood, and has 
 scarcely at all been acted on by dissenters. The 
 latter is far more palpable, though without the 
 aid of locality, it will never, for reasons that 
 have already been adduced, stay the moral and 
 religious deterioration of cities. Were dissenters 
 armed with both these advantages, it would give 
 them a might and a pre-eminence in large towns 
 which they have never yet attained. They would, 
 in fact, acquire for the apparatus they had reared, 
 all the homage and all the perpetuity of an esta¬ 
 blishment; and wield those very influences over 
 the population, for which alone a national church 
 is in any way desirable, 
 
 But an instrument that is ready made to our 
 hands should not be wantonly set aside; and it were 
 far better that the church should be stimulated 
 than that it should be superseded. It has al¬ 
 ready a great advantage over dissenters, in that lo¬ 
 cality, the full benefit of which, were it not for 
 the obtuseness of our civic legislators, might be 
 so soon and so easily restored to it. But there is 
 
176 
 
 not the same hold upon it for a pure exercise of 
 the patronage. The expense of its fabrics and its 
 salaries is not in general derived from hearers, 
 and therefore the taste of hearers may not be at 
 all consulted in its appointments. Instead of a re¬ 
 spectful deference to the popular opinion, on these 
 occasions, there is often a haughty, intolerant, and 
 avowed defiance to it—and we then see the long¬ 
 ings of the'public sorely thwarted by the resolute 
 and impregnable determination of the patron. It 
 may be easily conceived, therefore, how wide the 
 disruption is between the ruling and the subject 
 party, when a spirit altogether adverse to the pre¬ 
 vailing taste is seen to preside over the great bulk 
 of our ecclesiastical nominations. If power and 
 popularity shall ever stand in hostile array against 
 each other, we are not to wonder though the re¬ 
 sult should be, a church on the one hand, frowning 
 aloof in all the pride and distance of hierarchy 
 upon our population, and a people on the other, 
 revolted into utter distaste for establishments, and 
 mingling with this a very general alienation of 
 heart from all that carries the stamp of authority 
 in the land. 
 
 We should like, even for the cause of public tran¬ 
 quillity and good order, that there were a more 
 respectful accommodation to the popular taste in 
 Christianity, than the dominant spirit of ecclesias¬ 
 tical patronage in our day is disposed to render it. 
 We conceive the two main ingredients of this taste 
 to be, in the first place, that esteem which is felt by 
 
177 
 
 human nature for what is believed to be religious ho¬ 
 nesty; and, in the second place, the appetite of hu¬ 
 man nature, when made, in any degree, alive to a 
 sense of its spiritual wants, for that true and Scrip¬ 
 tural ministration which alone can relieve them. 
 Now, if these be, indeed, the principles of the popu¬ 
 lar taste, we know not how a deeper injury can be 
 inflicted, than when all its likings and demands, on 
 the subject of religion, are scorned disdainfully 
 away. There is a very quick and strong discrimina¬ 
 tion between that which it relishes and that which it 
 dislikes, in the ministrations of a religious teacher; 
 and, previous to all enquiry into the justice of this 
 discrimination, it must be obvious, that if instead 
 of being gratified by the compliances of patronage, 
 it is subjected to an increasing and systematic an¬ 
 noyance, this must gender a brooding indignancy 
 at power among the people, or, at least, a heart¬ 
 less indifference to all that is associated with the 
 government of the country, or with the matters of 
 public administration. 
 
 In every matter that is seen intensely to affect 
 the popular mind—that mind which is so loud in 
 its discontent, and so formidable in its violence— 
 that mind, the ebullitions of which have raised so 
 many a wasting storm in our day, and which, still 
 heaving, and dissatisfied, and restless, seems as if 
 it would roll back the burden of its felt or its fan¬ 
 cied wrongs on the institutions from which they 
 have germinated—it surely is the part of political 
 wisdom to allay rather than infuriate the disorder, 
 
178 
 
 by according all which it can, and all which it 
 ought, to the general wish of society. And the 
 obligation were still more imperious, should it be 
 made out that the thing wished for would add to 
 the public tranquillity, by adding to the public 
 virtue—that what is granted would not merely ap¬ 
 pease a present desire, but would shed a pure as 
 well as a pacifying influence over the future ha¬ 
 bits of our population—that, instead of a bribe 
 which corrupted, it were a boon to exalt and to 
 moralise them: thus combining what is rarely to 
 be met with in one ministration, the property of 
 calling forth a grateful emotion now, and the pro¬ 
 perty of yielding the precious fruit both of nation¬ 
 al worth and loyalty hereafter. 
 
 We believe that there is no one subject o 11 
 which our statesmen are more woefully in the 
 dark, than the right exercise of church patron¬ 
 age. They apprehend not its true bearings on 
 the political welfare of the country. The whole 
 question is blended with theology: and this has 
 shaded it with such a mystery to their eyes, as one 
 profession holds forth to the eye and the discern¬ 
 ment of another. They have not, in fact, steadily 
 looked to the matter, with their own understand¬ 
 ing; and acting, as they often do, in the hurry of 
 their manifold occupations, on the guidance and 
 information of others, they have very naturally 
 reposed this part of their policy on the advice of 
 mere ecclesiastics. It is true, that, in many a 
 single instance, the nomination may be so over- 
 
179 
 
 ruled by family interest and connection, as to 
 bring patronage and popularity into one. But, 
 with this abatement, there is a leading policy 
 which presides over this department of public af¬ 
 fairs; and we repeat it, that it is a policy mainly 
 derived from the representations and the authority 
 of churchmen. It is far more the interest of a go¬ 
 vernment to be right than wrong; and we think, 
 that in this, as in every other branch of then- ope¬ 
 rations, they do what is honestly believed to be 
 most for the civil and political well-being of the 
 state. But, just as in questions of commerce, 
 they maybe misled by lending their ear to the po¬ 
 litical science of party and interested merchants; 
 so, in questions of church countenance and pre¬ 
 ferment, they may be misled by lending their ear 
 to the oracles of a spiritual partizanship. It is 
 thus that the main force of their patronage may 
 be directed to one kind of theology; and that may 
 be the very theology which unpeoples the Esta¬ 
 blishment of its hearers. It is thus that their hon¬ 
 ours and rewards may, in the great bulk of them, 
 be lavished on one set of ecclesiastics, and these 
 may be the very ecclesiastics who alienate the po¬ 
 pulation from the church, and so widen the unfor¬ 
 tunate distance that obtains between the holders 
 of power in a country, and the subjects of it. 
 
 It is . manifest, therefore, that there must, on 
 this subject, be a delusion somewhere, though it 
 may not be easy to expose it. It is obviously for 
 the interest of statesmen that there should be a 
 
180 
 
 harmony of temper between them and the popu¬ 
 lation; -and never is this so forced upon our con¬ 
 victions as When, in a time like the present, a 
 slumbering fire is at work, which, if much further 
 irritated, will break out into fierce and open con¬ 
 flagration on the existing structure of society. 
 We know' not what the political concessions are, 
 which would allay the tumults of the public mind; 
 nor are we sure that any concessions of that sort 
 would be at all effectual. But there is, at least, 
 one avenue by which our rulers might still find 
 their way to acceptance and gratitude all over the 
 land. There is, at least, one link of communica¬ 
 tion, to the fastening of which they have only to 
 put forth a friendly hand; and, by keeping hold 
 of which, they will be sure to retain a steady hold 
 on the affections of a now alienated multitude. It 
 must be quite , palpable, even to themselves, that 
 there is one kind of church appointment which 
 sends a glow of satisfaction abroad among the fa¬ 
 milies of a parish; and that, by a boon so cheap 
 and simple, as a mere habit of acceptable patron¬ 
 age, they may bring in as many willing captives 
 to the -Establishment, as there is room in the 
 Establishment' to receive. Little as they may 
 know of ttietheOlogy of the question, they must, 
 at least,' 'know that which so- much glares upon 
 the observation of all, as that, with a certain style 
 of ecclesiastical patronage , 1 they may, when they 
 will, turn the great current of the population into 
 the national church, and again replenish the emp- 
 
181 
 
 ty pews and spacious but deserted edifices of the 
 their great hierarchy, with willing and delighted 
 hearers from all the ranks of society. And the 
 question recurs, what is the might and the myste¬ 
 ry of that spell which has so bewildered our men 
 of power from the path that would lead to a result 
 so desirable? Or, if not the effect of an infatua¬ 
 tion, but of a principle, what are the weighty rea¬ 
 sons of vindication for a policy that has so severed 
 the church from the common people, and reduced 
 to naked architecture one-half of that costly ap¬ 
 paratus, reared by a former age, for upholding 
 the Christian worth and virtue of the common¬ 
 wealth? 
 
 There seem to be three distinct grounds, on 
 which the popular taste in Christianity is so much 
 held at nought by the dispensers of patronage. 
 First, on the ground of the contempt that is felt 
 for it, as a low, drivelling affection; secondly, on 
 the ground of the moral reprobation in which it is 
 held as being inimical to human virtue; and, 
 thirdly, on the ground of the suspicion that it is 
 in close alliance with a factious and turbulent 
 disposition, and that, therefore, every encourage¬ 
 ment which is awarded to it forms an accession 
 of strength to the cause of democracy in-the land. 
 On one or other of these grounds is there an array of 
 contempt and resistance against the popular taste; 
 and men of the highest ascendency in the kin g, 
 dom are often to be seen among the foremost in 
 this array. The cry of, down with fanaticism, 
 
182 
 
 ascends from the bosom of the church; and the 
 dignitaries of the state may be observed in firmly 
 leagued opposition with the dignitaries of religion, 
 against the warmest likings of the multitude. 
 
 I. First, then, the popular taste in Christianity 
 is often treated by the holders of patronage, as if 
 it were a perverse appetite for absurdity and er¬ 
 ror. It is looked to as a thing of whim, and a 
 tiling of imagination; and there can be no doubt 
 that it has its occasional whims and absurdities— 
 its squeamish dislike to what is in itself very inno¬ 
 cent—and its fanciful and extravagant regards 
 to what in itself is very insignificant. Among 
 these we would remark its puling and fantastic 
 antipathy to all the visible symptoms of written 
 preparation in the pulpit*,—and its jealousy of all 
 doctrine that is uttered in any other than the cur¬ 
 rent phraseology,—and its sensitive recoil from 
 such innovations of outward form, as might sim¬ 
 plify or improve any of the services of the church, 
 —and its appetite for length and loudness, and 
 wearisome occasions, and other puerilities, which 
 have made it appear an utterly weak and con¬ 
 temptible thing, in the eye of many a scornful 
 observer. The popular taste, even in its pur- 
 
 * We must, however, earnestly recommend to all the readers of sermons, 
 that they, shall try to attain thehabitof reading them freely and impressively, 
 and in such a way as marks the direct communication of personal feeling 
 from the speaker to those whom he addresses. 
 
183 
 
 est and most respectable form, will still be a sub¬ 
 ject for caricature. But it has supplied additional 
 features for such a sketch out of its own follies, 
 and its own excrescencies; insomuch, that, to the 
 eye of many, and those too among the most pow¬ 
 erful and enlightened of our land, does it hold 
 forth the general aspect of a freakish and way¬ 
 ward propensity, which it is quite fair-to trample 
 upon, and, at all events, no outrage on any wor¬ 
 thyfeeling of our nature, utterly to thwart and to 
 disregard. 
 
 And here one reason at least becomes manifest, 
 why, on the part of clergymen, the mere whim¬ 
 sies of popular feeling ought not to be complied 
 with; and that between favourite preachers and 
 their doting admirers such a spectacle should ne¬ 
 ver be held out, as that of servile indulgence upon 
 the one side, and weak, trifling, senseless conceits 
 of taste and partiality, on the other. It is this 
 which, more perhaps than any other cause, has 
 degraded the popular opinion into a thing of no 
 estimation, and has thrown circumstances of ridi¬ 
 cule around it, which have given an edge to sa¬ 
 tire, and furnished a plea of extenuation for the 
 policy that holds it at nought. If it be grievous 
 to observe the demand of the people about frivo¬ 
 lities of no moment, it is still more grievous to 
 behold the deference which is rendered thereto by 
 the fearful worshippers at the shrine of popularity. 
 It is a fund of infinite amusement to lookers on, 
 when they see, in this interchange of little minds, 
 
184 
 
 how small matters can become great, and each 
 caprice of the popular fancy can be raised into a 
 topic of gravest deliberation. It were surely bet¬ 
 ter that Christian people reserved their zeal for 
 essentials; and that Christian teachers, instead of 
 pampering the popular taste into utter childish¬ 
 ness, disciplined it, by a little wholesome resis¬ 
 tance, into an appetite, at once manly, and ratio¬ 
 nal, and commanding. Every thing that can 
 disarm the popular voice of its energy will be la¬ 
 mented by those who think as we do, that it is a 
 voice which, in the matters of Christianity, is 
 mainly directed to what is practically and substan¬ 
 tially good; and that it is just the despite which 
 has been done to it that has so paralyzed the mi¬ 
 nistrations of our Establishment. And, therefore, 
 do we hold it so desirable that the popular taste 
 were chastened out of all those vagaries which 
 have just had the effect of chasing away the hom¬ 
 age that else would have been rendered to it. We 
 know that it has its occasional weaknesses and ex¬ 
 travagancies; but we believe that these are in no 
 way essential to it, and that, by the control of the 
 ministers of religion, acting wisely, and'honestly, 
 and independently, they could all be done away. 
 Though these were lopped off from the affection, 
 it would still subsist, with undiminished vigour, 
 and it would then be seen what it nakedly and 
 characteristically is—not that mere fantastic relish 
 which it is often conceived to be, but the deep and 
 strong aspiration of conscious humanity, feeling, 
 
185 
 
 and most intelligently feeling, what the truths, 
 and who the teachers are, that are most fitted to 
 exalt and to moralise her. 
 
 In proof of this we may, with all safety, allege 
 that let there be a teacher of religion, with a con¬ 
 science alive to duty, and an understanding sound¬ 
 ly and strongly convinced of the truths of the 
 gospel; let him, with these as his only recommen¬ 
 dations, go forth among a people, alive at every 
 pore to offence from the paltry conceits and cro¬ 
 tchets in which they have drivelled and been in¬ 
 dulged for several generations; let them be pre¬ 
 pared with all the senseless exactions which a 
 dark and narrow bigotry would often bring upon 
 a minister; and let him, disdainful of absurdity 
 in all its forms, whilst zealous and determined in 
 acquitting himself of every cardinal obligation, 
 only labour amongst them in the spirit of devoted¬ 
 ness: and it will soon be seen that the general 
 wood will of a neighbourhood is flu- more deeply 
 and solidly founded, than on the basis of such 
 petty compliances as have made popularity ridicu¬ 
 lous in the eye of many a superficial observer. 
 The truth is, that there is not one irrational pre¬ 
 judice among his hearers, which such a teacher 
 would not be at liberty to thwart and to traverse, 
 till he had dislodged it altogether. Grant him 
 the pure doctrine of the Bible for his pulpit, with 
 an overflowing'charity in his heart for household 
 ministrations—and the simple exhibition of such 
 worth and such affection on the week, from one 
 
186 
 
 who preaches the truths of Scripture ou the Sab- 
 bath, will, without one ingredient of folly, gain 
 for him, from the bosoms of all, just such a popu¬ 
 larity as is ever awarded to moral worth and to 
 moral wisdom. This, indeed, we believe to be 
 the main staple of that popularity which is so 
 much derided by the careless, and often so unfeel¬ 
 ingly trampled upon by the holders of patronage. 
 And thus it is fearful to think that, in the syste¬ 
 matic opposition which has been raised upon this 
 subject against the vox populi, government may, 
 unknowing of the mischief have been checking, 
 all the while, the best aspiration that can arise 
 from the bosom of a country—may have been 
 combating, in its first elements, the growth of 
 virtue in our land—and, in wanton variance with 
 its own subjects about the principles of religion, 
 may have been withering up all those graces of re¬ 
 ligion, which would else have blessed and beauti¬ 
 fied our population. 
 
 II. But this brings us to the second imputation 
 that has been brought against the popular taste, 
 in matters of Christianity—far graver than any 
 that is uttered in the mere playfulness of con¬ 
 tempt, and in virtue of which it has often been 
 reckoned with, as a pernicious delusion that un¬ 
 settles the morality of the people, as if, in its 
 preference for doctrine, it loathed and neglected 
 duty, and could only relish that ministration, 
 which, instead of acting as a stimulus, acted as a 
 soporific to human virtue. This we believe to be 
 
187 
 
 a very prevailing conception among the enemies 
 of popular Christianity; and hence there are not 
 a few who may resist its inroads as conscientiously 
 as they would the inroads of any moral pestilence, 
 
 _regarding the character of the population as ex¬ 
 posed to hazard from the currency of a favourite 
 and high-sounding mysticism, that made no ac¬ 
 count of ordinary practice, and left the conduct 
 of its disciples without restraint and without regu¬ 
 lation. There is the imagination of a seducing An- 
 tinomianism, in the creed of the vulgar, that enters 
 into all this hostility against their opinion and their 
 will in matters of religion, and often gives the tone 
 of serious indignant principle to a'distinct class of 
 antagonists from the former—who, more disposed 
 to fasten on the alleged follies of the popular taste, 
 regard it rather as a topic of light and airy ridi¬ 
 cule, than as a topic of earnest, solemn, and em¬ 
 phatic denunciation. 
 
 Now what we affirm is, that the very peculiar 
 economy of the gospel, devised as it has been for 
 the recovery of a sinful race from a great aberra¬ 
 tion into which they have wandered, exposes its 
 most honest and intelligent disciples to precisely 
 these aspersions—and that, therefore, the mise- 
 steem in which the popular taste is held may be 
 due to a misunderstanding of this economy. The 
 gospel, in the first instance, proclaims so wide an 
 amnesty for transgression, that the most gross and 
 worthless offenders are included; and there is 
 rone so far sunt in the depths and atrocities of 
 
188 
 
 moral turpitude, but that still the overtures of re¬ 
 deeming mercy may be brought down, even to 
 his degraded level, and he be told of an open 
 gate and a welcome admittance to heaven’s sanc¬ 
 tuary. That blood of atonement which cleans- 
 eth from all sin is proclaimed of virtue enough to 
 cleanse him from his sin; and he, without any de¬ 
 duction whatever, on the score of his former ini¬ 
 quities, is not barely permitted, but entreated and 
 urged to enter, through a great propitiation, up¬ 
 on the firm ground of acceptance with God. 
 
 Now, it is not merely that such encouragement, 
 held forth in the gospel to the most profligate 
 of our species, has suggested the idea of an im¬ 
 punity held forth by it to moral evil. But what 
 serves still more, perhaps, to stir the imputation, 
 that it makes no account of moral distinctions 
 whatever, is, that it appears to reduce the purest 
 and most profligate to the same level of worthless¬ 
 ness before God, and, in pointing to the avenue 
 of reconciliation, addresses both of them in the 
 6ame terms. It looks as if, under this new system, 
 all the varieties of character were to be supersed¬ 
 ed; and it is, indeed, a very natural conclusion 
 from the doctrine of the efficiency of faith with¬ 
 out works, that works are henceforth to be in no 
 demand and of no estimation. The man who is 
 deemed by society to have no personal righteous¬ 
 ness whatever, is told to link all his hopes of ac¬ 
 ceptance with the righteousness of Christ; and 
 the man to whom society awards the homage of a 
 
189 
 
 pure and virtuous character, is likewise told that 
 it is a fatal error to ground his security on any 
 righteousness of his own; but that he also must 
 place all his reliance before God on the righte¬ 
 ousness of Christ. This is very like, it has been 
 said, to the entire dismissal of the personal vir¬ 
 tues from religion, and the substitution of a mere 
 intellectual dogma in their place. It is certainly 
 a dogma, that glares upon us as the most promi¬ 
 nent feature of the popular or evangelical system; 
 and we ought not to wonder if, on a partial and 
 hurried contemplation, it should be apprehended 
 that, instead of amending the people, its direct 
 tendency is to vitiate and demoralise them. 
 
 For the purpose of arriving at truth in this 
 matter, it were well to reflect under what kind of 
 moral impression it is, that a believer, who hopes 
 for acceptance through the Mediator, renounces 
 all trust in his own righteousness. They who 
 would malign his system, affirm it to be, that it 
 is because his moral sense is so far obliterated, 
 that the distinction between right and wrong has 
 become a nullity in his estimation; insomuch that 
 he looks on a man of double criminality to be no 
 further, on that account, than his neighbour, from 
 the friendship of God. But might it not rather 
 be, because his moral sense is so far quickened 
 and enlightened, that the differences between the 
 better and the worse among men are lost in the 
 overwhelming impression that he has of the fear¬ 
 ful deficiency of all? The man whose conceptions 
 
190 
 
 have been enlarged upward to the high measure¬ 
 ments of astronomy, may know that, though one 
 earthly object is nearer to the sun than another, 
 yet the distance of both is so great as to give 
 him the impression of a nearly equal remoteness 
 with each of them. And the man whose con¬ 
 science has been informed upon heaven’s law, 
 may know that though one of his fellows has, by 
 an act of theft, receded further than himself, who 
 never stole, yet that both are standing in their 
 common ungodliness at an exceeding wide dis¬ 
 tance of alienation from the spirit and character 
 of heaven. "When one man’s righteousness is 
 placed by the side of another, it would argue a 
 moral blindness, not to perceive the shade of dif¬ 
 ference that there is between them. When the 
 better righteousness of the two is placed by the 
 side of the Saviour’s, it would argue a still more 
 grievous defect both of moral sight and moral 
 sensibility, not to perceive the contrast that 
 there is between the sacred elfulgency of the one 
 and the shaded earthly ambiguous character of 
 the other. And if, in the New Testament, the 
 alternative be actually placed within the reach of 
 all, of either being tried according to their own 
 righteousness, or of their being treated according 
 to the righteousness of Christ—it may not be from 
 a dull, but from a tender and enlightened sense of 
 moral distinctions, when one renounces the former, 
 and cleaves to the latter, as all his defence and 
 all his dependence, 
 
191 
 
 It seems to be on this principle that the publi¬ 
 cans and the sinners, in the gospel, are stated to be 
 before the Pharisees, in coming to the kingdom of 
 heaven. The palpable delinquencies of the former 
 seem to have forced more readily upon their ap¬ 
 prehension the need of another righteousness than 
 their own. The plausible accomplishments of the 
 latter served to blind their consciences against this 
 necessity. They were alive to the difference that 
 obtained between themselves and others. But, 
 they were not alive to the deficiency of their own 
 character from the requirements of God. And 
 it is thus, perhaps, that the doctrine of human 
 worthlessness still finds its readiest acceptance 
 among the lower orders of society. Their beset¬ 
 ting sins are of easier demonstration than either 
 the voluptuous or ungodly affections of the rich, 
 blended as they often are with so much honour, 
 and elegance, and sensibility. Still, it is not from 
 the dulness, but from the delicacy of the moral 
 sense, that it can penetrate its way, through all 
 these disguises, to the actual character of him who 
 is invested with them: and it is not because this 
 power of the human mind is steeped in lethargy, 
 but because it is of quick and vigorous discern¬ 
 ment, that man renounces his own righteousness, 
 and betakes himself to the righteousness of faith. 
 
 And what is true of the acceptance of this righ¬ 
 teousness on the part of man, is also true of the 
 proposal of it on the part of God. It is not be¬ 
 cause he under-rates morality, that he refuses the 
 
192 
 
 morality of man as a plea of confidence before 
 him—but, because sensitive of the slightest en¬ 
 croachment on a law, the authority of which he 
 holds to be inviolable, he will not admit the ap¬ 
 proach of sinners, but in a way that recognizes 
 the truth of the Lawgiver, and thoroughly recon¬ 
 ciles it with the exercise of his mercy. Through¬ 
 out the whole economy of the system of grace, 
 there is not one expression which so thoroughly 
 and so legibly pervades it, as the irreconcileable 
 variance that there is between sin and the nature 
 of the Godhead. It would almost look as if it 
 were for the purpose of holding forth this expres¬ 
 sion, that the whole apparatus of redemption was 
 instituted. Every circumstance that can give 
 weight to such a solemn demonstration is made to 
 accompany the overtures of forgiveness to man in 
 the New Testament. It is not a simple assurance 
 of pardon that is there exhibited, but of pardon 
 linked with the atonement that has been rendered 
 for iniquity. This, in truth, is the leading pecu¬ 
 liarity of the gospel dispensation, that while mer¬ 
 cy is addressed to all, it is addressed in such terms, 
 and through such a line of conveyance, as to mag¬ 
 nify all the other attributes of Deity. So that 
 man cannot enter into peace but through the me¬ 
 dium of such a contemplation as must obtrude 
 upon his mind the entire and untainted purity of 
 the divine nature. The avenue of reconciliation 
 is inscribed on each side of it with the evil of sin, 
 and with the sacred jealousy against it of a most 
 high and holy God. 
 
193 
 
 And, if it be God’s intolerance of sin, and a 
 high sense of the authority of his law, as inviol¬ 
 able—if it be these that modelled the gospel eco¬ 
 nomy at the first—it were strange, indeed, should 
 these principles fall out of sight, or be, in any 
 way, traversed and given up, in the subsequent 
 progress and application of the gospel among 
 men. It were strange, indeed, if those principles 
 which originated this system should be abandoned, 
 or even so much as impaired in its forthgoings 
 through the world—if the moral expression it 
 bears so decisively, as it comes out of the hands 
 of God, should be dissipated into nothing, when 
 making its way through the hearts and the habi¬ 
 tations of men—if that which so strongly marked, 
 at its outset, God’s abhorrence of sin, should, in 
 any of its future developements, have the effect 
 of encouraging sin—or, if a method of salvation 
 so peculiarly devised, and that, for the express 
 purpose of guarding and demonstrating the hon¬ 
 ours of virtue, should, after it is brought out to 
 the notice, and has gained the concurrence of 
 those for whom it was instituted, obliterate, in 
 their minds, the distinction between right and 
 wrong, or reduce virtue to a thing of no demand 
 and no estimation. 
 
 The gospel, in the meantime, maintains a most 
 entire consistency with itself. It unfolds that 
 provision by which atonement has been made for 
 the guilt of sin; but it never ceases announcing 
 as its ulterior object, to exterminate the being of 
 
194 
 
 sin from the heart and the practice of all its dis¬ 
 ciples. Its office is not merely to reconcile the 
 world, but to regenerate the world; and there is 
 not an honest believer, who rejoices in pardon, 
 and does not, at the same time, aspire after all 
 moral excellence; knowing, that to prosecute a 
 strenuous departure from all iniquity is his ex¬ 
 pressly assigned vocation, and that he who, from 
 Christ as a redeemer, has obtained deliverance 
 from the punishment of sin, must, under him as 
 a captain, hold an unsparing war with the power 
 and the existence of it. 
 
 Here, then, would appear to lie the miscon¬ 
 ception which we are endeavouring to combat. 
 The advocates of the evangelical system affirm 
 the nullity of human righteousness, when regarded 
 in the light of its founding any claim to reward 
 from the great Moral Governor of our species. 
 And this affirmation of theirs hangs upon the 
 principle, that by admitting the validity of such 
 a claim, the character of heaven’s jurisprudence 
 would be degraded beneath that standard of high, 
 inflexible, and uncompromising purity, from which 
 God will not consent that it shall be brought 
 down, in accommodation to human frailty and hu¬ 
 man sinfulness. But the same August Being, who 
 is thus prompted by the holy jealousies of his na¬ 
 ture to lay an interdict on the claims of sinfulness, 
 must, on the very same prompting, be equally 
 bent on the utter extirpation of it from the char¬ 
 acter of all whom he takes into reconciliation. 
 
195 
 
 If the presumption of sin be hateful in his sight, 
 the existence of sin must be hateful to him also. 
 He who, of purer eyes than to look upon sin, can 
 have no tolerance for its claims, can have as little 
 tolerance for its wilful continuance in the sinner’s 
 bosom. The entire nullity of human righteous¬ 
 ness viewed as a plea for reward from a God of 
 such surpassing holiness, so far from being at 
 variance is altogether of a piece with the entire 
 necessity of this righteousness, viewed as a per¬ 
 sonal accomplishment for the kindred society of 
 One whose character is so lofty. There is no in¬ 
 consistency whatever, hut the directly opposite, 
 in that the obedience of man should be inadmis¬ 
 sible as his personal claim to heaven, and yet 
 indispensable as his personal qualification for it. 
 And thus it is that while, in the doctrine of jus¬ 
 tification by faith alone, the virtue of a human 
 being is not admitted as an ingredient at all into 
 that title-deed which conveys to him his right of 
 entry into paradise, it is this virtue and nothing 
 else, which making constant progress in time, and 
 reaching its consummate perfection in eternity, 
 that renders him fit for the blessedness, and the 
 employments, and the whole companionship of 
 paradise. 
 
 And perhaps the most plain and direct vindi¬ 
 cation of the evangelical system, as being altoge¬ 
 ther on the side of morality, is that morality forms 
 the very atmosphere both of the happiness which 
 it offers here, and of the heaven to which it points 
 
196 
 
 hereafter. In the service of an earthly superior, 
 the reward is distinct from the work that is done 
 for it. In the service of God, the main reward 
 lies in the very pleasure of the service itself. 
 The work and the wages are the same. It is not 
 after the keeping of the commandments, but in 
 the keeping of the commandments, that there is 
 a great reward.* Even from the little that is 
 made known to us of the upper paradise, it is evi¬ 
 dent that its essential blessedness lies not in its 
 splendour, and nothin its melody, and not in the 
 ravishment of any sensible delights or glories— 
 but simply in the possession and play of a moral 
 nature, in unison with all that is right, and in 
 the rejoicing contemplation of that Being from 
 whose countenance there beams and is imprest 
 upon all the individuals of his surrounding family 
 the moral excellence which belongs to him.t The 
 gate of reconciliation, through the blood of Christ, 
 is not merely the gate of escape from a region of 
 wrath—it is the gate of introduction to a field of 
 progressive and aspiring virtue; and it is the 
 growth of this virtue upon earth which constitutes 
 its full and its finished beatitude. The land to 
 which every honest believer is bending his foot¬ 
 steps is a land of uprightness,t where the happi¬ 
 ness simply consists in a well attempered soul res¬ 
 cued from the tyranny of evil, and restored to 
 the proper balance of principles and affections 
 
 
 f 1 John iii. 1, 2, 3. J Psalin cslvii. 9, 10. 
 
197 
 
 which had gone into derangement. It is the hap¬ 
 piness of a moral being doing what he ought, and 
 living as he ought. It were a contradiction in 
 terms, to aver of such a system that it is unfa¬ 
 vourable to the interests of virtue. The doctrine 
 of justification by faith is not the absorbent of all 
 human activity, but the primary stimulant of that 
 busy and prosperous career, in which, the soul, 
 emancipated alike from fear and earthly affection, 
 rejoices in the acquirement of a kindred charac¬ 
 ter to God, and finds the work of obedience to 
 be its congenial and best loved employments. 
 This is the real process of effort and mental dis¬ 
 cipline that is undergone by every honest believ¬ 
 er, though hidden from the general eye under the 
 guise of a phraseology that is derided and un¬ 
 known by the world. He is diligent that he may 
 be found without spot and blameless, on the 
 great day of examination. It is the business of 
 his whole life to perfect holiness' in the fear of 
 God. 
 
 And for effecting this moral transformation on 
 the character of its disciples, does this system of 
 truth provide the most abundant guarantees. It 
 holds forth the most express announcement that, 
 without, such a transformation, there will be no 
 admittance into the kingdom of God. And it 
 reveals an influence for achieving it, which is 
 ever in readiness to descend on the prayers of 
 those who aspire after the habits and the affections 
 of righteousness. And, along with the call of 
 
faith, does it lift the contemporaneous call of re¬ 
 pentance. And it marks out a path of obedience, 
 by the urgency and the guidance of precepts in¬ 
 numerable. And, so far from lulling into inac¬ 
 tion, by its free offer of forgiveness, does it only 
 thereby release its disciples from the inactivity of 
 paralysing terror, and furnish them with the most 
 generous excitements to the service of God, in 
 the love, and the gratitude, and the joy of their 
 confident reconciliation. And, finally, as if to 
 shut out all possibility of escape from the toils 
 and the employments of virtue, does it make 
 known a day of judgment, wherein man will be 
 reckoned with, not for his dogmata, but for his 
 doings; and when there will be no other estimate 
 of his principles than the impulse which they gave 
 to his practical history in the world—they who 
 have done good being called forth to the resur¬ 
 rection of the just, and they who have done evil 
 unto the resurrection of damnation. 
 
 Now, all this truth has full recognition and 
 occupancy among the articles of the evangelical 
 creed; and the doctrine of justification by faith 
 alone, so far from laying any arrest on the prac¬ 
 tical influence of it, is felt by every genuine be¬ 
 liever to give all its spirit and all its scope to 
 the new obedience of the gospel. Without this 
 doctrine, in fact, there can be no agreement be¬ 
 tween God and man, but by a degrading compro¬ 
 mise between the purity of the one and the imper¬ 
 fection of the other; and the point at which 
 
199 
 
 this compromise should be struck is left undeter¬ 
 mined, and at the discretion of each individual, 
 who will, of course, accommodate the matter to 
 the standard of his own performances; and thus, 
 under all the varieties of moral turpitude, as well 
 as of moral accomplishment, will there be a fatal 
 tranquillity of conscience, in a world where each 
 may live as he lists; and heaven’s law, once 
 brought down to suit the convenience of our fallen 
 nature, may at length offer no disturbance to any 
 degree either of ungodliness or unrighteousness in 
 our species. But, with the doctrine ofjustifica. 
 tion by faith there is no such compromise. The 
 rewards of the divine government are still granted 
 in consideration of a righteousness that is altoge¬ 
 ther worthy of them. The claims of the Godhead 
 to the perfect reverence, as well as the perfect 
 love, of his creatures, are kept unbroken; and 
 when he proclaims his will to be our sanctification, 
 the disciple, as he feels himself released from the 
 vengeance of an unbending law, also feels himself 
 to be placed in a career of exertion that is quite 
 indefinite; where he will stop short at no degree 
 of moral excellence—where he can be satisfied 
 with no assignable fulfilment whatever—where his 
 whole desire and delight, in fact, will lie in pro¬ 
 gress, and he will never cease aspiring and press¬ 
 ing forward, till he has reached his prize, and 
 stands upon the summit of perfection. 
 
 It is only under the impulse of such principles 
 as these, that the mighty host of a country’s popu- 
 
200 
 
 Jation can be trained either to the virtues of so¬ 
 ciety, or to the virtues of the sanctuary. The 
 former may, to a certain extent, flourish of them¬ 
 selves, among the children of this world’s prospe¬ 
 rity. But, saving in conjunction with, and as eman¬ 
 ating from the latter, they never can be upheld amid 
 the workshops and the habitations of industry. It 
 is a frequent delusion, that the evangelical system 
 bears no regard to the social virtues, because, 
 in the mind of an evangelical Christian, they are 
 of no religious estimation whatever, but as they 
 stand connected with the authority of God. But 
 he cannot miss to observe that the sanctions of 
 this authority are brought, in every page of the 
 Bible, most directly and abundantly to bear upon 
 them; and thus, in his eyes, do they instantly re¬ 
 appear, strengthened by all the obligations, and 
 invested with a full character of deepest sacred¬ 
 ness. The integrity of such a creed as he pro¬ 
 fesses is the best guarantee for the integrity of 
 his relative and social conduct. And it is only in 
 proportion to the prevalence of this derided ortho¬ 
 doxy, that the honesties and sobrieties of life will 
 spread in healthful diffusion over the face of the 
 country. That system of doctrine which is stig¬ 
 matized as methodism; and against which govern¬ 
 ment are led to array the whole force of their 
 overwhelming patronage; and on the approaches of 
 which ecclesiastics are often seen to combine as 
 they would against the inroads of some pestilen¬ 
 tial visitor; and which, when it does appear within 
 
201 
 
 the well-smoothed garden of the Establishment, 
 is viewed as a loathsome weed that should be cast 
 out and left to luxuriate in its rankness, among the 
 wilds and the commons of Sectarianism;—what a 
 quantity of undesigned outrage must be inflicted 
 every year on the best objects both of principle 
 and patriotism, should this, indeed, be the alone 
 system that has the truth of heaven impressed 
 upon it, and the alone system that can transform 
 and moralise the families of our land! 
 
 If, then, evangelical Christianity be popular 
 Christianity—if its lessons are ever sure to have the 
 most attractive influence upon the multitude—if, 
 whatever the explanation of the fact may be, the 
 fact itself is undeniable, that the doctrine of our 
 first Reformers, consisting mainly of justification 
 by faith, and sanctification through the Spirit of 
 God, is the doctrine which draws the most crowd¬ 
 ed audiences around our pulpits, and this doctrine 
 is, at the same time, the most powerful moralising 
 agent that can be brought to bear upon them— 
 then does it follow that the voice of the people 
 indicates most clearly, in this matter, what is best 
 for the virtue of the people—that the popular 
 taste is the organ by which conscious humanity 
 expresses what that is which is best fitted both to 
 exalt and to console her—and that, by the ne¬ 
 glect and the defiance which are so wantonly ren¬ 
 dered to its intimations, are our statesmen with¬ 
 holding the best aliment of a people’s worth, and 
 therefore the best specific for a nation’s welfare. 
 
202 
 
 III. But we now proceed to the third great 
 prejudice which requires to be combated. In the 
 mind of many of our politicians there is a con¬ 
 ceived alliance between the fervour of the popular 
 demand for that religion which is most palateable, 
 and the fervour of the popular demand for those 
 rights which form the great topic of disaffection 
 and complaint among the restless spirits of our 
 community. It is quite enough to decide their 
 impressions upon this subject, that the voice which 
 they hear in favour of a certain style of Christian¬ 
 ity, is the voice of a great assemblage, made up 
 chiefly of the vulgar; and that when it reaches 
 them, it is in the shape of a cry or a challenge 
 from the multitude. This will instantly remind 
 them of the vociferation and the menace that arise 
 from the factious on a political arena, and they 
 will feel inclined to deal with it accordingly. Let 
 there be but the sympathy of the same impassion¬ 
 ed feeling among a number of people, and, what- 
 ■ ever be the topics of it, this is quite enough to 
 conjure up to the apprehensions of many a dis¬ 
 tant observer the imagery of riot, and resistance, 
 and the sturdiness of dissatisfied plebeianism. 
 When Bishop Horsley said in Parliament, that 
 the popular zeal which had gone so extensively 
 abroad, in behalf of missionary objects, was but 
 another expression of the revolutionary spirit, or 
 a new direction which it had now taken, after 
 the overthrow of its clubs and associations, we 
 doubt not he said what he honestly believed to 
 
203 
 
 be the truth. A bare inventory of names, how¬ 
 ever, had he actually taken it, might have con¬ 
 vinced him that the missionary cause was altoge¬ 
 ther another enterprise, supported by another set 
 of individuals, and animated, too, with a spirit 
 which would not only have lent no re-inforcement 
 to the turbulence that he dreaded, but if fostered 
 through the country to the uttermost, would most 
 effectually have neutralised it. To be blind on a 
 matter like this, is to be in blindness, if not of the 
 first, at. least of among the most important ele¬ 
 ments of political wisdom. Nor can we conceive 
 how a government may be misled more grievous¬ 
 ly, than when the character and views of a great 
 and growing body of their own subjects are thus 
 misapprehended. 
 
 But there are other causes for the delusion that 
 we are now attempting to expose; and, perhaps, 
 the most powerful of them is, that insignificance 
 in which a spiritual and devoted adherent of the 
 evangelical system will generally hold all the com¬ 
 mon objects of partisanship. He cannot, with a 
 heart pre-occupied by eternal things, let himself 
 down to a keen interest in the rivalry of this 
 world’s politics. Like a man intent on the prose¬ 
 cution of a journey, and with a mind absorbed by 
 the objects of it, he cannot mingle any great ear¬ 
 nestness or intensity of feeling with the disputes 
 of his fellow travellers; and especially if they relate 
 to matters connected with the mere comfort and 
 accommodation of the few days in which they 
 
204 
 
 are to keep together. He is otherwise taken 
 up, and he finds no room in his bosom for the 
 eager and busy emulations of a combatant upon 
 an arena, where he is comparatively so little af¬ 
 fected by all that is going on. The ruling party 
 of the State can see no use for such an individual, 
 and can place but a small reliance upon him; and 
 what will confirm their whole sense of hopeless¬ 
 ness about his services is, that, as indifferent to 
 the rewards .as he is to many of the aims and ob¬ 
 jects of political adherence, he appears to stand 
 beyond the possibility of being purchased by 
 them. As contrasted with the man whom they 
 can at all times count upon, he will, indeed, be felt 
 as of little or no estimation for any of their pur¬ 
 poses. And thus it is fearful to contemplate, by 
 how direct and natural a process the whole of the 
 Church patronage that is vested in the hands of 
 Government may be employed in rearing a care¬ 
 less and worldly priesthood all over the land— 
 how the men who sit loose to time are the surest 
 to be overlooked and neglected in the dispensa¬ 
 tion of benefices; and those who, by the very zeal 
 and indiscriminateness of their party attachment, 
 betray the earthliness of the element they breathe 
 in, may, on that single account, be raised to 
 those places of highest ascendency, from which 
 the weightiest and most abundant influence could 
 be made to descend on the character of the popu¬ 
 lation; 
 
 And here we may remark how readily the want 
 
205 
 
 of a very devoted regard to the special interests 
 of a reigning and existing Administration may be 
 confounded with the want of loyalty. They who 
 honour not the king’s immediate servants lie open 
 to the imputation that they bear no great honour 
 to the king himself. Tlius it is that the man who 
 simply feels himself in a state of unconcern about 
 the stability of a present Administration, may 
 come to be likened to those radically disloyal, 
 who vent forth asperity and menace against all 
 Administrations. It is surely possible to link the 
 utmost reverence with the solid and abiding pil¬ 
 lars of the Constitution, and, at the same time, 
 to feel but small interest in the changes of that 
 more shifting and moveable part of its apparatus 
 which is termed the Cabinet. But neither is this 
 enough for the full vindication of those who can¬ 
 not embark then - zeal in the affairs and the con¬ 
 tests of partizanship. Now, this a man whose 
 zeal is all pre-engaged on higher objects cannot 
 do. And, accordingly, in this part of our king¬ 
 dom, at least, there does exist a very general 
 imagination, among the upper classes, that, with 
 the more serious and spiritual clergy of our Es¬ 
 tablishment, there is a sort of hollowness of prin¬ 
 ciple, in reference to the Government of the land 
 —a certain suspicious cast of democracy about 
 them; and altogether an ambiguity of political 
 sentiment, on which no dependence could be laid, 
 in the crisis of national danger—in the dark and 
 turbid hour of a people’s violence. 
 
206 
 
 And the man who cannot bring himself to take 
 a keen concern in the affairs of partizanship, will 
 fare no better with the resisting than he does with 
 the ruling party of the State. It is altogether of 
 a piece with the general habitude of his feelings, 
 that as he does not much care, on any ground of 
 interest, at least, whether those who are in place 
 shall retain it, so he does not much care whether 
 those who are out of place shall succeed in ac¬ 
 quiring it. In this apparent contest, indeed, be¬ 
 tween place and patriotism, he can see no more 
 of the ravenous in the firm hold of the one party 
 upon that which they have, than in the eager 
 grasping of the other after that which they have 
 not; and so, if in Parliament, he will sit and vote 
 like a conscientious juryman on the specific merits 
 of every question that comes before him. We believe 
 that, acting on the guidance of such a principle as 
 this, he will, under every successive change of the 
 Cabinet, vote generally with Ministers, and occa¬ 
 sionally against them. It is so much more the 
 interest of every Administration to be right than 
 wrong, that it were strange, indeed, if they blun¬ 
 dered the matter so systematically as to be wrong- 
 in any thing like a majority of instances. And, 
 hence, this man of simplicity, who sits loose to 
 the profit, and is only alive to the principle, of 
 our domestic politics, while, by his incidental 
 deviations from Ministry, he forfeits all confidence 
 as a stedfast and thorough-going adherent of theirs, 
 will, by his more habitual dissent from the mea- 
 
sures of Opposition, call down from the other par¬ 
 ty, a far severer weight of reprobation. 
 
 And, indeed, it may be seen of every such in¬ 
 dividual, that, while only perhaps slighted or the 
 object of playfulness to the former party, he is 
 often, to the latter, the object of a keen and im¬ 
 passioned virulence. The very circumstance of 
 their exclusion from office holds them forth to the 
 public eye as the martyrs of political integrity,— 
 and it is beyond all endurance, when the voice of 
 censure descends upon them from one who stands 
 so evidently posted on a ground of independence 
 still higher than their own. This they could bear 
 from the servile adherents of Ministry; but when it 
 comes down upon them from the eminence of ac¬ 
 credited honesty and of worth unimpeachable, it 
 is unsufferably galling. They know that the main 
 ingredient of their popularity is the imagination 
 of their disinterestedness; and it is not to be for¬ 
 given, that one who neither cares that he is out, 
 nor wishes to be in, should, ever and anon, from 
 the platform of a disinterestedness far more un¬ 
 questionable than theirs, be blasting this ima¬ 
 gination, and so neutralising the very charm in 
 which their great strength lies. To stand in the 
 ranks of Opposition is like standing in the ranks of 
 a sturdy and self-denying patriotism; and when 
 thwarted at every turn by one more pure and 
 obviously more patriotic than them all, nothing- 
 can more cruelly disarm of all its force an exhibi¬ 
 tion so imposing, and so fitted to maintain a party 
 
in public confidence and estimation. This may 
 serve to explain the angry intolerance of the min¬ 
 ority in Parliament against every man in it of true 
 independence, and also why it is upon such that 
 the anti-ministerial press is sure to lavish the whole 
 strength and bitterness of its acrimony. 
 
 And here, for the purpose of marking still more 
 specifically the men whom we are attempting to 
 describe, let them be brought into comparison 
 with another set of men, who, in some of their 
 features, may be thought to resemble them. 
 Among the political characters of our age, there 
 are certain mal-contents who are altogether unap¬ 
 peasable; and who speak despairingly alike, and 
 contemptuously alike, of both the great parties in 
 the State; and who, if not yet seated within the 
 territory of Radicalism, are at least standing on 
 the very borders of it; and with whom the passions 
 of the multitude are the favourite weapons which 
 they employ, as instruments of annoyance against 
 all the existing authorities of the land. They 
 are like the others in this, that they cohere not 
 either with the one side or the other of that great 
 regular partizanship which obtains in our legis¬ 
 lative bodies; and yet how diametrically opposite 
 are they, in the whole spirit, and principles, and 
 temper, of their public conduct. Loud, and in¬ 
 flammatory, and seizing, with most congenial ea¬ 
 gerness, upon every topic of fermentation, the 
 only element they can breathe in with comfort is 
 that of uproar and discordancy; and whether they 
 
meditate in earnest an overthrow of government 
 or not, there is no spectacle which they more evi¬ 
 dently enjoy, than when they see the fabric urged 
 and played upon by the undulations of popular vi¬ 
 olence. Such a furious denouncer of both the 
 parties in the State as one of these, stands con¬ 
 trasted, in almost all his lineaments, with him who 
 is the hireling or the devotee of neither; but whose 
 calm, reflecting, independence is altogether in the 
 spirit of that wisdom which is pure, and peaceable, 
 and gentle, and full of mercy and good fruits, 
 without partiality and without hypocrisy. And if 
 any thing be wanting to establish the total diver¬ 
 sity of principle that there is between the two 
 sorts of independence, we have only to observe 
 the aspect which the champion of radicalism bears 
 to the champion of Christian consistency in Par¬ 
 liament, and gather, from his invective and his 
 scorn, its most satisfying illustration. 
 
 But after all, it may be asked, of what possible 
 use are such men of simplicity and godly sincerity 
 in Parliament?—men, of whom you are never sure 
 on what side to find them, and whose whole line 
 of proceeding is a constant mockery on the expec¬ 
 tations of party. And, were there no higher prin¬ 
 ciple in politics than those which characterise and 
 mark off the distinctions of party, the question 
 were altogether called for. But there are higher 
 principles. The cause of order and general go¬ 
 vernment is a higher cause than the cause of any 
 Administration; and often, in periods of turbu- 
 
210 
 
 lence and national distress this cause is endanger¬ 
 ed; and it is not the suspected testimony of the 
 partizan, but the testimony of the patriot, that is 
 of any power to still the commotion. It is not 
 the man of thorough-paced devotion to his party, 
 under all the fluctuation of its principles; but the 
 man of stedfast devotion to principle, under all 
 the fluctuations of party—it is he, and he alone, 
 who can lift a voice of authority that will be list¬ 
 ened to, amid that deafening noise which, at 
 times, is heard to rise, in one appalling outcry of 
 menace and discontent, from all quarters of the 
 land. He sits loose to both parties, but, in such a 
 crisis as this, he stands at the distance of the anti¬ 
 podes from him who reviles both parties; and 
 while the one does what he may to thicken the 
 disorder, does the other rally, at the simple lifting 
 up of his voice, all the right-hearted men of the 
 nation around the standard of loyalty. Were this 
 his solitary service, it were enough to stamp upon 
 him a character of far higher value than any un¬ 
 varying adherent either ofMinistry or Opposition 
 -can lay claim to. But the truth is, that his pre¬ 
 sence in the Legislature is of daily and perpetual 
 benefit. He bears with him, at all times, an un¬ 
 seen force of control over the motions of Govern¬ 
 ment; and each of the parties, though they may 
 be ashamed to acknowledge it, are yielding him a 
 constant homage, and rendering to his principles 
 and views a constant accommodation. The man 
 who is ever to be found on a higher walk of com 
 
211 
 
 sistency than the consistency of mere partizanship, 
 cannot be disregarded with impunity. There is 
 both a moral compulsion in the worth of his own 
 character; and a still more palpable compulsion in 
 the weight of his opinions, over the best and most 
 wholesome part of the community. It is thus that 
 he obtains an unknown ascendency in Parliament, 
 not visible, in nearly its full extent, to the public 
 eye; but most distinctly and powerfully felt in all 
 those modifying processes under which every bill 
 is shaped and prepared, ere it is brought ostensi¬ 
 bly forward. If parties be indispensable to the 
 business of a large deliberative assembly, if the 
 machinery will not work without them, if there be 
 no going on, unless a certain number of hands on 
 each side of the vessel keep stedfastly by the tack¬ 
 ling at' which they are respectively stationed—let 
 the many be enlisted into this needful service, if 
 needful it really be; but let us never want the men 
 of purer and loftier character, who bring thought, 
 and conscience, and moral principle, into contact 
 with each specific movement of this great national 
 engine,—who make the freshness and simplicity 
 of their own individual worth to bear on all its 
 operations—and who, taking no part in the game 
 of competition between the two parties, but often 
 derided as anomalous by them both, are, neverthe¬ 
 less, of mighty influence in staying both the cor¬ 
 rupt encroachments of the one, and the factious 
 extravagance of the other. 
 
 It may now be perceived what a pure (which 
 
212 
 
 we have already endeavoured to prove is mainly 
 synonymous .with a popular) exercise of Church 
 patronage will do for the political well-being of 
 a country. It would, generally speaking, fill the 
 Establishment with clergy who, detached from the 
 world, on that account sat loose to partizanship; 
 but who, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the 
 Bible, on that account were the staunch and hon¬ 
 est devotees of general patriotism. To them no 
 one Administration could look for effective aid 
 against their rivals in the contest of power. But 
 on them every Administration would have rea¬ 
 son to count for the most effective aid, in the con¬ 
 test of disaffection and disloyalty against the re¬ 
 gular authorities of the land. The minister who 
 had earned the confidence of his people, by urg¬ 
 ing the faithful exposition of all Scripture upon 
 them, stands on a high and secure vantage ground, 
 when, out of that indelible record, he bids them 
 honour the king, and obey magistrates, and med¬ 
 dle not with those who are given to change, and 
 lead a quiet and a peaceable life, in all godliness 
 and honesty. These accents would fall utterly 
 powerless from the lips of one who, on an arena 
 of partizanship, had manifested the heat or the 
 worldliness of a mere political clergyman. But 
 they would carry another influence along with 
 them, when recognised as the effusions of the 
 same honest principle which took the whole round 
 of Scripture, and brought forth of its treasury all 
 the truths and lessons that are to be found in it. 
 
213 
 
 It may thus be seen, how possible it is, by one 
 style of ecclesiastical patronage, to sacrifice the 
 permanent tranquillity of the kingdom to the 
 ephemeral views of an existing Administration; 
 while, by another style of it, a secure and ever¬ 
 lasting barrier may be raised against all die surges 
 of insurrectionary violence. A church filled with 
 the zealous friends and retainers of one leading 
 political interest can have no authority over a po¬ 
 pulation whom the very character of its priesthood 
 has alienated from its services. A church teeming 
 with zealous, and holy, and well-principled evan¬ 
 gelists, that has drawn largely of its hearers from 
 the multitude, and won largely on their veneration 
 and regard—such a church, without one offering 
 at the shrine of any party whatever, but mixing 
 her lessons of loyalty with all the other lessons of 
 the Christian law, will be found, in the fiercest 
 day of a nation’s trial, to be its best and surest pal¬ 
 ladium. 
 
 But the partizanship of clergymen is just as 
 hurtful, on the one side of politics, as the other. 
 The spirit of their office should raise them above 
 this arena altogether, and lead them to refrain 
 from taking any share in the contest at all. We 
 believe that the fancied alliance between the party 
 of Whiggism in the State, and the Evangelical 
 party in the Church, has tended, in Scotland, to the 
 discouragement and depression of the best of caus¬ 
 es. It has helped to direct the whole power and 
 patronage of government against the more accept- 
 
214 
 
 able clergy of our land, and so multiplied the to-* 
 pics of heartburning and irritation between the 
 people and then - rulers. A few political clergy 
 standing prominently forth, on either side of the 
 church, will suffice to fasten a political imputation 
 on the whole body that is represented by them— 
 and it is ever to be regretted, either that Govern¬ 
 ment should thus have been blinded into the in¬ 
 discriminate opposition of all that would make 
 most for the Christian worth and eventual loyalty 
 of the population; or that the zealots of Ministry 
 should have been betrayed into the imagination 
 that they were fighting the battles of order, when, 
 mistaking sound faith for tumultuous fanaticism, 
 they were ever thwarting those ecclesiastical mea¬ 
 sures which were best fitted to harmonise as well as 
 morally to elevate the lower orders of the country. 
 A priesthood strictly devoted to their own profes¬ 
 sional objects, and keeping aloof from the contest 
 of this world’s politics, and neither servile in their 
 loyalty, nor boisterous in their independence, and 
 ardently prosecuting the literature of them order, 
 or the labour of love in their parishes—the intent 
 and engrossing aim of such a priesthood is to rear 
 a generation for eternity. But still the blessings 
 which they would scatter along the path of time 
 are also incalculable. The promise of the life 
 that now is, as well as of the life that is to come, 
 is attendant upon all their exertions. And it is 
 deeply, indeed, to be regretted, that the voice 
 of party should have so marred and transformed 
 
215 
 
 the whole of this contemplation, as to have alien¬ 
 ated the Government of the land from the alone 
 instrument that can be at all effectual in form¬ 
 ing either a moral or a manageable population. 
 
216 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 ON CHURCH PATRONAGE, CONTINUED. 
 
 We are not aware that law has provided any limi¬ 
 tation whatever to the right of patronage in the 
 English Church, which, for ought we know, may 
 be exercised in a way altogether absolute and un¬ 
 controlled, and without any power of counterac¬ 
 tion or restraint vested in the people. So that, 
 however obnoxious a presentee to a living may 
 be, in the parish that has been assigned to him, 
 he, by holding a deed of presentation, holds a 
 title to the benefice which cannot be wrested from 
 him by any earthly power. The concurrence of 
 the Bishop of the diocese is, perhaps, indispens¬ 
 able to the completion of this right; and if he be 
 not responsible to any power out of the Church 
 for the principles upon which he either grants or 
 refuses this concurrence, we can see that, how¬ 
 ever little it may have been exercised of late, there 
 virtually lies a veto among ecclesiastics on every 
 nomination to an ecclesiastical office. Still, how¬ 
 ever, should there be the same regardlessness of 
 the popular taste among the dignitaries of the 
 Church, that we fear there still is among the great 
 majority of the holders of patronage, the practical 
 security would appear as feeble as is the legal one, 
 against the likings of the multitude on the subject 
 
of Christianity being, in the greater number of in¬ 
 stances, thwarted and overborne. 
 
 In these circumstances, the most direct method 
 for restoring the Establishment to efficiency and 
 acceptance among the people, is to conciliate the 
 regard both of the patrons and of the dignitaries 
 to the evangelical system, which is the only one 
 that can attract the multitude, because the only 
 one, the application of which to their condition, or 
 their conscience, is at all felt by them. This, 
 however, is not the work of a day; and whether 
 we look to the High Church intolerance that so 
 evidently scowls from the Episcopal bench, or to 
 the jealousy of all popular interference with the 
 right of Church nomination that has recently been 
 evinced in the Legislature of these kingdoms, we 
 must still reckon ourselves at a fearful distance 
 from a right adjustment between patronage, on 
 the one hand, and popularity, on the other. This 
 distance, however, we conceive to be lessening. 
 A more just estimation of popular Christianity is 
 now making ground in the walks of property and 
 political influence; and a more respectful defer¬ 
 ence to the popular voice will be sure to follow in 
 its train. It ought now to be well understood 
 among them, that the moral reprobacy of the 
 lower orders, as well as their political restlessness 
 and discontent, emanate from popular infidelity, 
 and not from that which has been ignorantly and 
 injuriously aspersed as popular fanaticism. When 
 the whole truth becomes evident to them, it will 
 
then be perceived, that by the latter of these two 
 elements alone will the former ever be neutralised. 
 It is not by a haughty defiance to the taste or the 
 tendencies of the multitude; or by declamatory 
 charges against sectarianism; or by a remote and 
 lofty attitude of withdrawment, on the part of her 
 superior ecclesiastics, from all those Christian in¬ 
 stitutions which are at once the ornament and the 
 blessing of our country; or by the strict and jea¬ 
 lous guardianship of bishops, in alarm for the im¬ 
 portation of an enthusiastic spirit into their dio- 
 'ceses: it is not thus that the Church of England 
 ever will acquire a religious and rightful ascen¬ 
 dency over its population. Under such a process 
 her arm will wither into powerlessness; and an 
 instrument, else of greater might and efficacy than 
 dissenterism, with the putting forth of all her en¬ 
 ergies, can ever hope to attain to—will lose its 
 whole force of moral and salutary control over the 
 character of the nation. The alienation of the 
 people will widen every year from the bosom of 
 the Establishment—and the Establishment, reft of 
 all spiritual virtue, will at length be reduced to a 
 splendid impotency of noble edifices, and high 
 gifted endowments, and stately imposing ceremo¬ 
 nial. We plead not for the overthrow of this mag¬ 
 nificent framework; for, if animated with the 
 breath of another spirit, as it stands, we conceive 
 it fitted to wield a far more commanding influ¬ 
 ence on the side of Christianity than were likely to 
 come from the ashes of its conflagration. But ne- 
 
219 
 
 ver will it recover this influence, till the spirit of 
 the olden time be recalled—never, till what is now 
 dreaded by the majority of that Church as fanati¬ 
 cism come again to be recognized and cherish¬ 
 ed as the sound faith of the gospel—never, till 
 what they now nauseate as methodism be felt as 
 the alone instrument that can either moralise the 
 people in time, or make them meet for eternity. 
 
 Our reason for affirming a jealousy of the popu¬ 
 lar voice in tire appointment of clergy, on the part 
 of the British Legislature, is founded on an exam¬ 
 ination of their recent Act for building, and pro¬ 
 moting the building, of additional churches, in 
 populous parishes. Though the Parliamentary 
 grant for this object is so small that, for a great 
 national effort, it must be extensively aided by the 
 voluntary subscriptions of the people, yet the will 
 of the people is admitted to no authority in the 
 nomination of the minister. Their contributions 
 are looked for, without any such equivalent, cither 
 in whole or in part, being provided to encourage 
 them. When the erection is a chapel for an eccle¬ 
 siastical district, the patronage is vested either in 
 the incumbent of the parish, or the chapel is to be 
 patronised in such a way as may be agreed upon 
 by the patrons of the parish where it is situated, 
 in conjunction with the commissioners for carrying 
 the act into execution. When the erection is a 
 new parish church, then its patronage is vested in 
 the patron of the original parish^from which it is 
 detached. In other words, patronage is to have as 
 
great an ascendency; and the popular will to be of 
 as little legal force in counteracting it, with the 
 new churches, as with the present ones; and so 
 sensitive is the aversion to any limitation upon the 
 former element, by the encroachment of the lat¬ 
 ter, that when a clause was proposed in the House 
 of Commons, for vesting the patronage of new 
 churches or chapels in the twelve highest sub¬ 
 scribers, where the edifices were raised wholly by 
 subscription, this clause, though supported by 
 the whole evangelical interest in Parliament, and 
 advocated by the chiefs of Administration, called 
 forth a prompt and overbearing majority, who in¬ 
 stantly put it down. 
 
 Now this is certainly not the way to promote the 
 building of new churches; neither is it the way to 
 secure an attendance upon them, after theyarebuilt. 
 And the only hopeful circumstance in the whole 
 of this national provision is, that the stipend of the 
 minister is paid out of the pew-rents which are 
 raised from the hearers. This will compel an ac¬ 
 commodation to the popular taste at least in the first 
 instance. But we cannot fail to remark how ut¬ 
 terly helpless every speculation of our Legislature 
 is, about the revival and the growth of public vir¬ 
 tue in our land, when thus impeded by their own 
 groundless alarms; and by their utter misconcep¬ 
 tion of what that instrument is, by which people can 
 be drawn to an attendance on the lessons of Chris¬ 
 tianity, or of what that Christianity is which eman¬ 
 ated pure from the mouth of revelation, and which, 
 
by its adaptation to human want and human con¬ 
 sciousness, is sure to meet with a responding 
 movement from the multitude, whenever it is ad¬ 
 dressed to them. 
 
 There is one evil that has ensued upon this 
 movement of the Legislature. It has tended to 
 fill and to satisfy the public imagination, and thus 
 laid an arrest upon the zeal of private adventur¬ 
 ers, who are friendly alike to the cause of the 
 Establishment and to the cause of Christian edu¬ 
 cation. Previous to the passing of this Act, Mr. 
 Gladstone of Liverpool erected two new churches 
 in that town, after having negotiated for him¬ 
 self, not the permanent right of patronage, for 
 this could not be obtained, but the three first no¬ 
 minations of a minister to each of them. There 
 was, in this instance, every security for a popular 
 exercise of the right of patronage. The zeal which 
 prompted the undertaking was, in itself, a gua¬ 
 rantee for the appointment of acceptable and ef¬ 
 fective clergymen. And, besides, as the seat- 
 rents were to form the revenue both for the sti¬ 
 pend of the minister, and for the repair and up¬ 
 holding of the fabrics, there was all the power of 
 a veto conceded, by the arrangement itself) to the 
 popular voice. It is gratifying to know that this 
 patriotic and enlightened gentleman, after having 
 so materially strengthened the interests of the 
 Establishment, and added to it two flourishing 
 congregations, in that great commercial town, 
 where his philanthropy and public spirit have so 
 
much distinguished him, has just been indemni¬ 
 fied for the expenses of his most benevolent specu¬ 
 lation, by its actual returns. This is a most im¬ 
 portant fact, in as far as it indicates a safe and 
 likely career for the multiplication of religious 
 edifices in our most populous and unprovided ci¬ 
 ties. And would magistrates or patrons, on the 
 one hand, concede a liberal allowance of patron¬ 
 age to subscribers, we doubt not that wealthy in¬ 
 dividuals, on the other, both ready to hazard and 
 even willing to lose in a good cause, would, in 
 imitation of this fine example, come forth in suf¬ 
 ficient strength, to second the designs and great¬ 
 ly to outrun the power of Government, in for¬ 
 warding an enterprise so closely allied with the 
 very highest objects after which either statesman 
 or philanthropist can aspire. 
 
 And here it occurs to us to say, that had Mr. 
 Gladstone obtained the perpetual patronage of his 
 two churches, in return for having erected and 
 endowed them, the right would have descended, 
 by inheritance, to his family, and, like any other 
 property, been transferable by pie. The right 
 would have originated most legitimately, and been 
 transmitted most legitimately; and long, perhaps, 
 after the purely Christian object which it subserv¬ 
 ed at first had passed out of remembrance, would 
 it be assimilated, in its character and in its exer¬ 
 cise, to any other private right of church patron¬ 
 age in the country. We know not in how far the 
 actual patronage in our land has taken its origin 
 
223 
 
 and its descent from the liberality of pious and 
 benevolent founders; or been rendered to great 
 proprietors, as, an equivalent for the burden of 
 church expenses which was laid upon them. But 
 when we think for what essential purposes this 
 right may be acquired, and how fairly it may be 
 appropriated and handed down in families, from 
 one generation to another, we are led to look to 
 its guidance and not to its overthrow, for any 
 great Christian reformation of the churches in 
 our land. The holders of this important right will, 
 at length, participate in the growing spirit and il¬ 
 lumination of the age; and while others regard pa¬ 
 tronage as the great instrument of the corruption 
 and decline of Christianity, we trust that, under 
 the impulse of better principles, it will, at length, 
 become the instrument of its revival. 
 
 It is not to any violent demolition in the exist¬ 
 ing framework of society, that we look for the 
 impulse which is to regenerate our nation. The 
 actual constitution, whether of Church or State, 
 is a piece of goodly and effective mechanism, 
 were the living agents who work it animated with 
 the right zeal and the right principle. And sorry 
 should we he, in particular, were a rashly inno¬ 
 vating hand laid upon the venerable Hierarchy of 
 England. Even the affluence of its higher dig¬ 
 nitaries, so obnoxious to the taste of some, could 
 be made subservient to the best of causes; and 
 through it, the principle of deference to station, 
 which, in spite of all his assumed sturdiness, eve- 
 
224 
 
 ry man feels to be insuperable within him, may be 
 enlisted on the side of Christianity. We envy not 
 that dissenter his feelings, who would not bless 
 God and rejoice, in the progress of an apostolical 
 Bishop through his diocese. But it is not from this 
 quarter, at present, that the glance of disapproba¬ 
 tion and disdain is made to fall upon him. It is 
 from his own brethren, we fear, on the episcopal 
 bench, who if, instead of lifting upon him the 
 frown of a hostile countenance, were to go and 
 do likewise, would throne their Establishment in 
 the affections of the whole population, and, by 
 the resistless moral force which lies in the union of 
 humble worth and exalted condition, would cause 
 both the radicalism and infidelity of our land to 
 hide their faces, as ashamed. Wherever the good 
 Bishop of Gloucester assumes, for a day, the office 
 of humble pastor, in one of the humblest of his 
 parishes, he leaves an unction of blessedness be¬ 
 hind him; and the amount of precious fruit that 
 springs from such an itinerancy of love and evan¬ 
 gelical labour is beyond all computation. Such a 
 mingling with the people as this would not confound 
 ranks, but most firmly harmonise them. It would 
 sanctify and strengthen all the bonds of society. 
 And it is wretched to think not merely of sound 
 principle being thrown aside, but of sound policy 
 being so glaringly traversed by the derision and 
 the discouragement which are laid on all the ac¬ 
 tivities of religious zeal—or, that they who pre¬ 
 side over the destinies of the English Church, as 
 
225 
 
 well as they who patronise her, should have been 
 misled into the imagination that her security lies 
 in her stillness—and that, should the warmth of 
 restless sectarianism be, in any semblance or mea¬ 
 sure, imported into her bosom, it will burn up and 
 destroy her. 
 
 In Scotland, too, there is a law of patronage 
 now firmly established, and now almost entirely 
 acquiesced in; and there are few belonging to our 
 Church, who ever think of disputing the right of 
 the patron to the nomination. But there seems 
 to be a great diversity of understanding about the 
 line which separates his right from the right of the 
 Church. He can nominate; but it would startle 
 the great majority of our clergy, were they told, 
 that the Church can, on any principle which seem- 
 eth to her good, arrest the nominee. The Church 
 can, on any ground she chooses, lay a negative 
 on any man whom the patron chooses to fix upon. 
 It is her part, and in practice she has ever done 
 so, to sit in judgment over every individual no. 
 mination. There are a thousand ways, in which 
 a patron might, through the individual whom he 
 nominates, throw corruption into the bosom of 
 our Establishment; and we would give up our best 
 securities, we would reduce our office as constitu¬ 
 tional guardians of the Church, to a degrading 
 mockery, were we to act as if there was nothing 
 for it, but to look helplessly on, and to lament that 
 there was no remedy. The remedy is most com- 
 <2 u 
 
226 
 
 pletely within ourselves. We can take a look at 
 the presentee; and if there be anything whatever, 
 whether in his talents, or in his character, or in 
 his other engagements, or in that moral barrier 
 which the general dislike of a parish would raise 
 against his usefulness, and so render him unfit, in 
 our judgment, for labouring in that portion of the 
 vineyard, we can set aside the nomination, and 
 call on the patron to look out for another pre¬ 
 sentee. It is the patron who ushers the presen¬ 
 tee into our notice; but the fitness of the person 
 for the parish is a question which lies solely and 
 supremely at the decision of the ecclesiastical 
 courts. 
 
 For the purpose of limiting the Church in the 
 exercise of this right, it has been contended that 
 her judgment on the fitness of the presentee is re¬ 
 stricted to the mere question of his moral and lite¬ 
 rary qualifications. But she has often taken a far 
 wider range of cognizance than this, and there is 
 nothing to prevent her from widening that range 
 to any extent she will. Previous to the enactment 
 of that law which, with all the formalities, has re¬ 
 cently been established, and by which a Professor 
 in a university is declared incapable of holding a 
 country parish, there was the case of a Professor, 
 who had received a presentation to such a parish, 
 brought up for the decision of the General As¬ 
 sembly. It is true that, by a majority of five, he 
 was found a competent person for the charge; but, 
 had three of these five voted differently, the hold- 
 
227 
 
 er of the presentation would have given it up as a 
 lost cause; nor would it ever have entered into 
 the conception of the patron that any thing re¬ 
 mained for him but to issue a new presentation in 
 behalf of some other individual. The incompe¬ 
 tency of the presentee would thus have been de¬ 
 clared, and on a ground altogether different from 
 that of moral or literary qualification. The truth 
 is, that the Church is not at all limited to particu¬ 
 lar grounds. She is at liberty to decide on any 
 principle she may; and, instead of departing from 
 her character, will, in fact, dignify and adorn it, 
 by admitting every principle connected with the 
 religious good of the people into her deliberations. 
 She can set aside any presentee, and that general¬ 
 ly on the principle that it is not for the cause of 
 edification that his presentation should be sustain¬ 
 ed. More particularly she has often, in the course 
 of her bygone history, judged it inexpedient to 
 settle a presentee, in the face of violent dislike and 
 opposition from the people; and, on this principle, 
 alone, has laid her veto upon his presentation, 
 without any reference to the moral or literary qua¬ 
 lifications of the holder of it. 
 
 There is, with many, a confusion of principle 
 upon this subject, that has been a good deal ag¬ 
 gravated by a case which occurred twice in the his¬ 
 tory of the Church, in which, after that the General 
 Assembly had set aside a presentee nominated by 
 one claimant to the patronage, and authorised the 
 settlement of one who was nominated by another, 
 
the former was found entitled, by the civil court, 
 to retain the fruits of the benefice. But this decision 
 of the civil court, it must be remarked, was found¬ 
 ed solely and exclusively on the legal right of the 
 claimants to the patronage. The minister who 
 was actually inducted was deprived of the stipend 
 attached to his office, but just because his presen¬ 
 tation was found to be invalid. It is no exception 
 whatever to the principle which we have just af¬ 
 firmed, that a case can be quoted of a clergyman 
 not-having a right to the emoluments of his charge, 
 who had the authority of the Church for his set¬ 
 tlement, but had not, at the same time, a good 
 presentation. The only case, in point, against it 
 Would be that of a clergyman having a good pre¬ 
 sentation, and, at the same time, not having the 
 authority of the Church for his settlement, and 
 enjoying, nevertheless, the fruits of the benefice. 
 And if no such case can be alleged, saving, per¬ 
 haps, in days of persecution and violence, it 
 would appear that the authority of the Church, not 
 responsible certainly for her decisions to any pow¬ 
 er existing without the limits of her ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction, is just as indispensable to the valid 
 settlement of a minister, as is a deed of presenta¬ 
 tion. 
 
 The truth is, that there are two essential cir¬ 
 cumstances which must meet together, ere a 
 preacher can be ordained to the charge of a par¬ 
 ish. He must have a presentation from the legal 
 holder of the patronage; and he must have the 
 
concurrence of the Presbytery to which the parish 
 belongs, or of its superior church judicatories. 
 As the matter actually stands, the first circum¬ 
 stance is indispensable; nor can we proceed to or¬ 
 dain a preacher to the charge of a parish, till he 
 come to us with a valid presentation; and few are 
 the members of our Establishment who would hold 
 it advisable to oppose the right of patronage. 
 But what we contend for is, that the other circum¬ 
 stance is equally indispensable—that as the matter 
 has ever stood, from the infancy of our being as a 
 Church, and as the matter stands at this very 
 hour, there must, previous to his ordination, be 
 the concurrence of the Church; and if we know 
 not a single instance, in our day, of a minister 
 being suffered by law to officiate and to draw the 
 emoluments of his living, in the face of the right 
 of patronage exercised against him; so, neither 
 do we know a single instance of a minister being 
 forced upon a parish, we shall not say in the face 
 of the people, but in the face of the ecclesiastical 
 power; nor are we aware of any settlement where 
 the preacher did not enter upon his charge with 
 the sanction of our votes, and under the canopy 
 of our majorities. 
 
 The right of a veto by the Presbytery on every 
 presentation, when they judge there is a defect in 
 the moral or literary qualifications of the presentee, 
 is conceded on all hands. When they pass a veto 
 on any other plea, however, their sentence, it 
 would appear, must be borne upwards by appeal 
 
230 
 
 to the General Assembly, and may be decided 
 there, on any principle which shall seem good unto 
 that venerable Court.* They may put their con¬ 
 clusive veto on any presentation, for any reason, 
 or, if they choose, for no reason at all. Even 
 though there should be manifest injustice in their 
 decision, there exists not, without the limits of 
 the Church, any one legal or constitutional provi¬ 
 sion against such a possibility. The only security, 
 in fact, is that a Church so constituted as ours 
 will not be unjust. At all events, the matter 
 could not be mended, by carrying the question 
 without the limits of the Church’s jurisdiction, 
 and so carrying the chance of, at least, as great 
 error and injustice along with it, when the eccle¬ 
 siastical reasons on which the General Assembly 
 passed sentence were brought under the review 
 of a civil judicatory. But in truth there is and 
 can be no such transition. The power of a veto 
 on every presentation, and without responsibility 
 at any bar but that of public opinion, is by all law 
 and practice vested in the supreme ecclesiastical 
 court of this country. And in these circumstan¬ 
 ces, is it to be borne that, with a power so ample, 
 we are tamely to surrender it to the single opera¬ 
 tion of another power not more firmly established, 
 
 * Appendix to Sir Harry Moncrieff’s Life of Dr. Erskine, p. 424. The 
 reader will find, in this Appendix, an able and luminous exposition of the 
 whole question, done by the masterly hand of the Reverend Baronet, whose 
 talents and force of character have shed a brightness over that Church, of 
 which he is so distinguished a minister. 
 
231 
 
 and not more uniformly indispensable than our 
 own? Are we, whose business it is to watch over 
 the interests of religion, and to provide for the 
 good of edification, and who, if we would only 
 make use of the rights with which we are invested, 
 could, in fact, subordinate the whole machinery 
 of the Establishment to our own independent 
 views of expediency—are we, as if struck by pa¬ 
 ralysis, to sit helplessly down under the fancied 
 omnipotence of a deed of patronage? So soon as 
 the majority in our Church shall revert to the 
 principle of its not being generally for the good 
 of edification, that a presentee, when unsupported 
 by the concurrence of the parish, shall be admit¬ 
 ted to the charge of it, there is no one earthly 
 barrier in the way of our nullifying his presenta¬ 
 tion, and making it as absolutely void and power¬ 
 less as a sheet of blank paper. We are not now 
 contending for the right and authority of a call 
 from the people, but for the power of the Church 
 to admit the will or taste of the people as an ele¬ 
 ment into her deliberations on the question, Whe¬ 
 ther a given presentation shall be sustained or not? 
 and of deciding this question just as she shall find 
 cause. And therefore it is, that in the lengthened 
 contest which has taken place between the rights 
 of the patrons and of the people, the Church, by 
 giving all to the former and taking all from the 
 latter, and in such a way, too, as to establish a 
 kind of practical and unquestioned supremacy to 
 a mere deed of presentation, has, in fact, bartered 
 
away her own privileges, and sunk into a state of 
 dormancy the power with which she herself is es¬ 
 sentially invested, to sit as the final and irrevers¬ 
 ible umpire on every such question that is submit¬ 
 ted to her. 
 
 But the Church has given away nothing that 
 she cannot recal. If there be, at this moment, 
 an entire independence of patrons upon the people, 
 this is a temporary grant, at the will and pleasure 
 of an authority that can, at any time, rescind it. 
 In the struggle between the right of patronage 
 and a principle of deference to the popular taste, 
 what was the theatre of the contest?—the General 
 Assembly. Where was it that patronage won her 
 victory?—in the supreme Court of our Establish¬ 
 ment. To what do the holders of patronage owe 
 the practical sovereignty which, for half a centu¬ 
 ry, has been conceded to those rights by which 
 they proudly think to overrule the deliberations 
 of clergymen?—why, to the votes of clergymen. 
 The vote of such an unrestricted supremacy to 
 the right of patronage was not extorted from us 
 by any legal necessity, but was the fruit of our 
 own voluntary deliberations; and the good of the 
 Church was or ought to have been the principle 
 which influenced them. Other views of the good 
 of the Church may again lead to other conclusions. 
 And, in the exercise of her undoubted right to 
 sustain or to refuse, upon ecclesiastical grounds, 
 any presentation that is offered, we may again 
 come to regard, as of old, the acceptable talents 
 
of the presentee, and the number of signatures 
 to his call, and the station or character of those 
 who have thus testified their concurrence in his 
 appointment, to be just as essential elements of 
 the question before us, as either his moral or lite¬ 
 rary qualifications. 
 
 It is on these principles that there are not a few 
 of the clergy who cleave to the Establishment, in 
 spite of all the partial corruptions that Sectarianism 
 has alleged against her. They see in the bosom 
 of their own church an open avenue to every de¬ 
 sirable reformation. They honestly believe that 
 there is not a better range of Christian usefulness 
 to be found, over the whole face of the country, 
 than within her walls—and that a man of prin¬ 
 ciple and zeal, when backed by the independence 
 which she confers, and shielded about by the am¬ 
 plitude of her securities and her power, stands on 
 the highest of all vantage ground, for the work of 
 honest and faithful ministrations. They trust that 
 she is the destined instrument for the preservation 
 and the revival of Christianity in our land—and 
 would tremble for her overthrow, as the severest 
 blow that, in this quarter of the island, could be 
 inflicted on the cause of the gospel. And when 
 either patrons or people are in the wrong, let us 
 never see the day when the cause shall be commit¬ 
 ted to any but to those whom the wisdom of the 
 country has raised above the temptations of depen¬ 
 dence; and who can clear their unfaultering way, 
 alike unmoved by the smile of grandeur, or by 
 the frown of a sometimes deluded population. 
 
284 
 
 But we forget that, after all, it will not be pri¬ 
 marily by any triumph gotten on the field of pub¬ 
 lic controversy, that an accommodation will at 
 length be brought about between the measures of 
 the patrons and the wishes of the people. Ere the 
 majority of our Church be desirous of such an ac¬ 
 commodation, there must be a great revolution of 
 sentiment among them, about the deference that 
 is due to the popular understanding; and this will 
 imply a similar revolution among men of power 
 and intelligence, in the country at large. Should 
 it come at length to be a general recognition with 
 the clergy, that, bating a few excrescencies, po¬ 
 pular Christianity is indeed the Christianity of the 
 New Testament, and the only system of doctrine 
 which can either regenerate the people for heaven- 
 or reform them into the sober and patriotic vir¬ 
 tues of the present world—this will also be a gen¬ 
 eral recognition with the reading and reflecting 
 classes of the community. And thus it will not 
 be upon an arena of litigation that the vox populi 
 will struggle its way to that ascendency which, in 
 matters of religion, we conceive to be altogether 
 due to it. It will arrive more surely and more pa¬ 
 cifically at this result, by the silent progress of a 
 common and harmonising sentiment among those 
 various classes who wont to set themselves in bat¬ 
 tle array, and debate their conflicting pretensions, 
 with all the keenness which opposite views and 
 opposite interests could inspire. Patrons will come 
 at length to see that the most acceptable offering 
 at the shrine of popularity is also the best offer- 
 
235 
 
 ing at the shrine of patriotism: and government 
 will not fail, in time, to understand that the 
 quick and sensitive tact of the people, in theology, 
 to which so little indulgence has hitherto been 
 given, so far from being, in any degree, allied to 
 that appetite for disturbance which endangers a 
 nation, is, in fact, the longing of man’s diseased 
 moral nature for that doctrine which brings, in its 
 train, the righteousness that exalteth a nation. 
 
 With the great majority of dissenters, the ap¬ 
 pointment of ministers is by popular election. The 
 right of suffrage is more or less extended, how¬ 
 ever, being sometimes vested in the sitters of a 
 congregation; at other times, restricted to the 
 members of it, or those who have been admitted 
 to the ordinances; and, in no small number of 
 instances, being exclusively in the hands of pro¬ 
 prietors, or trustees, who own the chapel, and bind 
 themselves to defray, from the proceeds of it, all 
 the expenses of the concern. 
 
 We do not hold the last of these arrangements 
 to be different, in point of effect, from either of 
 the two former. It affords, no doubt, the exam¬ 
 ple of a patronage shared among so many indivi¬ 
 duals, but still of a patronage controlled by the 
 hearers, and in a state of dependence on the po¬ 
 pular will. It is the obvious and direct interest 
 of the electors to fix on the man who, by his ta¬ 
 lents and doctrine, shall secure a full attendance 
 upon his ministrations; and so secure, at least, a 
 sufficient rental for meeting all the engagements. 
 
This state ot things is tantamount to a right of 
 patronage vested in the few, with the power of a 
 veto on each nomination vested in the many—a 
 power which will be exercised on each successive 
 appointment, till that one individual is brought 
 forward, in whom the patronage and the populari¬ 
 ty come to an adjustment with each other. This, 
 perhaps, is a simpler and better process for arriv¬ 
 ing at the result of ail acceptable minister, than 
 where the power of originating each his own can¬ 
 didate is spread over the whole multitude, and 
 the proceedings may come at length to be marked 
 with the turmoil and confusion that often attend 
 the business of a large popular assembly. And 
 we apprehend,, that with a patronage under this 
 kind of influence, the business of each appoint¬ 
 ment may not only be conducted in a style of 
 greater smoothness and facility; but that as zeal¬ 
 ous, and able, and faithful ministers would be pro¬ 
 vided, as under a constitution of things where each 
 individual sitter had a direct and personal share in 
 the positive nomination. 
 
 And after all, it must often happen that, even 
 under the most democratic economy of a congre¬ 
 gation, the minister virtually obtains his office by 
 the appointment of the few, and only with the ac¬ 
 quiescence of the many. In every assemblage of 
 human beings, this is the method by which all 
 their proceedings are really carried forward. The 
 ascendency of worth, or talent, or station, or some 
 other natural influence, is ever sure to vest the 
 power of originating in the few, and to leave no- 
 
237 
 
 thing with the many but the power of a veto; 
 nay, even, n many instances, to disarm them of 
 that power. The work of choosing their minister, 
 in a dissenting congregation, is, we doubt not, in 
 the great majority of instances, most wisely and 
 most peaceably conducted. But, on looking to 
 principles as well as to forms, we have as little 
 doubt that, in very many instances, the appoint¬ 
 ment is the result of a harmonized meeting beween 
 what may be called a virtual deed of patronage, 
 on the one hand, and the power of a negative, on 
 the other. And, amid all the sturdy opposition 
 there is to the Church, on the score of what has 
 been felt, as the most corrupt and pernicious of 
 her grievances, it is curious to observe how the 
 method of proceeding, even under the most popu¬ 
 lar constitutions of a chapel, resolves itself effectu¬ 
 ally into a modified patronage. 
 
 And there are many ways in which the Estab¬ 
 lishment may be in circumstances of as great ad¬ 
 vantage as dissenterism, for having her Church 
 patronage so modified, as that the popular voice 
 shall have its right degree of ascendency, in the 
 appointment of ministers. Whensoever the hold¬ 
 ers of patronage shall come to appreciate aright 
 the character and tendencies of the evangelical 
 system, this of itself will answer all the purposes 
 of a modified patronage. And whensoever the 
 Church shall resume the exercise of the authority 
 which belongs to her, of giving effect to the ex¬ 
 pression of the popular will, on every individual . 
 nomination, this will re-instate that negative, in 
 
all its force, which would restrain patronage, as 
 far as we hold it to be desirable. And, in all 
 cases where the revenue from seat-rents is of im¬ 
 portance to the patron, as in great towns, this 
 forms a strong security for the popular exercise of 
 the right. And, as in the building of new churches, 
 it is revenue derived from this source which fur¬ 
 nishes the means for the endowment of them, we 
 cannot extend the Establishment, without extend¬ 
 ing the cause of popular Christianity, by adding 
 to the number of instances in which we shall have 
 an accommodation between the choice of the pa¬ 
 trons and the wishes of the people. 
 
 Upon this last circumstance, indeed, we hold 
 ourselves entitled to found the following observa¬ 
 tion. Let the patronage of the existing Churches 
 in our Establishment be as corrupt as it may, every 
 additional Church that is built and endowed, on 
 the produce of its seat-rents, has, by its very con¬ 
 stitution, a security for the right and popular ex¬ 
 ercise of its patronage. However the right of no¬ 
 mination may be vested, there is a virtual control 
 with the hearers, which will necessitate the pa¬ 
 trons towards acceptable and evangelical clergy¬ 
 men. Whatever disadvantages may be alleged 
 on the side of the Establishment, when brought 
 into comparison with the Dissent, in respect of the 
 state of its patronage, they vanish altogether, in 
 reference to new erections; and, standing upon 
 equal ground, in this one particular, the only re¬ 
 maining question is, Which of the two is most fit¬ 
 ted to overtake the necessities of our unprovided 
 
239 
 
 population? We have already endeavoured to 
 point out the reason why, after that dissenterism 
 has lavished all her resources on the task, for up¬ 
 wards of a century, the population have so grown 
 and multiplied beyond her, that, in our large ci¬ 
 ties, one half, at least, of the labouring classes 
 are, in respect of the ordinances of the gospel, in 
 a state of practical heathenism; and why no expe¬ 
 dient appears so likely to provide, for this sore 
 destitution, as Established Churches, with local 
 territories having a preference for seats assigned 
 to them. And we do not feel restrained from 
 urging this expedient by any alleged corruption 
 respecting the patronage of the Establishment; 
 for, in as far as the new erections are concerned, 
 there will necessarily be a popular influence to 
 over-ride the nomination. And for this, there¬ 
 fore, as well as for other reasons, do we look to 
 the Establishment, in both countries, as the like¬ 
 liest instrument for recalling a degenerate people 
 to the faith and habits of a Christian land.* 
 
 * In addition to all the argument that we have alleged for the influence 
 and utility of religious establishments, on the ground of locality, we shall 
 subjoin a reason that comes with greater delicacy from the mouth of a dis¬ 
 senter. The following is a quotation from Baxter, who, if second to any, 
 was only second to Dr. John Owen, among the English Non-conformists 
 of the seventeenth century—a race of men who contributed so much to the 
 glories of what may be termed the Augustan age of Christianity in our 
 
 “ If you love the common good of England, do your best to keep up 
 sound and serious religion in the public Parish Churches; and be not guilty 
 of any tiling that shall bring the chief interest of religion into private assem¬ 
 blies of men merely tolerated, if you can avoid it. 
 
 “ Indeed, in a time of plagues’ epidemical infection, tolerated churches 
 may he the best preservatives of religion, as it was in the first 300 years, and 
 in the Arrian reign, and under Popery. But when sound and serious reli¬ 
 gion is owned by the magistrates, tolerated churches are but as hospitals for 
 the sick, and must not be the receptacle of all the healthful. And, doubt¬ 
 less, if the Papists can but get the Protestant interest over into prohibited 
 
240 
 
 Still, it is well for a country that dissenters do 
 their uttermost. They are right to extend their 
 interest and their ascendency as far as they can; 
 and to make as deep an impression on the out¬ 
 cast and alienated mass of our population as pos¬ 
 sible. The very jealousy that they awaken among 
 the fiery and alarmed bigots of our Establishment 
 is, of itselfj a salutary principle. And we doubt 
 not that, to the good of their own direct exertions, 
 they have added a most important contribution to 
 the cause of Christianity, by the wholesome re-ac¬ 
 tion to which, through them, the Church has 
 been stimulated. It is our part to rejoice that 
 Christ has been more preached in the Church, 
 by their means, even though, in some instances, 
 it may have been of contention. They have 
 poured a fresh zeal into the bosom of our Estab¬ 
 lishment, and done something to guide and to 
 purify the exercise of its patronage. It were well, 
 if, in every portion of the land, they could sup¬ 
 plement all that is corrupt or defective in our na¬ 
 tional churches. Could such an arm of intole- 
 
 or tolerated conventicles (as they will call them), they have more than half 
 overcome it, and will not doubt to use it next as they do in Trance, and by 
 one turn more to cast it out. The countenance of authority will go far with 
 
 will mostly go to the allowed churches, whoever is there. Let us, therefore, 
 lose no possession that we can justly get, nor be guilty of disgracing the 
 honest Conformists, but do all we can to keep up their reputation for the 
 good of souls. They see not matters of dilference through the same glass 
 that we do. They think us unwarrantably scrupulous. We think the mat¬ 
 ter of their sins to be very great. But we know that before God the degree 
 of guilt is much according to the degree of men’s negligence or unwilling¬ 
 ness to know the truth, or to obey it. And prejudice, education, and con¬ 
 verse, maketh great difference on men’s apprehensions. Charity must not 
 reconcile us to sin, but there is no end of uncharitable censuring each 
 
ranee be lifted up, in any country, as to crush 
 the energy of non-conformists, that would be the 
 country where the purest Establishment on earth 
 were sure to languish into indolence, or to gather 
 upon it the mould of spiritual decay. And, there¬ 
 fore it is, that we hold the best ecclesiastical sys¬ 
 tem for a kingdom, to be a publicly endowed 
 Church, on the one hand, keeping pace, in its 
 extent, with the growth of the population; and 
 an altogether free, unshackled dissenterism, on the 
 other, without one civil disability, or one stigma 
 of degradation, however light and lenient it may 
 be, affixed to the profession of it. 
 
 And, we have only one word more to our poli¬ 
 tical rulers upon this subject. We are most tho¬ 
 roughly aware of the association that obtains in 
 the minds of many of them between dissent and 
 democracy; and that, under this feeling, they not 
 only look with a hard and suspicious eye upon non¬ 
 conformity, but would resist every assimilation to 
 any of its features, on the part of the Establish¬ 
 ment. The evidences are innumerable, that the 
 association is, in the main, unfounded. Among 
 others we appeal to the charges issued in Novem¬ 
 ber, 1819, by the Methodist body, against politi¬ 
 cal disaffection, when Radicalism was at its height; 
 and to the known fact, that individuals were ex¬ 
 cluded from the membership of their churches, 
 for the single offence of attending the meetings 
 of the seditious. But the most satisfactory proof 
 of all, and one that comes immediately under the 
 eye of our statesmen, is that, which may be ob- 
 
tained from an investigation into the habit and 
 condition of those who are apprehended for sedi¬ 
 tious practices. We understand that, about three 
 years ago, when such apprehensions were nume¬ 
 rous, there was not among them the case of one 
 individual, who was a member of any of the great 
 dissenting bodies in our kingdom. And it will 
 be found, we venture to say, in every season of 
 political alarm, when such apprehensions are 
 called for, that, with a very few exceptions, in¬ 
 deed, neither the guilt of disaffection, nor even 
 the suspicion of it, has brought down this kind of 
 visitation at least on a regular member of any of 
 the evangelical denominations of Christianity. 
 The great majority, in fact, belong to those out¬ 
 casts from the word and ordinances, who associ¬ 
 ate themselves with no body of worshippers at all; 
 and the question comes to be, Why were they not 
 to be met with in the empty churches of the Es¬ 
 tablishment? This matter suggests whole volumes 
 of argument and reproof to statesmen. And it 
 is right that they should know the real origin of 
 those troubles which most embarrass them. It 
 does not lie with dissenters, who are innocent of 
 it all; but it lies with their own careless and cor¬ 
 rupt patronage. "Were the Church of England 
 rightly extended and rightly patronised, there 
 would be neither sedition nor plebeian infidelity 
 in the land. And thus, in the eye of one who 
 connects an ultimate effect with its real though 
 unseen cause, the whole host of Radicalism may 
 have been summoned into being by the very Go- 
 
vernment that sent forth her forces to destroy it; 
 and fierce ministerial clergymen, though they 
 mean not so, may, each from his own parish, 
 have contributed his quota to this mass of disaf¬ 
 fection; and, ascending from the men of subal¬ 
 tern influence, that Bishop, whose measures have 
 alienated from the Church the whole popular feel¬ 
 ing of his diocese, instead of a captain of fifties, 
 may virtually though unwittingly be a captain of 
 thousands, in the camp of that very rebellion 
 which would sweep, did it triumph, the existence 
 of his order from the kingdom; and, to complete 
 the picture of this sore and infatuating blindness, 
 iftherebeone individual in the Cabinet, whose 
 pernicious ascendency it is, that has diverted away 
 the patronage of the Crown from the only men 
 who can Christianise and conciliate the people, he, 
 in all moral and substantial estimation, is the ge¬ 
 neralissimo in this treasonable warfare against the 
 rights and the prerogatives of the monarchy. 
 
 But we believe that, in the majority of instanc¬ 
 es, they are the city rulers, who are the patrons 
 of city churches; and the post they fill is, there¬ 
 fore, one of great responsibility for the well-being 
 of the empire. It is under them that there exists 
 the most fearful deficiency in the means of reli¬ 
 gious instruction; and it is, of course, throughout 
 the mighty hosts over which they preside, that 
 violence, and profligacy, and all the elements of 
 moral and political mischief are ever sure to be 
 most copiously engendered. They have the pow- 
 
244 
 
 er, however, of counteraction in their own hands; 
 and were their eyes once opened to the influence 
 of locality, when combined with a reduction in 
 the size of parishes, and a pure exercise of patron¬ 
 age, they could not fail to perceive that, under a 
 steady and well-principled course of management, 
 the neglected myriads of a city might come, at 
 length, to change the ferocity of their aspect for 
 the moral and pacific cast of a country population. 
 There is the very same nature on which to operate 
 with both; and there is not one district, however 
 wild and outlandish at present, and though teem¬ 
 ing with families in the coarsest style of dissipated 
 and worthless plebeianism, that would not experi¬ 
 ence a speedy transformation, were certain prac¬ 
 ticable facilities opened for admitting them to the 
 church of a laborious minister, on the Sabbath, 
 and securing for them, through the week, the 
 unwearied and ever-plying attentions of the same 
 individual. When he once found his way to a re¬ 
 siding eldership, he would find himself elevated to 
 a tenfold ascendency over them; and without ro¬ 
 mantic effort (for if this were requisite, the whole 
 were fruitless Utopianism) might he bring his 
 densely peopled vineyard under all the blandness 
 of a village economy. They are the principle of 
 locality which has been so little adverted to, and 
 the preference of the parishioners to the sittings 
 of their own church which is still so provokingly 
 disregarded by our administrators, and the mo¬ 
 derate extent of parishes which may at length be 
 attained by terms of liberal encouragement held 
 
245 
 
 out to the subscribers for new churches, on the 
 part of magistrates—these are the simple elements 
 out of which a sufficient mechanism may be reared 
 for regenerating even the most unwieldy metropo¬ 
 lis; and, lastly, to animate this mechanism with 
 a right spirit and principle of vitality, let our city 
 patrons be no longer disdainful of conceding their 
 favours to the expression of the popular will; and, 
 on the side of religious honesty, as it in general is, 
 will it almost always be sure to direct their regards 
 to the most zealous and devoted labourers. 
 
 We have already said enough of locality and pa¬ 
 tronage, and the preference for seats to parish¬ 
 ioners; but, on the topic of lessening the extent 
 of parishes, by new erections, we would again re¬ 
 cur to the example at Liverpool, as a proof how 
 much may be done, without putting to hazard the 
 funds of the corporation. If, for the encourage¬ 
 ment of private adventurers, magistrates will not 
 allow a perpetual right of patronage, they may, 
 at least, allow that right for a certain term of 
 years, or for a certain number of successive no¬ 
 minations. In this way, without expense to the 
 town, may they obtain an immediate extension of 
 churches, and an ultimate extension of their own 
 patronage. It is not to be expected that sub¬ 
 scribers will pay for the erection and endowment 
 of a new church, if others are forthwith to patro¬ 
 nise it. But should they be permitted to hold, 
 for a time at least, in their own hands, a security 
 for popular appointments, they would not only feel 
 themselves prompted to this enterprise of benevo- 
 
lence, by a hope of indemnification from the seat- 
 rents, but also by the hope of a fulfilment to then- 
 own wishes, in the increase of useful and accept¬ 
 able clergy. If one individual has done so much 
 in Liverpool, what may not be expected from the 
 efforts of a great Christian public, in the cause? 
 And we are not aware of any expedient, by which 
 so speedy and effectual an enlargement of church ac¬ 
 commodation, in populous towns, can be arrived at. 
 
 And there is one circumstance which may dis¬ 
 hearten this process, at the outset, and which it 
 were, therefore, well to understand and be pre¬ 
 pared for. The people of every new parish should 
 have the preference for seats in their own church. 
 But there will generally be a disappointment, if it 
 be thought that this preference is to be extensive¬ 
 ly taken. The truth is, that the great object of 
 extending the church accommodation in cities is, 
 not to meet the demand that already exists, but 
 to create a taste and a habit which have now fallen 
 into desuetude. It is altogether a reclaiming pro¬ 
 cess; and more for the inspiration of a right ap¬ 
 petite that is not yet felt, than for the gratification 
 of one which is already astir, and in quest of in¬ 
 struction. It is, therefore, very possible that, at 
 the outset, there may be a very meagre demand 
 for the sittings of the new fabric, in the appro¬ 
 priate district itself; in which case, after the pre¬ 
 ference has been held out for a sufficient length 
 of time, the competition should be thrown open to 
 the inhabitants of the town at large. And here 
 lie the charm and the might of locality—that the 
 
247 
 
 minister, by concentrating his -attention upon the 
 families that reside in ic, will soon stir up a re-ac¬ 
 tion among them towards the place of his Sabbath 
 ministrations; and he will excite a growing de¬ 
 mand for seats that will soon press hard upon the 
 vacancies which occur; and, by the simple regu¬ 
 lation of continuing the rule of preference to the 
 parishioners for these vacancies, a parochial will 
 come, in the course of years, to be substituted for 
 a general congregation; aud, triumph enough for 
 one incumbency, will the people of a given geo¬ 
 graphical section of a town, at one time alienated 
 from Christianity and all its ordinances, be trans¬ 
 lated into the general habit of church-going; and, 
 trained to the recognitions and the regularities of 
 a country parish, will it be found that they are 
 capable of exemplifying all its virtues, and of ex¬ 
 hibiting the same aspect of kindliness and sobriety, 
 which many think can only be kept inviolate in 
 the more retired provinces of our empire. 
 
 With plain fabrics, and moderately endowed, a 
 most useful class of evangelical labourers may be 
 had, and on such seat-rents as could be afforded 
 by the great bulk of the people. Indeed, in all 
 the new churches, the utmost economy should be 
 observed, else the system will never be carried 
 forward to a right or adequate degree of exten¬ 
 sion. If our city rulers shall ever propose, in 
 good earnest, to have an ecclesiastical apparatus, 
 at all commensurate to their population, they must 
 bethink themselves of churches altogether secon¬ 
 dary to the present ones, both in architectural 
 
splendour and in the salaries of clergymen. It is 
 right that a certain number of the livings should 
 be upheld in such a degree of superiority, as to 
 hold out an allurement to men of professional emi¬ 
 nence, from all parts of the country. But should it 
 be reckoned necessary, so to hold up all the livings, 
 then this were an impracticable barrier in the way 
 of multiplying the parishes. And, therefore, the 
 best arrangement for a town that has only ten 
 churches, and would need thirty, is, in supple¬ 
 menting the deficiency, to descend from spires to 
 belfries, and, besides observing the utmost simpli¬ 
 city in the buildings, to assign such an income to 
 the clergyman, as that the whole expenses, both 
 of the erection and endowment, may, as nearly as 
 possible, be met by the proceeds of the atten¬ 
 dance. This would give confidence, and call forth 
 a much more productive effort, in the way of pri¬ 
 vate subscription for the cause, or even enable 
 magistrates to take the cause into their own hands. 
 But, in every possible way, it is a cause which 
 ought to be carried forward: and those are the 
 most patriotic and enlightened rulers, who, laying 
 aside the prejudices which have hitherto kept po¬ 
 pularity and patronage at so heartless a distance 
 from each other, shall now give their promptitude 
 to the great object of so multiplying churches, as 
 to meet the necessities of the people, and of so 
 appointing churches, as to draw them to a willing 
 attendance on the ministrations of Christianity. 
 
249 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 ON CHURCH OFFICES. 
 
 By the constitution of the Church of Scotland, it 
 is provided that, in each parish, there shall be, at 
 least, one minister, whose office it is to preach 
 and dispense the ordinances of Christianity, on the 
 Sabbath, and to labour in holy things among the 
 people, through the week; and elders, whose of¬ 
 fice it is to assist at the dispensation of sacra¬ 
 ments, to be the bearers of religious advice and 
 comfort among the families, and, in general, to 
 act purely as ecclesiastical labourers for the good 
 of human souls; and, lastly, deacons, to whom it 
 belongs, not to preach the word, or administer the 
 sacraments, but to take special care in administer¬ 
 ing to the necessities of the poor.* 
 
 In the course of time, the last of these three 
 offices has fallen into very general desuetude. 
 The duties of it have been transferred to the el¬ 
 dership, the members of which body have thus 
 been vested with a plurality of cares; it being 
 both their part to labour in matters connected 
 with the religious good of the people, and to share 
 in the administration of those funds which the law 
 
 * See the Form of Church Government, agreed upon in the Assembly 
 of Westminster Divines, and ratified afterwards by an act of the General 
 Assembly, in the year 164S. 
 
250 
 
 or custom of the country has provided for meeting 
 the demands of its pauperism. 
 
 The moral effect upon the people of such a con¬ 
 junction as this seems very much to have escaped 
 observation. And, indeed, it is only under cer¬ 
 tain rare and peculiar circumstances, where this 
 effect is very broadly or very strikingly exempli¬ 
 fied. The truth is, that, in the great majority of 
 our Scottish parishes, the sum expended on pau¬ 
 perism is raised by voluntary collection, and still 
 maintains the character of a ministration of kind¬ 
 ness. It is, besides, so very small in amount, as 
 not to have come very sensibly or extensively in¬ 
 to contact with the lower orders of society, who, 
 in those parts of the country where the method of 
 legal assessments for the poor has not been estab¬ 
 lished, still retain the veteran hardihood and inde¬ 
 pendence of their forefathers, and among whom 
 the condition of known and public dependence is 
 still regarded in the light of a family misfortune, 
 or a family degradation. 
 
 It is not, therefore, in such Scottish parishes as 
 these where we can see to greatest advantage the 
 effect of such a combination of duties as that 
 which we have now adverted to. Neither are we 
 sure that any very decisive exhibition of this ef¬ 
 fect is to be met with, in the whole of England. 
 There, it is true, the funds for pauperism are en¬ 
 ormous, and they are spread in distribution over 
 a very large proportion of the labouring classes in 
 that country. But we are ignorant whether the 
 
251 
 
 work of distribution is at all vested in men who 
 have the office, besides, of sharing in any religious 
 superintendance over the people. We rather 
 think that overseers, and others employed in the 
 dispensation of the legal aliment, hold out an ex¬ 
 clusively civil and secular aspect to the eye of 
 the population; and that there is no such incon¬ 
 gruity among them as the one in question; and in 
 virtue of which the same individual is called up¬ 
 on, by one of his offices, to evince a concern, and 
 exercise a care, over their eternal interests, and, 
 by another of his offices, to enter the lists with 
 them on the arena of clamorous assertion, and 
 loudly proclaimed discontent, and stout or surly 
 litigation. 
 
 But there are a good many parishes, in Scot¬ 
 land, now in progress towards the English system 
 of pauperism, in as far as respects a compulsory 
 provision by assessment; and where, too, in the 
 amount of the sums expended, they are making- 
 rapid advances towards the habits and economy 
 of our Southern neighbours. That which wont to 
 be applied for, with shame and humility, and to 
 be taken with gratitude, is now demanded in the 
 tone of a rightful or peremptory challenge; and 
 all the heart-burnings or jealousies of a legal con¬ 
 test are beginning to be infused into the ministra¬ 
 tions of parochial charity. That which was be¬ 
 fore diffused among a very few of our families, 
 and had to them the feeling of an element of 
 kindliness, is now gathering a dark and malignant 
 
tinge—and, what makes it still worse, is spread¬ 
 ing itself over so many of our families as to 
 threaten a bad impression on the general habit 
 and character of our population. The people, at 
 large, are becoming more closely associated with 
 pauperism; and pauperism itself is fast transform¬ 
 ing from its olden aspect of kind and gentle hu¬ 
 manity, and putting on a countenance of grim 
 attorneyship. Meanwhile, there has not been a 
 sufficient corresponding change in the old bodies 
 of administration; and thus both ministers and 
 elders, whose joint office it is to woo the people 
 to Christianity, have, in many of our larger towns, 
 been implicated in a most unseemly warfare with 
 them, on another ground altogether. It is in 
 such transition parishes as these, from an old to 
 a new system of things, that the phenomenon in 
 question is in its best possible state for observa¬ 
 tion; and where we may catch such an evolution 
 of our nature as shall not only serve to demon¬ 
 strate a present evil, but as shall also bring out to 
 view those general principles on which the chari¬ 
 ties of human intercourse ought to be conduct¬ 
 ed. 
 
 Conceive, then, an individual to be associated 
 with a district in the joint capacity of elder and 
 deacon, and that, at the same time, its pauperism 
 has attained such a magnitude, and such an estab¬ 
 lishment, as to have addressed itself to the desires 
 and the expectations of a large proportion of the 
 families. The argument must suppose him to be 
 
253 
 
 equally intent on the duties of each office, with¬ 
 out which there is a defect of right and honest 
 principle, on his part, and this of itself is a mis¬ 
 chievous thing, though no exception whatever 
 could be alleged against the combination of these 
 two offices. It will, therefore, serve better to ex¬ 
 pose the evils of this combination, to figure to 
 ourselves a man of zeal and conscientiousness, on 
 whom the burden of both offices has been laid, 
 and who is uprightly desirous of fulfilling the du¬ 
 ties of both. There are many who are but elders 
 in name, while deacons alone and deacons altoge¬ 
 ther in practice and performance; and this, of it¬ 
 self, by the extinction, as far as it goes, of the 
 whole use and influence of the eldership among 
 the people, is, of itself, a very sore calamity. 
 But let us rather put the case of one who would 
 like religious influence to descend from him, in 
 the former capacity, and, at the same time, would 
 like to acquit himself rightly among the people, 
 in the latter capacity: and we hope to make it ap¬ 
 pear that a more ruinous plurality could not have 
 been devised, by which to turn into poison each 
 ingredient of which it is composed—and that it is 
 indeed a work of extreme delicacy and difficulty 
 for an individual, on whom duties of a character 
 so heterogeneous have been devolved, to move 
 through the district assigned to him, without scat¬ 
 tering among its people the elements of moral 
 deterioration. 
 
 He goes forth among them as an elder, when 
 
254 
 
 lie goes forth to pray with them, or to address 
 them on the subject of Christianity, or to recom¬ 
 mend their attention to its ordinances, or to take 
 cognizance of the education of their children. 
 There are, indeed, a thousand expedients by which 
 he may attempt a religious influence among the 
 people; and, in plying these expedients, he acts 
 purely as an ecclesiastical labourer. And, did 
 he act singly in this capacity, we might know 
 what to make of the welcome which he obtains 
 from the families. But they recognize him to be 
 also a dispenser of temporalities; and they have 
 an indefinite imagination of his powers, and of his 
 patronage, and of his funds; and their sordid or 
 mercenary expectations are set at work by the 
 very sight of him; and thus some paltry or inter¬ 
 ested desire of their own may lurk under the 
 whole of that apparent cordiality which marks the 
 intercourse of the two parties. It were a great 
 satisfaction, to disentangle one principle here from 
 another; and this can only be done by separating 
 the one office from the other. It were desirable 
 to ascertain how much of liking there is for the 
 Christian, and how much for the pecuniary minis¬ 
 tration with which this philanthropist is charged. 
 The union of these two throws an impenetrable 
 obscurity over this question, and raises a barrier 
 against the discernment of real character, amongst 
 the people with whom we deal. 
 
 But this combination does more than disguise 
 the principles of the people. It serves also to 
 
255 
 
 deteriorate them. If there be any nascent affec¬ 
 tion among them towards that which is sacred, it 
 is well to keep it single—to defend it from the touch 
 of every polluting ingredient—to nourish and 
 bring it forward on the strength of its own proper 
 aliment—and most strenuously to beware of hold¬ 
 ing out encouragement to that most subtle of all 
 hypocrisies, the hypocrisy of the heart; which is 
 most surely and most effectually done, when the 
 lessons of preparation for another world are mixed 
 up with the bribery of certain advantages in this 
 world, and made to descend upon a human sub¬ 
 ject in one compound administration. There is a 
 wonderful discernment in our nature evinced by 
 the Saviour and his Apostles, throughout their 
 whole work of Christianising, in the stress that is 
 laid by them on singleness of eye—and in the an¬ 
 nouncements they give of the impossibility of 
 serving two masters, and of the way in which a 
 divided state of the affections shuts and darkens 
 the heart against the pure influence of truth. 
 Simplicity of desire, or the want of it, makes the 
 whole difference between being full of light and 
 full of darkness. It is thus that Christ refuses to 
 be a judge and a divider; and that the Apostles 
 totally resign the office of ministering to the tem¬ 
 poral wants of the poor; and that Paul, in parti¬ 
 cular, is at so much pains both to teach and to 
 exemplify, among his disciples, the habit of inde¬ 
 pendence on charity to the very uttermost—de¬ 
 nouncing the hypocrisy of those who make a gain 
 
256 
 
 of godliness; and even going so far as to affirm, 
 that the man who had joined their society, with a 
 view to his own personal relief, out of its funds, 
 from the expense of maintaining his own house¬ 
 hold, was worse than an infidel. On the maxim 
 that “ my kingdom i£ not of this world,” it will 
 ever be a vain attempt to amalgamate Christian¬ 
 ity with the desires of any earthly ambition; and 
 this is just as applicable to the humble ambition 
 of a poor man for a place in the lists of pauperism, 
 as to that higher ambition which toils, and aspires, 
 and multiplies its desires, and its doings, on the 
 walks of a more dignified patronage. We are 
 not pleading, at present, for the annihilation of 
 pauperism, but for the transference of its duties 
 to a separate class of office-bearers. We are for 
 removing a taint and a temptation from the elder¬ 
 ship, and for securing, in this way, the greatest 
 possible efficacy to their Christian labours. We 
 are for delivering the people from the play and 
 the perplexity of two affections, which cannot 
 work together, contemporaneously at least, in the 
 same bosom. On the principle that there is a 
 time for every thing, we should like a visit from 
 an elder to be the time when Christianity shall 
 have a separate and unrivalled place in the atten¬ 
 tion of those with whom, for the moment, he is 
 holding intercourse; and that when the impres¬ 
 sion of things sacred might be growing and gath¬ 
 ering strength from his conversation, there shall 
 not be so ready and palpable an inlet as there is 
 
2 51 
 
 at present, for the impression of things secular 
 to stifle and overbear them. 
 
 There are two different ways in which an elder 
 may acquit himself of his superinduced deacon- 
 ship: either in the way of easy compliance with 
 the demands of the population, or in the way of 
 strict and conscientious inquiry, so as to act right¬ 
 ly by the fund which has been committed to him. 
 Take the first way of it, and suppose him, at the 
 same time, to have the Christianity of his district 
 at heart, and what a bounty he carries around 
 with him on the worst kind of dissimulation! Like 
 a substance, where neither of the ingredients taken 
 singly is poisonous, and which assumes all its vi¬ 
 rulence from the composition of them, what a 
 power of insidious but most fatal corruption lies in 
 the mere junction of these two offices! There is 
 many a pluralist of this sort, who never can and 
 never will verify this remark, by any experience of 
 his own; because he has virtually resigned the bet¬ 
 ter and the higher of his functions, or rather has 
 not once from the beginning exercised them. But 
 let him go forth upon his territory, in the dis¬ 
 charge of both, and what a sickening duplicity of 
 reception he is exposed to! What a mortifying in¬ 
 difference to the topic he has most at heart, under 
 all the constrained appearance of attention which 
 is rendered to it! With what dexterity can the 
 language of sanctity be pressed into the service, 
 when their purpose requires it; and yet how evi¬ 
 dent, how mortifying'ly evident, often, is the total 
 
258 
 
 absence of all feeling and desire upon the subject, 
 from the hearts of these wily politicians! How of¬ 
 ten, under such an unfortunate arrangement as 
 this, is Christianity prostituted into a vehicle for 
 the most sordid and unworthy applications—all its 
 lessons no further valued than for the mean and 
 beggarly elements with which they are conjoined 
 —and all its ordinances no further valued than as 
 stepping-stones, perhaps, to a pair of shoes. It 
 is this mingling together of incompatible desires— 
 it is this bringing of a pure moral element into 
 contiguity with other elements which vitiate and 
 extinguish it—it is this compounding of what is 
 fitted in itself to raise the character, with what is 
 fitted, in itself, and still more by its hypocritical 
 association with better things, to adulterate and 
 debase it—it is this which sheds a kind of wither¬ 
 ing blight over all the ministrations of the plural¬ 
 ist, and must convince every enlightened observ¬ 
 er, that, till he gets rid of the many elements of 
 temptation which are in his hands, he will never 
 expatiate, either with Christian comfort, or with 
 Christian effect, among the population. 
 
 And here we may remark another argument 
 against this plurality, which ought to address it¬ 
 self with great effect to all those who think that 
 an increase of profligacy among the people is the 
 sure attendant on an increase of pauperism. There 
 may be no great harm done by putting this admi¬ 
 nistration into the hands of an eldership, so long 
 as the money is raised in the shape of a free-will 
 
259 
 
 offering from the giver, and it is made to descend 
 in the shape of unconstrained kindness upon the 
 receiver; or so long as they have only to deal with 
 moderate sums among moderate expectations. 
 But, when the fund is raised in a legal and com¬ 
 pulsory way by assessment, and when that which 
 wont to be petitioned for, in the shape of charity, 
 is demanded in the shape of justice, and when the 
 people are thus armed with the force and impetus 
 of an aggressive legality, upon the one side, and 
 are not met in the firm and resolute spirit of a 
 defensive legality, upon the other, there will, in 
 time, be amongst us a far more rapid acceleration 
 of pauperism than ever has been exemplified in 
 England. That old apparatus vffiich would have 
 sufficed under the old system, will he a feeble de¬ 
 fence against the wmight and urgency of applica¬ 
 tions that are sure to be engendered by the new. 
 A kirk-session may do for an organ of distribution, 
 while the expression of good -will may be held forth, 
 on the one side, and the feeling of gratitude may 
 be called back, on the other. But when, from an 
 administration of charity, it is transformed into a 
 warfare of rights, it becomes altogether an un¬ 
 seemly contest for such parties as these—and a 
 contest, in which the cupidity, and the love of 
 pleasure, oi' of indolence, that characterise our 
 nature, will mightily prevail over that unpractised 
 simplicity -which we should ever like to character¬ 
 ise our eldership; vdiose proper business it is to 
 officiate among sacraments, and to exert a Chris- 
 
260 
 
 tian superintendence over the families that are 
 assigned to them. The exemption of Scotland 
 from an oppressive pauperism is not at all due to 
 the ecclesiastical form of that machinery under 
 which it is administered. It is to be ascribed sim¬ 
 ply to the absence of a compulsory provision; and 
 it will be found that, after this is introduced, then, 
 so soon as it is fully understood and acted on, all 
 that is ecclesiastical, in our courts of administra¬ 
 tion, so far from being a safeguard to the indepen¬ 
 dence of our people, will, in fact, smooth, and 
 widen, and encourage, their transition to pauperism. 
 Scotland has not yet had time to overtake England, 
 in the amount of her expenditure. But it will be 
 found that, in the great majority of those parishes 
 where a compulsory provision for the poor has 
 been established, she is moving onward, at a faster 
 rate of acceleration. The pauperism of Manches¬ 
 ter is still greater, in its present amount, than that 
 of Glasgow. But the proportional increase in 
 Glasgow, during the last twenty years, is very 
 greatly beyond that in Manchester.* 
 
 * It grieves us to remark, here, that there have lately sprung up, in Scot¬ 
 land, some strenuous advocates for a legal and compulsory provision, and 
 that, on the ground of a few isolated cases, where there has been no increase 
 of expenditure consequent on the introduction of this method into some of 
 our Scottish parishes. The habit of the people may certainly survive the per¬ 
 nicious influence of this system for perhaps half a ge 
 ly not all at once that a national spirit, or a n 
 But it will at length give way to the force ( 
 for ever be regr^lted, if the wholesale exper 
 
 and it 
 
261 
 
 Let us now conceive a pluralist to be aware of 
 this mischief, and, by way of guarding against it, 
 to put himself forth in an attitude more character¬ 
 istic of deaconship—firm in resistance to every 
 claim that is capable of being reduced, and most 
 strict and resolute in all his investigations. In this 
 case the only fit and effectual attitude of eldership 
 must be given up. He may as well try to look two 
 opposite ways, at the same moment, as think of 
 combining the one with the other, and of keeping 
 the people at bay by his resistance to them, on the 
 ground of his lower, and, at the same time, draw¬ 
 ing their regard, on the ground of his better and 
 higher ministrations. He will find it utterly im¬ 
 possible to find access for the lessons of Christian¬ 
 ity, into hearts soured against himself, and, per¬ 
 haps, thwarted in their feelings of justice, by the 
 disappointments they have gotten at his hand. It 
 is thus that, by a strange fatality, the man who lias 
 been vested with a religious superintendence over 
 the people, has become the most unlikely for gain¬ 
 ing a religious influence over them—and all his 
 wonted powers of usefulness, now worse than neu¬ 
 tralised, have, by the positive dislike that has been 
 turned against him, been sunk far beneath the le¬ 
 vel of any private or ordinary individual. There 
 
262 
 
 cannot, surely, be a more complete travesty on all 
 that is wise and desirable in human institutions, 
 than to saddle that man, whose primitive office it 
 is to woo the people to that which is spiritually 
 good, with another office, where he has to war 
 against the people, on the subject of their tempo¬ 
 ralities. There may, at one time, have been a 
 compatibility between these two functions, under 
 the cheap economy of the old Scottish pauperism; 
 but it is all put to flight by the shock which takes 
 place between the rapacity of the one party and 
 the resistance of the other, under a system of Eng¬ 
 lish pauperism. The people will listen with dis¬ 
 dain, or with shrewd and significant contempt, to 
 the Christian conversation of that elder who stands 
 confronted against them, on the ground of his dea- 
 conship: and they will expect an easy unresisting- 
 compliance with all their demands from that dea¬ 
 con who has plied them with the affectionate 
 counsels of Christianity, on the ground of his el. 
 dership. They will dexterously work the desirous¬ 
 ness that he must feel, in the one of these capaci¬ 
 ties, against the duties that he would like to fulfil, 
 in the other of them. They will tell him that they 
 have no time and no heart for religion, while un¬ 
 der the pressure of alleged difficulties that he will 
 do nothing to relieve. He, in the meantime, will 
 perceive that, unless he complies with the de¬ 
 mand, he can find no acceptance; and that, though 
 he should comply, acceptance gained through the 
 medium of bribery will lead to no pure or desir- 
 
2 63 
 
 able influence on the character of the population. 
 In this unfortunate contest, each will, in all likeli¬ 
 hood, believe the other to be a hypocrite; the one 
 incurring this suspicion because of the way in 
 which the legal hardihood of the deacon stands in 
 awkward and unseemly conjunction upon the same 
 individual, with the apparent zeal and sincerity of 
 the elder; and the other incurring this suspicion, 
 because of the way in which a sordid desire after 
 things secular is mingled, in the same exhibition, 
 with a seeming deference to things sacred. It is 
 thus that the pluralist feels himself paralysed info 
 utter helplessness: and never was public function¬ 
 ary more cruelly hampered than by this associa¬ 
 tion of duties, which are altogether so discordant. 
 There is no place for the still small voice of Chris¬ 
 tian friendship, in such an atmosphere of recrimi¬ 
 nation, and heart-burning, and mutual jealousy, as 
 now encompasses the ministration of charity, in 
 our great towns. To import the English principle 
 of pauperism among the kirk-sessions of Scotland 
 is like putting new wine into old bottles. It so 
 mangles and lacerates an eldership, as to dissipate 
 all the moral ascendency they once had over our 
 population. It is ever to be regretted that such a 
 ministration as this should have been inserted be¬ 
 tween the two parties. No subtle or Satanic ad¬ 
 versary of religion could have devised a more 
 skilful barrier against all tire usefulness and effect 
 of these lay associates of the clergy: and, as the 
 fruit of this melancholy transformation, a class 
 
of men, who have contributed so much to build 
 up and sustain our national character, will be as 
 good as swept away from the land. 
 
 And the clergy themselves have received a vitiat¬ 
 ing taint from this pernicious innovation. They too 
 have been implicated among the stout legalities of 
 a business, now turned from an atfair of the heart 
 to an affair of points and precedents, where every 
 question must be determined with rigour, and 
 every determination be persisted in, with uncom¬ 
 plying hardihood. The minister feels himself 
 translated into a new and strange relationship with 
 his people, and is in inextricable difficulties about 
 the character he should assume; for whether he 
 moves in the style of an affectionate pastor, or puts 
 on the stern countenance amongst them of a liti¬ 
 gant with their claims, corruption will be sure to 
 attend upon his footsteps; and he will either call 
 forth the fawning hypocrisy of expectants, on the 
 one hand, or be met, in soreness and sullenness of 
 spirit, by the disappointed candidates for parochi¬ 
 al aliment, on the other. 
 
 In the late ferments of the popular mind which 
 took place at Glasgow, one of the earliest move¬ 
 ments was a combined application to each of the 
 kirk-sessions, for an extension of the system of 
 parochial aid. Whether the refusal of this was 
 the pretext, or the principle, of the disturbances 
 that followed, it ought at least to be quite palp¬ 
 able that our ecclesiastical courts ought never to 
 be involved in the whirl of any such political agi- 
 
265 
 
 tationsj and we have reason to believe that, from 
 the Church having been implicated to such a de¬ 
 gree, in what was once a charitable, but is now 
 regarded as a legal ministration, there has a ran¬ 
 corous infidelity been spreading among the people 
 —a contempt for religion itself mingling with all 
 the odium and irritation that have been incurred 
 by its ministers. 
 
 There are two ways of decomposing this mis¬ 
 chief. There may be a reversion to the old sys¬ 
 tem of Scottish pauperism, so that its expenses 
 shall be wholly defrayed, as before, by voluntary 
 collections, and it shall regain the character of a 
 purely ecclesiastical ministration. We believe 
 this to be practicable, and that too with a speed 
 and a facility of which no adequate impression 
 can be given by argument. This is a subject in 
 which the result of experience, upon actual trial, 
 will far outstrip the anticipations even of the most 
 sanguine economist. If the existing cases of pau¬ 
 perism are suffered to die out, on the legal fund 
 raised by assessment, and the new applications 
 are met by the gratuitous fund gathered at the 
 church doors—the former fund would, in a few 
 vears, be left unburdened, and be no longer call¬ 
 ed for; and the latter fund be found, in every 
 way, as adequate to the then existing demand 
 for relief, as the whole of the present revenue, 
 both legal and gratuitous, is to the present de¬ 
 mand. It were interfering with a future part of 
 our argument, were we to enter now into the 
 M 
 
question, why it is that a happier state of things, 
 and a more diffused comfort and sufficiency among 
 our people will follow upon the reduction, or 
 even the total abolition of public charity, for the 
 relief of indigence, than can ever be brought 
 about,, either by its most skilful or its most abun¬ 
 dant ministrations? But, in the meantime, let 
 the thing be tried, instead of argued; let separate 
 parishes just throw themselves fearlessly on an ex¬ 
 periment which, to many an eye, looks so hazar¬ 
 dous; let the excess of their actual pauperism 
 over their present collections be taken off, and 
 provided for out of the sum raised by assessments; 
 and let all future cases be attempted, at least, up¬ 
 on the produce of future collections:—and ere 
 one year has rolled over this new system of things, 
 there are many of our public and practical men, 
 who have resisted to the uttermost all theoretical 
 conviction upon the subject, that will, if they 
 simply engage in the matter with their own hands, 
 be sure to work their way to a most firm experi¬ 
 mental conviction about it. Should this plan be 
 entered upon, we would feel less earnest about 
 the separation of our eldership from the work of 
 public charity. There would still, it is true, af¬ 
 ter the abridgment had taken place, in the extent 
 of its operation, be a remainder of the mischief 
 that we have attempted to expose; but far more 
 innocent, in point of effect, just because far more 
 insignificant than before, in point of magnitude. 
 Perhaps, however, a deaconship might be of tern- 
 
porary use, in helping to conduct the pauperism 
 back again to its original state. It would, in the 
 meantime, relieve the eldership of all apprehen¬ 
 sion of personal fatigue and difficulty to them¬ 
 selves, while the experiment was going forward. 
 It would extend that most desirable of all opera¬ 
 tions—a frequent intercourse between the lower 
 and higher orders of the community. By this 
 widening of the public agency, too, there would, 
 at least, be a widening of the amount of practical 
 observation, on a matter that is grossly misunder¬ 
 stood by many reasoners and declaimers, and that 
 requires only the light of a close and familiar ex¬ 
 perience to be thrown upon it. We may, after¬ 
 wards, attempt to bring forward the reasons, why 
 a deaconship, however good as a temporary expe¬ 
 dient, need not be insisted on as a part of the per¬ 
 manent or essential machinery of any parish; 
 however important their services may be, through¬ 
 out the whole period of transition, from the pre¬ 
 sent corrupt and modernised system of pauper¬ 
 ism, in our large towns, back again to the old 
 and healthful economy of our Scottish parishes. 
 
 But should this plan not be adopted, it were 
 greatly better that the Church should be altogether 
 dissevered from the ministrations of public charity. 
 We shall never cease to regret the introduction 
 of a legal spirit into the work of human benevo¬ 
 lence; and to regard the establishment of a com¬ 
 pulsory provision for the poor as one of the worst 
 invasions ever made on the olden habit of our 
 
country, and as one of the deadliest obstacles to its 
 moral regeneration. But if this curse is to be 
 perpetuated upon our land, let elders and deacons 
 and all who hold any ecclesiastical character 
 amongst us, cease, from this moment, to be impli¬ 
 cated in a business so mischievous. It is quite 
 enough that, in their strict official employment, 
 of sustaining the principle and character of the 
 country, they have the whole adverse influence 
 of this vitiating dispensation to contend with. 
 But, in the name of all Christian and all political 
 wisdom, let not such a dispensation be put into 
 their hands; nor let these labourers in the cause 
 of Scotland’s piety and Scotland’s worth be 
 charged with any distribution of a quality so poi¬ 
 sonous, and, at the same time, so alluring, that 
 they can neither withhold it, without alienating 
 many hearts from them, nor spread it freely 
 around, without insinuating corruption into these 
 hearts, and scattering the seeds of a great and 
 pernicious distemper over the land. 
 
 It is our confident expectation, however, that 
 our towns will take the better way of it, and re¬ 
 duce then' separate parishes to the economy from 
 which they have departed. In this case, there 
 will be a gradual diminution of the evil to which 
 our eldership is, at present, so much exposed. 
 Or if, to aid the process, an order of deacons 
 shall he instituted, then the members of the 
 former body, relieved altogether from the public 
 charge of the poor, may be left free to expatiate 
 
among the people purely as their Christian friends, 
 and with.the single object of promoting the spirit 
 and the observations of the gospel among their 
 families. 
 
 When the work of an elder is thus disembarass- 
 ed from the elements by which it was before vi¬ 
 tiated, he will feel a sad burden of perplexity and 
 discomfort cleared away. He may, at times, be 
 received with distaste, by families that would 
 have welcomed him, on the ground of his secular 
 ministrations. But surely it is better that there 
 be a distinctly visible line of demarcation between 
 these families, and those which still receive him 
 with cordiality on a higher ground, and about 
 the principle of whose cordiality, therefore, there 
 can be no mistake and no misinterpretation. He 
 who has felt the delight of genuine Christian in¬ 
 tercourse with the poor, will feel all the charm of 
 a deliverance, when the sordid and the sacred are 
 thus separated the one from the other; and he, 
 freed from the suspicions which, at one time, har¬ 
 assed and distressed him, can now expatiate, at 
 least over a certain portion of the territory, with 
 the animating thought that so many doors and so 
 many hearts are open to him; and that, on the 
 single score of such religious or such respectful 
 attentions as he may be disposed to render to the 
 population. He will feel himself as if elevated 
 into a more etherial region, when borne in plea¬ 
 santness along on the pure play of such feelings 
 and such friendships as are called forth by simple 
 
270 
 
 goodness, on the one side, and that simple grati¬ 
 tude, on the other, which is ever sure to be at¬ 
 tracted by goodness, even when it has no gift to 
 bestow. In truth, the very purity of such a min¬ 
 istration adds prodigiously both to the pleasure 
 and to the power of it: and, whereas no cheering 
 ' inference could be drawn from the extended ac¬ 
 ceptance of an elder among the people, so long 
 as he stood charged with the elements of a beg¬ 
 garly dispensation—should that charge be given 
 up, we shall then, from every additional house, 
 where he is hailed as the acquaintance and the 
 respectable friend of the inmates, be able to infer 
 the authentic progress of a right and peaceful in¬ 
 fluence among our families. 
 
 There is a delusive fear to which inexperience 
 is liable upon this subject, as if there was a very 
 general rapacity among the families of the poor, 
 which, if not appeased out of the capabilities of a 
 public fund, would render it altogether unsafe 
 for any private individual, in the upper walks of 
 society, to move at large among their habitations. 
 It is not considered how much it is that this ra¬ 
 pacity is whetted by the imagination of a great 
 collective treasure, at the disposal of this indivi¬ 
 dual. An elder who is implicated with pauper¬ 
 ism, or the agent of a charitable society who is 
 known to be such, will most certainly light up 
 a thousand mercenary expectations, and, be met 
 by a thousand mercenary demands, in the course 
 of his frequent visitations among the people. But 
 
let him stand out to the general eye as dissociated 
 with all the concerns of an artificial charity; and 
 let it be his sole ostensible aim to excite the reli¬ 
 gious spirit of the district, or to promote its edu¬ 
 cation—and he may, every day of his life, walk 
 over the whole length and breadth of his territo¬ 
 ry, without meeting with any demand that is at 
 all unmanageable, or that needs to alarm him. 
 The truth is, that there is a far greater sufficiency 
 among the lower classes of society than is gener¬ 
 ally imagined; and our first impressions of their 
 want and wretchedness are generally by much 
 too aggravated; nor do we know a more effectual 
 method of reducing these impressions than to cul¬ 
 tivate a closer acquaintance with their resources, 
 and their habits, and their whole domestic econo¬ 
 my. It is certainly in the power of artificial ex¬ 
 pedients to create artificial desires, and to call out 
 a host of applications, that would never have 
 otherwise been made. And we know of nothing 
 that leads more directly and more surely to this 
 state of things, than a great regular provision for 
 indigence, obtruded, with all the characters of 
 legality, and certainty, and abundance, upon the 
 notice of the people. But wherever the securi¬ 
 ties which nature hath established for the relief 
 and mitigation of extreme distress are not so tam¬ 
 pered with, where the economy of individuals, 
 and the sympathy of neighbours, and a sense of 
 the relative duties among kinsfolk, are left, with¬ 
 out disturbance, to their own silent and simple 
 
272 
 
 operation;—it will be found that there is nothing 
 so formidable in the work of traversing a whole 
 mass of congregated human beings, and of en¬ 
 countering all the clamours, whether of real or 
 of fictitious necessity, that may be raised by our 
 appearance amongst them. So soon as it is un¬ 
 derstood that all which is given by such an adven¬ 
 turous philanthropist is given by himself; and so 
 soon as acquaintanceship is formed between him 
 and the families; and so soon as the conviction of 
 his good will has been settled in their hearts, by 
 the repeated observation they have made of his 
 kindness and personal trouble, for their sakes;— 
 then the sordid appetite which would have been 
 maintained, in full vigour, so long as there was 
 the imagination of a fund, of which he was merely 
 an agent of conveyance, will be shamed, and 
 that nearly into extinction, the moment that this 
 imagination is dissolved. Such an individual will 
 meet with a limit to his sacrifices, in the very de¬ 
 licacy of the poor themselves; and it will be pos¬ 
 sible for him to expatiate among hundreds of his 
 fellows, and to give a Christian reception to every 
 proposal he meets with; and yet, after all, with 
 the humble fraction of a humble revenue, to earn 
 the credit of liberality amongst them. We know 
 not, indeed, how one can be made more effectu¬ 
 ally to see, with his own eyes, the superfluousness 
 of all public and legalised charity, than just to 
 assume a district, and become the familiar friend 
 of the people who live in it, and to do for them 
 
the thousand nameless offices of Christian regard, 
 and to encourage, in every judicious and inoffen¬ 
 sive way, their dependence upon themselves, and 
 their fellow-feeling one for another. Such a pro¬ 
 cess of daily observation as this will do more than 
 all political theory can do, to convince him with 
 what safety the subsistence of a people may be 
 left to their own capabilitiesj and how the mo¬ 
 dern pauperism of our days is a superstructure al¬ 
 together raised on the basis of imposture and 
 worthlessness—a basis which the very weight of 
 the superstructure is fitted to consolidate and to 
 extend. 
 
 It is fully admitted, that ail elder, to be at all use¬ 
 ful to the people, must approve the genuineness of 
 his Christianity amongst them; and this he cannot 
 do if he carry to their observation the hard and 
 forbidding aspect of one that has no feeling for 
 the poor. It is the necessity of maintaining such 
 a defensive aspect among the numerous applica¬ 
 tions which are gendered by an artificial system of 
 charity, that renders it so desirable to rescue all 
 ecclesiastical men from the work of its distribu¬ 
 tions. But should charity cease to be artificial, 
 and the cause come, at length,' to be confided to 
 the operation of sympathy, and a sense of duty, 
 among individuals, then, let an elder associate 
 himself with the families of any city district, and 
 it is certainly his part, as one of these individuals, 
 to exemplify, in his person, all the virtues of that 
 gospel, for the interest of which he professes to 
 
274 
 
 be a labourer. But he will soon ascertain the dif¬ 
 ference, in respect of pressure and urgency of ap¬ 
 plication for those alms which are dispensed by 
 public and associated charity, and those alms 
 which are done in secret. What is still, better, 
 there will be a charm of gratitude and of moral 
 influence in the one ministration, which he never 
 felt in the other: and, when the year has rolled 
 over his head, and he computes all the expenses 
 of that season of kindness and of enjoyment 
 which is past, he will find in this, as in every 
 other department of Christian experience, that 
 the yoke of the Saviour is, indeed, easy, and his 
 burden is light. 
 
 But it is not the materiel of benevolence, given 
 to those few of his families who may require it,— 
 it is not this that will bind to him the population 
 he has assumed. This may be necessary to indi¬ 
 cate the honesty of his principles. But it is the 
 morale of benevolence,—it is the unbounded and 
 universal spirit of kindness felt by him for all the 
 families, and expressing itself in numberless other 
 ways, besides the giving of alms,—it is this which 
 will raise him to his chief and useful ascendency 
 over them. It is seldom adverted to, how much 
 a simple affection, if it be but authentically mani¬ 
 fested in any one way, is fitted to call forth affec¬ 
 tion back again. It is little known how open 
 even the rudest and wildest of a city population 
 are to the magic of this sweetening influence. 
 There is here one precious department of our na- 
 
 X 
 
275 
 
 ture which seems not to have been so overspread 
 as the rest of it, by the rains of the fall. Per¬ 
 haps, vanity and selfishness may enter as elements 
 into the effect; but, certain it is, that if one hu¬ 
 man being see, in the heart of another, a good 
 will towards himself, he is not able, and far less 
 is he willing, to stifle or to withhold the recipro¬ 
 cal good will that he feels to arise in his own bo¬ 
 som. This is a phenomenon of our nature which 
 the hardy administrators of a poor’s house have 
 little conception of; and they may be heard to 
 predict, that if you disjoin an elder from all the 
 patronage which he shares with them, you take 
 away from him the only instrument by which he 
 can ever hope to conciliate his families. The 
 truth is, that it is in virtue of being associated 
 with them, that there is so wide a distance, and 
 so many heart-burnings, between him and his 
 families. And he never will be able to make 
 ground amongst them, till that which letteth is 
 taken out of the way. The hostility of the people, 
 or the hypocrisy of the people, may be abundant¬ 
 ly nourished out of the elements of the present 
 system; but it is by the play of finer elements al¬ 
 together, that the hearts of the people are to be 
 won. We are quite aware of the incredulity of 
 practical men upon this subject; but it is just be¬ 
 cause they are not practical enough, that they 
 are blind to the truth, and cannot perceive it. 
 This is a subject on which the faithful delinea¬ 
 tions of experience are, at the same time, so very 
 
276 
 
 beautiful, that they impress an indiscriminating 
 mind with the suspicion of a fancy picture, ou 
 which the glare, and the tinsel, and the warm col¬ 
 ouring, of an artist have been abundantly em¬ 
 ployed. We are quite confident, however, that, 
 in the progress of the system of locality, there 
 will be a speedy and a satisfying multiplication of 
 facts, more than enough to verify that what has 
 been affirmed upon this topic are, indeed, the 
 words of truth and soberness. 
 
 It has never been enough adverted to, that a 
 process for Christianising the people is sure to be 
 tainted and enfeebled, when there is allied with 
 it a process for alimenting the people—that there 
 lies a moral impossibility in the way of accom¬ 
 plishing these two objects, by the working of one 
 and the same machinery—and that if a combined 
 operation has been set up, in behalf of the former, 
 then its individual agents do wrong, by joining 
 their counsels and their energies together, in be¬ 
 half of the latter; for the duties connected with 
 which they should simply resolve themselves into 
 private Christians, each acting separately, and in 
 secret, within his own sphere, and each eventual¬ 
 ly finding how much more remarkable that sphere 
 becomes, when charity is again restored to its na¬ 
 tural aspect, and all artifice, and all publicity, are 
 done away from it. 
 
 Still, however, there is the impression among 
 many, of a flowery and unsubstantial romance, in 
 all that has been said about the charm of private 
 
277 
 
 kindness, when unassociated with such gifts as 
 can only be supplied out of the treasures of public 
 liberality. They regard it as a dream of poetry, 
 which is never realised, even in a country parish 
 —a scene more favourable, it is thought, to all 
 sorts of sentimentalism—and which, therefore, lies 
 at a still more hopeless distance away from us, 
 among the rude and rugged materials of a city 
 population. So that it still remains the obstinate 
 conviction of by far the greater number of our 
 municipal rulers, that, without a copious distribu¬ 
 tion of the material of benevolence, there is no 
 making way among the crowded families of a 
 town; and that the simple affection of benevo¬ 
 lence, however intense in its feeling, and how¬ 
 ever obvious and sincere in all its indications, 
 will not suffice for the acceptance of a mere Chris¬ 
 tian philanthropist, in the humble walks of so¬ 
 ciety. 
 
 This is a question, too, which it were better to 
 try than to argue. And yet it ought to be a pal¬ 
 pable thing, even with our most every-day observ¬ 
 ers, that humanity is so constituted as to derive 
 a sensation of pleasure from another’s love, as 
 well as from the fruit of another’s liberality. 
 When humanity, indeed, is brought up to its 
 perfection, it will be the former, and not the lat¬ 
 ter, that will minister the highest gratification. 
 There is to be treasure, we are told, in heaven; 
 and yet there will neither be silver nor gold there, 
 which the apostle Peter ranks among corruptible 
 
278 
 
 things; for, according to the report of our Savi¬ 
 our, there is nothing in that place of blessedness 
 which either moth or rust can corrupt, or which 
 thieves can steal. And there will also be benevo¬ 
 lence in heaven—a communication from one to 
 another, of such treasure as belongs to it—a mu¬ 
 tual transference of enjoyment, whieh will heigh¬ 
 ten the enjoyment of each of the parties—a ful¬ 
 ness of gratification arising not merely from the 
 tide of kind and pleasurable emotion which passes 
 and repasses between God upon his throne, and the 
 holy and happy family around him, but arising also 
 from the reciprocal conveyance of reverence and 
 regard, and all that is righteous, and affectionate, 
 and true, between the various members of that 
 family. So that, even in a state of things where 
 poverty is altogether excluded—where silver and 
 gold cannot enter, as they do now, into that ex¬ 
 pression of good will, which is often rendered 
 here by one human being to another—where, 
 though materialism do exist, it is not such a cor¬ 
 rupt and deranged materialism as that by which 
 we are surrounded, and in virtue of which, the 
 claims of want, and sickness, and suffering, are 
 incessantly calling forth a supply of this world’s 
 wealth, from those who have it to those who have 
 it not—in a state of things where those miseries 
 which draw upon the ordinary beneficence of our 
 species are unknown, and where almsgiving is 
 impossible;—will there still, in some way or 
 other, be a rich and blessed dispensation of good 
 
279 
 
 falling from those who have neither gold nor sil¬ 
 ver to give, and yet who, by giving such things 
 as they have, will so elevate the raptures and the 
 felicities of heaven, as to cause its joy to be 
 felt. 
 
 In this world the poor shall be with us always; 
 and, under the imperative duty of giving such 
 things as we have, all who do have the silver and 
 gold are under the obligation of being willing to 
 distribute, and ready to communicate. And yet this 
 is a world where the principles of heaven ripen into 
 perfection. This is a world where the affections of 
 heaven take their birth, and rise into maturity, and 
 operate, in the midst of much to thwart and to dis¬ 
 courage them, and find in the peopled scenes of 
 humanity the objects of constant and manifold 
 indulgences. This is a world too which gross and 
 sensual as the general nature of its inhabitants 
 may be, and keenly directed as their appetites are 
 towards silver and gold, or such materials of en¬ 
 joyment as these can produce, it is still a world, 
 where, through all its generations the charm even 
 of simple kindness is not unfelt, even when it has 
 nothing to bestow; it is a world where Christian 
 love, even though it do not possess the elements 
 of liberality, is no sooner recognised in our bo¬ 
 som, than it causes another bosom to respond and 
 to rejoice along with it; it is a world where the 
 cordiality of man to his fellow, in its passage from 
 one heart and from one habitation to another, is 
 ever sure to carry along with it the truest and 
 
most touching of all gratifications; it is a world 
 where we affirm, that good will, though unaccom¬ 
 panied with wealth, can spread a higher and more 
 permanent felicity, even among its poorest vi¬ 
 cinities, than ever wealth can, in all its profu¬ 
 sion, unaccompanied with good will. So that 
 though a time be coming, when the world shall 
 be burned up, and all its silver and gold, and other 
 materials for the grosser desires of our body, are, 
 like the .dross of some worthless residuum, to be 
 utterly consumed and cast away; yet, if the pure 
 and prompting benevolence of the soul, with all 
 its ardours upon the one side, and all its honest 
 gratitude upon the other, shall survive this pro¬ 
 cess of destruction, and be transplanted into hea¬ 
 ven, there will be enough to regale, and that for 
 ever, its immortal society; enough, out of the mere 
 interchange of its moralities and its feelings, to 
 sustain all its fondest delights, and all its highest 
 and most abiding ecstaeies. 
 
 Now, though these moralities are here imper¬ 
 fect, yet are they not even now, in their present 
 measure, and according to their present degree, 
 convertible to the purpose of diffusing upon earth 
 a certain proportion of the blessedness of heaven? 
 When unaccompanied with the possession of gold 
 and silver, they will of course give to their in¬ 
 struments of benevolence, the aim and the direc¬ 
 tion of benevolence. But they are not always 
 thus accompanied. The poor in this world’s 
 goods are often rich in faith, and heirs of the 
 
281 
 
 everlasting kingdom. They may possess the ele¬ 
 ments of the character of heaven, though they do 
 not possess the earthly means of earthly gratifica¬ 
 tion. With this character, and its emanating in¬ 
 fluences, they will shed a lustre and a blessedness 
 around the mansions of the city which hath foun¬ 
 dations; And though the earthly be unlike to 
 the heavenly nature, in its active principles, yet 
 it is not so unlike, in its experience of passive en¬ 
 joyment, biit that with this character a poor man 
 may shed a degree of the same lustre and the 
 Same blessedness around his present dwelling- 
 place. it holds true, even of the most profligate 
 of our kind, that attentions can soothe them, and 
 the expression of civility can reconcile them, and 
 the courteousness which is due from one human 
 being to another can soften and draw them out 
 to a return of courteousness back again; and the 
 friendship which has positively nothing to offer, 
 but its moral and affectionate regards, can waken 
 in their minds a sensation of enjoyment; and good 
 will, with those minuter services, which, of no mo¬ 
 ment in respect of their material benefit, go only 
 to indicate the principle from which they spring, 
 can, on the strength of its own bare and unasso¬ 
 ciated existence, subdue them into a reciprocal 
 tenderness—and that all these, when obviously 
 emerging out of a Christian heart, from a deep 
 and a sacred fountain struck out there, and form¬ 
 ing a well of water which springeth up into life 
 everlasting, can give such an unequivocal charac- 
 o 
 
ter of religiousness to all that its possessor either 
 doeth or saith to his neighbours who are around 
 him, as, though he has neither silver nor gold to 
 give away, may, in fact, render him their most 
 important benefactor. In that crowded obscuri¬ 
 ty of human beings where God hath fixed his ha¬ 
 bitation, he may be a light, and send forth a mo¬ 
 ral sunshine into the surrounding darkness; he 
 may be a leaven, and by the fermenting opera¬ 
 tion of his example and advice may leaven the 
 whole of his little neighbourhood; he may be a 
 salt, nor will it be known, perhaps, till the dis¬ 
 closures of another day, how far die influence of 
 his presence went to preserve from utter dissolu¬ 
 tion the putrid mass of wickedness around him; 
 or how much the recurring melody of his evening 
 psalms served to mitigate the uproar of its noisy 
 and turbulent dissipation. But the fact which 
 now calls our attention is, that even the most de¬ 
 praved of nature’s children own the power and 
 the graciousness of those simple ministrations 
 which form the all that a humble Christian can 
 bestow—that his professions of kindness, and his 
 pleadings of earnestness* and his advices of piety, 
 to themselves and to their families, and his little 
 surrenders of time and of trouble, have an impres¬ 
 sion upon them—and that, even in spite of their 
 own unregenerate hearts, it is, upon the whole, 
 an impression of kindliness—that, giving only 
 such tilings as he has, and without either gold or 
 silver to give, he has wrought a benefit for them, 
 
283 
 
 and for himself a gratitude, and a cordial remem¬ 
 brance, surpassing all that takes place in the more 
 common dispensations of charity: insomuch that, 
 whether we compute the good that has been ren¬ 
 dered, on the one hand, as made up of moral 
 influence, and friendly admonition, and the name¬ 
 less offices of a humble but honest regard; and the 
 return it calls out, on the other, as made up of a 
 heart-felt graciousness which even the sternest of 
 our kind cannot withhold from the man who 
 unites, in his person, the worth of Christianity 
 with the gentleness of Christianity;—we will posi¬ 
 tively find, in this simple play of the pure and 
 abstract feelings of benevolence, unassociated 
 as it is with what may be called the materialism 
 of benevolence, more of the ethereal character of 
 a higher and holier region, than in the mere inter¬ 
 course of such a generosity as evinces itself only 
 by a gift, and of such a gratitude as evinces itself 
 only by the pleasure of receiving it. 
 
 It is surely a position, the truth of which may 
 be demonstrated to human experience, that the 
 simple existence of kind affection, on the one 
 hand, and the simple recognition of it, with its 
 influence in calling forth a corresponding return, 
 upon the other, are enough, of themselves, to 
 augment, and that too in a most substantial and 
 satisfying degree, the happiness of each of the 
 parties; and that, therefore, the man who has no¬ 
 thing to give but the expression of his friendly 
 regard may, in fact, be dealing out among his fel- 
 
lows the materials of real enjoyment. It will not 
 be difficult to convince of this truth the members 
 of an affectionate family, in the transference of 
 whose kindly feelings from one to another they 
 intimately know that there is a sensation far more 
 precious to the heart, than can be wrought there 
 by the transference of gold or silver. Neither 
 will it be difficult to convince the man of ever- 
 flowing cordiality, in the walks of social inter¬ 
 course, who, whether at the festive board, or 
 even in his hurried passage through the bustle and 
 throng of a street teeming with acquaintances, is 
 most thoroughly conscious of the pleasure that is 
 both given and received by the smile, and the ra¬ 
 pid enquiry, and even the most slight and momen¬ 
 tary token of deference and good will. Neither 
 will it be difficult to make the truth of this lesson 
 be recognised by him who has had frequent expe¬ 
 rience and fellowship among the abodes of pover¬ 
 ty, and who can attest how pure and how delici¬ 
 ous that incense is which arises from the simple 
 acknowledgments of those who, save their regard 
 and the expression of their honest attachment, 
 have positively nothing to bestow. And neither 
 will it be difficult to make this whole matter plain 
 to the reflection of the poor themselves, upon 
 whose humble vicinities the wealthy have seldom 
 or never entered, and who know well that, with¬ 
 in the narrow compass of their own intercourse, 
 a bright and a gladdening influence may be con¬ 
 veyed from one humble tenement to another; 
 
285 
 
 ancl that if the next door neighbour bear an affec¬ 
 tion to them, it throws a light into their bosoms 
 which would not be there, if he bore against them 
 a grudge or a displeasure; and that the difference, 
 in point of feeling, between an atmosphere of 
 kind agreement and an atmosphere of fierce and 
 fiery contention is just as distinct as will be the 
 difference between heaven and hell: insomuch 
 that, after all, it is not so much the occasional 
 liberality of him who makes the transient visit, 
 and leaves behind him some token of his abun¬ 
 dance,—it is not this which so cheers and allevi¬ 
 ates the lot of poverty, as that more stedfast and 
 habitual blessedness which, by the kindness of im¬ 
 mediate neighbours, may be made to shine and to 
 settle around its habitation. All this is abun¬ 
 dantly obvious among the various conditions of 
 society, in the bosom of a family, or among the 
 rich, in all that regards their intercourse with 
 each other; or among the rich, as to the sweetness 
 which they have themselves experienced, in a 
 simple offering of affection from the poor; or 
 among the poor, in all that they know and feel of 
 the relationship in which they stand with the 
 members of their own neighbourhood. And the 
 only difficulty, in completing this proof, which 
 we have to contend with, is when we attempt to 
 convince the rich that, while it is their duty to 
 give of their gold and silver to those who stand 
 in need of them, it is their kindness which, if ac¬ 
 tually perceived to be genuine, is more valued 
 
286 
 
 and more enjoyed by the poor than even the fruit 
 of their kindness—it is the principle which 
 prompted the offering that, after all, affords a 
 truer relish to their feelings than the offering it¬ 
 self—it is the community of hearts which raises 
 and delights them more than even the community 
 of goods. If the one be established between the 
 various classes of society, it will no doubt bring 
 the best and fittest proportion of the other along 
 with it. But the thing of importance to be re¬ 
 marked just now is, that nature, even when sunk 
 in abject poverty, and, therefore, relieved in her 
 more pressing wants by an act of alms-giving, is 
 still more soothed and conciliated by an exhibi¬ 
 tion of good will, on the part of the giver, than 
 by the whole material product of the beneficence 
 that he has rendered—that it is a gross, and, in 
 every way, an injurious misconception of the poor 
 to think them beyond the reach of those finer in¬ 
 fluences which reciprocate between pure sympa¬ 
 thy, on the one hand, and a simple sense and 
 observation of that sympathy, on the other. In 
 other words, that the rich are not aware of what 
 that is which gains the most effective influence 
 over the hearts of the poor, if they think that for¬ 
 tune has given them a power which belongs only 
 to the principle of generosity that is within, and 
 not to the mere fruit of generosity that is with¬ 
 out; or if they think that money descending, by 
 the law of the land, in the shape of an unwilling 
 or extorted ministration, has any portion in it of 
 
287 
 
 that higher control which only belongs to the law 
 of love written in the heart, and evincing its 
 operation in unwearied attentions, and engaging 
 affabilities, and willing services. 
 
 Conceive, then, an individual who has been in 
 the habit, for years, of going round among an as¬ 
 signed population as the agent and the distributor 
 of relief, out of a public treasury. Should he 
 transfer his office to another, and simply go 
 round among them, in the new capacity of a 
 friend and a Christian adviser, he may still have 
 a certain proportion of silver and gold to dispose 
 of, out of those private means which he, in com¬ 
 mon with all other men, should lay out on chari¬ 
 table uses, as God hath given him the ability. 
 The gold and the silver may not, therefore, be 
 totally withdrawn from his ministrations; but, in 
 virtue of such an arrangement, the gold and the 
 silver would, at least, be very much reduced, 
 and he would be left without any thing to substi¬ 
 tute in their places, but the attentions of kind¬ 
 ness and the attentions of Christianity. We are 
 not supposing this old office to be abolished, but 
 only to be laid on another; and the question is a 
 very plain one, Will the attentions which we have 
 just now specified be, in themselves, enough to 
 maintain him in the place which he formerly held 
 over that neighbourhood of human beings, where 
 he wont to expatiate? The practical solution of 
 this question would lead us to determine whether 
 the account, which we have now given, of our 
 
288 
 
 nature be of an experimental or of a visionary 
 Character. If there be other tokens of affection 
 than the one act of giving money, and these to¬ 
 kens be exhibited; if there be other marks of good 
 will than the distribution of a gold and a silver 
 which he no longer has to bestow, and these 
 Inarks be authentically seen and read of all men, 
 Upon hiS person; if; without the means of his 
 former liberality, his present love bd only verified 
 in its naked existence; or if it announce its real¬ 
 ity by such signs as nature has annexed to the 
 feeling; and as every partaker of that nature 
 knows well how to interpret; if, by the perseve¬ 
 rance Of months, he has schooled away every 
 suspicion of hypocrisy, and, in the toils and the 
 services of an unwearied assiduity, he has, at 
 length, earned the conviction that all their hopes 
 and all their anxieties are his own; if; when he 
 knocks at their doors, it should only be on the 
 simple etrand of a cordial enquiry, or ah im¬ 
 ploring advice, either to themselves or to their 
 children;—the man may positively have nothing 
 but lois heart to give, but, iii giving that, he has 
 touched the very principle of our nature which 
 brings all its hidden machinery under his power. 
 This ascendency of the moral ov'er the material 
 part of our constitution is no romance and no fa¬ 
 brication of poetry. It is exemplified every day, 
 in the living and the ordinary walk of human ex¬ 
 perience. There is not, on the face of our world, 
 one neighbourhood of contiguous families, either 
 
so poor or so profligate as to withstand these re¬ 
 peated demonstrations; and that sullenness of 
 character which no bribery could reduce, and 
 which gathers a deeper and more determined 
 gloom, when the hand of authority is applied to 
 it, has been rendered tractable as childhood, un¬ 
 der the mighty and the magical spell of a meek, 
 and endearing, and undissembled charity. 
 
 The law of reciprocal attraction between one 
 heart and another is a law of nature as well as 
 of Christianity; insomuch, that no sooner does 
 the regard of a philanthropist for the people of 
 his district come to be recognised, than their re¬ 
 gard for him, and that, too, both from the con¬ 
 verted and unconverted, will attest of what kind 
 of material humanity is formed. The effect is so 
 beautiful that one cannot expatiate upon it, with¬ 
 out meeting the imputation of romance from 
 those hackneyed, and secular, and incredulous 
 men, whose eyes have never once been directed to 
 this field of observation; but the effect is, at the 
 same time, so certain as to stamp on what we say 
 all the soundness of an experimental affirmation. 
 Christianity, indeed, is the alone agent by which 
 the elevating power of a sentiment so pure and so 
 celestial, as to have the effect of poetry upon the 
 imagination, will ever be realised on the familiar 
 and homebred scenes of ordinary life. But it is a 
 most inviting circumstance, in the great enter¬ 
 prise of spreading the light and influence of 
 Christianity around a population, where one sees 
 
290 
 
 that the very humblest of its zealous votaries can 
 thus work his secure and certain way to the uni¬ 
 versal acceptance of his fellows.- Let suspicion 
 be but once dissipated, and the enmity of nature 
 be disarmed, by the true and touching demon¬ 
 strations of a real principle of kindness, and ridi¬ 
 cule have ceased from its uproar, and contempt 
 have discharged all its vociferations, and the man’s 
 Worth and benevolence become manifest as day; 
 then, though the ministration of gold and silver 
 be that which fortune hath altogether denied Min* 
 it is both very striking and very encouraging to 
 behold, how, in spite of themselves, he steals the 
 hearts of the people away from them; how, as if 
 by the operation of some mystic spell, the most 
 restless and profligate of them all feel the soften¬ 
 ing influence of his presence and of his doings; 
 and how, in the' cheap and humble services of 
 tending tlieir children, and visiting their sick, and 
 ministering in sacred exercises at the couch of 
 the dying, and filling up his opportunities of in¬ 
 tercourse with the utterance of holy advice, and 
 the exhibition of holy example* there is, in these 
 simple and unaccompanied attentions, a charm 
 felt and welcomed, even in the most polluted 
 atmosphere that ever settled around the most cor¬ 
 rupt and crowded of human habitations. 
 
 This is not credited ,by many of our citizens; 
 and men who deliver themselves in a tone of 
 grave, and respectable, and imposing experience, 
 may be heard to affirm, that, unless an elder be 
 
291 
 
 vested with a power of administration over the 
 public money, he will be an unwelcome visitor 
 with the general run of our families—that he will 
 meet with few to bid him God-speed, on the 
 single and abstract errand of Christianity—and 
 that, while the old system of payments without 
 prayers was acceptable enough, the new system 
 of prayers without payments will banish the 
 whole host of eldership in our city from the ac¬ 
 ceptance and good will of its inhabitants. Surely 
 this is a matter of proof and not of probability— 
 a thing that may be committed to the decision of 
 experience, instead of being left to the conten¬ 
 tions of reason or of sophistry. Let an elder 
 count it his duty to hold a habitual intercourse of 
 kindness with the people of his district, and, for 
 this purpose, devote but a few hours in the week 
 to their highest interest; out of the fulness of a 
 heart animated with good wijl to men, and, in 
 particular, with that good will which points to 
 tlie good of their eternity, let him make use of 
 every practical expedient for spreading amongst 
 them the light and influence of the gospel; let it 
 be his constant aim to warn the unruly, to com¬ 
 fort the afflicted, to stimulate the education of 
 children, to press the duty of attending ordinan¬ 
 ces, to make use of all his persuasion in private, 
 and of all his influence to promote such public 
 and parochial measures as may forward the simple 
 design of making our people good, and pious, and 
 holy;—then, though he should go forth among 
 
292 
 
 them stript of power, and patronage, and pecuni¬ 
 ary administrations; though his honest and Chris¬ 
 tian good will be all he has to recommend him; 
 though the various secularities, by which the of¬ 
 fices of our Church have been polluted and de¬ 
 graded, shall be conclusively done away, and the 
 w T hole armory of our influence among the people 
 be reduced to the simple element of good will, 
 and friendship, and personal labour, and unwea¬ 
 ried earnestness in the prosecution of their spiri¬ 
 tual welfare:—yet, with these, and these alone, 
 will any of our elders, at length, find a welcome 
 in every heart, and a home in every habitation. 
 Others may then take up the ministration which 
 he has put away. But it will be his presence 
 which will awaken the finest glow of kindly and 
 reverential feeling among our population. Though, 
 out of any public treasury, he neither has gold 
 nor silver to give, yet, let him just do with his 
 means and his opportunities as every Christian 
 should do, and feel as every Christian should feel, 
 and he will rarely meet with a family so poor as 
 to undervalue his attentions, or a family so pro¬ 
 fligate as to persist in despising them. 
 
 All the dispensations of Providence, and all the 
 great events in the train of human history, are 
 on the side of the Christian philanthropist. He 
 has only to watch his opportunity, and there is 
 not a family so hardened in the ways of impiety, 
 where he may not, in time, establish himself. 
 The stoutest-hearted sinner he may have to deal 
 
293 
 
 with must, in a few little years, meet with some¬ 
 thing to soften and to bring him down. Death 
 may make its inroads upon his household, and 
 disease may come, with its symptoms of threaten¬ 
 ing import, upon his own person; and, in that 
 bed of sickness which he dreads to be his last, 
 may the terrors and reproaches of conscience be 
 preparing a welcome for the elder of his district; 
 and he who wont to laugh the ministrations of 
 his Christian friend away from him will, at length, 
 send an imploring message and supplicate his 
 prayers. Such is the omnipotence of Christian 
 charity. At the very outset of its enterprise, it 
 will find a great and an effectual door opened to 
 it: and, in the course of months, its own perse¬ 
 verance will work for it; and Providence will 
 work for it; and the mournful changes which 
 take place in every family will work for it; and 
 all the frailties of misfortune and mortality to 
 ■which our nature is liable will work for it: and 
 thus may one single individual, acting in the ca¬ 
 pacity of a Christian friend, and ever on the alert 
 with all the aid of Christian counsel, and all the 
 offices of Christian sympathy, in behalf of his as¬ 
 signed population, be the honoured instrument 
 of reviving another spirit, and setting up another 
 style of practice and observation, in the midst of 
 them. Thus may he obtain a secure hold of as¬ 
 cendency over the affections of hundreds; and, 
 like unto a leaven for good, in the neighbourhood 
 which has been entrusted to his care, may he, by 
 
294 
 
 the blessing of God, infuse into that mass of hu¬ 
 man immortality with which he is associated the 
 fermentation of such holy desires, and peniten¬ 
 tial feelings, and earnest aspirations, and close 
 inquiries after the truth, as may, at length, issue 
 in the solid result of many being called out of 
 darkness intb light, of many being turned unto 
 righteousness. 
 
 The Christian elder who has resigned the tem¬ 
 poralities of his office should not think that, on 
 that account, he has little in his power. His pre¬ 
 sence has a power. His advice has a power. His 
 friendship has a power. The moral energy of his 
 kind attentions and Christian arguments has a 
 power. His prayers at the bed of sickness, and 
 at the funeral of a departed parishioner, have a 
 power. The books that he recommends to his 
 people, and the minister whom he prevails on them 
 to hear, and the habit of regular attendance upon 
 the ordinances to which he introduces them, have 
 a power., His supplications to God for them, in 
 secret, have a power. Dependence upon him, 
 and upon his blessing, for the success of his own 
 feeble endeavours, has a power. And when all 
 these are brought to bear on the rising genera¬ 
 tion; when the children have learned both to 
 know and to love him; when they come to feel 
 the force of his approbation, and, on every recur¬ 
 ring visit, receive a fresh impulse from him to dili¬ 
 gence at school, and dutiful behaviour out of it; 
 when the capabilities of his simple Christian reia- 
 
295 
 
 tionship with the people thus come to be estimat¬ 
 ed:—it is not saying too much, to say that, witli 
 such as him, there lies the precious interest of the 
 growth and transmission of Christianity, in the 
 age that is now passing over us; and that, in re¬ 
 spect of his own selected neighbourhood, he is the 
 depositary of the moral and spiritual destinies of 
 the future age. 
 
 We shall conclude this department of the sub¬ 
 ject with three distinct observations relative to the 
 office and duties of the eldership. 
 
 First. We are well aware how widely the prac¬ 
 tice of our generation has diverged from the prac¬ 
 tice of our ancestors: how the temporal, which form 
 their superinduced duties* have taken place of the 
 spiritual, which form the primitive and essential 
 duties of the eldership; how, within the limits of 
 our Establishment, the lay office-bearers of the 
 Church are fast renouncing the whole work of 
 ministering from house to house, in prayer, and 
 in exhortation, and in the dispensation of spiritu¬ 
 al comfort and advice* among the sick* or the 
 disconsolate, or the dying. We are aware that a 
 reformation, in this department, can only be 
 brought about by an influence of a more gentle, 
 and moral, and withal more effectual kind than 
 that of authority. But we almost know nothing 
 of greater importance than to have a connection 
 of this kind established between the elders and 
 the population of those districts which are respec¬ 
 tively assigned to them. We know of nothing 
 
296 
 
 which will tell more effectually, in the way of hu¬ 
 manizing our families, than if so pure an intercourse 
 was going on, as an intercourse of piety, between 
 our men of respectable station, on the one hand, 
 and our men of labour and of poverty, on the 
 other. We know of nothing which would serve 
 more powerfully to link and to harmonize into 
 one fine system of social order, the various classes 
 of our community. We know not a finer exhibi¬ 
 tion, on the one hand, than the man of wealth 
 acting the man of piety, and throwing the goodly 
 adornment of Christian benevolence over thesplen- 
 dour of those civil distinctions, which give a weight 
 and a lustre to his name in society. And we know 
 not a more wholesome influence, on the other 
 hand, than that which such a man must carry 
 around with him, when lie enters the habitations 
 of our operatives, and dignifies, by his visits, the 
 people who occupy them; and talks with them, 
 as the heirs of one hope and of one immortality; 
 and cheers, by the united power of religion and 
 of sympathy, the very humblest of misfortune’s 
 generation; and convinces them of a real and 
 a longing affection after their best interests; and 
 leaves them with the impression that here, at 
 least, is one man who is our friend; that here, at 
 least, is one proof that we are not altogether des¬ 
 titute of consideration amongst our fellows; that 
 here, at least, is one quarter on which our confi¬ 
 dence may rest; aye, and amidst all the insigni¬ 
 ficance in which we lie buried from the observa- 
 
297 
 
 tion of society, we are sure, at least, of one who, 
 in the most exalted sense of the term, is now rea¬ 
 dy to befriend us, and to look after us, and to 
 care for us. 
 
 Secondly. Those who have entered on the im¬ 
 portant and honourable office of the eldership, 
 should have a full impression of its sacredness. 
 We are fully aware that there is not a professing 
 Christian who does not forfeit all title to the name 
 and character of a Christian, if he do not honest¬ 
 ly, and with all the energies of his soul, aspire at 
 being not merely almost, but altogether a disciple 
 of the Lord Jesus. It is the duty of the obscur¬ 
 est individual in a congregation, to be as hea¬ 
 venly in his desires, and as peculiar in the whole 
 style of his behaviour, and as upright in his trans¬ 
 actions, and as circumspect in his walk, and as 
 devoted, in heart and in service, to the God of 
 his redemption, as the minister who labours 
 amongst them in word and in doctrine, or as the 
 elders that assist him in the administration of or¬ 
 dinances, or as the most conspicuous among the 
 office-bearers of the church with which lie is con¬ 
 nected. But they should remember that the very 
 circumstance of being conspicuous forms a double 
 call upon their attention to certain prescribed du¬ 
 ties of the New Testament. It is this which gives 
 so peculiar an importance to their example. It 
 is this which, by making their light shine before 
 men, renders it a more powerful instrument for 
 glorifying God. And it is this, too, which stamps 
 
a tenfold malignity upon their misconduct. And 
 under the impression of this, should they be care¬ 
 ful lest their good be evil spoken of—to be, in all 
 things, an example to the flock over which God 
 hath appointed them the overseers—to remember 
 that their conduct has a more decided bearing 
 upon others than it had formerly—and that, as it is 
 their duty to look, not to their own things, but 
 to the things of others also, so it is their most so¬ 
 lemn and imperious obligation, to take heed, and 
 give no just offence, in any thing, that the reli¬ 
 gion of which they are the declared and the vi¬ 
 sible functionaries, be not blamed. We know not 
 how a greater outrage can be practised on Chris¬ 
 tianity, we know not how a deadlier wound can 
 be given to its interest and its reputation in the 
 world, we know not how a sorer infliction can be 
 devised on a part of greater tenderness, than for 
 a man to usurp a place of authority and of lofty 
 standing, in the church of our Redeemer, and 
 then to exhibit such a life, and to maintain such 
 a lukewarm indifference, and to hold out such a 
 conformity to the world, as to all the levities, and 
 all the secularities which abound in it; and above 
 all, so to deform the path of his own personal 
 history, by what is profane, and profligate, and 
 unseemly, that the report of his misdoings shall 
 spread itself over the neighbourhood, and, into 
 whatever company it may enter, it shall scanda¬ 
 lise the friends of Jesus, and become matter of 
 triumph and of bitter derision to his enemies. 
 
299 
 
 Thirdly. The gentlemen who have been invest¬ 
 ed with this office should make a conscience of 
 their attendance upon the needs and the demands 
 of their respective population; not to slur and 
 superficialise the matter, but to give to it strength, 
 and earnestness, and persevering attention; not 
 to enter upon their offices, as if they were so many 
 sinecures, but to feel that certain duties are an¬ 
 nexed to them, and that, for the right'and atten¬ 
 tive performance of these duties, a weight of re¬ 
 sponsibility is lying upon them. In each parish 
 there is an ample field for the exercise of such 
 duties; a field so extensive that, if left to the so¬ 
 litary management of one individual, must be left 
 in a great measure neglected; a field greatly be¬ 
 yond the time and the strength of the minister; a 
 field which he is not able to cultivate to the full, 
 by his own personal exertions, and to do justice 
 to which he must avail himself of the assistance 
 of his elders. And sure we are that, with a man¬ 
 ageable extent of walk assigned to each of them, 
 they would, at length, come to feel that to be 
 an enjoyment which they may, perhaps, for some 
 time, feel to be an oppression: and, though deli¬ 
 cacy and inexperience should, at first, operate as 
 restraints to their acting in the capacity of spiri¬ 
 tual labourers, yet habitual and intimate inter¬ 
 course with their people will soon reconcile them 
 to their new employment, and render it a smooth, 
 a pleasant, and an interesting concern. 
 
 It might be expected that, ere bringing this to- 
 
300 
 
 pic to a close, we should deliver a few rules 
 for the right discharge and exercise of deacon- 
 ship. We do not plead for this as a permanent 
 institution of the church, believing as we do, that 
 it were vastly better for the people, if all public 
 charity, for the relief of indigence, were, as soon 
 as possible, done away. Still, however, such an 
 order of men might be of important service, in 
 conducting society back again to its natural state, 
 as it respects pauperism. And we are thorough¬ 
 ly persuaded that, by acting conformably to the 
 spirit of the few hints which follow, they will ar¬ 
 rive at the conviction, that all public and osten¬ 
 sible charity might very safely be dispensed 
 with. 
 
 First. The poor will feel themselves greatly 
 soothed and conciliated, by their ready attention, 
 by their friendly counsels, by their acts of advice 
 and assistance as to the conduct of their little af¬ 
 fairs; by the mere civility and courteousness 
 which marks their transactions with them; and 
 that these will positively go farther to gladden 
 their hearts, and to endear their persons to them, 
 than all the money which they may find it neces¬ 
 sary to award for the support of their indigent 
 families. 
 
 Secondly. It will be said that, by this unre¬ 
 strained facility of manner, they willlay themselves 
 open to the inroads of the worthless and the un¬ 
 deserving. In answer to this, we ask if there be 
 not room enough, in a man’s character, for the 
 
301 
 
 wisdom of the serpent along with the gentleness 
 of the dove? That we may ward off the unde¬ 
 serving poor, is it necessary to put on a stern and 
 repulsive front against all the poor who offer them¬ 
 selves to our observation? The way, we appre¬ 
 hend, is to put forth patience, and attention, and 
 to be in the ready attitude of prepared and imme¬ 
 diate service for all applications, in the first in¬ 
 stance ; to conduct every examination with tem¬ 
 per and kindness: and surely it is possible to do 
 this, and, at the same time, to conduct it with 
 vigilance. Exercise will soon sharpen their dis¬ 
 crimination in these matters, and when they have 
 got a thoroughly ascertained state of the claim 
 which has been advanced, and they find that it is 
 not a valid one, then let them put forth their 
 firmness, then let them make a display of calm 
 and settled determination, then let them show 
 their people that they have judgment as well as 
 feeling, and that they know how to combine the 
 habit of justice to the public, by not squandering 
 their money on unsuitable objects, with the habit 
 of sympathy for genuine distress, and of ready 
 attention to the merits of every application. 
 
 On the strength of this principle, it will be in 
 the power of a deacon to check, on the one hand, 
 all unreasonable applications; and, on the other, 
 still to preserve all that homage of attachment, 
 which his kindness to real sufferers, and his can¬ 
 dour and courteousness to all, are fitted to secure 
 for him. His people will not like him the worse 
 
302 
 
 that they see him acting in a sound, judicious, and 
 experimental way with them. They know how 
 to appreciate good sense, as well as we; and they 
 admire it, and they have an actual liking for it. 
 They are scandalised when they see kindness 
 lavished upon the unworthy. Though they like 
 attention and sympathy, they have a greater esteem 
 for them, when they see them combined with the 
 exercise of judgment and a good understanding: 
 and in proportion therefore as a deacon evinces 
 himself to have the faculty of rejecting those claims 
 which are groundless, in that very proportion will 
 a real sufferer esteem that act of preference, by 
 which he has had the discernment to single out 
 his claim, and the benevolence most soothingly 
 and most sympathisingly, and most amply, to pro¬ 
 vide for it. 
 
 But, lastly, we know not a more interesting- 
 case that can be submitted to a deacon, than 
 when an applicant proposes, for the first time, to 
 draw relief from a public charity. This he is often 
 compelled to do, from some temporary distress, 
 that hangs over his family: and if the emer¬ 
 gency could be got over without a public and de¬ 
 grading exposure of him who labours under it, 
 there would both be a most substantial saving of 
 the public fund, and a most soothing act of kind¬ 
 ness rendered to the person who is applying for it. 
 If by the influence of the deacon, or that of his 
 friends, work could be provided for a man in 
 such circumstances, or some private and delicate 
 
303 
 
 mode of relief be devised for him, then we know 
 not in what other way he could more effectually 
 establish himself as the most valuahle servant of 
 the public, and as the best and kindest friend of 
 his own immediate population. All will depend 
 upon the earnestness and the sense of duty which 
 he brings to his offices along with him; and we 
 should be much disappointed if it be not the re¬ 
 sult of his practice and observation, in this walk 
 of philanthropy, that, after all, the cause of hu¬ 
 man indigence may be fully confided to the sym¬ 
 pathy of individuals, and that even the demise of 
 his own order is an essential step towards the 
 conclusive establishment of that state of things 
 where nature and Christianity will render their 
 most effectual contributions, for alleviating the 
 wants and the miseries of the species. 
 
 We may afterwards enlarge on the reasons why 
 we regard a deaconship in the light of a tempora¬ 
 ry expedient, for the purpose of reducing that pau¬ 
 perism which has been accumulated upon us, under 
 a former system of administration, rather than as 
 an institution that is at all essential to the perma¬ 
 nent well-being of a parish. So long as any me¬ 
 thod of public relief for indigence is perpetuated 
 amongst us, whether by assessment or voluntary 
 collection, we hold it greatly better that its whole 
 conduct and management be devolved upon dea¬ 
 cons than upon elders. But we are, at the same 
 time, persuaded that it is not only a most practi¬ 
 cable thing for an order of deacons so to manage, 
 
304 
 
 as, in a few years, to transfer the whole expenses 
 of the parochial poor from a compulsory to a 
 gratuitous fund—we are further persuaded, that 
 as the result of their experience, these very men 
 will come to see with what perfect safety, and 
 even improvement, to the comfort of the lower 
 orders, the latter fund may also be dispensed 
 with; and thus their labours may come to be dis¬ 
 pensed with, after having reached this most satis¬ 
 factory of all consummations, that of having led 
 the people to repose on their own capabilities: 
 For, by giving them to understand that individual 
 sympathy, and their own foreseeing prudence, 
 are all they have to look for, against the day 
 of poverty, they will, at length, re-open those 
 mighty sources which an artificial charity had 
 sealed, and out of which nature, when not tortur¬ 
 ed and tampered with, as she has been, by the 
 intermeddling spirit of legislation, provides far 
 more abundantly for the wants of all her chil¬ 
 dren. 
 
305 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 ON SABBATH SCHOOLS. 
 
 It is well, that in the various religious establish¬ 
 ments of Europe, provision should have been made 
 for the learning as well as for the subsistence of a 
 regular clergy. It is well, when a teacher of the 
 gospel, in addition to the strict literature of his 
 own profession, is further accomplished in the 
 general literature of the times. We do not hold 
 it indispensable that all should be so accom¬ 
 plished. But that is a good course of education 
 for the church, which will not only secure the 
 possibility that every minister may be learned in 
 theology, but also a chance, bordering upon 
 certainty, that some of them shall attain an emi¬ 
 nence of authority and respect, in the other sci¬ 
 ences. Christianity should be provided with 
 friends and defenders, in every quarter of human 
 society; and there should be among them such 
 a distribution of weapons, as may be adapted to 
 all the varieties of that extended combat, which is 
 ever going on between the church and the world. 
 And there is a special reason why the prejudices 
 of philosophy against the gospel should, if possible, 
 be met and mastered by men capable of standing 
 on the very same arena, and plying the very same 
 tactics, with the most powerful of its votaries;— 
 and that, not so much because of the individual 
 
306 
 
 benefit which may thereby be rendered to these 
 philosophers, as because of their ascendant influ¬ 
 ence over the general mind of society; and be- 
 cause of the mischief that would ensue to myriads. 
 beside themselves, could an exhibition so degrad¬ 
 ing be held forth to the world, as that of Christi¬ 
 anity which laid claim to the light of revelation, 
 retiring abashed from the light of cultivated na¬ 
 ture, and not daring the encounter, when mer., 
 rich in academic lore, or lofty in general author¬ 
 ship, came forth in hostility against her. 
 
 It is mainly to the learning of the priesthood 
 that Christianity has kept her ground on the 
 higher platform of cultured and well educated hu¬ 
 manity, and that she enters so largely, as a bright 
 and much esteemed ingredient, into the body of 
 our national literature. It is true that, in this 
 way, she may compel an homage from many 
 whom she cannot subdue unto the obedience of 
 the faith; and save herself from contempt, in a 
 thousand instances, where she has utterly failed 
 in her attempts at conversion. But it is well, 
 whenever this degree of respect and acknowledg¬ 
 ment can be obtained for her, among the upper 
 classes of life; and more especially in every free 
 and enlightened nation, like our own, where the 
 reigning authority is so much under the guidance 
 of the higher reason of the country, it is of un¬ 
 speakable benefit that Christianity has been so 
 nobly upheld by the talent and erudition of her 
 advocates. The fostering hand of the Legisla- 
 
307 
 
 ture would soon have been withheld from all our 
 Christian institutions, had the Christiana system 
 not been palpably recommended by those nume¬ 
 rous pleadings wherewith a schooled and accom¬ 
 plished clergy have so enriched the theological 
 literature of our island. Nor do we believe that, 
 in the face of public opinion, any political defer¬ 
 ence could have long been rendered to Christian¬ 
 ity, had she been overborne, in her numerous 
 conflicts with the pride and sophistry of able un¬ 
 believers. It is thus that we stand indebted to 
 the learning of Christian ministers for the security 
 of that great national apparatus of religious in¬ 
 struction, the utility of which we have already 
 endeavoured to demonstrate: and hence, though 
 learning does not, of itself, convert and Chris¬ 
 tianise a human soul, it may be instrumental in 
 spreading and strengthening that canopy of pro¬ 
 tection, which is thrown, by our Establishment, 
 over those humbler but more effective labourers, 
 by whose Parish ministrations it is, that the gen¬ 
 eral mass of our population becomes leavened with 
 the doctrines of the gospel, and Christianity is 
 carried, with light, and comfort, and power, into 
 the bosom of cottages. 
 
 But, though learning must be enlisted on the 
 side of Christianity, for the purpose of upholding 
 her in credit and acceptance, among influential 
 men; yet it is not indispensable for the purpose 
 of conveying her moral and spiritual lessons into 
 
308 
 
 the heart of a disciple. The truth is, that many 
 of the. topics about which ecclesiastical learning 
 is conversant, are exterior to the direct substance 
 of that Bible which professes to be a written com¬ 
 munication from God to man: such as the historic 
 testimonies that may be quoted in favour of reli¬ 
 gion, and those church antiquities, to acquire the 
 knowledge of which we must travel through many 
 a volume of ponderous erudition, and at least the 
 history, if not the matter, of the various contro¬ 
 versies by which the Christian world has been 
 agitated. We are aware that much of this con¬ 
 troversy relates to the contents of the record, as 
 well as to the credentials of the record. Yet, 
 however its plainer passages may have been dark¬ 
 ened by heretical sophistry, on the one hand, and 
 its obscure passages may have divided the opinion 
 of critics and translators, on the other; this does 
 not hinder, that, from the Bible, and the Eng¬ 
 lish Bible, there may be made to emanate a flood 
 of light, on the general mass of an English pea¬ 
 santry—that, to evolve this light, a high and ar¬ 
 tificial scholarship is neither necessary nor avail¬ 
 able—that, on the understanding of a man, un¬ 
 lettered in all that proceeds from halls or colleges, 
 the Word of God may have made its sound, and 
 wholesome, and sufficient impression: and that 
 from him the impression may be reflected back 
 again, on the understandings of many others, as 
 unlettered as himself-—that thus all, in the book 
 of God’s testimony which mainly goes so to en- 
 
309 
 
 lighten a man, as to turn him into a Christian, 
 maybe made to pass from one humble convert to 
 his acquaintances and neighbours; and, without 
 the learning which serves to acquire for Christi¬ 
 anity the dignified though vague and general 
 homage of the upper classes, he may, at least, be 
 a fit agent for transmitting essential Christianity 
 throughout the plebeianism that is around him. 
 
 To deny this, indeed, were to resist the affir¬ 
 mations of that very record in which all that may 
 be known of Christianity is found. We are there 
 told, and from the direct mouth of the Saviour, 
 that things essential to salvation may be revealed 
 unto babes, which lie hid from the wise and the 
 prudent. The poor to whom the gospel is preach¬ 
 ed have a full share of this revelation. The Spirit 
 of God, we are told, acts as a revealer; and yet 
 it is not his office to make known any truths ad¬ 
 ditional to those which are already engrossed in 
 Scripture. The light that cometh from him is a 
 light which shineth on the page of inspiration, 
 and causes us to discern only what is graven 
 thereupon. The doctrine of the Bible is made 
 known to us by this process, and nothing else. 
 Under the tuition of God’s Spirit, we only learn 
 what has already been fully expressed by the let¬ 
 ter of the Bible, but which, without his influence, 
 can never be fully apprehended in its meaning, or 
 felt in its power. It is thus that he communi¬ 
 cates nothing at variance with the written testi¬ 
 mony, and nothing which has not been already 
 
310 
 
 declared by the written testimony; though his in¬ 
 terference be necessary, in order that the testi¬ 
 mony be received. The operation may be illus¬ 
 trated by the way in which an impression is given 
 to any substance, through the means of a stamp¬ 
 ing instrument. The substance may be so hard 
 and impracticable as to resist the impression, 
 when a weak arm is put forth to urge forward the 
 instrument; but it may be made to take in a full 
 and a fair impression, when a strong arm is em¬ 
 ployed. And thus may it be with the impression 
 of Bible doctrine, on moral, and thinking, and in¬ 
 telligent man. The Bible may be brought into 
 contact with the mind of the reader, and learn¬ 
 ing, and talent, and all the forces that mere hu¬ 
 manity can muster, may be made to aid the im¬ 
 pression of it, and be wholly ineffectual. The 
 Spirit of God may then undertake the office of 
 an enlightener; and, in so doing, he may keep 
 by the Bible as his alone instrument; and not one 
 truth'may pass in conveyance from him to the spi¬ 
 rit of that man, on whom he is operating, but sim¬ 
 ply and solely the truths which are taken off from 
 the written Word of God;-and all the Christiani¬ 
 ty that he teaches, and that he leaves graven on 
 the hearts of his subjects, may just be a correct 
 transcript of the Christianity that exists in the 
 New Testament. And thus it is that a workman 
 of humble scholarship may be transformed, not 
 into an erratic and fanciful enthusiast, but into a 
 sound Scriptural Christian, without one other re- 
 
311 
 
 ligious tenet in his understanding than what is 
 strictly and accurately defined by the literalities 
 of the written record, and without one other reli¬ 
 gious feeling in his heart than what is most perti¬ 
 nently called forth by the moral influence of the 
 truths which have thus been made known to him. 
 
 If there be truth in this representation, it will 
 appear that the Bible can be no more dispensed 
 with, for the purpose of putting the impress of 
 Christianity on a human soul, than the stamping 
 instrument can be dispensed with, for the pur¬ 
 pose of fixing the device which it bears on the 
 piece of matter that is submitted to it. The dis¬ 
 ciple’s mind must be brought into contact with 
 Scripture, and it is so, when he is employed, ei¬ 
 ther in hearing, or reading, or pondering, what 
 is written thereon. And it will further appear 
 that the Spirit, in his work of making good an 
 impress of Christianity on man, no more varies in 
 one feature, or one lineament, from the Christi¬ 
 anity that is already engraven on the indelible 
 Word of God, than that hand, which simply bears 
 upon a seal, either alters or effaces the inscrip¬ 
 tion which is fastened by it on the substance to 
 which it is applied. It is thus that all the pre¬ 
 tences of enthusiasm may be refuted and exposed; 
 and that, while the teaching of the Spirit is held 
 to be indispensable, the soundness and proficien¬ 
 cy of the taught still remain to be tried, and may 
 be taken cognizance of, at the bar of the law and 
 of the testimony. There is no license given by 
 
312 
 
 this statement to the vagaries of a credulous and 
 overheated imagination: being subject, as they 
 all are, to the touchstone of a word that is immu¬ 
 table, and cannot pass away. We know it to be 
 the fear of many, lest the doctrine of a special 
 and spiritual illumination, taking place in every 
 instance of conversion, should throw open the 
 Christian world to an influx of fancies and 
 fluctuations, that would be utterly interminable. 
 But the written record is the great barrier of de¬ 
 fence against all such irregularities. There might 
 be room for this apprehension, were it still the 
 office of the Spirit to originate new and unheard 
 of truths, in the minds that he enlightens. But 
 this work has ceased long ago, and the Book in 
 which the truths thus originated were treasured 
 up has, for many centuries, had the seal of com¬ 
 pleteness set upon it; and the office of the Holy 
 Ghost now is not to inform any one mind of no¬ 
 velties that are yet unrevealed, bnt simply to 
 transcribe on the tablet of its understanding what 
 has already been inscribed on the tablet of the 
 written revelation. And thus it is both true that 
 it is through a distinct and personal work of the 
 Holy Spirit that each believer is called out of 
 darkness unto marvellous light—and that, in re¬ 
 spect of the essentials of Christianity, there has 
 been one stable and permanent belief among them 
 all. It is like the telescope pointed to a distant 
 landscape, which reveals the same objects to all 
 the numerous and successive spectators; and so 
 
31 ; 
 
 it is mainly one and the same doctrine that is held 
 by the genuine disciples of all countries, and 
 which has come unchangingly down, from gener¬ 
 ation to generation. 
 
 If it be thought that this statement serves very 
 much to reduce the importance of human learn¬ 
 ing, let it be observed, on the other hand, that 
 still to human learning there belongs an impor¬ 
 tant function, in the matter of Christianity. One 
 does not need to be the subject of a material im¬ 
 press upon his own person, in order to judge of 
 the accordancy between the device that is sub¬ 
 mitted to his notice, and the seal that is said to 
 have conveyed.it. Both may be foreign to him¬ 
 self: and yet he, by looking to the one and to 
 the other, can see whether they are accurate 
 counterparts. And, in like manner, a man of 
 sagacity and of natural acquirement may never 
 have received, upon his own heart, that impres¬ 
 sion of the Bible which the Holy Spirit alone has 
 strength to effectuate; but still, if such an im¬ 
 pression be offered to his notice, in the person of 
 another, he may be able both to detect the Spuri¬ 
 ous, and, in some measure, to recognize the gen¬ 
 uine marks of correspondence between the con¬ 
 tents of Scripture, on the one hand, and the 
 creed, or character, of its professing disciple, on 
 the other. It is well, when such a man looks, in 
 the first instance, to the written Word; and, by 
 aid of the grammar and lexicon, and all the re¬ 
 sources of philology, evinces the literal doctrine 
 
314 
 
 that is graven thereupon. It is also well, when 
 he looks, in the second instance, to the human 
 subject, and by aid, either of natural shrewdness, 
 or of a keen metaphysical inspection into the ar¬ 
 cana of character, drags forth to light that moral 
 and intellectual picture which the doctrine of the 
 Bible is said to have left upon the soul. If there 
 be a single alleged convert upon earth, who can¬ 
 not stand such a trial, when fairly conducted, he 
 is a pretender, and wears only a counterfeit and 
 not the genuine stamp of Christianity. And thus 
 it is, that he who has no part whatever in the 
 teaching that cometh from God, who is still a 
 natural man, and has not received the things of 
 the Spirit, may, to a certain extent, judge the 
 pretensions of him who conceives that the Holy 
 Ghost has taken of the things of Christ, and 
 shown them to his soul. He can institute a sound 
 process of comparison between those testimonies 
 of Scripture which a natural criticism has made 
 palpable to him, and those traces upon the soul 
 which a natural sagacity of observation has made 
 palpable to him: and, without sharing himself in 
 an unction from the Holy One, or being sealed 
 by the Spirit of God into a personal meetness for 
 the inheritance of the saints, still may he both 
 be able to rectify and restrain the excesses of fan¬ 
 aticism, and also to recall the departures that her¬ 
 esy is making from the law and from the testi¬ 
 mony. 
 
 The work of Bishop Horsley against Unitarian- 
 
315 
 
 ism is a work which erudition and natural talent 
 are quite competent to the production of. It is 
 the fruit of a learned and laborious research into 
 ecclesiastical antiquities, and a vigorous argumen¬ 
 tative application of the materials that he had ga¬ 
 thered, to that controversy, on the field of which 
 he obtained so proud and pre-eminent a conquest. 
 We would not even so much as hazard a conjec¬ 
 ture on the personal Christianity of this able and 
 highly gifted individual. We simply affirm, that 
 for the execution of the important service which 
 he, at that time, rendered to the cause, his own 
 personal religion was not indispensable; and, whe¬ 
 ther or not by the means of a spiritual discern¬ 
 ment, he was enabled to take off, from the in¬ 
 scribed Christianity of the record, an effectual 
 impression of it upon his own soul, it was well, 
 that, by the natural expedients of profound sense 
 and profound scholarship, he cleared away that 
 cloud in which his antagonist, Dr. Priestley, might 
 have shrouded the face of the record, both from 
 the natural and spiritual discernment of other 
 men. It is possible, both to know what the doc¬ 
 trine of the Bible is, and most skilfully and irre¬ 
 sistibly to argument it, without having caught 
 the impress of the doctrine upon one’s own soul. 
 It is possible for a man not to have come himself 
 into effective personal contact with the seal of Ho¬ 
 ly Writ, and yet to demonstrate the characters of 
 the seal, and to purge away its obscurity, and 
 make it stand legibly out, which it must do, ere 
 
316 
 
 it can stand impressively out, to the view of others. 
 There are many who look with an evil eye to the 
 endowments of the English Church, and to the 
 indolence of her dignitaries. But to that Church 
 the theological literature of our nation stands in¬ 
 debted, for her best acquisitions; and we hold it 
 a refreshing spectacle, at any time that meagre 
 Socinianism pours forth a new supply of flippan¬ 
 cies and errors, when we behold, as we have of¬ 
 ten done, an armed champion come forth, in full 
 equipment, from some high and lettered retreat 
 of that noble hierarchy; nor can we grudge her 
 the wealth of all her endowments, when we think 
 how well, under her venerable auspices, the bat¬ 
 tles of orthodoxy have been fought,—that, in this 
 holy warfare, they are her sons and her scholars 
 who are ever foremost in the field,—ready, at all 
 times, to face the threatening mischief, and, by 
 the might of their ponderous erudition, to over¬ 
 bear it. 
 
 But, if human talent be available to the pur¬ 
 pose of demonstrating the characters of the seal, 
 it is also, in so far, available to the purpose of 
 judging on the accuracy of the impression. The 
 work, perhaps, which best exemplifies this, is 
 that of President Edwards, on the conversions of 
 New England, and in which he proposes to esti¬ 
 mate their genuineness, by comparing the marks 
 that had been left on the person of the disciple, 
 with the marks that are inscribed on the Book of 
 the law and of the testimony. He was certainly 
 
81*7 
 
 much aided, in his processes of discrimination 
 upon this subject, by the circumstance of being a 
 genuine convert himself, and, so, of being fur. 
 nished with materials for the judgment, in his 
 own heart, and that stood immediately submitted 
 to the eye 'of his own consciousness. But yet 
 no one could, without the metaphysical faculty 
 wherewith nature had endowed him, have con¬ 
 ducted so subtle, and at the same time, so sound 
 and just an analysis, as he has done; and no one, 
 without his power of insight among the mysteries 
 of our nature,—a power which belonged to his 
 mind, according to its original conformation,— 
 could have so separated the authentic operation of 
 the Word upon the character, from the errors 
 and the impulses of human fancy. It is true that 
 none but a spiritual man could have taken so mi¬ 
 nute a survey of that impression which the Holy 
 Ghost was affirmed to have made, through the 
 preaching of the Word, upon many, in a season 
 of general awakening. But few, also, are the spi¬ 
 ritual men, who could have taken so masterly a 
 survey; and that, just because they wanted the 
 faculties which could accomplish their possessor 
 for a shrewd and metaphysical discernment among 
 the penetralia of the human constitution. It is 
 thus that, by the light of nature, one may trace 
 the characters which stand out upon the seal; 
 and, by the light of nature, one may be helped, 
 at least, to trace the characters that are left upon 
 the human subject, in consequence of this super* 
 
318 
 
 nai application. Fanaticism is kept in check by 
 human reason, and the soberness of the faith is 
 vindicated. The extravagance of all pretenders 
 to a spiritual revelation is detected, and made ma¬ 
 nifest; and the true disciple stands the test he is 
 submitted to, even at the bar of the natural under¬ 
 standing. 
 
 We cannot take leave of Edwards, without tes¬ 
 tifying the whole extent of the reverence that we 
 bear him. On the arena of metaphysics, he stood 
 the highest of all his cotemporaries, and that, too, 
 at a time, when Hume was aiming his deadliest 
 thrusts at the foundations of morality, and had 
 thrown oyer the infidel 'cause the whole eclat of 
 his reputation. The American divine affords, 
 perhaps, the most wondrous example, in modern 
 times, of one who stood richly gifted both in na¬ 
 tural and in spiritual discernment: and we know 
 not what most to admire in him, whether the.deep 
 philosophy that issued from his pen, or the 
 humble and child-like piety that issued from his 
 pulpit; whether, when, as an author, he deals 
 forth upon his readers the subtleties of profound- 
 est argument, or when, as a Christian minister, 
 he deals forth upon his hearers the simplicities of 
 the gospel; whether it is, when we witness the 
 impression that he made, by his writings, on the 
 schools and high seats of literature, or the im¬ 
 pression that he made, by his unlaboured address¬ 
 es, on the plain consciences of a plain congrega¬ 
 tion. In the former capacity, he could estimate 
 
319 
 
 the genuineness of the Christianity that had be¬ 
 fore been fashioned on the person of a disciple; 
 but it was in the latter capacity, and speaking of 
 him as an instrument, that he fashioned it, as it 
 were, with his own hands. In the former capaci¬ 
 ty, he sat in judgment, as a critic, on the resem¬ 
 blance that there was between the seal of God’s 
 Word, and the impression that had been made on 
 the fleshly tablet of a human heart; in the latter 
 capacity, he himself took up the seal, and gave 
 the imprinting touch, by which the heart is con¬ 
 formed unto the obedience of the faith. The former 
 was a speculative capacity, under which he acted 
 as a connoisseur, who pronounced on the accor- 
 dancy that obtained between the doctrine of the 
 Bible, and the character that had been submitted 
 to its influence; the latter was an executive ca¬ 
 pacity, under which he acted as a practitioner, 
 who brought about this accordancy, and so han¬ 
 dled the doctrines of the Bible, as to mould and 
 subordinate thereunto the character of the people 
 with whom he had to deal. In the one, he was 
 an overseer, who inspected and gave his deliver¬ 
 ance on the quality of another’s work; in the 
 other, he was the workman himself: and while, 
 as the philosopher, he could discern, and discern 
 truly, between the sterling and the counterfeit, in 
 Christianity, still it was as the humble and devot¬ 
 ed pastor that Christianity was made, or Christi¬ 
 anity was multiplied, in his hands. 
 
 Now, conceive these two faculties, which were 
 
320 
 
 exemplified in such rare and happy combination, 
 on the person of Edwards, to be separated, the 
 one from the other, pnd given respectively to 
 two individuals. One of these would then be so 
 gifted, as that he Could apply the discriminating 
 tests, by which to judge of Christianity; and the 
 other of them would be so gifted as that, instru- 
 mentally speaking, he could make Christians. 
 One of them could do what Edwards did, from 
 the pulpit; another of them could do what Ed¬ 
 wards did, from the press. Without such judges 
 and overseers as the former, the faith of the Chris¬ 
 tian world might be occasionally disfigured by 
 the excesses of fanaticism; but without such 
 agents as the latter, faith might cease to be formed, 
 and the abuses be got rid of only by getting rid 
 of the whole stock upon which such abuses are oc¬ 
 casionally grafted. It is here that churches, un¬ 
 der the domination of a worldly and unsanctified 
 priesthood, are apt to go astray. They confide 
 the cause wherewith they are entrusted to the 
 merely intellectual class of labourers, and they 
 have overlooked, or rather have violently and 
 impetuously resisted, the operative class of la¬ 
 bourers. They conceive that all is to be done by 
 regulation, and that nothing, but what is mis¬ 
 chievous, is to be done by impulse. Their mea¬ 
 sures are generally all of a sedative, and few or 
 none of them of a stimulating tendency. Their 
 chief concern is to repress the pruriencies of reli¬ 
 gious zeal, and not to excite or foster the zeal 
 
321 
 
 itself, By this process they may deliver their es¬ 
 tablishment of all extravagancies, so as that we 
 shall no longer behold, within its limits, any 
 laughable or offensive caricature of Christianity. 
 But who does not see that, by this process, they 
 may also deliver the Establishment of Christianity 
 altogether; and that all our exhibitions of genu¬ 
 ine godliness may be made to disappear, under 
 the same withering influence which deadens the 
 excrescencies that occasionally spring from it. It 
 is quite a possible thing for the same church to 
 have a proud complacency in the lore, and argu¬ 
 ment, and professional science, of certain of its min¬ 
 isters; and, along with this, to have a proud con¬ 
 tempt for the pious earnestness, and pious activi¬ 
 ty, of certain other of its ministers. In other words, 
 it may applaud the talent by which Christianity 
 is estimated, but discourage the talent by which 
 Christianity is made. And thus while it continues 
 to be graced by the literature and accomplish¬ 
 ment of its members, may it come to be reduced 
 into a kind of barren and useless inefficiency as to 
 the great practical purposes for which it was or¬ 
 dained. 
 
 To judge of an impression requires one species 
 of talent, to make an impression requires another. 
 They both may exist, in very high perfection, 
 with the same individual, as in the case already 
 quoted. But they may also exist apart; and often, 
 in particular, may the latter of the two be found, 
 in great efficiency and vigour, when the former 
 
of the two may be utterly awanting. The right 
 way for a church is to encourage both these ta¬ 
 lents to the uttermost'; and not to prevent the 
 evils of a bad currency, by laying such an arrest 
 on the exercise of the latter talent, as that we 
 we shall have no currency at all. It must be 
 produced, ere it can be assayed; and it is pos¬ 
 sible so to chill and to discourage the productive 
 faculties in our Church, as that its assaying facul¬ 
 ty shall have no samples on which to sit in judg¬ 
 ment. This will universally be the result in eve¬ 
 ry church where a high-toned contempt for what 
 it holds to be fanaticism is the alone principle by 
 which it is actuated; and where a freezing nega¬ 
 tive is sure to come forth on all those activities 
 which serve to disturb the attitude of quiescence, 
 into which it has sunk and settled. The leading 
 measures of such a church are all founded on the 
 imagination that the religious tendencies of our 
 nature are so exuberant, as that they need to be 
 kept in check, instead of being, in fact, so dor¬ 
 mant as that theyneed work, and watchfulness, and 
 all that is strenuous, and pains-taking, in the of¬ 
 fice of an evangelist, for the purpose of being 
 kept alive. The true Christian policy of a church 
 is to avail itself of all the zeal, and all the energy, 
 which are to^be found both among its ecclesias¬ 
 tics and its laymen, for the production of a posi¬ 
 tive effect among our population; and then, 
 should folly or fanaticism come forward along 
 with it, fearlessly to confide the chastening of all 
 
this exuberance to the sense, and the scholarship, 
 and the sound intellectual Christianity, for the 
 diffusion of which over the face of our Establish¬ 
 ment, the Establishment itself has made such 
 ample provision. Such is our impression of na¬ 
 ture’s lethargy, and deadness, and unconcern, that 
 we are glad when any thing comes forward,;—that 
 we are pleased to behold any symptom of spiri¬ 
 tual life or vegetation at all,—and so far from be¬ 
 ing alarmed by the rumour of a stir, and a sensa¬ 
 tion, and an enthusiasm, in any quarter of the 
 land, we are ready to hail it as we would the pro¬ 
 mise of some coming regeneration. A policy the 
 direct opposite of this is often the reigning policy 
 of a church; and, under its blasting operation, 
 spurious and genuine Christianity are alike obli¬ 
 terated; and the work of pulling up the tares is 
 carried on so furiously, that the wheat is pulled 
 up along with it,—the vineyard is rifled of its good¬ 
 liest blossoms, as well as of its noxious and pesti¬ 
 lential weeds; and thus the upshot of the process 
 for extirpating fanaticism may be to turn the 
 fruitful field into a wilderness, and to spread de¬ 
 solation and apathy over all its borders. 
 
 A church so actuated does nothing but check 
 the excrescencies of spiritual growth, and may do 
 it so effectually as to reduce to a naked trunk 
 what else might have sent forth its clustering 
 branches, and yielded, in goodly abundance, the 
 fruits of piety and righteousness. There is no 
 positive strength put forth by it, on the side of 
 
324 
 
 vegetation, but all on the side of repressing its 
 hated overgrowth. It makes use of only one in- 
 strument, and that is the pruning-hook; as if, by 
 its operation alone, all the purposes of husbandry 
 could be served. Its treatment of humanity pro¬ 
 ceeds on such an excessive fertility of religion in 
 the human heart, that all the toil and strenuous¬ 
 ness of ecclesiastics must be given to the object 
 of keeping it down, and so confining it within 
 the limits of moderation; instead of such a natu¬ 
 ral barrenness that this toil and this strenuousness 
 should rather be given to the various and ever- 
 plying activities of an evangelist, who is instant in 
 season and out of season. It is thus that the out¬ 
 field of sectarianism may exhibit a totally differ¬ 
 ent aspect from the inclosed and well kept garden 
 of an Establishment. In the former, there may 
 be a positive and desireable crop, along with the 
 weeds and ranknesses which have been suffered 
 to grow up unchastened; in the latter, there may 
 be nothing that offendeth, save the one deadly 
 offence of a vineyard so cleaned, and purified, and 
 thwarted in all its vegetative tendencies, as to 
 offer, from one end to the other of it, an unvaried 
 expanse of earthliness. 
 
 We, therefore, do wrong, in laying such a 
 weight of discouragement on the labourers who 
 produce, and throwing the mantle of our protec¬ 
 tion and kindness only over the labourers who 
 prune. And what, it may be asked, are the in¬ 
 gredients of mightiest effect, in the character and 
 
32 5 
 
 talent of a productive labourer? They are not his 
 scholarship, and not his critical sagacity of dis¬ 
 cernment into the obscurities of Scripture, and 
 not his searching or satirical insight among the 
 mysteries of the human constitution. With these 
 he may be helped to estimate the Christianity 
 that has been formed, and to lop off its unseemly 
 excrescencies; but with these alone we never 
 shall positively rear, on the foundation of nature* 
 the edifice itself. This requires another set of 
 qualifications which may or may not exist along 
 with that artificial learning to which, we trust, an 
 adequate homage has been already rendered by 
 us, and qualifications which, whether they are 
 found among endowed or unendowed men, ought 
 to be enlisted on the side of Christianity. They 
 may exist apart from science, and they may most 
 usefully and productively be exerted apart from 
 science. The possessors of them are abundantly 
 to be found in the private or humble walks of so¬ 
 ciety, and may be the powerful instruments of 
 propagating their own moral and spiritual like¬ 
 ness among their respective vicinities. We are 
 aware of the jealousy and disdain in which they 
 are regarded by many a churchman,—that, held 
 to be empirics, who invade the province of the 
 regular faculty, there is, it is thought, the same 
 mischief done by them, in theology, which is 
 done by quacks in medicine—that the diseases of 
 the soul are liable to the same sort of injurious 
 mismanagement, in the hands of the one, as the 
 
diseases of the body are in the hands of the other; 
 and this is very much the feeling of the great ma¬ 
 jority of our ecclesiastics, whether they look to 
 the efforts of unlettered Methodism, in England, 
 or to the Sabbath teaching, and the lay itineran¬ 
 cies, and the gratuitous zeal of the unofficial and 
 the unordained of our own country. 
 
 Now, this parallel between physic and theolo¬ 
 gy does not hold; nor is the power of working a 
 given effect on the corporeal system arrived at 
 by the same steps, with the power of working a 
 given effect on the moral or spiritual system. 
 To be a healing operator upon the body one 
 must be acquainted with the manifold variety 
 of effects which the agents and applications in¬ 
 numerable of matter have upon the maladies 
 equally innumerable, to which the body is ex¬ 
 posed. To be a healing operator upon the 
 soul, there is one great application revealed to us 
 in Scripture, which, in every instance where it 
 does take effect, acts as an unfailing specific for 
 all its moral disorders. In the former profession, 
 every addition of knowledge is an addition of 
 power; and the best guarantees for an effectual 
 exercise of the art medical are the science, and 
 study, and experience, of a finished education. 
 In the latter profession, these are useful too, for 
 est ima t ing the effect that has been made upon the 
 character, but not indispensable for working that 
 effect. That mighty truth, the belief of which 
 is the power of God, and the wisdom of God, un- 
 
327 
 
 to salvation, may be deposited, by one man, in 
 the heart of another, without the aid of any scho¬ 
 lastic art, or scholastic preparation. It is too 
 simple to be illustrated by human talent, and the 
 mode of its conveyance from one bosom to ano¬ 
 ther depends on certain influences which are as 
 much beyond the reach of a philosopher as of a 
 peasant, and as much within the reach of a pea¬ 
 sant as of a philosopher. Grant that the one has 
 just as much of personal Christianity, and as much 
 of devotedness, in the cause of human souls, and 
 as much of the spirit of believing intercession 
 with God, in behalf of those among whom he is 
 labouring,—and then is he in possession of just 
 as powerful instruments as the other, for bringing 
 them under the dominion of the truth, as it is in 
 Jesus. So that it is not with bodily as it is with 
 spiritual innoculation. To work the one aright 
 there must be the contact of a right matter with 
 the material subject to which it is applied; and 
 one must study the properties of that which is 
 without them, ere they are qualified to make the 
 application. To work the other aright, there 
 must be the contact of a right mind with the mo¬ 
 ral subject to which it is applied; and the posses¬ 
 sor of such a mind has simply to put its desires 
 and its tendencies into movement, that the wish¬ 
 ed for effect may follow; has to act on the im¬ 
 pulse of its affections for others; and to pour 
 forth its Christian regards for their welfare ; and 
 to gain them over by the exhibition of its worth, 
 
and kindness, and piety; and to hold out that 
 Word of life, in which there is nothing dark, but 
 to those who love darkness; and to vent itself in 
 prayer for the saving illumination of those whom 
 it never ceases, so long as hope and prudence 
 warrant the exertion, to ply, with its most unweari¬ 
 ed activities. To work a moral effect, such as 
 love, on the heart of another, one cannot fail to 
 perceive that mere science, even though it should 
 be the science of our own nature, were utterly 
 unavailing; and that the man who bears this af¬ 
 fection in his own heart would do more to call 
 out a return of it, from the heart of his neighbour, 
 than he who, without love himself, has, at the 
 same time, a most intelligent discernment into 
 the law of its operation. And it is the same with 
 a Christian effect. He who can best work it on 
 another’s mind is a Christian himself. It is the 
 sympathy of his kindred feelings—it is the obser¬ 
 vation of his actual faith, and of its bright and 
 beautiful influences upon his own character—it is 
 the winning representation of a doctrine tha^ 
 may be read a thousand times over, without ef¬ 
 fect, in the written epistles of the New Testa¬ 
 ment, but which is armed with a new power to 
 engage and soften the heart of an inquirer, when 
 he sees it exemplified in the person of that be¬ 
 liever who is a living epistle of Christ Jesus—it is 
 the melting tenderness by which he presses home 
 the overtures of the gospel on his fellow sinners, 
 and, above all, the efficacy of his prayers for grace 
 
329 
 
 to turn and grace to enlighten them; these are 
 what may accomplish a man who is unlettered in 
 all but his Bible, to be a far more efficient Chris- 
 tianiser than the most profound or elaborate theo¬ 
 logian; these are what essentially constitute that 
 leaven by which, either with or without philoso¬ 
 phy, a fermenting process for the growth and 
 the diffusion of Christianity is made to spread far 
 and wide among our population. 
 
 This is the reason why, though ecclesiastics 
 should be accomplished in the whole lore and 
 scholarship of their profession, they should not 
 discourage the effort and activity of lay operatives, 
 in the cause. They may inspect their work, but 
 they should not put a stop to it. When they dis¬ 
 cover a union of intelligence and piety in an indi¬ 
 vidual, even of humble life, they should patronize 
 his attempts to spread around him the moral and 
 spiritual resemblance of himself. They else may 
 freeze into utter dormancy the best capabilities 
 that are within their reach of Christian useful¬ 
 ness: and thus it is possible for a clergyman, by 
 the weight of his authority, to lay an interdict on 
 a whole host of Christian agency, whom he should 
 have summoned into action, and of whom it is 
 possible that each may be far beneath him in the 
 literature of Christianity, and yet each far be¬ 
 fore him in the instrumental power of making 
 Christians. 
 
 Were the families of a city lane wholly over¬ 
 run with the foul spirit of radicalism, it would not 
 
330 
 
 be on the services of him who could best dissert 
 on the ethics of patriotism and good citizenship 
 that I should most build my hopes of reclaiming 
 them. I should look for a far more important 
 and practical reformation from the simple pre¬ 
 sence and contiguity among them, of one their 
 equal, perhaps, in station, and who himself was a 
 sound and a leal-hearted patriot. There would 
 be a weight of influence in the mere exhibition of 
 his wholesome and well-conditioned mind, which 
 no argument however skilful, and no penetration 
 however subtle into the casuistry of public and 
 political virtue, could have power to carry along 
 with them. The living exemplification of a sober, 
 and judicious, and regulated spirit, maintaining its 
 loyalty in the midst of surrounding fury and fer¬ 
 mentation, would go farther to calm the tempest 
 than the most ingenious political sermon that 
 was ever framed: and more especially if the indi¬ 
 vidual who so held forth among his neighbours 
 was one in whose friendship they had long trust¬ 
 ed, and to whose consistency and good conduct 
 they could all testify. There is no series of lec¬ 
 tures delivered in any hall of public resort that 
 would have half the force which lay in the mere 
 personal communications of such a man with his 
 next-door associates; and what could not have 
 been done by the didactic efforts of any political 
 reasoner, will be far more readily done by the 
 present example and the untaught effusions of 
 him who simply realised, in his own character, 
 
831 
 
 the worth and the practical wisdom of a good cit¬ 
 izen. 
 
 Or, in some other cluster of families, did jeal¬ 
 ousy and dislike alienate the heart of each individ¬ 
 ual from all his fellows, it would not be to him 
 who best understood the mysteries of our moral 
 nature, that I would look, as the likeliest instru¬ 
 ment for restoring peace and confidence among 
 them. Through his insight into the arcana of 
 the human constitution, he may be able both to 
 perceive and to proclaim, that when there is good 
 will to others in the bosom of one, this calls forth 
 a reciprocal good will to him back again. It is 
 not by sermonizing on the operation of this prin¬ 
 ciple, that the wished for effect is carried: it is 
 by actually having the principle, and operating 
 therewith. Or, in other words, the simple pre¬ 
 sence of a man, humble it may be, in rank, but 
 richly endowed either with Christian or with con¬ 
 stitutional benevolence,—it is this, unaccompa¬ 
 nied with all metaphysical discernment, or the 
 power of metaphysical explanation, that will do 
 more to expel the spirit of rancour from a neigh¬ 
 bourhood, and to substitute the spirit of charity 
 in its place, than any theoretical exposition of 
 principles or processes can possibly accomplish. 
 It is not the man who best lectures on the opera¬ 
 tion of the moving force, but the man who is pos¬ 
 sessed of the moving force, and actually wields it 
 —it is he who w'orks the practical consequence 
 on the temper and mind of the neighbourhood 
 
over which he expatiates. And thus it is that 
 the man of Christian love operates more power¬ 
 fully as a leaven, in his vicinity, than the man of 
 Christian learning: and it is altogether a mistake, 
 that a long and laborious routine of scholarship 
 must be described, ere the exertions of a religious 
 teacher shall, with efficacy, tell on the moral 
 and spiritual habit of the disciples who repair to 
 him. 
 
 For, it is just in Christianity as in the cases we 
 have now quoted. All the essential truths of it 
 can be easily apprehended; insomuch, that on the 
 ground of mere intelligence with respect to its 
 most vital and important doctrines, the peasant 
 and the philosopher are upon a level. But to ap¬ 
 prehend the truth with the natural understanding 
 is one thing, and it is another so to realise and so 
 to appropriate it, as that it shall bear, with power 
 and with personal influence, upon the character. 
 Now, we shall meet with instances of the latter 
 as readily in the humble as in the lofty walks of 
 society; and there we shall as soon find an indivi¬ 
 dual who can hold forth a living picture of Chris¬ 
 tianity, and bring the whole moving force of its 
 affections and its virtues to bear on the vicinity 
 around him. It were bad philosophy, to con¬ 
 fine the work of propagating a Christian influence 
 throughout a population to the adepts of a univer¬ 
 sity; and just as strong a transgression against 
 the true philosophy of our nature, to confine it to 
 the regularly bred and ordained clergy, whether 
 
333 
 
 of our city or our country parishes. And, how¬ 
 ever offensive it may be to the official pride and 
 the official intolerance of churchmen, it is not, on 
 that account, the less true, that, among the very 
 humblest of the flock, individuals may be found, 
 who, with no pretensions to the science of Chris¬ 
 tianity, yet, from the attractive sympathy that 
 there is in its virtues and in its .graces, will 
 form into a more powerful as well as a purer lea¬ 
 ven than is the minister himself: insomuch, that 
 the very best service which he is capable of ren¬ 
 dering to the cause may be, to give freedom and 
 encouragement to the working of this leaven, in 
 every part of the mass, where it is known to exist. 
 Perhaps, the deadliest obstacle to the Christianity 
 of his parish is the rancour that he feels towards 
 the zeal and the activity of lay operatives,—the 
 contemptuous resistance, not less unphilosophical 
 than it is unscriptural, with which he is ever 
 bearing down the nascent piety of his neighbour¬ 
 hood, and stifling, in embryo, all those various 
 expedients of Sabbath schools, and fellowship 
 meetings, and assemblages for prayer and religious 
 conversation, wherewith the Christianity of the 
 few might diffuse and multiply its own image over 
 the whole of that parochial territory which is as¬ 
 signed to him. 
 
 In every church let securities be provided for 
 the highest attainments of Christian literature, so 
 as that many ecclesiastics shall be found in it, 
 rich in all the deep and varied erudition of theo- 
 
334 
 
 logy. We know not a nobler intellectual emi¬ 
 nence than that which may be gained on the 
 neglected walks of sound and scriptural philoso¬ 
 phy, by one who, with a mind stored both in the 
 criticism and antiquities of his profession, further 
 knows how to impregnate his acquisitions with 
 the liberal and experimental spirit of our age; 
 and who, without commuting the orthodoxy of 
 God’s imperishable record, could so far moder¬ 
 nize the science, of which he was, at the same 
 time, both the champion and the ornament, as to 
 envolve upon the world, not its new truths, but its 
 new applications. Christianity never changes, 
 but the complexion and habits of the species are 
 always changing: and thus may there be an ex¬ 
 haustless novelty both of remark and illustration, 
 in our intellectual treatment of a science which 
 touches at almost every point in the nature of 
 man, and bears, with decisive effect, on the 
 whole frame and economics of civil society. In 
 such a tract of literature as this, study, and spe¬ 
 culation, and scholarship, may be carried to the 
 uttermost extent: and he who has done so may 
 well take his place with all that is dignified and 
 great, whether in moral or political philosophy. 
 But it were giving the last finish to the character 
 of his mind, if, amid the pride and the prowess 
 of its rare accomplishments, he could appretiate 
 aright the piety and the practical labours of an 
 unlettered Christian: and it would confer upon 
 him that very thing which is so touching, in the 
 
385 
 
 simplicity of Newton, or in the missionary zeal 
 and devotedness of Boyle, if, while surrounded by 
 the trophies of his own successful authorship, he 
 could be made to see, that, however profound in 
 the didactics of Christianity, yet, in the actual 
 work of giving a personal spread to Christianity, 
 there is many a humble man of privacy and of 
 prayer who is far before him. 
 
 According to our beau ideal of a well going and 
 a well constituted church, there should be among 
 its ecclesiastics the very hignest literature of 
 their profession, and among its laymen the most 
 zealous and active concurrence of their personal 
 labours in the cause. The only check upon the 
 occasional eccentricities of the latter should be 
 the enlightened judgment of the former: and 
 this, in every land of freedom and perfect tolera¬ 
 tion, will be found enough for the protection of 
 a community against the inroads of a degrading- 
 fanaticism. It is utterly wrong, that because zeal 
 breaks forth, at times, into excesses and devia¬ 
 tions, there should, therefore, be no zeal; or, be¬ 
 cause spiritual vegetation has its weeds as well as 
 its blossoms, all vegetation should, therefore, be 
 repressed. The wisest thing, we apprehend, for- 
 adding to the produce of the Christian vineyard 
 is to put into action all the productive tendencies 
 that may be found in it. The excrescencies 
 which may come forth will wither and disappear, 
 under the eye of an enlightened clergy: so that 
 while, in the first instance, the utmost space and 
 
336 
 
 enlargement should be permitted, for the mani¬ 
 fold activities of Christian love, upon the one 
 hand, there should be no other defence ever 
 thought of, against the occasional pruriencies 
 that may arise out of this operation, than the 
 mild and pacific, but altogether efficacious correc¬ 
 tive of Christian learning, upon the other. 
 
 There are two sets of clergy, in every establish¬ 
 ment; and it were curious to observe how each 
 of them stands affected to the two questions, 
 whether the ministers of the gospel shall be more 
 richly furnished with Christian literature, and, 
 whether the laymen who are under them shall be 
 permitted to supplement the duties of the clerical 
 office, with Christian labour. There is one class 
 of our ecclesiastics, both in England and Scotland, 
 who have a taste for popular agency, and lay en¬ 
 terprises, and the whole apparatus of religious 
 schools and religious societies, which are so mul¬ 
 tiplying around us, in this busy age of philanthro¬ 
 pic activity and adventure. Now, what we would 
 ask of such ecclesiastics is, whether they would 
 feel a relish or repugnance towards those mea¬ 
 sures, the effect of which is to exalt the clergy 
 of the. church to a higher pre-eminence than they 
 even now occupy, for all the accomplishments of 
 sacred literature? Will they come forward and 
 say that they are afraid of literature?—that a cler¬ 
 gy too enlightened would not suit them?—that, 
 loving to breathe in the muddy atmosphere of 
 popular ignorance and popular folly, they want 
 
337 
 
 no science and no scholarship, whose hateful 
 beams might disperse the congenial vapours where¬ 
 with the effervescence ofplebeianism has filled and 
 overspread the whole scene of theirignoble labours? 
 Do they tremble, lest the light of philosophy should 
 penetrate into the dark unknown of their own in¬ 
 glorious sculking places? And are they really 
 conscious, after all, that what they have headed 
 and patronised is a low paltry drivelling fanati¬ 
 cism, which would shrink before the full gaze of 
 a lettered and intellectual church, where every 
 minister were a luminary of science as well as a 
 luminary of the gospel? These are the degrad¬ 
 ing imputations they will bring upon themselves, 
 by any resistance they shall make to the learning 
 of the clergy: and such a resistance, if offered, is 
 the very thing that will propagate the timely alarm 
 to another quarter, and will cause, we trust, the 
 friends of learning to rally, and to form into 
 strength elsewhere. Those ministers who, whe¬ 
 ther under the name of the high church, or of the 
 moderate, or of the rational party, feel a strong 
 disrelish towards the active interference of laymen 
 in the work of religious instruction, will know how 
 to act should they perceive, in the party of their 
 antagonists, an equally strong disrelish towards 
 any measure that goes to augment the professio¬ 
 nal literature of all our future ecclesiastics. They 
 cannot be blind to the fact, that, at this moment, 
 there is a fermentation, and a brooding activity, 
 x 
 
338 
 
 and an unexampled restlessness, and a busy- 
 movement of schemes and of operations, before 
 unknown in the walks of popular Christianity; 
 and if, additional to all this, they should further 
 see a dread, on the part of zealous champions and 
 overseers, lest the lamp of Christian literature 
 should be lighted up into greater brilliancy than 
 before, we trust that this will be felt and un¬ 
 derstood by those who nauseate what they term 
 the missionary and methodistical spirit of our 
 age, as the intimation of what they ought to do. 
 It is not by putting forth the arm of intolerance, 
 that they will reach it its exterminating blow. 
 It is not by fulminating edicts that they’will 
 smother it. It is not by raising and strengthen¬ 
 ing all the mounds of exclusion, that they will be 
 able to guard our Establishment against what 
 they deem, and honestly deem, to be the inroads 
 of a pestilence. These are not the legitimate de¬ 
 fences of our Church against hateful fanaticism: 
 and they who have set themselves in array against 
 this hydra, whether she be indeed a reality or on¬ 
 ly a bugbear of their own imagination, can do 
 nothing better than to rear a literary and enligh¬ 
 tened priesthood, under the eye of whose vigi¬ 
 lance all that is truly noxious and evil will be 
 most effectually disarmed also. 
 
 But should the friends of this so called fanaticism 
 among the clergy be also the friends, and not the 
 enemies, of scientific and theological accomplish- 
 
339 
 
 merit in their own order; should they dare their an¬ 
 tagonists to the open arena of light and of liberty; 
 should their demand be that the torch of learning 
 shall be blown into a clearer and intenser flame, and 
 be brought to shine upon all their opinions and 
 all their ways; should the cry which they send 
 forth be for more of erudition, and more of philo¬ 
 sophy, and that not one single labourer shall be 
 admitted to the ministerial field, till our universi¬ 
 ties, those established luminaries of our land, have 
 shed upon his understanding a larger supply of 
 that pure, and chaste, and academic light, the 
 property of which is to guide, and not to bewil¬ 
 der, to clarify the eye of the mind, and not to 
 dazzle it to the overpowering of all its faculties;— 
 if this be the beseeching voice of fanaticism, and 
 it be left to pass unregarded away, then shall the 
 enemies of fanaticism have become the enemies 
 of knowledge; and our Church, instead of exhi¬ 
 biting the aspect of zeal tempered by wisdom, 
 and of a warm, active, busy spirit of Christian 
 philanthropy, under the control and guardianship 
 of accomplished and well educated clergymen, 
 may, at length, desolated of all its pieties, be 
 turned into a heartless scene of secularity, and 
 coarseness, and contempt for vital religion, where 
 the sacredness of Christianity has fled, and left 
 not behind it one redeeming quality in the sci¬ 
 ence of Christianity among its officiating minis¬ 
 ters; and, alike abandoned by the light of the Di¬ 
 vine Spirit, and the light of human philosophy, it 
 
340 
 
 will offer the spectacle of a dreary and extended 
 waste, without one spot of loveliness or verdure 
 which the eye can delight to rest upon.* 
 
 But, it is now time to enter on the more fami¬ 
 liar objections which have been alleged against 
 Sabbath schools: and there is none which floats 
 so currently, or is received with greater welcome 
 and indulgence, than that they bear with adverse 
 and malignant influence, on family religion,—that 
 they detach our young from the natural guardian¬ 
 ship of their own family; and come in place of 
 that far better and more beautiful system which, 
 at one time, obtained over the whole Lowlands 
 of Scotland,—when almost every father was, at 
 the same time, the Sabbath teacher of his own 
 
 • "We have been insensibly led to some of the above remarks, by the cir¬ 
 cumstance of a measure being now in progress, for augmenting the acade¬ 
 mic preparations of our students, ere they shall be admissible to the ministerial 
 office in Scotland. There can be no doubt as to the fact of a very wide diversity 
 of sentiment between two bodies of clergy, about the expediency of enlisting, 
 as subsidiary teachers, laymen who have not had the advantage of a university 
 education. We think, on the one hand, that, without such education, there 
 
 fectively employed; but, on the other hand, we would have tins education 
 rendered far more complete, and perfect among the regular teachers of the 
 Establishment. And we therefore conceive that the measure in question 
 should have friends and zealous supporters from both sides of die Church. 
 They who see ground for fear, lest, in the novel institutions of Sabbath 
 teaching, and lay agency, the Church shall be trodden under foot by a sort 
 of fanatical usurpation, should wish for a more accomplished clergy, as the 
 most effectual barrier against this mischief. And it is for the credit of 
 those again who patronise such institutions, to manifest their utter fearless¬ 
 ness of light and learning; but rather to court its approaches, and prove, 
 by their doing so, that they regarded their own practice as accordant with 
 the doctrines of revelation, and the sound philosophy of our nature. 
 
341 
 
 offspring; when the simple voice of psalms was 
 heard to ascend from our streets and our cot- 
 ages, and the evening of God’s hallowed day was 
 consecrated, in many a mansion of domestic piety, 
 to those holy exercises which assembled the chil¬ 
 dren of each household around their venerable 
 sires, and transmitted the Christian worth and 
 wisdom of the former to its succeeding genera¬ 
 tion. It is some such picture as this which kin¬ 
 dles the indignation of many a sentimentalist 
 against the institutions that we are pleading for; 
 and they have to combat not merely the uncon¬ 
 cern and enmity which obtain with the many, 
 towards all schemes of Christian philanthropy 
 whatever, but also the generous emotions, and 
 even the pious recollections, of a few men, who 
 are disposed, at least, to give the question a re¬ 
 spectful entertainment. 
 
 Now, it ought to be remembered, that to come 
 in place of a better system is one thing, and to 
 displace that system is another. Is it possible for 
 any man, at all acquainted with the chronology of 
 Sabbath schools, to affirm that they are the instru¬ 
 ments of having overthrown the family religion of 
 Scotland? Have they operated as so many ruth¬ 
 less invaders, on what, at the time of their entrance, 
 was a beauteous moral domain, and swept away 
 from it all that was affecting or graceful in the ob¬ 
 servations of our forefathers? Whether did they 
 desolate the territory, or have they only made their 
 lodgement on what was already a scene of desola- 
 
342 
 
 tion? The truth is, that for many years previous 
 to the extension of this system, a woful degene¬ 
 racy was going on in the religious habit and char¬ 
 acter of our country;—that, from the wanton out¬ 
 rages inflicted by unrelenting patronage on the 
 taste and demand of parishes, the religious spi¬ 
 rit, once so characteristic of our nation, has 
 long been rapidly subsiding—that, more particu¬ 
 larly in our great towns, the population have so 
 outgrown the old ecclesiastical system, as to have 
 accumulated there into so many masses of practi¬ 
 cal heathenism:—and now the state of the alter¬ 
 native is not, whether the rising generation shall 
 be trained to Christianity in schools, or trained to 
 it under the roof of their fathers; but whether 
 they shall be trained to it in schools, or not trained 
 to it at all. It is whetlier a process of deterioration, 
 which originated more than half a century ago, and 
 hasbeen rapid andresistless in its various tendencies 
 ever since—whether it shall be suffered to carry our 
 people still more downward in the scale of moral 
 blindness and depravity; or whether the only re¬ 
 maining expedient for arresting it shall be put into 
 operation. Were it as easy a task to prevail on 
 an irreligious parent to set up the worship and 
 the instruction of religion, in his family, as to get 
 his consent, and prevail upon his children, to at¬ 
 tend the ministrations of a Sabbath school, there 
 might then be some appearance of room for all 
 the obloquy that has been cast upon these institu¬ 
 tions. But as the matter stands, in many a city 
 
343 
 
 and in many a parish, the Christian philanthropist 
 is shut up to an effort upon the young, as his last 
 chance for the moral regeneration of our country. 
 In despair (and it is a despair warranted by all 
 experience) of operating, with extensive effect, on 
 the confirmed habit and obstinacy of manhood, he 
 arrests the human plant, at an earlier and more 
 susceptible stage, and puts forth the only hand 
 that ever would have offered for the culture and 
 the training of this young immortal. In the great 
 majority of instances, he does not withdraw his pu¬ 
 pils, for a single moment, from any Christian in¬ 
 fluence that would have descended upon them 
 in another quarter, but showers upon their heads 
 and their hearts the only Christian influence they 
 ever are exposed to. He is, in fact, building up 
 again that very system, with the destruction of 
 which he has been charged, and rearing many 
 young, who, but for him, would have been the 
 still more corrupt descendants of a corrupt paren¬ 
 tage, to be the religious guides and examples of a 
 future generation. 
 
 It is not true that family religion is superseded by 
 these schools, so as to make Christianity less the 
 topic of mutual exercise and conversation between 
 parents and children, than before the period of 
 their institution. Instead of banishing this topic 
 from families, they have been known, in very ma¬ 
 ny instances, to have first introduced it into dwell¬ 
 ing-places where before it was utterly unknown. 
 The most careless of parents are found to give 
 
344 
 
 their ready and delighted consent to the proposal 
 which comes to them from the Sabbath teacher, 
 for the attendance of their children. And the 
 children, instead of carrying off' from their own 
 houses an ingredient of worth which truly had no 
 place in them, do, in fact, impart that very ingre¬ 
 dient from the seminaries which have been brand¬ 
 ed as the great absorbents of all the family religion 
 in the land. Parents, in spite of themselves, feel 
 an interest in that which interests and occupies 
 their children; and through the medium of na¬ 
 tural affection have their thoughts been caught to 
 the subject of Christianity; and the very tasks and 
 exercises of their children have brought a theme to 
 their evening circle, upon which, aforetimes, not a 
 syllable of utterance was ever heard; and still 
 more, when a small and select library is attached 
 to the institution, has it been the mean of circu¬ 
 lating, through many a household privacy, such 
 wisdom and such piety as were indeed new visi¬ 
 tants upon a scene, till now untouched by any 
 print or footstep of sacredness. 
 
 We have one prophecy in the Bible, that many 
 shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be in¬ 
 creased. It was thus at the outset of Christiani¬ 
 ty, when apostles itinerated from one country to 
 another; it is thus still with missionaries who go 
 abroad; and it is also thus, though in a greatly 
 more limited degree, with Sabbath teachers, who 
 go forth on the errand of Christianising, each 
 stepping beyond his own threshold, and travell- 
 
345 
 
 ing his benevolent round among other families. 
 In the natural progress of things, the loco-motive 
 operation will gradually contract itself within nar¬ 
 rower boundaries. Christianity, by a more ex¬ 
 tended set of movements, will first be established, 
 in a general way, throughout all lands. Then, by 
 a busy internal process among towns and parish¬ 
 es, will there be a filling up of each larger terri¬ 
 tory. The local system of Sabbath schools may 
 be regarded as a step, in this transition, from a 
 wore widely diffusive to a more intense and con¬ 
 tracted style of operation. So far from supersed¬ 
 ing the household system of education, its direct 
 consequence is to establish that system in places 
 where it was before unknown, or to restore it in 
 places, where, through the decay of Christianity, 
 for one or more generations, it had, for some 
 time, been suspended. We shall not affirm, at 
 present, whether it is destined to continue a 
 wholesome institution, to the end of time; or, 
 whether, like the general enterprise of missionar¬ 
 ies, it too may come to be dispensed with, having 
 served its own important but temporary purpose 
 of conducting the world onward to that state, for 
 the arrival of which we have another prophecy of 
 the Bible, when “ they shall not teach every 
 man his neighbour, and every man his brother, 
 saying, ‘ know the Lordfor all shall know him, 
 from the least to the greatest.” 
 
 Meanwhile, we not only see that the Sabbath 
 school system tends directly to the establishment 
 
846 
 
 of the househould system of education, hit that, 
 even in those families where the latter is in full 
 operation, the former does not interfere with it. 
 There are many who concede the advantage of 
 Sabbath schools, in those cases where the parents 
 are neither able nor willing to teach their chil¬ 
 dren, but who regard them as a bane and a nui¬ 
 sance, when they come into contact with our re¬ 
 ligious and well ordered families. In this state 
 of opinion, it is impossible to conduct a Sabbath 
 school, without a feeling of very awkward embar¬ 
 rassment, on the part both of the teacher and of 
 the people among whom he expatiates. No chil¬ 
 dren can be admitted, without a severe reflection 
 against their parents being implied by it; and if 
 such be the prevalent style of sentiment respect¬ 
 ing these institutions, no parent will consent to 
 send his children, without feeling, that by this 
 step, he brings down upon his own character and 
 respectability the heaviest of all imputations. For 
 our own parts, we feel ourselves to be clear of 
 this embarrassment altogether. We would make 
 no distinction in the invitation that we offered to 
 families for their attendance on our schools, be¬ 
 tween religious and irreligious parents. In large 
 towns, where the church accommodation is still 
 in such wretched scantiness, we know that, with 
 respect to the great majority of children, such a 
 school affords the only opportunity they have, 
 through the day, for meeting in a place of public 
 worship or instruction,—and that attendance upon 
 
347 
 
 it would no more interfere with household exer¬ 
 cises, than does attendance upon the ministrations 
 of a regular clergyman, in a well provided coun¬ 
 try parish. This argument for the sufficiency 
 and tire superiority of family instruction would 
 apply, with as great force, against the attendance 
 of children on a church, as against their atten¬ 
 dance on a Sabbath school, in all those cases 
 where there is no church open to receive them. 
 The truth is, that these schools afford the only 
 supplement we can at present command, in a 
 large town, for the defects of its ecclesiastical 
 system. They come in place of the churches yet 
 to be provided, and the existing number of which 
 we have already demonstrated to be so fearfully 
 short of the needs of the population. Nor does 
 the time in which a Sabbath school keeps its 
 children detached and at a distance from their 
 natural guides and protectors, exceed the time 
 at which, under a better economy, these same 
 children would be sitting, from under the paren¬ 
 tal roof, in a chapel, or meeting-house. 
 
 But, even granting the case of parents altoge¬ 
 ther religious, and granting them to be fully ob¬ 
 servant of all the ordinances, and that, in parti¬ 
 cular, their well-filled family pew holds out, Sab¬ 
 bath after Sabbath, the pleasing aspect of a well- 
 conditioned and a well disciplined household; 
 still we do not hold a Sabbath school for the chil¬ 
 dren of such parents to be at all hurtful, or even 
 superfluous. There is time both for the house- 
 
348 
 
 hold and the school exercises, during the curren¬ 
 cy of a Sabbath evening, consisting, at the very 
 least, of four hours; and it is, on many accounts, 
 better that this time should be so partitioned, than 
 that it should all be spent by the children, in 
 what they are apt to feel the weary imprisonment 
 of their own dwelling places. It is well that there 
 should be such a variety to keep up and enliven 
 their attention, among religious topics. It is 
 well that the parent should guide their prepara¬ 
 tions for the teacher; and that a judicious teach¬ 
 er should lead on the parent to a right track of 
 exercise and examination, for the children. There 
 is time, under such a system, both for the lessons 
 and the prayers of the family; and it is further 
 right that there should be time for the heads of 
 the family to have their own hours of deeper sa¬ 
 credness, not to be interrupted even by the reli¬ 
 gious care of those who have sprung from them. 
 The seminaries w r e plead for, instead of having 
 any effect to mar, do, in fact, harmonise, at all 
 points, with the spiritual complexion of our most 
 decent and devoted families. Nor can we con¬ 
 ceive any degree of piety, or Christian wisdom, 
 on the part of parents, that should lead them to 
 regard a well conducted Sabbath school in any 
 other light than as a blessing and an acquisition 
 to their children. 
 
 And here it may be remarked of a local school, 
 that it possesses a peculiar advantage over a gen¬ 
 eral school, in the attraction which it holds out 
 
349 
 
 to all sorts of families. It lies either within its 
 own little district, or in its own immediate vicin¬ 
 ity; and, separated only by a few houses from 
 each dwelling-place, the whole line of distance 
 which is described by each of the scholars from 
 his home, can, both in going and returning, be 
 easily followed or overseen by his parents. Thus 
 will there be no corruption to meet him on his 
 path, and no possibility, between the parent and 
 the teacher, to evade the attendance of a single 
 evening, on any excursion of vice or idleness. 
 The shield and the security of domestic guardian¬ 
 ship are thus thrown over the system; and even 
 the children of the religious and irreligious 
 mingle together only under the eye of their 
 teacher, and may be separated instantaneously at 
 the breaking up of the juvenile congregation. 
 They mix only at the season when the example 
 and proficiency of the good have a predominating 
 influence over the depraved and the careless; 
 and passing, in a single moment, from the eye of 
 the teacher to the eye of the parent, there is no 
 time for the influence of the depraved to assume 
 its natural ascendency. Through a Sabbath 
 school, as through a conduit, the spirit and char¬ 
 acter of the better families may send a moralising 
 influence upon the others; while, in their passage 
 to and from the schools, all the guards of paren¬ 
 tal jealousy might be put forth, to intercept the 
 stream that else might flow in an opposite direc¬ 
 tion. It is thus that the presence and the exer- 
 
350 
 
 tions of a Sabbath teacher may bring about just 
 such a composition of the families as to give scope 
 for the assimilating power of every good ingredi¬ 
 ent, and, at the same time, to check the assimi¬ 
 lating power of every bad one. He may hasten 
 inconceivably the fermentation of that leaven, by 
 the working of which it is that we are taught to 
 expect, at length, the spread of Christianity 
 throughout the whole population. Nor are we 
 aware of a single office, within the regular limits 
 of any ecclesiastical constitution, from the pious 
 and faithful discharge of whose duties so signal a 
 blessing may be anticipated, both for the present 
 and for future generations. 
 
 We are glad, however, that so much has been 
 said, in Scotland, about the invasion of the Sab¬ 
 bath school system on family religion. It will 
 have a salutary re-action both on teacher and 
 parents, and make all who are religiously dis¬ 
 posed be careful, lest so interesting a vestige of 
 the Christianity of other days should be any fur¬ 
 ther defaced or trampled upon, by an institution 
 the design of which is to restore our population to 
 all that was pious, and venerable, and affecting, 
 in the style and habit of the olden time. And 
 there is one thing that may be said to those who 
 urge this objection most vehemently. In so do¬ 
 ing they give up the principle of the former ob¬ 
 jection. By admitting the competency of parents 
 to teach Christianity to their children, they admit, 
 that part of this work, at least, may be confided 
 
351 
 
 to other hands than those of regular and ordained 
 clergy. They admit that a father, in humble life, 
 may be the instrument of transmitting Christian 
 wisdom and Christian worth to his own children, 
 —and that though it were quackery for each par¬ 
 ent to undertake the cure of family diseases, it is 
 not quackery for each to undertake the work of 
 family instruction. Thus the comparison between 
 the efforts of the unlicenced in theology and me¬ 
 dicine is, by them at least, practically given up. 
 We hold this to be a signal testimony, and from 
 the mouths of adversaries too, to the power of 
 unlettered Christianity, in propagating its own 
 likeness, throughout the young of our rising gen¬ 
 eration,—a power which most assuredly would not 
 all go into dissipation, though, for a short time 
 every Sabbath evening, it were transported from 
 its place in the family to a new place in such a 
 seminary of religious instruction as we have at¬ 
 tempted to advocate. 
 
 And there is one point of superiority which a 
 Sabbath teacher, humble in circumstances, has 
 over one who is much and visibly raised above 
 the level of the families among whom he labours. 
 It is true that the latter has an advantage, in the 
 mere ascendency of rank, and in that peculiar 
 homage which the very exhibition of piety, when 
 conjoined with affluence, is ever sure to draw 
 from the multitude. But the former has his 
 compensation in the more unmixed influence of 
 his ministrations. His presence awakens no sor- 
 
352 
 
 did or mercenary expectation among the poor. 
 The welcome he gets from them is altogether dis¬ 
 interested: and, as we have already attempted to 
 evince, in the proportion that the acceptance of 
 a religious visit is untainted, in respect of its 
 character, is the visit itself unimpaired in re¬ 
 spect of its practical efficacy. To us the purity 
 of the ministration appears indispensable to the 
 power of it: and it is to him who is the bear¬ 
 er of Christianity and nothing else, among the 
 habitations of the common people, that we would 
 look for the most ready and rapid diffusion of 
 its principles. This is a circumstance which goes 
 far to counteract any loss that may be conceived 
 to arise from the defect of a more regular or re¬ 
 fined scholarship. Let there be sincere piety unit¬ 
 ed with plain but good intelligence, and we 
 would have no scruple, but the contrary, in em¬ 
 ploying, as Sabbath teachers, men from the very 
 humblest classes of life. The weight of an exalt¬ 
 ed character will ever carry it over the want of an 
 exalted condition: and it is, indeed, a striking 
 testimony to the worth and importance of the 
 poor, that among them the best capabilities are 
 to be found for transforming a corrupt into a 
 pure and virtuous community. 
 
 This holds out a very brilliant moral perspec¬ 
 tive to the eye of a philanthropist. In a few 
 years, many of the scholars at our present semi¬ 
 naries will be convertible into the teachers of a 
 future generation. There will be indefinite addi- 
 
353 
 
 tions made to our religious agency. Instead of 
 having to assail, as now, the general bulk of the 
 population, by a Christian influence from with¬ 
 out, the mass itself will be penetrated, and, 
 through the means of residing and most effective 
 teachers, there will be kept up a busy process of 
 internal circulation. It is thus that he who can 
 patiently work at small things, and be content to 
 wait for great things, lends by far the best con¬ 
 tribution to the mighty achievement of regener¬ 
 ating our land. Extremes meet; and the san¬ 
 guine philanthropist, who is goaded on by his 
 impatience to try all things, and look for some 
 great and immediate result, will soon be plunged 
 into the despair of ever being able to do any 
 thing at all. The man who can calmly set him¬ 
 self down to the work of a district school, and 
 there be satisfied to live and to labour without a 
 name, may germinate a moral influence that will, 
 at length, overspread the whole city of his habi¬ 
 tation. It is rash to affirm of the local system 
 that it is totally impracticable in London; while 
 most natural, at the same time, that it should ap¬ 
 pear so to those who think nothing worthy of an 
 attempt, unless it can be done per sallum ,—unless 
 it at once fills the eye with the glare of magnifi¬ 
 cence, and it can be invested, at the very outset, 
 with all the pomp and patronage of extensive 
 committeeship. A single lane, or court, in Lon¬ 
 don, is surely not more impracticable than in 
 other towns of this empire. There is one man 
 
354 
 
 to be found there, who can assume it as his loca¬ 
 lity, and acquit himself thoroughly and well of 
 the duties which it lays upon him. There is ano¬ 
 ther who can pitch beside him, on a contiguous 
 settlement, and, without feeling bound to specu¬ 
 late for the whole metropolis, can pervade, and do 
 much to purify his assumed portion of it. There 
 is a third who will find that a walk so unnoticed 
 and obscure is the best suited to his modesty; 
 and a fourth, who will be eager to reap, on the 
 same field, that reward of kind and simple grati¬ 
 tude, in which his heart is most fitted to rejoice. 
 We are sure that this piece-meal operation will 
 not stop for want of labourers,—though it may be 
 arrested, for a while, through the eye of labour¬ 
 ers being seduced by the meteoric glare of other 
 enterprises, alike impotent and imposing. So 
 long as each man of mediocrity conceives himself 
 to be a man of might, and sighs after some scene 
 of enlargement, that may be adequate to his fan¬ 
 cied powers, little or nothing will be done; but 
 so soon as the sweeping and sublime imagination 
 is dissipated, and he can stoop to the drudgery of 
 his small allotment in the field of usefulness, then 
 will it be found, how it is by the summation of 
 many humble mediocrities, that a mighty result 
 is at length arrived at. It was by successive 
 strokes of the pickaxe and the chisel that the 
 pyramids of Egypt were reared: and great must 
 be the company of workmen, and limited the task 
 which each must occupy, ere there will be made 
 
355 
 
 to ascend the edifice of a nation’s worth, or of a 
 nation’s true greatness. 
 
 In this laborious process" of nursing an empire 
 to Christianity, we know not, at present, a readi¬ 
 er or more available apparatus of means than 
 that which has been raised by Methodism. In 
 every large town of England, it owns a number 
 of disciples, and, through a skilful mechanism that 
 has been long in operation, there is a minute ac¬ 
 quaintance, on the part of their leaders, with the 
 talents and character of each of them. Why 
 should not they avail themselves of their existing 
 facilities for the adoption of this system, and so, 
 thoroughly pervade that population by their Sab¬ 
 bath schools, which they only, as yet, have par¬ 
 tially drawn to their pulpits? It would be doing 
 more, in the long run, to renovate and multiply 
 the chapels of Methodism, than all that has yet 
 been devised by them: and thus might they both 
 extend religious education among the young, and 
 a church-going habit throughout the general po¬ 
 pulation. We doubt not that, with this new style 
 of tactics, they would mightily alarm the Estab¬ 
 lishment. But so much the better. This is just 
 the salutary application which the Establishment 
 stands in need of. And, from all that we have 
 learned of the catholic and liberal spirit of this 
 class of dissenters, we guess that, though they 
 did no more than simply stimulate the Church of 
 England to do the whole work, and to do it 
 aright, they would bless God and rejoice. 
 
356 
 
 Such is the good will we bear to sectarians, 
 that we should rejoice in nothing more than to 
 behold their instantaneous adoption of an expedi¬ 
 ent which, we honestly believe, would add ten¬ 
 fold to their resources and their influence. Let 
 them operate in large towns, on the principle of 
 locality. Let them enter on the territorial pos¬ 
 session of this peopled wilderness. Let them er¬ 
 ect as many district schools and district chapels 
 as they find that they have room for; and if the 
 Establishment will not be roused by this manifold 
 activity, out of its lethargies, then sectarianism 
 will, at length, earn, and most rightfully earn, 
 all the honours and all the ascendency of an Es¬ 
 tablishment. It is, indeed, a most likely thing 
 that the Church would be put into motion; and 
 this, of itself, were an important good rendered 
 to tire country, by the industry and zeal of dis¬ 
 senters. But when we look to the fearful defi¬ 
 ciency of our ecclesiastical system, there is no 
 fear lest all the galley-boats of sectarianism, with 
 the slow and ponderous Establishment in tow, 
 will too soon overtake the mighty extent of our 
 yet unprovided population. Nor do we know of 
 any common enterprise that would promise fairer, 
 aflength, for embodying the Church and the dis¬ 
 senters together, by some such act of comprehen¬ 
 sive union, as has lately reflected so much honour 
 on the two most numerous classes of dissenters in 
 our country. 
 
351 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Since the publication of the chapters on Church 
 Patronage, the Author has been kindly honoured 
 by a specific communication from Mr. Gladstone, 
 respecting the returns of the churches that were 
 endowed by him. 
 
 One of them is in the town of Liverpool, and 
 there is attached to it a school for the education, 
 at present gratuitous, of 280 children. The cost 
 and annual expense of this establishment form a 
 heavy deduction from the surplus of seat rents 
 that would otherwise have accrued out of the ca¬ 
 pabilities of the church alone; and, accordingly, 
 the return is only between three and four per 
 cent, per annum, on the whole cost. 
 
 The other church is at Seaforth, a small dis¬ 
 tance from Liverpool, where there is likewise a 
 school attached to the church. In both cases 
 there are also school-houses. It is obvious that 
 the circumstance of the church at Seaforth being 
 smaller than the other, is unfavourable to the 
 amount of surplus return upon the capital; and, 
 accordingly, though the schools there be only 
 endowed partially, whereas it is still a wholly en¬ 
 dowed school in Liverpool, the return upon the 
 whole cost is about two and a half per cent. 
 
The Author thinks it necessary to supplement, 
 by these details, the information of the text; and 
 he does so, not at the desire of Mr. Gladstone, 
 who kindly left him to his own discretion, in this 
 respect, but to prove how small the hazard of 
 such a speculation is, in populous cities, and with 
 large churches, provided only, however, that the 
 subscribers restrict themselves to the single object 
 of a church, and not, as has been most benevo¬ 
 lently done in the instances at Liverpool, extend 
 the charity of their enterprise to additional ob¬ 
 jects. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. IX. 
 
 On the Relation that subsists between the Christian and 
 the Civic Economy of Large Towns,™-- 1 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 
 On the Bearing which a Right Christian Economy has 
 upon Pauperism,..—., - -— - —. 49 
 
 CHAP. XI. 
 
 On the Bearing which a Right Civic Economy has upon 
 Pauperism,- 89 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 On the Present State and Future Prospects of Pauperism 
 in Glasgow,- 137 
 
 CHAP. XIII. 
 
 On the Difficulties and Evils which adhere even to the 
 best condition of Scottish Pauperism,.,——-. 185 
 
 CHAP. XIV. 
 
 On the Likeliest Means for the Abolition of Pauperism in 
 England, — .— - 1-225 
 
 CHAP. XV. 
 
 On the Likeliest Parliamentary Means for the Abolition 
 of Pauperism in F.nglpnd,,...,. . . . . tl ...,. r .. lttt 300 
 
 CHAP. XVI. 
 
 On the Likeliest Parochial Means for the Abolition of 
 Pauperism in England,. . , 332 
 
THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN AND CIVIC ECONOMY 
 
 LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 CHAP. IX. 
 
 ON THE RELATION THAT SUBSISTS BETWEEN THE 
 CHRISTIAN AND THE CIVIC ECONOMY OF LARGE 
 TOWNS. 
 
 Before proceeding farther, it may be useful to 
 offer a short summary of the principles which have 
 already been expounded about a right ecclesias¬ 
 tical system for great towns; and then to eluci¬ 
 date the bearing which a good Christian, has upon 
 a good civic, economy: discriminating, at the 
 same time, between the peculiarities which apper¬ 
 tain to each of them. 
 
 There is a sure experimental alliance between 
 the defect of Christianity among a people, and 
 the defect of certain human arrangements that 
 conduce to its growth and preservation;—and 
 one most palpable defect of the latter sort is, that 
 the population of cities have been permitted so far 
 to outgrow the means of their religious instruc¬ 
 tion. There are many towns in our empire, where 
 
 Voi.. II. A 
 
the Establishment has not provided room in 
 churches for one tenth of the inhabitants; and 
 the inhabitants, when thus left to seek out Chris¬ 
 tianity for themselves, have shown how feeble the 
 native demand of the human mind for it is, by their 
 not supplementing, with chapels and meeting¬ 
 houses, beyond another tenth, this enormous defi¬ 
 ciency of the Establishment. It is clear, in these 
 circumstances, that the vast majority must be left 
 to wander without the pale of Christian ministra¬ 
 tions, and Christian ordinances, altogether—where 
 they have settled down into a mass of heathenism, 
 which, to the eye of common experience, looks 
 completely irrecoverable. There is a very gen¬ 
 eral feeling of helplessness and despair upon this 
 subject, as if the profligacy and ungodliness of 
 cities were elements in every way as unconquer¬ 
 able as is physical necessity itself: and thus it is, 
 that any serious or sustained attempt to make 
 head against this sore mischief, is ranked, by many 
 an incredulous observer, with the Quixotism that 
 goeth forth, on some region of wild adventure, to 
 reclaim a hydra, that scarcely admits of being sof¬ 
 tened, and will certainly never be subdued. 
 
 To make the recovery in question still more 
 hopeless, there is no denying of the fact, that 
 were churches to be built at this moment, up to 
 the full accommodation of all our city families, it 
 would have almost no perceptible influence on the 
 habit into which they have degenerated. It is 
 not at the sound of a bell, that they will consent 
 
3 
 
 to relinquish the sordid or profane gratifications 
 wherewith they fill up that day of rest, which they 
 have turned into a day of rioting and lawless in¬ 
 dulgence. New churches might be built, and, if 
 well appointed, new churches might be filled, but 
 rather by a transference of sitters from the old 
 churches, than by any large or extensive drafts on 
 a still unmoved population. So that this one ex¬ 
 pedient which has been so much talked of, and to 
 which even the eye of national wisdom has lately 
 been directed, may, in itself, be utterly powerless, 
 as to the object of making any sensible advances 
 on the heathenism of our people,—all serving to 
 confirm the general hopelessness that there is up¬ 
 on the subject, and to afford a plausible warrant 
 for the contempt wherewith schemes of philan¬ 
 thropy are so apt to be regarded by the more 
 secular and sober minded of our citizens, who feel 
 satisfied with things as they are, nor want their 
 quiescence to be at all disturbed by any sugges¬ 
 tion or demonstration, whatever, of things as they 
 should be. 
 
 This sluggishness of the population, in respect 
 to Christianity, has led us to advert, to the differ¬ 
 ence, in point of effect, between their being left 
 to seek it for themselves, and their being aggres¬ 
 sively plied with the offer of its ministrations and 
 its lessons. It is a difference which we conceive 
 to be well exemplified by the advantages which a 
 local, has over a general Sabbath school. The 
 teacher of a general Sabbath school draws to him 
 
4 
 
 those pupils, chiefly, whose parents have a predis¬ 
 position for the instructions of the gospel; and so, 
 may he be instrumental in perpetuating Christi¬ 
 anity where it is, but not in reviving it where it is 
 not. The teacher of a local Sabbath school, on 
 the other hand, feels himself charged with all the 
 families that are to be found on the face of his 
 assigned territory; and, by the mere force of moral 
 suasion, does he find himself able to compel nearly 
 all the children to come in: and thus, instead of a 
 mere process of attraction, which ever operates 
 only on minds already possessed of some kind¬ 
 red quality to religion, does he set up an active 
 process of emanation, whereby he operates on 
 minds that are indifferent, or even hostile to the 
 cause; and the cheering experience is, that under 
 this local system, the attendance of the young is 
 more than tripled beyond what it was under the 
 general system,—thus pointing out the way in 
 which a population might have been preserved 
 from degeneracy, had it been adopted sooner; 
 and the way in which, if adopted now, a popula¬ 
 tion might still be recalled from it. 
 
 For, what is true of Sabbath schools for the 
 young, is also true of churches for the whole popu¬ 
 lation. Let a church draw its sitters from the 
 city at large, and it is by the feeble process of at¬ 
 traction, and by this alone, that it secures their 
 attendance. A minister cannot charge himself 
 with so wide a field of superintendence as the 
 whole city. He cannot take cognizance of all its 
 
5 
 
 families, or pay such week-day attentions to them 
 as might induce their Sabbath-day attendance up¬ 
 on himself. Meanwhile, the population increases, 
 and outgrows the room that there is in churches 
 for their accommodation; and many are the fami¬ 
 lies that fall without the reach of all ministerial 
 cognizance whatever, and who without the habit 
 of church-going, are also without the taste for it: 
 and thus, it is not only true that the number of 
 places of worship is greatly beneath the necessities 
 of the people, but the demand of the people them¬ 
 selves, for new places, is also greatly beneath these 
 necessities;—so, that if by a sudden movement of 
 patriotism, many new churches were speedily made 
 to arise to the view of the citizens, the mortifying 
 result were, that the citizens, still unmoved out of 
 their long acquired and firm habits of non-atten¬ 
 dance, would leave the churches to stand unoccu¬ 
 pied, and so stamp the charge of temerity and 
 impotence on the whole speculation. 
 
 It is on this account that we hold it indispensa¬ 
 ble, for the restoration of a Christian habit in our 
 cities, to give to churches the benefit of the same 
 principle of locality, that has been found so sig¬ 
 nally efficacious in bringing Sabbath schools into 
 contact with the whole population. Every church 
 in the Establishment should be as exclusively con¬ 
 nected with its parish, as a local Sabbath school is 
 with its assigned territory. The week-day atten¬ 
 tions of the minister, instead of being generalised 
 over the whole city, in which case they are sure 
 
6 
 
 to be languid, and heartless, and ineffective, should 
 be as much concentrated, and as frequently reiter¬ 
 ated as possible, in the smaller and more manage¬ 
 able district, over which he has hitherto had little 
 more than a bare nominal superintendence. Were 
 he permitted to recruit his church from his parish, 
 as far as his parish might be disposed to furnish 
 him with hearers, this would soon translate him 
 into a far more intimate and endearing relationship 
 with its families, than by all his other attempts he 
 could possibly attain. The circumstance of hav¬ 
 ing a thousand hearers in his parish, instead of a 
 hundred, would give him a weight and an ascenden¬ 
 cy convertible to the best Christian, and collater¬ 
 ally bringing along with it the best civil and eco¬ 
 nomical purposes that ever were contemplated by 
 the eye of patriotism. All the bland, and kindly, 
 and civilising influences of a parochial system 
 could thus be brought into play among the dark 
 and crowded recesses of a city. And little is it 
 known, how much the cruel disruption of the min¬ 
 ister from his parish, by a system of seat-letting 
 that ought instantly to be abandoned, has contri¬ 
 buted to that degeneracy which looks at present 
 so hopeless and irrecoverable. 
 
 But, there is a way of acting, upon this sugges¬ 
 tion, which must be attended to. The substitu¬ 
 tion of a local, for a general congregation, should 
 not be attempted by an instantaneous dismissal of 
 all the extra-parochial sitters, and the oft’er of 
 their vacant room to the inhabitants of the parish 
 
7 
 
 where the church is situated. This, independently 
 of its being an act of violence to individual feel¬ 
 ing, were an act of impolicy, even for the purpose 
 that is meant to be accomplished by it. The 
 strong existing habit of alienation from all ordi¬ 
 nances, on the part of those who have long lived 
 in ease and comfort without them, must be adver¬ 
 ted to: and, such in fact is the inveteracy of this 
 habit, that, were a thousand sittings vacated in the 
 church of one of our plebeian parishes, for the 
 sake of extensively accommodating the parishion¬ 
 ers, it is likely that not more than a hundred of 
 these sittings might be inquired after. It is not 
 enough that room be provided—the renovation of 
 a new habit must be brought about: and, it were 
 positively throwing away the accommodation that 
 we have, if pews were emptied for the people, 
 faster than the people came forward with their 
 demand for the pews. This points to the conclu¬ 
 sion, that a parochial, can only come in the place 
 of a general attendance, not by an immediate, but 
 by a gradual substitution of the one for the other. 
 And there is no law of graduality that seems bet¬ 
 ter adapted for the purpose, than simply to hold 
 forth, to the preference of parishioners, all those 
 vacancies which are created by the death or the 
 removal of present occupiers. There is no offence 
 given to any actual sitter by such an arrangement: 
 and the vacancies which, in a congregation of fif¬ 
 teen hundred, will not take place at above the rate 
 of a hundred in the year, will not exceed the rate 
 
at which the demand for them may be stimulated, 
 by the ordinary labours and attentions of any city 
 minister, in the parish which has been assigned to 
 him; and every new seat-letting extends his in¬ 
 terest in his own local territory, by adding to the 
 number of his Sabbath hearers who reside within 
 its bounds; and thus the ties of reciprocity be¬ 
 tween him and his people, are every day becom¬ 
 ing closer—till at length, but for the extent of his 
 population, the relationship would be as affection¬ 
 ate on his part, and as cordial on theirs, as is that 
 which obtains between the worthy minister, and 
 the simple natives of a parish in the country. 
 This is a consummation which never can be 
 reached, under the present system of seat-letting; 
 and it were vain to attempt the speeding of it for¬ 
 ward by any sudden or desultory shift in the dis¬ 
 tribution of the sitters,—although we have no 
 doubt that, by the method now recommended, 
 (while nothing striking or visible could be pro¬ 
 duced in a single year), the whole effect would be 
 surely and quietly realised in less than the space 
 of a single generation. 
 
 The power which a local Sabbath school teacher 
 has, in virtue of that peculiar arrangement under 
 which he operates, to draw out a full attendance, 
 of the juvenile population of his district, on that 
 seminary over which he presides, is the very power 
 that, under the same arrangement, might be ex¬ 
 ercised by the minister of a city parish. Not that 
 he would suddenly call forth the attendance of 
 
9 
 
 his whole population on the church where he 
 preaches,—for he has the habits of manhood and 
 of established life to contend against,—but that he 
 would do it gradually and surely. Let his people be 
 only aware of their right of preference for the va¬ 
 cant sittings of their own church—and he will find 
 his progressive, but certain way to the desirable re¬ 
 sult of a Sabbath audience, the great bulk of whom 
 are composed of the residenters upon his own 
 territorial vineyard. He has it so much in his 
 power, within the limited district of a parish, to 
 make himself the object of recognition among its 
 families. He can so easily, by his week-day atten¬ 
 tions, obtrude himself and the business of his pro¬ 
 fession upon their notice. He can so naturally 
 become the object of their Sunday preference, by 
 becoming the object of their gratitude for his 
 practicable labours among the young, and the sick, 
 and the dying. He can withal, by the institution 
 of a good Sabbath school system, so readily fill up 
 the vacancies in his congregation out of its semina¬ 
 ries, by the very likely transition that would take 
 place among the youth on the borders of man¬ 
 hood: when, after leaving the schools that he had 
 provided, so many of them would most naturally 
 find their, way to the church in which he preach¬ 
 ed. It is thus, that, as the fruit of his concentrated 
 attentions through the week, on a parish, the min¬ 
 ister might recruit and sustain the attendance, with 
 a facility which can never be experienced by him 
 whose loose and general relationship to the whole 
 
 Vol. II. b 
 
10 
 
 city leaves him no other chance for a congrega¬ 
 tion, than the unfostered demand of people who 
 are in a great measure beyond his reach, and with 
 whom he can never come into close and recurring 
 contact in the way of household ministrations. 
 
 We are the more earnest upon this point, be¬ 
 cause we are aware of no other method by which 
 a demand can be excited for additional churches, 
 at all commensurate to the moral and religious 
 necessities of our population. Under the present 
 system, there may, by the mere increase of people, 
 be such an increase of the demand, in our second 
 rate towns, as shall ensure the addition of one or 
 two churches in half a century, or in such a period 
 of time as may have witnessed the accession of as 
 many families as could fill a dozen of churches. 
 And thus it is, that profligacy and profanation so 
 rapidly outstride all the counteractions which have 
 been raised against them; and which, however it 
 may have escaped observation hitherto, have in 
 truth lost their efficacy, by the utter neglect of 
 the principle of locality, as applied to the churches 
 and parishes of a city. It may only be by the 
 countenance and good will of magistrates, that the 
 indispensable article of churches, for the accom¬ 
 modation of the people, can be provided. But it 
 is only by the assiduity of ministers, with all the 
 advantages for local and parochial cultivation up¬ 
 on their side, that the no less indispensable article 
 can be provided, of a demand, on the part of the 
 people, for this accommodation. Give to such a 
 
11 
 
 minister the power of meeting this demand with 
 vacancies as they occur. Let him be able to sa¬ 
 tisfy the inquiries of his people, by the assurance of 
 disposeable room for them, and for them only, at 
 the next term of seat-letting. Save both him and 
 them from the discouragement of beholding that 
 room taken possession of, through the partiality 
 of city administrators, by interlopers from with¬ 
 out; and then, by very ordinary exertion indeed, 
 under this amended system, could the demand of 
 the people be so excited, as not merely to fill, but 
 to press on the existing accommodation. In this 
 way too, the demand would clearly announce it¬ 
 self—and, from the intenseness of the competition 
 for places, could there be gathered the distinct 
 and satisfying intimation, when it was that new 
 erections might safely be adventured on—and, 
 greatly beyond the power of accommodation in 
 his own church, might each minister create occu¬ 
 piers for future churches, whose united voice would 
 clearly indicate the time for old parishes being 
 divided, and new ones formed out of shares and 
 detachments from contiguous parishes. 
 
 We fear that without this expedient, the in¬ 
 crease of churches will follow tardily and slug¬ 
 gishly in the rear of a far more rapidly increasing 
 population; and, that thus, from one year to an¬ 
 other, there will be a decay of proportional means 
 for the arresting of vice and profligacy in our land. 
 It is not, as we have often averred, with Christian 
 instruction for the supply of our spiritual wants. 
 
12 
 
 as it is with any given commodity for the supply 
 of our bodily wants. In the latter case, there is 
 no strenuousness required to call forth a demand: 
 so, that upon the simple offer of the commodity, 
 we may be sure, that it will be as much sought for, 
 and as much used, as is good for the interest of 
 our species. But the case is widely different with 
 the lessons of Christianity. To raise a demand 
 for them, is a work of as great or greater difficulty 
 than it is to provide the supply of them. And, it 
 is only by the clergy of the Establishment, each 
 keeping up an intensely parochial operation within 
 his own sphere, instead of dissipating his influence 
 over the wide , superficies of a whole city—it is 
 only thus, we apprehend, that much more of Sab¬ 
 bath accommodation will come to be provided, 
 because it is only thus that much more of it will 
 come to be either called or cared for. 
 
 The mode of parochial seat-letting, as now laid 
 down, we regard as by far the most important 
 suggestion that can be offered to our city adminis¬ 
 trators, for the purpose of forwarding a right 
 Christian economy in our great towns; and we 
 shall deem their compliance with it to be the very 
 best contribution which they could render to the 
 cause. And yet, we speak the language both of 
 apprehension and experience, when we profess 
 ourselves to be not very sanguine, either of then- 
 speedy adoption of this mode, or of their faithful 
 and persevering execution of it. It requires a 
 force, of no ordinary momentum, to shift the rou- 
 
13 
 
 tine of municipal business; and no where is there 
 more devout homage rendered to the omnipotence 
 of custom, than in the office of city clerks or city 
 chamberlains; and there, as in a secure and im¬ 
 pregnable fastness, will she continue to hold her 
 imperial sway—alike regardless of promises that 
 are not remembered, and of principles that are not 
 understood. It is not, that in the required line of 
 proceeding there is at all any difficulty: for noth¬ 
 ing more patent, we should think, than simply, in 
 the disposal of vacant places, to grant a preference 
 to parochial, over extra-parochial applications. 
 And were any thing like a striking or visible re¬ 
 sult to come soon enough out of this arrangement, 
 we should not despair of a more ready compliance 
 with it. Could the final benefit be so placed be¬ 
 fore the immediate eye of our civic practitioners, 
 as to force itself upon their observation, it is likely 
 enough that, on their part, there would be a more 
 punctual adherence to this great law of parochial 
 equity. But the operation of the law is so grad¬ 
 ual—and, when bidden to look through the vista 
 of half a generation, for the full and salutary effect, 
 it then appears to be so much a matter of specu¬ 
 lation, and so little a matter of sense, that any ar¬ 
 gument which can be addressed upon the subject 
 has but a feeble influence, when it has the mighty 
 power of old use and old authority to contend 
 against. It is thus, we fear, that with all those 
 advantages of the principle of locality, which an 
 Establishment naturally possesses—it may be long 
 
14 
 
 ere in towns, she shall come completely to realize 
 them; and, meanwhile, that the unordained or 
 dissenting teachers of religion may, by the assump¬ 
 tion of what is tantamount to parishes for them¬ 
 selves, earn that superiority of usefulness which 
 our regular clergy, while the existing methods are 
 perpetuated, will vainly and hopelessly aspire 
 after. 
 
 Should one hundred applications from the fami¬ 
 lies of a poor city parish, for seats in their own 
 parish church, come into competition with a hun¬ 
 dred applications from families in the wealthier 
 and more fashionable side of the town, we know 
 not in what terms to brand or to depreciate the 
 impolicy that would set aside the former, and give 
 preference and acceptancy to the latter. Such a 
 forthcoming for seats, on the part of our operative 
 population, were just the commencement of a pro¬ 
 cess, which, of all others, it were most desirable to 
 help andto encourage forward: nor can we conceive 
 an object on which either serious principle or en¬ 
 lightened patriotism ought to be more intently set, 
 than that of opening and multiplying all possible 
 facilities for this best of all popular movements. 
 The intelligence of the first year’s success would 
 call forth a host of expectancy from neighbours, 
 for the vacancies of the second year, and thus 
 would the matter make progress, so as that with 
 the infection of a new taste, there should be the 
 spread of a new habit, in that very quarter of so¬ 
 ciety which is now so wofully overrun both with 
 
political rancour, and with personal worthlessness. 
 The appearance of a parochial demand for seats, 
 from artizans and labourers, is just that initial ten¬ 
 dency to what is good which ought to be hailed 
 with delight, and met with the readiest alacrity, by 
 all who have any presiding influence in the man¬ 
 agement of our public affairs. And when, instead 
 of this, the tendency is discouraged, and driven 
 back again to the dormancy out of which it had 
 arisen—when the hand that ought to have fostered 
 this approximation inflicts upon it the check of a 
 mortifying repulse, made as offensive as possible, 
 by the preference of a rich man who is out of the 
 parish, to a poor man who is in it—when, dishear¬ 
 tened by repeated failures, the attempt is no longer 
 made, because the galling experience of this sor¬ 
 did and ungenerous partiality has at length con¬ 
 vinced parishioners that the attempt is altogether 
 hopeless,—the conclusion is, that philanthropy 
 may often be thwarted in her likeliest designs, not 
 because of the natural impediments which lie in 
 her way, but because her best and dearest inter¬ 
 ests happen to lie at the disposal of men, who have 
 neither the heart to care for the success of a gen¬ 
 erous enterprise, nor the talent to appreciate it. # 
 
 * It may be right to mention, that in Glasgow, where the public func¬ 
 tionaries arc so alive to every consideration of die public welfare, the rule 
 of parochial seat-letting has been virtually conceded to, at least, one of the 
 parishes, though, at the outset of its operation, the old habit which wont to 
 
16 
 
 It is much better, for the right Christian econo- 
 my of a town, when the rule of parochial equity, 
 in seat-letting, tends to the disappointment of capi¬ 
 talists than to the disappointment of labourers. 
 By the former disappointment, an effective interest 
 is created in behalf of more churches; and the in¬ 
 convenience of a limited accommodation is made to 
 fall upon those who are most able to remedy and 
 to extend it; and these wealthy outcasts can form 
 into a powerful body of application for an addi¬ 
 tional church—so that to reject the applications 
 of the wealthy, in favour of the poor, is to walk in 
 that direct line which leads to the increase of our 
 ecclesiastical provision in great cities. Whereas, 
 to reject the applications of the poor, in favour of 
 the wealthy, is just to reverse this process. It is 
 to make irrecoverable outcasts of those who are 
 without the means of at all helping themselves. 
 It is to damp, into irrecoverable apathy, the whole 
 class of society to which they belong. It is to ex¬ 
 tinguish the first hopeful symptoms of a revival, 
 throughout that mass of human beings, whose 
 estrangement from all the sanctities of Sabbath 
 observation, is of such deadly import to the well¬ 
 being of a community. It is to stifle that incipi¬ 
 ent voice which arises from among the poorer or¬ 
 ders themselves; and, by listening to which, a 
 healing influence would have come back upon 
 them, and restored to soundness that great foun¬ 
 dation of a country’s prosperity and peace—the 
 virtue of its people. It is thus that men, who are 
 
1*7 
 
 the very'first to tremble at the outbreakings of 
 radicalism, may lie the most deeply chargeable 
 with the guilt of having fed and sustained it in its 
 principle; withholding, as they do, the best coun¬ 
 teraction to all the brooding elements of a fiery 
 and mischievous fermentation. 
 
 Of all the outrages, either felt or fancied, on the 
 rights of the people, this is the one which is fol¬ 
 lowed by the surest retaliation; and that, not so 
 much from its present influence, in swelling the 
 tide of discontent, as from its final result in the 
 more confirmed irreligion of our city populace. 
 It forms the addition of at least one real, to the 
 whole previous list of their imaginary grievances, 
 and leaves upon its aspect such a glaring expres¬ 
 sion of preference to the desires of the wealthy, 
 over the righteous demands of the poor, as not 
 only to furnish one topic of substantial provoca¬ 
 tion, but as to impart a plausibility to all the 
 others. This, however, does not constitute the 
 main soreness of that cruel and unfeeling policy 
 which we have endeavoured to expose,- and which 
 lies in the effect that it has to perpetuate the de¬ 
 pravity of the multitude, and that too, in the face 
 of a willingness, on the part of the multitude, to 
 be set on the path which leads both to tranquil¬ 
 lity and to righteousness. 
 
 We deem this topic, of seat-letting, to be of suf¬ 
 ficient importance in itselfj for justifying all the 
 amplitude of remark and argument that we have 
 bestowed upon it: and, we think, it may farther 
 
 VOL. II. C 
 
IS 
 
 be employed for the purpose of illustrating a dis¬ 
 tinction, which we shall find most closely and es¬ 
 sentially applicable to many other particulars con¬ 
 nected with the Christian and Civic Economy of 
 towns; and which the reader would do well to 
 apprehend and to fix in his remembrance, more 
 especially, throughout the whole of our intended 
 lucubrations on the subject of pauperism. We 
 advert to the distinction between what may be 
 called a natural and a political difficulty in the 
 way of any given reformation. There is no natu¬ 
 ral difficulty in the way of certain benefits that 
 would accrue from a right arrangement of matters 
 as to seat-letting. But there is a political diffi¬ 
 culty in the way of initiating and maintaining the 
 arrangement itself. Grant the simple enactment 
 of a preference for parishioners to all vacant pla¬ 
 ces in their own parish church, as the vacancies 
 occur, and a faithful adherence to this enactment; 
 and, in the nature of things, there is no let or hind¬ 
 rance in the way of a very great improvement on 
 the economy of our cities; and that, with little 
 more to do, than just to wait the operation of this 
 new method. Vacancies will, by deaths and re¬ 
 movals, occur, as a matter of course. Other things 
 being equal, parishioners will, by the mere influ¬ 
 ence of juxtaposition, aided, as it generally is, by 
 the influence of connexion with their minister, on 
 other grounds, prefer accommodation in their own, 
 to accommodation in other churches. If there be 
 any thing in the very superior attractions of one, 
 
19 
 
 or more, 'of the city clergy, to disturb this prefe¬ 
 rence—this will operate within his parish, as well 
 as beyond its limits, and secure an overwhelming 
 superiority of competition for seats from his own 
 parishioners; so as to give to the favourite minis¬ 
 ter all the surer chance of at length realising a pa¬ 
 rochial congregation. This, in the very order of 
 nature, he will sooner or later arrive at; and we 
 should then, upon the whole, behold, under such 
 a system of management, the ministers of a city- 
 having each a compact and concentrated influence 
 over his own separate portion of it—an influence 
 that would be inconceivably augmented, from the 
 very circumstance of such a number of families, 
 with whom he stood parochially associated through 
 the week, being now his stated hearers on the 
 Sabbath—and an influence, which tire whole ope¬ 
 ration of the principle of locality would enable 
 him'to wield with tenfold greater facility and effect 
 than he ever can do over the hearers of a general 
 congregation. There may be artificial impedi¬ 
 ments in the way of setting up this arrangement, 
 but there are no natural impediments to it: for, 
 after it is set up and acted on, the nature both of 
 individual man and of society affords nought but 
 openings and facilities in its favour; and, without 
 more than the ordinary strenuousness of average 
 and every day people being farther concerned in 
 the matter, the benefits that would flow from it 
 are altogether incalculable. Nature would soon 
 unpeople a parish church of its present sitters. 
 
Nature would more incline parishioners than others 
 to fill up the vacancies. Nature would put into 
 the breast of each clergyman a far more lively in¬ 
 terest in a parish where he had a thousand, than 
 in one where he had only a hundred hearers, and 
 would vest him with a far more useful ascendency 
 over it. Nature would prompt him to the exer¬ 
 tions of a more willing activity, in a field that was 
 crowded with the members of his own congrega¬ 
 tion; and even should his natural habits, as in 
 some cases it undoubtedly is, be not labour but 
 indolence, the reformed economy would, at least, 
 render any slender week-day attentions which he 
 was disposed to bestow, ten times more effective 
 than they ever can be under the existing econo¬ 
 my. So, that in respect of natural difficulties, or 
 such difficulties as attach inherently and essen¬ 
 tially to the subject of management, there are none, 
 but the contrary, in the way of bringing about a 
 desirable result; and whatever difficulties we have 
 to contend with, in this matter, are altogether fac¬ 
 titious or political,—appertaining, not to the con¬ 
 stitution of the thing to be managed, but to the 
 constitution of what may be called the managing 
 apparatus—not to the subject that we want to be 
 operated upon, but to the agency who now work 
 it. 
 
 For example, the difficulty, in the present in¬ 
 stance, lies not in the parish where we should like 
 the arrangement, that we are now pleading for, 
 to be carried into effect, but it lies, among the ar- 
 
21 
 
 cana of city business and city committeeship. It 
 is not a natural but a political difficulty. It con¬ 
 sists in a kind of vis inertia;, whereby it is so hard 
 to move any municipal body out of its old ten¬ 
 dencies. The field of contest is not the popula¬ 
 tion, but among the heads and rulers of the popu¬ 
 lation; and the mighty resistance that is to be 
 overcome, nearly all arises from the rust and the 
 tardiness which adhere to the ponderous machine 
 of a city corporation, that obstinately perseveres 
 in its wonted cycle, and whose subordinate com¬ 
 mittees as obstinately persevere in their wonted 
 epicycles. The way to overcome this, no doubt, 
 is by the force of persuasion, addressed to the pre¬ 
 sent and the living administrators of this superin¬ 
 tendence. But, without meaning the slightest 
 disrespect to these individuals, who, to say the 
 least of them, must, in regard to intellect, be on 
 the fair level and average of humanity, there is, 
 perhaps, no class of men who are better entitled 
 to a sensitive dislike and jealousy of all innova¬ 
 tion. They are incessantly assailed, and upon all 
 hands, with counsel and criticism; and full many 
 must be the crudities of undigested speculation 
 that are submitted to their notice; and the very 
 labour of separating the precious from the vile of 
 the suggestions, wherewith they are plied, must be 
 oppressive to men who are already overborne; and 
 it is no wonder that they should feel the distur¬ 
 bance of any change whatever, in their accustomed 
 routine, to. be harassing and vexatious; and the 
 
public are really not aware of all the indulgence 
 that is due, upon these grounds, to men who make 
 such important surrenders of time and of conve¬ 
 nience to the well-being of the community: so, 
 that it was not with a view to advance any charge, 
 but with a view to impress what we deem a dis¬ 
 tinction of capital importance, that we have given 
 way to the train of our present observations. A 
 natural difficulty is that which is encountered on 
 the field of direct and immediate management, 
 and after we have obtained an actual occupation 
 of the field, in the way that is desired. A politi¬ 
 cal difficulty'is that which is encountered previ¬ 
 ously to taking this occupation, and, generally, 
 on the road to it; and is often of a nature so im¬ 
 practicable, that the operation, out of which a 
 good result was promised, may never be begun. 
 The natural difficulty lies with the thing to be 
 managed, and is a let or hindrance between the 
 operation and the result. The political difficulty 
 lies with the existing managers, and is a let or 
 hindrance anterior to the operation, and often pre¬ 
 ventive of it. The operation of the rule of seat¬ 
 letting would most surely lead to the result that 
 we anticipate, and have attempted to explain; be¬ 
 cause there is no natural impediment among our 
 men of private condition in parishes, but the re¬ 
 verse, in the way of such a consequence. But, 
 among our men of public office in corporations, 
 there is a very strong political impediment in the 
 
28 
 
 way of establishing, and practically abiding by, 
 the rule. 
 
 The truth and importance of this distinction 
 will come to be more fully recognised when we 
 treat of Pauperism. The example of nearly all 
 Europe, with the exception of England, proves, 
 that there is no natural difficulty in the way of a 
 population being subsisted, without almost the sin¬ 
 gle case of an individual perishing by want; and 
 that, without any legal or compulsory provision 
 for the poor. But now, that such a provision has 
 been established in this country, and that the 
 great unwieldy corporation of the state must be 
 moved, ere any step can be taken towards the 
 abolition of it, and that the subordinate courts of 
 administration, in every parish, have sunk and 
 settled into the obstinacy of an old practical ha¬ 
 bit, in all their proceedings, there is a host of 
 political difficulties that must be met and over¬ 
 come, not ere it can be proved with what cer¬ 
 tainty the people, when left to themselves, will 
 find their own way to their own comfort and in¬ 
 dependence, but ere the measure shall be carried 
 of actually leaving the people to themselves. We 
 think that there is no natural difficulty which 
 stands in the way of the success of such an experi¬ 
 ment, if tried; but we feel that there are many 
 political difficulties in the way of putting the ex¬ 
 periment to the trial. We hold it a practicable 
 thing, to conduct any parish, either in a city or in 
 the country, to the old economy of a Scottish 
 
24 
 
 parish, on the strength of an arrangement which 
 we shall afterwards endeavour to set, in more de¬ 
 tailed exposition, before our readers; and that 
 there is no impediment on the parochial field, 
 which is the real theatre of the experiment, in the 
 way of final and looked for success. The strug¬ 
 gle is not with the population, for obtaining the 
 success of the arrangement—but the struggle is 
 with our legislature and our municipalities, for 
 obtaining the arrangement itself. The place of 
 most formidable resistance is not in the outer, but 
 the inner department of this business, and the 
 occasion of it is, when, in the hall of deliberation, 
 the attempt is made to break up our existing arti¬ 
 ficial economy, and thus to prevail over the dis¬ 
 like and the prejudices of hacknied functiona¬ 
 ries, and to carry that nearly impregnable front, 
 wherewith all novelty is sure to be withstood, by 
 the clerks, and the conveners, and the committee¬ 
 men, of an old establishment. The battle is not 
 with the natural difficulties of the problem, but 
 with its political difficulties—not with the laws of 
 human nature, as to be found in the parish where 
 the experiment is made, but with the tendencies 
 of human nature, as exhibited on that arena of 
 public discussion and debate where the experi¬ 
 ment is proposed. In the work of abolishing lega¬ 
 lised charity, the heaviest conflict will not be with 
 the natural poverty of the lower orders, but with 
 that pride of argument, and that tenacity of opi¬ 
 nion, and all those political feelings and capacities 
 
25 
 
 which obtain among the higher orders. In short, 
 we hold that there is nothing in the condition of 
 the people which opposes a barrier against the 
 abolition of all legal and compulsory pauperism, 
 but that there is a very strong initial barrier in the 
 condition of our laws, and courts, and long estab¬ 
 lished usages; In the practical solution of the 
 question of public charity, the recipients will not 
 be found so difficult of management as the law¬ 
 givers and administrators. There is a method by 
 which might be effected, and almost without" dif¬ 
 ficulty, the abolition of public charity among our 
 plebeians—but the consent of our patricians must 
 be obtained, ere we are free to put the method in¬ 
 to operation: and what we affirm is, that it is a 
 greater achievement to obtain leave and liberty 
 for using the method, than to obtain success for 
 the method itself; or,, in other words, that the 
 great impediment to the removal of this sore na¬ 
 tional distemper, lies not among the plebeians, but 
 among the patricians of the commonwealth. 
 
 But there is another distinction, which we must 
 labour to impress—even that which obtains be¬ 
 tween the way in which a Christian, and the way 
 in which a Civic good is rendered to the popula¬ 
 tion of cities, by the establishment of a good ec¬ 
 clesiastical, system amongst them. 
 
 We should not call that a Christian benefit to 
 any individual, which conduces not either to his 
 security, or to his preparation, for an inheritance 
 in heaven. Ere he is Christianly the better, for 
 
 Vol. II. D 
 
the labour that has been bestowed upon him, there 
 must be wrought in his soul that change of princi¬ 
 ple: and of :chafacter, without which, he will for¬ 
 ever remain an outcast from the abodes of a blissful 
 eternity. We shall not, nor is it necessary to dog¬ 
 matise, at present, about the precise nature of this 
 change. We shall only Suppose, that some change 
 or other must be made to pass upon every human 
 heart, ere he who owns it has passed from the 
 state of an heir of condemnation, to that of the 
 heir of a glorious immortality. Any benefit short 
 of this, is not entitled to the denomination of a 
 Christian benefit, and it is just by the number of 
 individuals who receive this distinct benefit, each 
 for himself, that we would estimate the amount 
 of Christian good done to a population. 
 
 ; Now, there is no doubt that this good would 
 be promoted, by the arrangement which we have 
 suggested, by a full parochial attendance of the 
 people upon acceptable ministers, and by the la¬ 
 bours of those ministers, now rendered greatly 
 more effective, in i-irtue of that more strict paro¬ 
 chial relationship which we have ventured to re¬ 
 commend. And, yet it is not to be disguised, 
 that even in those congregations which are re¬ 
 puted to be the most prosperous and flourishing, 
 the number of actual converts may bear a small 
 proportion, indeed, to the number even of steady 
 and interested hearers—that, in respect to the 
 whole auditory, they may constitute a very little 
 flock, and stand forth a peculiar people, in the 
 
21 
 
 midst of the many still sunk in the lethargy and 
 unconcern of nature—that, as the fruit of the la¬ 
 bour, and close earnestness, of a lengthened in¬ 
 cumbency, all that a most assiduous pastor shall 
 leave behind him may be a mere fraction of his 
 parishioners, turned, through his means, to the 
 genuine faith and discipleship of Christianity. 
 This is what will most readily be admitted, by 
 those who rate Christianity according to the high 
 standard of the New Testament—who demand, as 
 tests of the reality of conversion, those lofty and 
 spiritual characteristics that were so current in 
 the early churches, however rarely exemplified ill 
 modern days—who require, for eternity, a devoted¬ 
 ness of heart, as well as a decency of external ob¬ 
 servation—and are not satisfied with any transi¬ 
 tion of habit, short of that thorough regenerative 
 process which sanctifies the affections as well as 
 reforms the external history, and by which man 
 becomes a new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord; 
 
 Now, if this spiritual renovation, to the feel¬ 
 ings and the principles of peculiar Christianity , 1 
 be an event of such exceeding rarity—if it but 
 occur at distant intervals, to cheer and to reward 
 the labours even of our most devoted clergymen 
 —if, in the best attended ministry, and under the 
 busiest application of powerful and persuasive in¬ 
 fluences, it still holds true, that though many are 
 called, yet few are converted,—then it but leads; 
 us again to the conclusion, that let churches be 
 built, and parishes be organized, and the wisest 
 
and fittest arrangements be adopted, the quantity 
 of Christian good which is in consequence done, 
 may be in very minute proportion, indeed, to the 
 number of human beings among whom it is at¬ 
 tempted; that a very handful out of the untouch¬ 
 ed mass may be all the harvest that is reaped, and 
 that too, by a machine of which we are required 
 to enlarge the compass and the magnitude, so as 
 to make it commensurate to the whole population. 
 And thus, both with enlightened Christians, who 
 are aware of the extreme paucity of that faith 
 which is unto salvation, and with mere secular 
 philanthropists, who can, at the same time, per¬ 
 ceive how little, even under the most close and 
 diligent administration of the ordinances of the 
 gospel, the real sacredness of the gospel is ever 
 diffused throughout the general bulk of any con¬ 
 gregation;—with both, may there be an impres¬ 
 sion, as if the effect that we promised, from the 
 setting up of a right Christian apparatus in cities, 
 was most sanguinely overrated—with the former, 
 who are most thoroughly, and, as we think, most 
 rightly convinced, that, without a special and sanc¬ 
 tifying influence from above, no engine of human 
 contrivance is at all available to the conversion of 
 a human soul—and, with the latter, who will feel 
 that, if all which is gained be but the bringing 
 down of some mysterious and preternatural influ¬ 
 ence from heaven, on a mere scantling of the 
 population, then the labour of raising so vast a 
 spiritual organization is not only thrown away 
 
29 
 
 upon an inadequate object, but upon an object 
 that is only prized by a few unintelligible fana¬ 
 tics, with whom they can feel no sympathy, and 
 will hold no fellowship. 
 
 We refer the former of these two classes to the 
 first chapter of this work, where we have attemp¬ 
 ted to demonstrate the good and the necessity of 
 a terrestrial apparatus, for the distribution of that 
 living water, or that spiritual influence, which com- 
 eth from above: and we have only farther to re¬ 
 mind them, that even though a few more of the 
 whole human race be thereby snatched from the 
 common ruin of our nature, and be recovered to a 
 blissful immortality, it is not from them that we 
 should expect any complaint of the inadequacy of 
 such a result, to the means or to the labour that 
 may have previously been expended. And, be¬ 
 sides, it is to be presumed that the extended means 
 of Christian instruction which we have ventured 
 to recommend, would, at least, be productive of 
 as great a proportion of additional Christianity, as 
 the present means are of the Christianity that is 
 now actually produced. And would they, be¬ 
 cause so little is produced, set aside the means 
 that are already in operation? Would they dis¬ 
 continue the expense of all the existing churches, 
 because in almost every church, it is still the fear¬ 
 ful minority, we have reason to apprehend,, who 
 are brought under the saving power of the gospel, 
 and so are raised, by spiritual education, into a 
 meetness for paradise? The truth is, that when- 
 
ever a more copious descent of the Holy Ghost 
 shall come down upon us, it will pass through all 
 the channels of conveyance that have been fur¬ 
 nished for it in the land; entering into pulpits, 
 and then spreading itself over congregations, and 
 finding its way, most readily, through the most free 
 and frequented pathways of communication that 
 have been opened up between the ministers of re¬ 
 ligion and the people among whom they expatiate; 
 By subdividing parishes, we just multiply these 
 pathways; and by localising parishes, we jiist 
 make the pathways shorter, and more convenient 
 and accessible, than before. We do not set aside 
 the doctrine of a spiritual influence; for we be¬ 
 lieve that it is this which will be the primary and 
 the essential agent in that great moral regenera¬ 
 tion that awaits our species. But just as in the 
 irrigating processes of Egypt, the reservoirs are 
 constructed, and the furrows are drawn, and every 
 field on the banks of the Nile is put into readiness 
 for the coming inundation—so we, knowing that 
 the Spirit maketh its passage into the human heart, 
 by the word and the ordinances of the gospel, are 
 just labouring at a right process of spiritual irri¬ 
 gation, when we provide such arrangements as 
 will bring the greatest number of human beings 
 into broadest and most recurring contact with this 
 word, and with these ordinances. 
 
 But, at present, we have it still more at heart 
 to propitiate the latter class, or our mere civil 
 and political philanthropists, to the cause of a 
 
31 
 
 right ecclesiastical system for cities. And the 
 argument we would urge upon them is, that, un¬ 
 der such a system, the civic benefit which they 
 most care for, is both anterior, in regard of time, 
 and greatly more extended, in regard of diffusion, 
 than the Christian benefit about which, we fear, 
 they are much less solicitous. The fact admits 
 of being explained, but we have only time, just 
 now, to announce it,—that the preacher who, by 
 his doctrine, is best fitted to convert the few, is 
 also best fitted to congregate the many,—that he 
 who is the most powerful, in respect of the saving 
 influence which he causes to descend on the very 
 little flock, is also the most popular, in respect of 
 the attractive influence wherewith he assembles 
 the multitude around his stated ministrations: in 
 a word, that he who is most qualified for the Chris¬ 
 tian good, of turning some from darkness to spi¬ 
 ritual light, is also most qualified for the civic 
 good, of turning many from their habits of Sab¬ 
 bath riot, and Sabbath profanation, to, at least, a 
 personal attendance on the services of Christianity. 
 It is certainly a question, full of interest, what that 
 is, in the lessons of an orthodox minister, which 
 draws the crowd around his pulpit, and yet falls 
 short of reaching an effective Christian influence 
 to more, perhaps, than a very small proportion of 
 them. Without resolving the question, we would 
 turn to this fair application the undoubted fact 
 upon which it is founded; we would bid our phil¬ 
 anthropists mark the distinction which obtains be- 
 
tween the Christian and the civic good that may 
 be rendered to a population. The one extends 
 but to the select few, who have been reclaimed 
 from the love of the world, to the love and the 
 spiritual services of him who made the world. 
 The other may extend to the whole of a crowded 
 congregation, reclaimed from the outlandish hea¬ 
 thenism of their old practices, to the decencies of 
 Sabbath attire and Sabbath observation. There 
 is a humanizing, that is far short of a Christianiz¬ 
 ing, influence. There is a soberness of habit to 
 which a general population may be trained, and 
 that, under the very process which conducts a few 
 of that population to spirituality of heart. The 
 very practice of church-going would make a more 
 orderly and pacific society on earth, even though 
 it should fail of preparing more than a very few 
 of that society for heaven. It is thus, that, by a 
 deed of acceptable patronage, the magistrates of 
 a city may confer a temporal benefit on the com¬ 
 munity, that shall be felt extensively, and almost 
 instantaneously, even though the minister of their 
 appointment may have to labour most strenuously 
 for years, and yet be the instrument of a Chris¬ 
 tian blessing to but an exceeding small number of 
 families. The fact is melancholy to those who 
 are engrossed with the considerations of death and 
 judgment, and the various concerns of the imper¬ 
 ishable soul. But we now address those who are 
 taken up with the mere accommodations of the 
 fleeting journey of this world’s existence—whose 
 
33 
 
 demand, as the rulers of a town, is more for quiet 
 citizens, than for holy and regenerated believers— 
 who should like men to be so far moral as to be 
 manageable, whether or not they shall also be so 
 far spiritual as to be heavenly—who want, at all 
 events, to have a commonwealth free from the 
 profligacy that leads to turbulence on earth, how¬ 
 ever short its vast majority may fall of that piety 
 which leads to triumph, and to a rich inheritance 
 in paradise. Now, what we affirm is, that on the 
 higher ground of Christian usefulness, a right ec¬ 
 clesiastical system may only reclaim from the evil 
 to the good, its tens or its fifties, out of the teem¬ 
 ing multitudes of a city parish; but that while 
 it is doing so, there is also a collateral influence, 
 by which it reclaims its thousands and tens of 
 thousands, from what is evil, to what is good, on 
 the lower ground of civic usefulness. 
 
 To estimate the Christian good done to an in¬ 
 dividual, made pious, through the labours of a 
 devoted clergyman, we have only to compute the 
 difference between a ruined and a blissful eternity. 
 To estimate the civic good done to a town, the 
 majority of whose people stood estranged from 
 the ordinances of Christianity, but are now, by 
 the multiplication of churches, and the right exer¬ 
 cise of patronage, reclaimed to attendance upon 
 them, we must bethink ourselves a little of the 
 many substantial influences, upon the general cha¬ 
 racter, which such a habit will necessarily bring 
 along with it. Conceive, then, one family, in hum- 
 
34 
 
 ble and operative life, trained, though it may only 
 be to the outward regularities of a Christian Sab¬ 
 bath; and taking respectable occupancy of its own 
 pew, where it exhibits the domestic group of well 
 doing parents and well disciplined children—each 
 exchanging, on that day, the garb of citizenship 
 for the becoming holiday attire, which thrift and 
 management have enabled them to provide; and 
 retained in constant attendance on the lessons of 
 a minister, from whom, if they do not inhale the 
 vital spirit, they will, at least, imbibe, though per¬ 
 haps insensibly, somewhat of the sedate and moral 
 tone of Christianity, and be strengthened in their 
 taste for the decencies of even-going citizenship. 
 
 . May we not read, on the very aspect of such a 
 family, the indications of virtue, and order, and 
 industry, through the week, and a manifest superi¬ 
 ority, in all these attributes, over another family, 
 that spends its Sabbath recklessly and at large? 
 It is certainly not from families of a right Sabbati¬ 
 cal habit, that popular violence will draw the ali¬ 
 ment by which it is upholden; for it is a habit 
 which holds no alliance, whatever, with dissipa¬ 
 tion, or idleness, or discontent. And, therefore, 
 could a right exercise of patronage simply induce 
 a greatly more general attendance of the lower 
 ranks upon divine service—then, far more readily 
 and extensively than the spread of thorough con¬ 
 version among the people, would there be the 
 spread of such secondary virtues as should amount 
 to a civic good that were altogether incalculable. 
 
35 
 
 If in pure Christianity, which we have attempted 
 to prove is popular Christianity, there be an initial 
 charm to draw the people around its ministrations, 
 and that greatly beyond its final effect, in turning 
 them from the children of this world, to the chil¬ 
 dren of light; and if it be farther true, that the 
 very habit of Sabbath regularity stands associated 
 with all the other habits of sober and pacific citi¬ 
 zenship, then, though the great majority of a con¬ 
 gregation, so attracted and detained, shall still 
 continue to be of this - world, yet are the virtue 
 and tranquillity of the world greatly promoted, 
 even by the more superficial transformation which 
 they have thus been made to undergo. So, that 
 by every deed of acceptable church patronage, 
 though small be the accession which may thereby 
 be gained to the kingdom of heaven, yet a mighty 
 accession will be made to the stock of good civic 
 accomplishments and properties upon earth. Nor 
 is there another way by which our municipal rul¬ 
 ers could more effectually mark the wisdom of 
 their policy, or do so much to meliorate the dis¬ 
 temper of a vicious and disorderly population, 
 than by the appointment, to their vacancies, of 
 such Christian ministers as are best suited to the 
 taste of the labouring classes, and who of this 
 hold out the most authentic and palpable testi- 
 mony, by the simple fact of their overflowing 
 congregations. 
 
 The distinction between the Christian and the 
 civic good that is done to a community were still 
 
36 
 
 more apparent, did the minister localise upon a 
 given territory, and as he went from house to 
 house, in week-day visitations, meet, at every turn, 
 with the greetings of affectionate recognition from 
 the members of his now parochial congregation. 
 Throughout the whole of this progress, he might 
 rarely meet with the heirs and expectants of a 
 blessed eternity—yet, who does not see, that be¬ 
 yond the limits of a circle so select and peculiar, 
 he bears about with him a humanizing influence 
 that may be felt in almost every habitation? It is 
 a sad contemplation to him whose heart is occu¬ 
 pied with the weight and reality of eternal things, 
 that out of so vast a population, a mere handful 
 of converts may be the whole fruit of a lengthened 
 and laborious incumbency. And yet it is an ex¬ 
 perimental truth, that in respect of temporal and 
 immediate good, the whole population may be 
 sensibly bettered, by the ever recurring presence 
 of an affectionate pastor in the midst of them. 
 The primary impulse, it is true, on which he sets 
 out among his people, is the good of their immor¬ 
 tality; and, in the occasional fulfilment of this 
 high errand, he finds his encouragement and re¬ 
 ward. But he scatters abroad, and far more large- 
 ly, among the families, another good, which, though 
 hut of secondary and subordinate importance in 
 his eyes, is enough to stamp him, in the estima¬ 
 tion of every civil and political ruler, as by far 
 the most useful servant of the community. There 
 is a substantial, though unnoticed, charm in the 
 
37 
 
 visit of a superior. There is a felt compliment in 
 his attentions, which raises an emotion in the 
 breast, the very opposite of that disdainful senti¬ 
 ment towards the higher orders of society, that is 
 now of such alarming prevalence amongst our 
 operative population. There is a real contribu¬ 
 tion made to the earthly moralities of the poor 
 man, by the consciousness of that friendly tie 
 which unites him in an acquaintanceship that is 
 ever growing with the minister of his parish. The 
 very aim that is made, by the people, to afford him 
 a decent reception, in the cleanliness of their 
 bouses, and the dress of their children, is not to 
 be overlooked, in our estimate of the bland and 
 beneficial influences that accompany his frequent 
 reiterations over the face of his allotted vineyard. 
 There is, in all these ways, and in many more, a 
 most effective, wholesome, and widely spread influ¬ 
 ence, coming out of the relationship that subsists 
 between a local clergyman, and the families that 
 reside within the limits of his superintendence— 
 an influence which, in respect of its amount upon 
 the individual, may come far short of that Chris¬ 
 tian good that issues in everlasting blessedness, 
 but which, in respect of its diffusiveness, tells 
 throughout the whole host of his parishioners, and 
 issues in the important earthly or civic good of a 
 better habited population—an influence that will, 
 at least, reach so far as to reduce their profligacy, 
 and to quiet their turbulence, and to soften all 
 their political exasperations, and to beget a kindly 
 
38 
 
 amalgamation of the various classes with each 
 other, and, if not to secure their eternity, yet al¬ 
 together to shed a comfort and a virtuousness 
 over the pilgrimage which leads to it. 
 
 It both serves to spread this moral cement, and 
 forms a mighty addition to its quantity, when the 
 minister, by means of a well-appointed eldership, 
 can multiply among his people the number of 
 their Christian friends, who enter their abodes, 
 and take a kindly interest in their families. Even 
 with such an apparatus, we might expect the 
 amount of Christian good to be only fractional, in 
 respect to the whole population; yet this would 
 not prevent a civic good, which, in a very few 
 years, might be almost universal. Only let that 
 monstrous coalition be broken up, in virtue of 
 which the office of a spiritual labourer has been 
 so wofully neutralised, by the duties and the dis¬ 
 pensations of pauperism being laid upon it—let 
 the jealousies and the heart-burnings incidental to 
 such a business, be conclusively done away from 
 all the ministrations of Christianity—let the cler¬ 
 gyman have coadjutors who, like himselfj may go 
 forth among the families, on the single errand of 
 Christian advice or Christian consolation—let them 
 watch their best opportunities, and, in an especial 
 manner, never neglect those openings of advan¬ 
 tage, where sickness paves the way for the wel¬ 
 come admittance of a religious visitor, or the 
 death of some near and beloved relative makes 
 his sympathies and attentions so inexpressibly 
 
39 
 
 soothing—let them, perhaps, in addition to the 
 influence of their sincerity and worth, be a little 
 raised, as they generally are, above the mass of 
 the commonalty, in respect of fortune and intelli¬ 
 gence,—and the effect of such an order of things, 
 in attempering the social fabric, and in multiply¬ 
 ing the links of confidence and good will between 
 man and man, were altogether incalculable. A 
 certain portion of good Christianity would, in all 
 likelihood, come out of this arrangement; but a 
 far greater proportion of good citizenship would, 
 most assuredly, come out of it: and we repeat it, 
 that all those who take a greater interest in the 
 latter object than they do in the former, are still 
 in the most direct way of advancing their own 
 favourite cause, when, through the medium of 
 the former, they attempt to reach the latter; or, 
 when in devising for the temporal welfare of that 
 community, with whose concerns they are entrust¬ 
 ed, they do their uttermost for improving the 
 ecclesiastical system of great towns, by the multi¬ 
 plication of churches, and the appointment of ac¬ 
 ceptable and efficient clergymen. 
 
 And here it may not be out of place to remark, 
 how much it serves to divide and to weaken the 
 force of popular violence, when the vast and over¬ 
 grown city is broken down into separate parochial 
 jurisdictions—where each is isolated as much as 
 possible from the other, by its visible landmarks, 
 and its own distinct and busy apparatus of man¬ 
 agement; and where the people, instead of all 
 
40 
 
 looking one way, to the distant and general head, 
 and forming into a combined array of hostile feel¬ 
 ing and prejudice against it, are, in virtue of a 
 local economy, which possesses interest enough 
 to have formed a sort of esprit de corps among 
 the inhabitants of every subordinate district, habi¬ 
 tuated to look several ways to that nearer and 
 more interesting regime by which they are respec¬ 
 tively surrounded. In a great town, where the 
 parishes are little better than nominal, and there 
 is no affecting relationship between administrators 
 and subjects, all the public and political tenden¬ 
 cies of the popular mind run towards one point, 
 and may form into one impetuous and overwhelm¬ 
 ing surge against the reigning authority of the 
 place. The more that this else unmanageable 
 mass is penetrated and split up into fragments, 
 and that the effervescence which is in each is 
 made to play around a separate machinery of its 
 own, the more safe will be the leading corporation 
 from any of those passing tempests, by which the 
 multitude is often thrown into fierce and fitful 
 agitation. A parochial economy is not the less 
 effectual, for this purpose, that the jurisdictions 
 which it institutes, instead of being of a legal, are 
 rather of a moral and charitable character. The 
 kindly intercourse that is promoted between the 
 various classes, under such an arrangement as this, 
 is the best of all possible emollients, in every sea¬ 
 son of political restlessness. It is the distance 
 between the ruler and his subjects, which, whether 
 
41 
 
 in the unwieldy state, or in the unwieldy metro¬ 
 polis, leaves room for those dark and brooding 
 imaginations that are so apt to fret and infuriate 
 into a storm. The more that this distance is al¬ 
 leviated, by the subdivisions of locality, the more 
 do the charities of common companionship mingle 
 in the commotion, and exude an oil upon the 
 waters, that assuages their violence. They are 
 the towns of an empire, which form the mighty 
 organs of every great political overthrow; and if 
 a right parochial system in towns would serve to 
 check, or rather to soften, the turbulence that is 
 in them, then ought the establishment of such a 
 system to be regarded by our rulers as one of the 
 best objects of patriotism. 
 
 There is no class of philanthropists who ought 
 to be more aware of the distinction between a 
 Christian and a civic good, and of the way in 
 which the one is outstript by the othex - , than the 
 teachers of Sabbath schools. A very few months 
 of discipline, in these seminaries, will witness a 
 very palpable transformation on the manners, and 
 habits, and general appearance of the young pu¬ 
 pils. The cleanliness, and the docility, and the 
 scholarship, and the decency of demeanour, and the 
 friendliness of regard towards their instructor— 
 these may all be induced, in a short time, on the 
 great majority of attendants; and they are all so 
 many important contributions of civic good ren¬ 
 dered to that community, in the business and con¬ 
 cerns of which they are afterwards to partake. 
 
 Voi. II. F 
 
The direct consequence of such juvenile training, 
 is to rear them into better members of society 
 than they would otherwise have been; and yet 
 there is not a more familiar exhibition than that 
 of a visible growth, in these secondary accomplish¬ 
 ments, on the part of almost all the learners, while, 
 perhaps, not a single individual can be quoted, as 
 having been the subject of a sound and scriptural 
 conversion during the period of his attendance. 
 It is the part of a Christian labourer to persevere 
 in his assiduities with diligence and prayer; and 
 though only one, out of many, should be turned 
 from the darkness of nature to the light of the 
 gospel, to think not that such a result is too insig¬ 
 nificant for the big and busy operation of many 
 years. And far less, ought the mere secular phi¬ 
 lanthropist to grudge the expense or the magni¬ 
 tude of such an apparatus, for he may reckon on a 
 greatly more abundant crop of that fruit which is 
 unto social prosperity here, than of that fruit 
 which is unto immortality hereafter. His ob¬ 
 jects, at least, will be extensively promoted by the 
 diffusion of Sabbath teaching among the outcast 
 and neglected families of a city population. He 
 is not to measure the extent of civic, by the extent 
 of Christian good that may emanate from a right 
 ecclesiastical system; and however languidly the 
 mere theologian may lend his concurrence to an 
 economy of means, on the ground of their slender 
 efficacy in regenerating the souls of men—yet may 
 the municipal functionary be very sure that, for 
 
43 
 
 the earthly good which he aspires after, no more 
 likely expedient can be devised, for humanizing 
 the lower orders, and adding to the stock of those 
 virtues which go to strengthen and uphold a com¬ 
 monwealth. 
 
 And we must not, when on this subject, omit 
 the fine remark of Wilberforce, respecting the 
 power of Christianity to elevate the general stan¬ 
 dard of morals, even in countries where it has 
 failed of positively converting more than a very 
 small proportion of the inhabitants. The direct 
 good which Christianity does, is when it stamps 
 the impress of its doctrine on the few whom it 
 makes to be the living epistles of Christ Jesus. 
 But they are epistles which, to use the language 
 of holy writ, may be seen and read of all men. 
 Society at large may not be able to appreciate the 
 hidden principle of the evangelical life; but they 
 can, at least, peruse the inscription of its visible 
 graces and virtues, and can render them the ho¬ 
 mage, both of their full esteem and of their partial 
 imitation. It is thus that Christians are the salt 
 of the earth; nor is it known how much they con¬ 
 tribute to the general healthfulness and preserva¬ 
 tion of that community, throughout which they 
 lie scattered. The presence of but one Christian 
 individual in a city lane, may tell, by a sort of re¬ 
 flex and secondary influence, on the general tone 
 of his vicinity. His example may not be of force 
 enough to regenerate the hearts of his acquain¬ 
 tances; but it may be of force enough to in- 
 
44 
 
 duce a certain reformation upon their habits: and 
 Whether the fire of sacredness shall pass or not, 
 from one bosom to another, that light, by which 
 the outward history of every genuine disciple is 
 irradiated, may be borrowed and sent back, though 
 with fainter and duller brilliancy, from all his as¬ 
 sociates. It is thus that, through the medium of 
 few Christians, many may be moulded into better 
 citizens; and notwithstanding the exceeding rarity 
 of conversion, yet, by that sort of repeating pro¬ 
 cess, wherewith it acts on the social habits and 
 earthly moralities of the species, may there ema¬ 
 nate from the very little flock a real, though un¬ 
 acknowledged blessing, over the whole face of a 
 world that lieth in wickedness. 
 
 We hold it necessary to have expatiated thus 
 much on the relation that subsists between the 
 Christian and the civic good that may be render¬ 
 ed to a town population, because we are aware of 
 a certain feeling, wherewith the whole specula¬ 
 tion is shrewdly and sagaciously looked to, as if it 
 were at best a sanguine, though plausible romance, 
 that could never be realised. And, among this 
 class of sceptics, we have to rank some of our 
 soundest theologians, who, aware of the extreme 
 paucity of conversion, even under means of the 
 likeliest devising, are led to anticipate therefrom 
 a corresponding paucity of reformation in the so¬ 
 cial and secular habits of the people. Now, we 
 altogether defer to their judgment, in regard to 
 the paucity of conversion; and we most thorough- 
 
45 
 
 ly concur in their affirmation, that few are the 
 people who now walk on the path which leadeth 
 to life everlasting; and, acceding to the justness 
 of their demand, for a Christianity as strict, and 
 lofty, and spiritual, as that which is pourtrayed in 
 the New Testament, and conscious, at the same 
 time, how rarely it is exemplified in our days, we 
 hold with them, that a right machinery may be 
 erected, and put for years into busy operation, 
 and yet that a few additional gleanings, out of a 
 field teeming with imperishable creatures, may 
 form the whole amount of what is thereby secured 
 and gathered in for the kingdom of heaven. But, 
 with our eyes perfectly open to this melancholy 
 likelihood, we are still, and even on Christian 
 grounds alone, desirous of the machinery. It has 
 its indispensable uses, as we have already attemp¬ 
 ted to show, even in the season of most copious 
 descent of living water from above; and if, ere 
 that day of refreshing shall arrive, it be instru¬ 
 mental in adding, though only one, to the number 
 of the saved, we think that, on the high count and 
 reckoning of eternity, the profit of the apparatus 
 far outweighs both the labour and the expense of 
 it. But it is on civic ground, we think, that such 
 a machinery would earn the triumph of its earliest 
 and most conspicuous achievements; and we have 
 to entreat the attention of our mere ecclesiastics 
 to the way in which the one influence may be dif¬ 
 fused over the whole extent of humanity, while 
 the other remains circumscribed within those bar- 
 
46 
 
 riers which can only be forced by the weapons of 
 a higher warfare—ere they shall resolutely give 
 up the cause of civil and economical improvement, 
 as alike inaccessible, by ecclesiastical means, to all 
 the efforts of human strength, and to all the de¬ 
 vices of human policy. 
 
 But it were an object of more immediate and 
 practical importance to overcome the incredulity 
 of our civil functionaries upon this subject; to the 
 imaginations of many of whom, we fear, there is, 
 in the peculiar walk of clergymen, something ca¬ 
 balistic, and mysterious, and remote from the 
 whole business of ordinary affairs. The direct 
 aim of a spiritual labourer is to work in his peo¬ 
 ple a spiritual regeneration of character; and this 
 is a matter that may, to the eye of clerks and 
 council men, stand too much aloof from the scenes 
 and transactions of our every day world, to t have 
 any intelligible bearing on the department which 
 they occupy. When the argument is addressed 
 to a man of common official experience, by which 
 the civic good of a population is linked and limi¬ 
 ted with the operation of a high evangelical in¬ 
 fluence, that he does not comprehend, then the 
 whole anticipation that is founded upon it, will 
 bear to him very much of an ideal character: and, 
 when he is farther told of the exceeding few who 
 are saved and sanctified by the truth as it is in 
 Jesus, he will very naturally conclude, that the 
 specified cause, and the predicted consequence, 
 are alike insignificant; and that the result of an 
 
47 
 
 improved ecclesiastical system, in cities, will be as 
 paltry, in point of extent, as it is aerial, in point 
 of speculation. If Christian regeneration be as 
 rarely exemplified in actual life as poetical ro¬ 
 mance is, then it may be thought, that after all, 
 the promise of any great sensible good to be done 
 to society, is just as unlikely of fulfilment from 
 the doings of a priesthood, as from the dreams of 
 poetry. These form some of the elements of that 
 indisposition which obtains among our rulers to 
 the erection of city churches, and the subdivision 
 of city parishes; and, therefore, it is the more ne¬ 
 cessary to expose those more palpable human in¬ 
 fluences, on which hinges the dependance between 
 a vigorous and well filled up Christian economy, 
 on the one hand, and a great popular reformation, 
 on the other, in all the virtues of good neighbour¬ 
 hood, and good citizenship. It is the minister, 
 after all, who most urges the spiritualities of 
 Christian faith and holiness, that most attracts the 
 multitude to congregate into a stated audience, 
 and thus to exchange a former looseness of habit 
 for the decencies of Sabbath observation;—and 
 it is he who is generally found to be most assidu¬ 
 ous in week-day ministrations;—and it is he who 
 will most readily obtain the zealous co-operation 
 of others, to mingle in all the charities of inter¬ 
 course along with him, among the families of sunk¬ 
 en and neglected plebeianism;—and though the 
 work of grace, for another world, be still restricted 
 to a small minority of his parish, yet a sure colla- 
 
48 
 
 teral attendant upon his labours is, that a work of 
 converse and cordiality is carried abroad through¬ 
 out the mass of his people, which tends to heighten 
 the aspect, and to improve the whole economy of 
 the present world. This is a process, the rationale 
 of which might be obvious enough, even to a mere 
 earthly understanding; and so might the power 
 and charm of locality; and so might the effect of 
 one Christian’s example, in raising the standard 
 of morality among many who are not Christians; 
 and so might the tendency of Sabbath schooling, 
 both to induce a more orderly and civilized habit 
 among the young, and to strengthen the tie of 
 kindliness between the teacher and the taught, 
 or between the higher and lower ranks of the com¬ 
 munity. There is nought surely of the mystic or 
 unsubstantial in any of these influences; and if 
 nevertheless, they be the most faithful stewards of 
 the mysteries of God, from whom they are most 
 ready to descend on the families of our general 
 population, there ought to be an indication here, 
 to our men of political ascendency, whether in 
 the state or in the city corporation, of what that 
 is which forms our best and cheapest defence 
 against the evils of a rude, and lawless, and pro¬ 
 fligate community. 
 
49 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 
 ON THE BEARING WHICH A RIGHT CHRISTIAN' ECO¬ 
 NOMY HAS UPON PAUPERISM. 
 
 We are able to affirm,, on the highest of all au¬ 
 thorities, that the poor shall be with us always— 
 or, in other words, that it is vain to look for the 
 extinction of poverty from the world. And, yet 
 we hold it both desirable and practicable to ac¬ 
 complish the extinction of pauperism: so that be¬ 
 tween ihe state of poverty and that of pauperism, 
 there must be a distinction, which, to save con¬ 
 fusion, ought to be kept in mind, and to be 
 clearly apprehended. 
 
 The epithet poor has a far wider range of appli¬ 
 cation than among, the lower orders of the com¬ 
 munity. We may speak, and speak rightly, of a 
 poor nobleman,, or a poor bishop* , or a poor baro¬ 
 net. It is enough to bring down the epithet on 
 any individual, that out of his earnings or. pro¬ 
 perty he is not able to maintain himself in the 
 average style of comfort that obtains throughout 
 the class of society to which he belongs. The 
 earl who cannot afford a carriage, and the labourer 
 who cannot afford the fare and the clothing of our 
 general peasantry, however different their claims 
 to our sympathy may be, by being currently term¬ 
 ed poor, are both made to share alike in this de¬ 
 signation. 
 
 Vo;.. II. G 
 
50 
 
 To be poor is primarily to be in want;—and 
 even though the want should be surely provided 
 for, by the kindness of neighbours, yet is the 
 epithet still made to rest on the individual who 
 originally wore it. The aged female householder, 
 who is both destitute and diseased, may, in virtue 
 of the notice that she has attracted, be upheld in 
 greater abundance than any occupier in the hum¬ 
 ble alley of her habitation. And yet it may with 
 truth be said, that she is the poorest of them all— 
 poor in respect of her own capacity for her own 
 support, though comfortable in respect of the sup¬ 
 port that is actually administered to her. She, 
 even after the charitable provision that has thus 
 been attached to her lot, is always termed poor, 
 and in this sense do we understand the prophecy 
 of our Saviour, that the poor shall be with us al¬ 
 ways. She, in the midst of her comforts, still ex¬ 
 emplifies the prediction; and we doubt not, that 
 there will be such exemplifications to the end of 
 time. She is poor, and yet she is not in want. 
 The condition of poverty, arising from a defect of 
 power or of means on the part of him who occu¬ 
 pies it, will ever, we apprehend, be a frequent 
 circumstance in society; while the wants of po¬ 
 verty, arising from a defect in the care of relatives, 
 or in the humanity of friends and observers, will, 
 we trust, at length be exclusively done away. So 
 that even after the charity of the millennial age 
 shall have taken full possession of our species, 
 may the prophecy still find its verification under 
 
51 
 
 an economy of things where the state of poverty 
 shall be at times exemplified; but where the suf¬ 
 ferings of poverty, from the vigilance and promp¬ 
 titude of such sympathies as are quickened and 
 kept alive by the influence of the gospel, shall be 
 for ever unknown. 
 
 It was with the benevolent purpose of hasten¬ 
 ing so desirable a consummation, that poor rates 
 were instituted in England. A fund is raised in 
 each of the parishes, by a legal and compulsory 
 operation; out of which a certain quantity of ali¬ 
 ment is distributed among those residents who 
 can substantiate the plea of their wants, to the 
 satisfaction of its administrators. A man is, or 
 ought to be poor, and that referably too, not to 
 any of the higher classes of society, as a poor 
 clergyman or a poor gentleman, but referably to 
 the labouring classes of society; or, he ought, in 
 respect of his own personal means, to be beneath 
 the average condition of our peasantry, ere he is 
 admitted upon the poors’ fund. When so admit¬ 
 ted he comes under the denomination of a pau-. 
 per. A poor man is a man in want of adequate 
 means for his own subsistence. A pauper is a 
 man who has this want supplemented in whole or 
 in part, out of a legal and compulsory provision. 
 He would not be a pauper by having the whole 
 want supplied to him out of the kindness of neigh¬ 
 bours, or from the gratuitous allowance of an old 
 master, or from any of the sources of voluntary 
 charity. It is by having relief legally awarded 
 
ito him, out of money legally raised, that he be- 
 comes a pauper. We are just now occupied with 
 the mere business of definitions, but this is a busi¬ 
 ness which is often necessary: and we therefore 
 repeat it, that the state of poverty is that state in 
 which the occupier is unable of himself to uphold 
 the average subsistence of his family; and the 
 state of pauperism is that state in which the oc¬ 
 cupier has the ability either entirely, or in part, 
 piade up to him out of a public and constitutional 
 fund. 
 
 But the truth is, that the invention of pauper¬ 
 ism, had it been successful, would have gone to 
 annihilate the state of poverty as well as its suf¬ 
 ferings. A man cannot be called poor, who has 
 a legal right, on the moment that he touches the 
 borders of indigence, to demand that there his 
 descending progress shall be arrested, and he shall 
 be upheld in a sufficiency of aliment for himself 
 and his family. The law, in fact, has vested him 
 with a property in the land, which he can turn to 
 account, so soon as he treads on the confines of 
 poverty: and had this desire been as effective as 
 uvas hop,ed and intended, a state of poverty would 
 havp been impossible. A man may retain the 
 designation of poor, who has been relieved from 
 all the discomforts of want, by the generosity of 
 another; but this epithet ought not to fall upon 
 any, >vho can ward off these discomforts by means 
 of a rightful application for that which is consti¬ 
 tutionally his own. So that had this great politi- 
 
53 
 
 cal expedient been as prosperous in accomplish¬ 
 ment as it was mighty in promise, there would 
 have remained no individual to whom the designa¬ 
 tion of poverty had been applicable—and the wis¬ 
 dom of man would have defeated the prophecy 
 of God. But though the wisdom of man cannot 
 make head against the state of poverty, the chari¬ 
 ty of man may make head against its sufferings. 
 The truth is, that pauperism has neither done 
 away the condition of poverty, nor alleviated the 
 evils of it. This attempt of legislation to provide 
 all with a right of protection from the miseries of 
 want, has proved vain and impotent; and leaves 
 a strong likelihood behind it, that a .more real 
 protection would have been afforded, had the 
 case been abandoned to the unforced sympathies 
 of our nature—and had it been left to human 
 compassion to soften the wretchedness of a state, 
 against the existence of which no artifice of hu¬ 
 man policy seems to be at all available. 
 
 We have already abundantly remarked on the 
 slender influence of a right Christian apparatus, 
 in regard to the very small number that may be 
 
 Christianized by it out of the whole population_ 
 
 while, at the same time, its influence may be im¬ 
 mediately and extensively felt, in regard to the 
 very great number that may be civilized by it. 
 The same relation, of which we have attempted to 
 demonstrate the existence, between the Christian 
 and the civic good that may be done under a 
 right economy in towns, obtains, and in a still 
 
54 
 
 more remarkable degree, We think, between the 
 proper Christian effect that is accomplished in a 
 city parish, and the effect not merely of arresting, 
 but even of driving away its pauperism altogether. 
 Were the conversion of the many an essential 
 step towards the overthrow of pauperism—then 
 by some would the latter effect be regarded as a 
 romantic, and, by others, as a fanatical anticipa¬ 
 tion. But in like manner as the same economy 
 which works but a minute Christian, may work a 
 mighty civic good; so, while it only does away 
 the blindness and depravity of nature from a very 
 few individuals in a parish, may it, at the same 
 time, do away a corrupt and corrupting pauperism 
 from all its families. We think, that the political 
 achievement of emancipating all from pauperism 
 may be sooner arrived at, under a system of means 
 which has for its main object the Christianity of 
 the people, than the spiritual achievement of 
 emancipating a twentieth part of them from the 
 power of the God of this world, and calling them 
 out of darkness into the marvellous light of the 
 gospel. Our readers, we trust, are sufficiently 
 familiarized, from the remarks and reasonings of 
 our last chapter, to the compound effect of a good 
 parochial economy over the families among whom 
 it is instituted; and can now clearly perceive, 
 how while there is one influence addressed by it 
 to the spiritual principles of our constitution, 
 which may only tell on a select and scanty pecu- 
 lium from among the general mass—there is ano- 
 
55 
 
 ther influence addressed by it to the natural prin¬ 
 ciples of our constitution, which tells widely and 
 suddenly on the vast majority of the people. Now, 
 connected too with the question of pauperism, 
 there are certain strong and urgent natural prin¬ 
 ciples; some of which are powerfully operated 
 upon by the Christian local economy that we 
 would recommend, and all of which tend to hast¬ 
 en the extinction of pauperism, at a rate of far 
 greater velocity than the progress of essential 
 Christianity among the people. So much, in¬ 
 deed, is this our feeling, that while we look on a 
 good Christian economy, as eminently fitted both 
 to sweeten and to accelerate the transition from 
 the charity of human laws to the charity of hu¬ 
 man kindness, yet we do not think it indispensable 
 to this effect; but that on the simple abolition of 
 a compulsory assessment for the relief of new ap¬ 
 plicants, there would instantly break forth from 
 innumerable fountains, now frozen or locked up 
 by the hand of legislation, so many refreshing 
 rills on all the places that had been left dry and 
 destitute, by the withdrawment from them of 
 public charity, as would spread a far more equal 
 and smiling abundance than before over the face 
 of society. 
 
 The first, and by far the most productive of 
 these fountains, is situated among the habits and 
 economies of the people themselves. It is impos¬ 
 sible but that an established system of pauperism 
 must induce a great relaxation on the frugality 
 
56 
 
 and providential habits of our labouring classes. 
 It is impossible, but that it must undermine the 
 incentives to accumulation; and, by leading the 
 people to repose that interest on a public provi¬ 
 sion, which would else have been secured by the 
 effects of their own prudence and their own care¬ 
 fulness, it has dried up far more abundant re¬ 
 sources in one quarter than it has opened in ano¬ 
 ther. We know not a more urgent principle of 
 our constitution than self-preservation; and it is 
 a principle which not only shrinks from present 
 suffering, but which looks onwards to futurity, 
 and holds up a defence against the apprehended 
 wants and difficulties of the years that are to 
 come. Were the great reservoir of public chari¬ 
 ty, for the town at large, to be shut, there would 
 soon be struck out many family reservoirs, fed by 
 the thrift and sobriety, which necessity would 
 then stimulate, but which now the system of pau¬ 
 perism so long has superseded;—and from these 
 there would emanate a more copious supply than 
 is at present ministered out of poor rates, to ali¬ 
 ment the evening of plebeian life, and to equalise 
 all the vicissitudes of its history. 
 
 The second fountain which pauperism has a 
 tendency to shut, and which its abolition would 
 reopen, is the kindness of relatives. One of the 
 most palpable, and at the same time most grievous 
 effects of this artificial system, is the dissipation 
 which it has made of the ties and feelings of rela¬ 
 tionship. It is this which gives rise to the melan- 
 
51 
 
 choly list of runaway parents, wherewith whole 
 columns of the provincial newspapers of England 
 are oftentimes filled. And then, as if in retalia¬ 
 tion, there is the cruel abandonment of parents, 
 by their own olfspring, to the cold and reluctant 
 hand of public charity. In some cases, there may 
 not be the requisite ability; but the actual ex¬ 
 pense on the part of labourers, for luxuries that 
 might be dispensed with, demonstrates that, in 
 most cases, there is that ability. But it is alto¬ 
 gether the effect of pauperism to deaden the in¬ 
 clination. It has poisoned the strongest affections 
 of nature, and turned inwardly, towards the indul¬ 
 gences of an absorbent selfishness, that stream 
 which else would have flowed out on the needy of 
 our own blood and our own kindred. It has shut 
 those many avenues of domestic kindliness by 
 which, but for its deadening and disturbing influ¬ 
 ence, a far better and more copious circulation of 
 needful supplies would have been kept up through¬ 
 out the mass of society. We believe, that were 
 the first fountain restored to its natural play, there 
 would be discharged, from it alone, in the greatest 
 number of instances, a competency for the clos¬ 
 ing years of the labourer;—and did this resource 
 fail, that the second fountain would come in aid, 
 and send forth, on the decaying parentage of 
 every grown up and working generation, more 
 than would replace the dispensations of pauperism. 
 
 A third fountain, on which pauperism has set 
 one of its strongest seals, and which would in- 
 v„ t . n. h 
 
58 
 
 stantly be unlocked on the abolition of the sys¬ 
 tem, is the sympathy of the wealthier for the 
 poorer classes of society. It has transformed the 
 whole character of charity, by turning a matter 
 of love into a matter of litigation: and so, has 
 seared and shut many a heart, out of which the 
 spontaneous emanations of good will would have 
 gone plentifully forth among the abodes of the 
 destitute. We know not how a more freezing 
 arrest can be laid on the current of benevolence, 
 than when it is met in the tone of a rightful, and 
 perhaps, indignant demand for that, wherewith it 
 was ready, on its own proper impulse, to pour 
 refreshment and relief over the whole field of as¬ 
 certained wretchedness. There is a mighty dif¬ 
 ference of effect between an imperative and an 
 imploring application. The one calls out the jea¬ 
 lousy of our nature, and puts us upon the attitude 
 of surly and determined resistance. The other 
 calls out the compassion of our nature, and in¬ 
 clines us to the free and willing movements of 
 generosity. It is in the former attitude, that, un¬ 
 der a system of overgrown pauperism, we now, 
 generally speaking, behold the wealthy in refer¬ 
 ence to the working classes of England. They 
 stand to each other in a grim array of hostility— 
 the one thankless and dissatisfied, and stoutly 
 challenging as its due, what the other reluctantly 
 yields, and that as sparingly as possible. Had 
 such been a right state of things, then pity would 
 have been more a superfluous feeling in our con- 
 
59 
 
 stitution; as its functions would have been nearly 
 superseded by the operation of law and justice. 
 And the truth is, that this sweetener of the ills of 
 life has been greatly stifled by legislation; while 
 the amount of actual and unrelieved wretched¬ 
 ness among the peasantry of England, too plainly 
 demonstrates, that the economy of pauperism has 
 failed to provide an adequate substitute in its 
 room. Were this economy simply broken up, and 
 the fountain of human sympathy again left free to 
 be operated upon by its wonted excitements, and 
 to send out its wonted streams throughout!those 
 manifold subordinations by which the various class¬ 
 es of society are bound and amalgamated together 
 —we doubt not that from this alone a more abun¬ 
 dant, or, at least, a far more efficient and better 
 spread tide of charity would be diffused through¬ 
 out the habitations of indigence. 
 
 But there is still another fountain, that we hold 
 to be greatly more productive even than the last, 
 both in respect to the amount of relief that is 
 yielded by it, and also in respect to the more fit 
 and timely accommodation wherewith it suits it¬ 
 self to the ever varying accidents and misfortunes 
 of our common humanity. There is a local dis¬ 
 tance between the wealthy and the poor, which is 
 unfavourable to the operation of the last fountain, 
 but this is amply compensated in the one we are 
 about to specify;;—and, some may be surprised, 
 when we intimate, that of far superior importance 
 to the sympathy of the rich for the poor, do we 
 
60 
 
 hold to be the sympathy of the poor for one ano¬ 
 ther. In the veriest depths of unmixed and ex¬ 
 tended plebeianism, and where, for many streets 
 together, not one house is to be seen which indi¬ 
 cates more than the rank of a common labourer, 
 are there feelings of mutual kindness, and capa¬ 
 bilities of mutual aid, that greatly outstrip the 
 conceptions of a hurried and superficial observer: 
 And, but for pauperism, which has released imme¬ 
 diate neighbours from the feeling they would 
 otherwise have had, that in truth the most im¬ 
 portant benefactors of the poor are the poor 
 themselves—there had been a busy internal ope¬ 
 ration of charity in these crowded lanes, and 
 densely peopled recesses, that would have proved 
 a more effectual guarantee against the starvation 
 of any individual, than ever can be reared by any 
 of the artifices of human policy. One who has 
 narrowly looked to some of these vicinities; and 
 witnessed the small but numerous contributions 
 that pour in upon a family whose distresses have 
 attracted observation; and seen how food, and 
 service, and fuel, are rendered in littles, from 
 neighbours that have been drawn, by a kind of 
 moral gravitation, to the spot where disease and 
 destitution hold out their most impressive aspect; 
 and has arithmetic withal for comparing the a- 
 mount of these unnoticed items with the whole 
 produce of that more visible beneficence which is 
 imported from abroad, and scattered, by the hand 
 of affluence, over the district,—we say that such 
 
61 
 
 an observer will be sure to conclude, that, after all, 
 the best safeguards against the horrors of extreme 
 poverty have been planted by the hand of nature, 
 in the very region of poverty itself—that the nu¬ 
 merous, though scanty rivulets which have their 
 rise within its confines, do more for the refresh¬ 
 ment of its more desolate places, than would the 
 broad streams that may be sent forth upon it, 
 from the great reservoir of pauperism: And, if it 
 be true, that it is just the stream which has dried 
 up the streamlets, and caused them to disappear 
 from the face of a territory, over which they would 
 else have diffused a healthful and kindly irrigation 
 —then should pauperism be abolished, let but hu¬ 
 manity abide, in all the wonted attributes and 
 sympathies which belong to her, and we may be 
 sure, that for the supplies which issued from the 
 storehouse of public charity, there would be am¬ 
 ple compensation, in the breaking out of those 
 manifold lesser charities, that never fail to be 
 evolved, when human suffering is brought into 
 contact with human observation. 
 
 We cannot, at present, expatiate, as perhaps we 
 shall, on these compensatory processes, that would 
 most surely be stimulated into greater power and 
 activity by. the abolition of pauperism; but the 
 last of them is of such weight and importance in 
 the argument, that ere we proceed to the main 
 topic of this chapter, we may offer a few remarks 
 in the way of illustration. Those sympathies, 
 which lie deeply seated and diffusively spread 
 
62 
 
 among a population, form a mine of productive¬ 
 ness, 'that lies very much hidden from the eye 
 of that philanthropy which moves on the elevated 
 walk of city committees, and great natio. al socie¬ 
 ties. Perhaps the most palpable argument that 
 could be addressed to our institutional men, upon 
 this subject, is the fact of the Bible Society draw¬ 
 ing a larger revenue from the weekly pennies of 
 the poor, than from the splendid donations, and 
 yearly contributions, of the wealthy. It is a strik¬ 
 ing evidence of the power of accumulated littles, 
 and proves how much the number compensates 
 for the smallness of the individual offerings. Now, 
 though this be a very palpable demonstration of 
 the importance of the lower orders to the cause 
 of charity, yet it is far from being an adequate 
 demonstration. This fact, convincing as it is, 
 does not sufficiently represent the might and the 
 magnitude of those resources which lie deposited 
 among the labouring classes, and would, in a na¬ 
 tural state of things, emit a far more plentiful re¬ 
 lief upon human indigence than is done by all the 
 paraded charities of our land. It is delightful to 
 perceive how readily the poor have been interest¬ 
 ed on the behalf of a great Christian society. But 
 there is a still more forcible appeal made to their 
 hearts, by the spectacle of human suffering, and in 
 circumstances of life like then- own. There is a 
 more constantly plying address to their sympa¬ 
 thies, in the disease or helplessness of a next-door 
 neighbour, than even in the weekly recurrence of 
 
63 
 
 a visitor for their humble contribution. There is 
 a common feeling among the men of the operative 
 classes, inspired by the very condition which they 
 in common occupy: for fellowship with one in 
 his lot is felt as a sort of claim to fellowship with 
 him in his love and liberality. In these, and in 
 many other principles of our nature, there are 
 daily and most powerful excitements to charity, 
 which, if never interfered with hy pauperism, 
 would have yielded a far more abundant produce 
 to the cause, than ever descended upon it, in gold¬ 
 en showers, from all the rich, and mighty, and 
 noble of the nation put together. It is the little, 
 combined with the numerous and the often, which 
 explains this mystery. Each offering is small— 
 but there is an unknown multitude of offerers, 
 and under incessant application too, from the 
 near and the constant exhibition of suffering at 
 their very doors. Had art not attempted to su¬ 
 persede nature, or the wisdom of man to improve 
 upon that wisdom which poured into the human 
 heart those sympathies that serve to oil and to 
 uphold the mechanism of human society, there 
 would have emerged out of this state of things, a 
 far more plenteous dispensation of relief than the 
 wealthy have ever given, or even, perhaps, than 
 the wealthy could afford; whose occasional bene¬ 
 factions come far short, in the quantity of aid, of 
 those kind offices which are rendered, and those 
 humble meals which are served up, and those 
 nameless little participations into which a poor 
 
64 
 
 householder is admitted with the contiguous fa¬ 
 milies, and all that unrevealed good which cir¬ 
 culates, unseen, throughout every neighbourhood 
 where the native play of human feeling is not dis¬ 
 turbed by the foreign and adventitious influences 
 of a perverse human policy. 
 
 There is a statement, made by Mr. Buxton, in 
 his valuable work upon Prisons, which is strongly 
 illustrative of the force of human sympathy. In 
 the Jail of Bristol, the allowance of bread to the 
 criminals is beneath the fair rate of human subsis¬ 
 tence; and, to the debtors, there is no allowance 
 at all, leaving these last to be provided for by 
 their own proper resources, or by the random 
 charity of the town. It has occasionally happened 
 that both these securities have failed them, and 
 that some of their number would inevitably have 
 perished of hunger, had not the criminals, rather 
 than endure the spectacle of so much agony, given 
 a part of their own scanty allowance, and so 
 shared in the suffering along with them. It is 
 delightful to remark, from this, that the sympathy 
 of humble life, instead of the frail and imaginative 
 child of poetry, is a plant of such sturdy endur¬ 
 ance as to survive even the roughest of those pro¬ 
 cesses by which a human being is conducted to 
 the last stages of depravity. Now, if the working 
 of this good principle may thus be detected among 
 the veriest outcasts of human society, shall we 
 confide nothing to its operation among the people 
 and the families of ordinary life. If such an in- 
 
65 
 
 tense and unbroken fellow feeling be still found 
 to exist, even after the career of profligacy is run, 
 are we to count upon none of its developments 
 before the career of profligacy is entered on? In 
 other words, if in prisons there be the guarantee 
 of natural sympathy against the starvation of the 
 destitute, is it too sanguine an affirmation of our 
 species, that there is the same and a stronger 
 guarantee in parishes? The truth is, such is the 
 recoil of one human being from the contempla¬ 
 tion of extreme hunger in another, that the report 
 of a perishing household, in some deepest recess 
 of a city lane, would inflict a discomfort upon the 
 whole neighbourhood, and call out succour, in 
 frequent and timely forthgoings, from the conti¬ 
 guous families. We are aware that pauperism 
 lays an interdict upon this beautiful process. 
 Pauperism relaxes the mutual care and keeper- 
 ship which, but for it, would have been in more 
 strenuous operation, and has deadened that cer¬ 
 tain feeling of responsibility which would have 
 urged and guided to many acts of beneficence. 
 There can be little doubt, that the opening up of 
 this great artificial fountain has reduced that na¬ 
 tural fountain, the waters of which are so deeply 
 seated, and. so diffusively spread, throughout the 
 whole mass and interior of a population. But, in 
 countries where pauperism is unknown, and popu¬ 
 lar sympathy is allowed to have its course, it sends 
 forth supplies upon human want which are alto¬ 
 gether incalculable; and still, in our own country, 
 
 Voi. II. I 
 
66 
 
 is it ready to break forth in streams of rich and 
 refreshing compensation, so soon as pauperism is 
 done away. 
 
 It will be seen, then, that we do not hold a 
 good Christian economy to be indispensable to 
 the negation of pauperism. We think, that sim¬ 
 ply upon the absence of this system from any 
 country, there will be in it less of unrelieved po¬ 
 verty than when the system is in full establish¬ 
 ment and operation. We would confide this cause 
 to the great fountains of relief which are provided 
 by nature, and conceive that, when the people are 
 left to themselves, they, in the first instance, by 
 their own economy, would prevent the great ma¬ 
 jority of that indigence which now meets the dis¬ 
 pensations of pauperism; that, in the second in¬ 
 stance, the care of individuals, for the aged and 
 the helpless of their own kindred, would, operat¬ 
 ing in each separate circle of relationship, work a 
 mighty reduction on the territory of want; that, in 
 the third instance, a still farther reduction would 
 be effected, by the more copious descent of libe¬ 
 rality from the wealthier to the poorer classes; 
 and, to complete the wholesome process, that in¬ 
 ternal charity among the poor themselves would 
 fill up the many countless vacuities which escape 
 the eye of general observation. We cannot affirm, 
 that never, .in any instance, would there be a re¬ 
 mainder of want unprovided for; but we are strong¬ 
 ly persuaded, that it would fall infinitely short of 
 the want which is now unreached and unrelieved 
 
67 
 
 by all the ministrations of legalized charity. And 
 we reckon that this argument would hold, even 
 apart from Christianity, on the mere play of those 
 natural principles of self preservation, and social 
 and relative sympathy, which are inseparable from 
 the human constitution. So that in Constantino¬ 
 ple the condition of the people would be econo¬ 
 mically worse, were pauperism introduced among 
 them; and, in London, the condition of the peo¬ 
 ple would, at this moment, have been economically 
 better, had pauperism never been instituted. In 
 those great towns of continental Europe, where 
 the compulsory relief of poverty is unknown, we 
 read of no such distress as should urge the adop¬ 
 tion of such an expedient. There may occur a 
 very rare instance of positive starvation; but let it 
 never be forgotten, that instances also occur in 
 the British metropolis: and we do think it more 
 likely to happen there, just because of pauperism, 
 which has substituted the tardy and circuitous 
 process of a court of administration, for the prompt 
 and timely compassions of an immediate neigh¬ 
 bourhood. So that, whatever the bearing may be 
 of a good Christian economy, upon this question, 
 we neither regard it as indispensable to the ex¬ 
 emption of a country from pauperism, nor do we 
 regard pauperism as conducive to the well-being 
 of a country where Christianity is unknown. 
 
 But, though it were utterly misconceiving the 
 truth and philosophy of the whole subject, to af¬ 
 firm that Christianity w r as indispensable, yet there 
 
is a way in which it acts as an element of mighty 
 power and importance in this department of hu¬ 
 man affairs. It is most true, that nature, when 
 simply left to the development of her own spon¬ 
 taneous and inborn principles, will render a better 
 service to humanity than can be done by the legal 
 charity of England; but it is also true, that Chris¬ 
 tianity urges this development still farther, and 
 so gives an augmented and overpassing sufficiency 
 to nature. It is true, that it is better to commit 
 the cause of human want to the safeguards which 
 nature has already instituted, than to a compul¬ 
 sory assessment; but it is also true, that Christi¬ 
 anity strengthens these safeguards, and so creates 
 a far more effective defence against those miseries 
 that might be apprehended to ensue on the aboli¬ 
 tion of pauperism. It is true, that, in every assem¬ 
 blage of human beings, there are proper and pri¬ 
 mary fountains of relief, from the mere efflux of 
 which there cometh the discharge of a more abun¬ 
 dant blessing upon the poor than ever can be made 
 to descend from the storehouse of public charity; 
 but it is also true, that Christianity both quickens 
 the play, and adds to the productiveness, of all 
 these fountains. The man who is a Christian will 
 be the most ready to labour with his own hands, 
 rather than be burdensome; and, if he have de¬ 
 pendent relatives, he will be the most ready to 
 provide for those of his own house and of his own 
 kindred; and, if he be rich, he will be the most 
 willing to distribute and ready to communicate; 
 
69 
 
 and, if he be poor, still, with his humble mite, will 
 he aspire after the blessing that is promised to a 
 giver, and shun, to the uttermost, the condition 
 of a receiver. Christianity does not originate 
 these principles in society, but Christianity adds 
 prodigiously to the power and intenseness of their 
 operation—so that without, perhaps, striking out 
 any fountain diverse from those that we have al¬ 
 ready enumerated, does it, by simply stimulating 
 these, call forth a mighty addition to those heal¬ 
 ing waters, that serve both to sustain the comfort 
 and to assuage the sufferings of our species. 
 
 And let us not estimate the beneficial effect of 
 Christianity, on this department of human life, 
 merely by the number of people who have been 
 so far influenced by its lessons, as to be spiritu¬ 
 alised by them. This were, indeed, to reduce the 
 worth and importance of the whole speculation. 
 But there is, as we have already stated, an indi¬ 
 rect power in Christianity to multiply, beyond the 
 spread of its own essential principle through the 
 hearts of men, those virtues which go to improve 
 their social habits, and to rectify the many disor¬ 
 ders which would otherwise agitate and disturb 
 their social history. The sound Christian econo¬ 
 my that regenerates the few for heaven, reforms 
 the many into the frugality, and the industry, and 
 the relative duty, and all the other moralities 
 which stand allied with self-respect and decency 
 of character upon earth. We should augur greatly 
 more for a man of congregational habits, in regard 
 
70 
 
 to his providential management, and liis unbrok¬ 
 en independence, and his generous sympathy for 
 neighbours and kinsfolk, than we should for the 
 man who lived beyond the pale of all ecclesiasti¬ 
 cal cognizance, and spent his unhallowed Sab¬ 
 bath in shameful and sordid profanation. Now, 
 what we affirm is, that a local, and, at the same 
 time, a laborious clergyman, has the power of thus 
 congregating his people, greatly beyond his power 
 of converting them: and out of the civic virtues 
 which he would be the instrument of diffusing 
 through his parish, would there be a strong addi¬ 
 tional excitement given to all those various sour¬ 
 ces of distribution and supply, which were sure 
 to be re-opened, and to re-issue, the moment that 
 pauperism was withdrawn; and which, either by 
 the prevention, or by the positive relief of indi¬ 
 gence, would leave much less of human suffering 
 unredressed, than we now witness under a full and 
 long established operation of public charity. 
 
 But, beside the growth and multiplication of 
 the civic virtues, we have, under a good parochial 
 economy, other, and, perhaps, more powerful se¬ 
 curities for an ample compensation being rendered 
 to human want, should pauperism be done away. 
 It would have the effect of enlisting the very pride 
 and selfishness of our nature into the service. Out 
 of the mingling and acquaintanceship that would 
 ensue, among the various orders of society, there 
 were a greatly more honourable feeling that would 
 arise in the breasts of the poor, and uphold them 
 
71 
 
 in their generous stand against the humiliations 
 of public charity. The homage rendered to the 
 dignity of each household, by the annual presence 
 of the minister, and the more frequent visitations 
 of his parochial agents, were not without its effi¬ 
 cacy, in rearing a preventive barrier to stop the 
 descent and the degradation of many families. 
 When the rich go forth on a plebeian territory, in 
 the ostensible capacity of almoners, we are aware 
 what the character of that stout and clamorous 
 reaction is, which is sure to come back upon 
 them. But let them go forth on those topics of 
 our common nature, which tend to assimilate all 
 the ranks of life; let education, or piety, or friend¬ 
 ship, be the occasions of those short, but frequent 
 interviews, where the inequalities of condition are, 
 for the time, forgotten; let Christian philanthro¬ 
 py, for which a right parochial apparatus would 
 give such ample scope and exercise, guide the 
 footsteps of our official men to the humblest of 
 our city habitations, and there suggest, in conver¬ 
 sation, all that sense and sympathy can devise for 
 the immortal well-being of the inmates;—though 
 these applications should fail, in many thousand 
 instances, of their direct and primary design, yet 
 let them be repeated and kept up, and one result 
 will be sure to come out of them—a more erect, 
 and honourable, and high minded population, less 
 able than before to brook the exposure of their 
 necessities to the observation of another, and more 
 strenuous than before in sustaining their respecta- 
 
72 
 
 bility, on that loftier platform to which they have 
 been admitted, by the ennobling intercourse of 
 their superiors in society. 
 
 There is one style of companionship with the 
 poor, that is fitted to call forth a reciprocity, which 
 all the ministrations of opulence cannot appease. 
 There is another style of it, that is fitted to call 
 forth delicacies of a far softer and more sensitive 
 character than they often get credit for. The 
 agent of a society for the relief of indigence, who 
 carries a visible commission along with him, is 
 sure to be assailed, in full and open cry, at every 
 corner, with the importunities of alleged want. 
 The bearer of a moral and spiritual dispensation 
 will not, in the long run, be the less welcome of 
 the two, nor will his kindness be less appreciated, 
 nor will the courtesy of his oft repeated attentions 
 fail of sending the charm of a still gladder sensa¬ 
 tion into the heart. The truth is, that it is in the 
 absence of every temptation, either to cunning or 
 sordidness, when the intercourse between the rich 
 and the poor is in the end most gratifying, as well 
 as most beneficial, to both; and these are the oc- 
 'casions upon which the unction of a finer influ¬ 
 ence is felt, with each of the parties, than ever 
 can have place in the dispensations of common 
 charity. When one goes ostensibly forth among 
 the people as an almoner, the recoil that is felt by 
 them, from the exposure of their necessities, is 
 overborne, at the very first interview; and the bar¬ 
 rier of delicacy is forced, and forced irrecoverably: 
 
73 
 
 so as that deceit and selfishness shall henceforth 
 become perpetual elements in every future act of 
 fellowship between them. When one goes forth 
 among them on a spiritual enterprise, and intro¬ 
 duces himself on a topic that reduces to a general 
 level the accidental distinctions of humanity, and 
 addresses a poor man as a sharer in the common 
 hopes and common interests of the species, he is 
 relieved, for the time, from all sense of inferiority, 
 nor will he be the first to revive it in his own 
 breast, by descending to the. language of com¬ 
 plaint or supplication. It is thus that the ac¬ 
 quaintanceship between the rich and the poor, 
 which is sustained by converse with them on all 
 other topics save that of their necessities, is sure 
 to increase the reluctance of the poor to obtrude 
 this last topic on the attentions of the wealthy. 
 It is thus that a mere Sabbath teacher comes 
 speedily into contact with such delicacies, among 
 the lower orders, as are not suspected even to ex¬ 
 ist by the administrators of a city hospital. And 
 it is thus, that under a right Christian economy, 
 there would arise, in the hearts, and among the 
 habitations of the poor themselves, a most effec¬ 
 tual barrier against all that importunate and insa¬ 
 tiable urgency of demand, which has been so fos¬ 
 tered among the people by debasing pauperism. 
 
 And the system of locality, when carried into 
 effect, not only exposes the people to the view of 
 their superiors, but it exposes them more fully and 
 frequently to the view of each other. One sure 
 
74 
 
 result of this system is, that it supplies contiguous 
 families with common places of resort, as the parish 
 church and the parish schools; and furnishes them 
 with objects of common interest and attention, as 
 their minister, or the Sabbath teachers of their 
 children; and groupes the inhabitants of small 
 vicinities into occasional domestic assemblages, as 
 when the minister performs his annual round of 
 household ministrations, or under the fostering 
 care of himself and his agents, the more religious 
 of a district hold their weekly meetings for the 
 exercises of piety. It is unavoidable, that with 
 such processes as these, a closer and more mani¬ 
 fold acquaintanceship shall grow up in every im¬ 
 mediate neighbourhood; and that moral distance 
 which now obtains, even among families in a state 
 of juxtaposition, shall be greatly reduced; and 
 the people will live more under the view, and 
 within the observation of the little besetting public 
 wherewith their ties of fellowship are now more 
 strengthened and multiplied than before; and this, 
 independently of all Christian and all civic virtue, 
 will bring the natural pride of character into alli¬ 
 ance with those various habits which go to coun¬ 
 teract the vice and the misery of pauperism. The 
 consciousness of a nearer and more impending re¬ 
 gard than is now directed towards them, would 
 make them all more resolute to shun the degrada¬ 
 tion of charity, and the obloquy they would incur 
 by a shameful abandonment of their relatives, and 
 even that certain stigma which would be affixed 
 
75 
 
 to them, were the liberality of some open-hearted 
 neighbour eulogised in their hearing, and they felt 
 themselves to suffer by the comparison. The lo¬ 
 cal system, in short, would bring a sense of cha¬ 
 racter into more quick and habitual play among 
 the intimacies of a city population—and this were 
 favourable to the growth among them of, at least, 
 the more popular and respectable virtues—and, 
 when they are a little raised, by education and in¬ 
 telligence, there is not a surer forfeiture of respect 
 than that which is incurred by him who unworthily 
 stoops to the attitude of a supplicant and a waiter 
 on for public charity; nor is there a readier ho¬ 
 mage of popularity awarded, than that which is 
 openly and cordially given, when a poor man 
 shares of his humble means among the poorer 
 who are around him. 
 
 And here let it be remarked, that though the 
 direct power and principle of Christianity are limi¬ 
 ted to a few, yet that reflex influence which ema¬ 
 nates from them upon the many, would tell with 
 peculiar effect on the economic habits of the whole 
 population. The one Christian of a city lane may 
 fail to reach a spiritual lesson into the hearts of 
 his acquaintances, and yet, by the very dress of 
 his children, and the decent sufficiency of his 
 whole establishment, hold forth another obvious 
 lesson, that may be learned and copied by them 
 all. And they may vie with him, at least, in de¬ 
 cency of condition, if not in devoutness of charac¬ 
 ter; and, though they decline to run the heavenly 
 
76 
 
 race along with him, yet will they far miore readily 
 enter with him into rivalship for the honour and 
 the becoming air of independence upon earth. 
 There is an utter inadvertency to the laws of our 
 universal nature, on the part of those who think, 
 that in the humblest circles of plebeianism, there 
 is not the operation of the very same principles 
 which may be witnessed in the higher circles of 
 fashionable life. There is a style of manner and 
 appearance that is admired among the poor, and 
 which, when introduced by one of the families, 
 constitutes it the leader of a fashion that is apt to 
 be emulated by all the others. There is a certain 
 bon ton , by which the average feeling of every dis¬ 
 trict is represented; and nothing contributes more 
 powerfully to raise it, than the residence of an in¬ 
 dividual, whose attention to the duties of his sta¬ 
 tion has kept him nobly and manfully afloat above 
 the degradations of charity. The infection of 
 .such an example spreads among the neighbours. 
 What he shuns from principle they spurn at from 
 pride; and thus the very envies and jealousies of 
 the human heart go to augment our confidence, 
 that should the economy of pauperism in our ci¬ 
 ties give place to a right Christian economy, there 
 will, in the spirit and capabilities of the people 
 themselves, be an ample compensation for all that 
 is withdrawn from them. 
 
 We are most thoroughly aware of the incre¬ 
 dulity wherewith all such statements are listened 
 to, by men hacknied among the details of official 
 
77 
 
 business, and who hold every argument, that is 
 couched in general language, and is drawn from 
 the principles of human nature, to be abstract and 
 theoretical. But they should be taught, that their 
 institutional experience is not the experience which 
 throws any light upon the real and original merits 
 of this question—that though they have been work- 
 ing for years, with their fingers, among the ac¬ 
 counts and the manipulations of city pauperism, 
 their eyes may never, all the while, have been 
 upon the only relevant field of observation—that 
 practitioners though they be, it is not at all in the 
 tract of their deliberations or their doings, where 
 true practical wisdom is to be gotten—that the 
 likeliest counsellor upon this subject, is not the 
 man who has travelled, however long and labori¬ 
 ously, over the inner department of committee- 
 ship, but the man who travels, and that on an 
 errand distinct from common charity, over the 
 outer department of the actual and living popula¬ 
 tion. In one word, a local Sabbath teacher, with 
 ordinary shrewdness of observation, and who meets 
 the people free of all that disguise which is so 
 readily assumed, on every occasion of mercenary 
 intercourse between them and their superiors,— 
 from him would we expect a greatly sounder de¬ 
 liverance, than from the mere man of place or of 
 penmanship, on the adequacy of the lower orders 
 to their own comfort and their own independence. 
 It is a sufficient reply to the charge of sanguine 
 or visionary, which is so often advanced against 
 
78 
 
 our confident affirmations upon this topic, that we 
 invite the testimonies of all those with whom a dis¬ 
 trict of plebeianism is the scene of their daily, or, 
 at least, their frequent visitations. And it is no 
 small contribution which a good Christian econo¬ 
 my will render towards the solution of this great 
 political problem—that it so penetrates and opens 
 up the interior of that mass which has hitherto 
 been shrouded in the obscurity of its own dense¬ 
 ness, from all previous inquirers—that it unseals 
 this book of mystery, and offers a distinct leaf, 
 which may be easily overtaken by each one of its 
 labourers—that it can thus lay an immediate hand 
 on the ipsa corpora of the question—and rear the 
 true doctrine of pauperism on the same solid and 
 inductive basis by which all truth and all philoso¬ 
 phy are upholden. 
 
 We know not how great the artificial transfor¬ 
 mation is, which the pauperism of two centuries 
 may have wrought on the individual habits, and 
 the mutual sympathies, of a London population; 
 or to what degree it may have overborne either 
 the cares of self-preservation, or the kindnesses of 
 neighbourly regard towards those children of mis¬ 
 fortune and want, who chance to come within the 
 range of their daily observation. We can well 
 believe, that the sum which issues from legal cha¬ 
 rity, upon a given district of the metropolis, could 
 not, all at once, be dispensed with: the native 
 capabilities of the people being so much weaken¬ 
 ed and impaired, by the very system that now 
 
79 
 
 comes in aid of the deficiencies it has itself creat¬ 
 ed. But of the very worst and most wretched 
 vicinities of Glasgow, where pauperism is only 
 yet in progress, and has not attained such a sanc¬ 
 tion and settlement as to have effaced the original 
 habitudes of nature, we can aver that, under a 
 right economy, and without the importation of 
 any charity from abroad, each is sufficient in its 
 own internal resources, for the subsistence of all 
 its families. And were people only left to them¬ 
 selves, and made to feel that they were the alone 
 rightful keepers of their own households and 
 their own kinsfolk, and committed back, again to 
 those spontaneous charities, which the sight of suf¬ 
 fering never fails to awaken—it would be found 
 that the mechanism of human laws has, by thwart¬ 
 ing and doing violence to the laws of the human 
 constitution, superseded a previous and a better 
 mechanism. 
 
 That district of the Saltmarket, which is refer¬ 
 red to in the second chapter of this work, has 
 now, for several years, been under the superin¬ 
 tendence of the same teacher who originally as¬ 
 sumed it. In respect of poverty, we should regard 
 it as rather beneath the average state of our opera¬ 
 tive population; and, accordingly, it was propos¬ 
 ed, at the outset, that all the expenses of the little 
 institution which has been reared in it, including 
 the rent of the room, with the cost of the fuel and 
 candles, and a small library of books, should be 
 defrayed by the subscriptions of the charitable. 
 
But this had not been prosecuted with vigour 
 enough, to meet all the charges of this humble 
 concern, and the teacher resolved to throw him¬ 
 self on the good-will and resources of the parents 
 themselves. It is true, that by a small monthly 
 payment, which is most cheerfully rendered on 
 the part of his scholars, he has been enabled to 
 overtake and to overpass all the expenses of his 
 little seminary. The materiel, it may be thought, 
 of this free-will offering, is so insignificant as to 
 prove nothing. But the alacrity wherewith it was 
 rendered; the conscious ability that was indicated 
 for the required sacrifice, and for a great deal 
 more; the additional interest that was felt in the 
 school, when each was thus led to regard it as a 
 nursling and a dependant of his own; the unex¬ 
 cepted support that was given, not one family be¬ 
 ing deficient of its quota, though the very poorest 
 of the territory had to share in it; the certain air 
 and consequence of patronage wherewith this pro¬ 
 posal invested all the contributors; the delight 
 expressed by them at their own independence, 
 not unmixed, perhaps, with somewhat of a gene¬ 
 rous disdain towards any obligation of the sort 
 from their betters in society,—these were the to¬ 
 kens of a sufficiency and a spirit that still remain 
 with the very humblest of our peasantry, and are 
 enough to indicate such elements of moral great¬ 
 ness, as only need to be called back again from the 
 dormancy into which they had been cradled by 
 the hand of pauperism, when they shall rear anew, 
 
81 
 
 arid in the bosom of our community, all those 
 guarantees for the sustenance of our people that 
 this cruel foster-mother has destroyed. 
 
 We are glad to understand that so good an ex¬ 
 ample is now beginning to be copied, and that 
 about ten of the Sabbath school districts, in that 
 neighbourhood of the town, have been recently 
 laid under the same system of manageirierit. There 
 is a most willing concurrence, in them all, on the 
 part of the population; and fitted as such an eco¬ 
 nomy is, both to honour them, and to fasten, more 
 tenaciously than before, the roots of each little 
 association, among the families that are thus ad¬ 
 mitted'to nourish and to uphold it, we would ear¬ 
 nestly recommend the same practice to every 
 other local teacher, who may have obtained-a 
 sufficient intimacy with the people, to have made 
 sure of their confidence, and of the satisfaction 
 which they feel in the kindness and usefulness of 
 his labours. 
 
 We have already endeavoured abundantly to 
 prove, that a good Christian economy is not in¬ 
 dispensable to the negation of pauperism, in a 
 country where it has never been established: see¬ 
 ing that the simple abolition of it would naturally, 
 and of itself, work out a great improvement on 
 the economic condition of the people. Still, how¬ 
 ever, Christianity would heighten and secure this 
 improvement the more, by the re-enforcements it 
 would bring, both to human sobriety and to. hu¬ 
 man sympathy. And, in a' country where pau- 
 
 Vol. II. l 
 
perism is established, and where it is proposed, 
 through the extinction of it, to commit the cause 
 of human suffering back again to that individual 
 care and kindness from which it has been so un¬ 
 wisely wrested by the hand of legislation—we 
 think that nothing could more effectually speed 
 and ensure this great retracing movement, than 
 the parochial subdivisions, and the pure patron¬ 
 ages, and the wholesome.influences on the popular 
 mind, which were attendant on the working of a 
 right ecclesiastical apparatus, rightly administered. 
 It were well that the existence of a good Christian 
 economy, and the decline of pauperism, went 
 gradually and contemporaneously together, so as 
 that the complete establishment of the one, shall 
 come, at length, to be the death and disappear¬ 
 ance of the other; and, although the former be not 
 absolutely essential to the latter, yet, we know of 
 no other way, than through the attainment of the 
 Christian desideratum, in which the economic de¬ 
 sideratum would be arrived at with greater prac¬ 
 tical facility and smoothness, or with the hazard 
 of less violence being rendered to the deeply root¬ 
 ed prejudices of the land. 
 
 It is on this account, that the merely secular 
 philanthropist, reckless though he be of eternity, 
 and all its concerns, should hail a good Christian 
 economy, as he would the fittest and the likeliest 
 instrument of a great civil and political reforma¬ 
 tion. And it is no less true, that the Christian 
 philanthropist, though he sits comparatively loose 
 
83 
 
 to this world and all its evanescent interests, 
 should desiderate the abolition of pauperism, as 
 he would the removal of a deadly impediment in 
 the way of that great spiritual reformation, to the 
 hastening of which he consecrates his labours and 
 his prayers. On the one hand, we fear not the 
 contempt of the statesman, when we affirm, that 
 the salvation of one soul is an achievement of sur¬ 
 passing worth and importance to the deliverance 
 of our whole empire from the weight of its assess¬ 
 ments for pauperism. And we fear not, on the 
 other hand, the dislike of the theologian to our 
 announcement, that the pauperism itself is a moral 
 nuisance, which must be swept away from these 
 realms, ere we can rationally hope for a very pow¬ 
 erful or prevalent spirit of Christianity in the land. 
 That which letteth must be taken out of the way. 
 It is, indeed, a heavy incumbrance on the work 
 of a clergyman, whose office it is to substitute 
 among his people the graces of a new character, 
 for the hardness, and the selfishness, and the de¬ 
 praved tendencies of nature, that, in addition to 
 the primary and essential evils of the human con¬ 
 stitution, he has to struggle, in his holy warfare, 
 against a system so replete as pauperism is, with 
 all that can minister to the worst, or that can 
 wither up the best, affections of our species. With 
 what success can he acquit himself as a minister 
 of the New Testament, in the presence of this 
 legalized and widely spread temptation, by which 
 every peasant of our land is solicited to cast away 
 
84 
 
 from him the brightest of those, virtues wherewith 
 the morality of this sacred volume is adorned? 
 By what charm shall he woo them from earth, and 
 bear their hearts aspiringly to heaven, while such 
 a bait and such a bribery are held forth to all the 
 appetites of earthliness,—or, how can he find a 
 footing for the religion of charity and peace, in a 
 land broiling with litigation throughout all its 
 parishes, and where charity, transformed out of 
 its. loveliness, has now become an angry firebrand, 
 for lighting up the most vindictive passions and 
 the fiercest jealousies of our nature? 
 
 It is a question deeply interesting to human 
 morality, whether, when it lies within his choice, 
 it is the more becoming part in man to face a 
 temptation or to flee from it. The one, and con¬ 
 sistent, and oft repeated deliverance of the gospel 
 upon this subject, is, that in every case where it 
 can be done, without the dereliction of what is in¬ 
 cumbent in the given circumstances, the tempta¬ 
 tion ought to be shunned rather than resisted; 
 and that we have no reason to calculate on the 
 present success, or future moral prosperity, of any 
 individual, who, uncalled, goes daringly and wan¬ 
 tonly forth upon the arena of trial, however stre¬ 
 nuous his purposes, and however firm his confi¬ 
 dence of victory. “ Enter not into temptation,” 
 is one of the recorded precepts of the New Testa¬ 
 ment; and “ lead us not into temptation,” is one 
 of the prescribed prayers. It is our duty not 
 merely to maintain a distance from evil, but as 
 
85 
 
 much as in us lies to maintain a distance from the 
 excitements to evil. And it were well that this 
 principle, one of the most important which relates 
 to the discipline of character, and altogether suit¬ 
 ed as it is to the real mediocrity of the human 
 powers, was not merely proceeded on in the walk 
 and sanctification of private Christians, but was 
 adverted to by those who, elevated to the guar¬ 
 dianship of the public interests, ought not to over¬ 
 look the most precious of them all, even the virtue 
 of the commonwealth. What an Augean stable, 
 for example, is the whole business of excise and 
 custom house regulation!—nor were there a task 
 more truly honourable to the legislature of Brit¬ 
 ain, that has been so busied of late with plans of 
 economy for reducing the expenditure, than now 
 to busy itself with the details of a still nobler re¬ 
 formation. It were a still higher walk of improve¬ 
 ment, did the government, which now studies to 
 bear as lightly as possible on the means of the 
 people, study also to bear as lightly as possible on 
 the morals of the people. To carry the abolition 
 of pensions and places is reckoned a triumph in 
 the contest between power and patriotism. But 
 there is a yet more generous triumph in reserve, 
 for a yet more unspotted patriotism—even the 
 abolition of those many provocations which are 
 now held out to fraud, and falsehood, and perjury, 
 on the part of our regular traders, and to the more 
 daring iniquities of contraband, on the part of a 
 bolder and hardier population. It is, indeed, a 
 
86 
 
 melancholy lesson that we read of our nature, 
 when we note of the practice of smuggling, how 
 sure it is to flourish just up to the degree of en¬ 
 couragement that is enacted and provided by par- 
 liament—how, from the two elements of the risk 
 and the profit, there may be computed a certain 
 specific bounty upon this lawless adventure, that 
 will specifically call out as much of crime and cu¬ 
 pidity as shall seize upon every shilling of it—and 
 how every addition made to the bounty, by some 
 careless or unlucky clause, acts with all the cer¬ 
 tainty of physical attraction, in bringing on a 
 consequent addition to the number of despera¬ 
 does, whom it lures from the pursuits and the 
 peaceful habits of regular industry: Or, in other 
 words, such is the fragility of principle among 
 men, that accurately in proportion to the length 
 and breadth of the temptation, will be the corres¬ 
 ponding dimensions of an offence that has demo¬ 
 ralised whole provinces of the empire—seducing 
 the people from all the decencies and sobrieties 
 of their former life, and utterly unsettling the do¬ 
 mestic habit of their families. 
 
 We hold pauperism to be a still more deadly 
 antagonist to the morality of our nation, though 
 neither so sudden nor so ostensible in the mischief 
 which it inflicts upon human principle; and, in¬ 
 stead of striking out local and visible eruptions, 
 in certain parts of the body politic, holding forth 
 a cup of seeming bounty, but which is charged 
 with a slow and insinuating poison, wherewith it 
 
lias tainted the whole frame of society. It effect- 
 eth its work of destruction, upon the character of 
 man, more by sap than by storm. The family 
 virtues have not been swept away by it with the 
 violence of an inundation; but they have drooped 
 and languished, and, at the end of a few genera¬ 
 tions, are now ready to expire. The mildew 
 which it has sprinkled over the face of the com¬ 
 munity, has fallen, in small and successive quan¬ 
 tities, from its hand; and it is only by an addition 
 made every year, to this deleterious blight, that 
 the evil at length is consummated. Like the 
 Malaire in Italy, it has now attained a progress 
 and a virulency, which begin to be contemplated 
 with the awe of some great approaching desola¬ 
 tion; and a sense of helplessness mingles with the 
 terror which is inspired by the forebodings of a 
 mighty disaster, that has been gathering along the 
 lapse of time, into more distinct shape and more 
 appalling magnitude. It is, indeed, a frightful 
 spectacle; and the heart of the Christian, as well 
 as of the civil philanthropist, ought to be solem¬ 
 nized by it. He, of all men, should not look on 
 with indifference, while the vapour of this teemino- 
 exhalation so thickens and spreads itself throu«'ff 
 out the whole moral atmosphere of our land: And, 
 when he witnesses the fell malignity of its opera¬ 
 tion, both on the graver and more amiable virtues 
 of our nature,—when he sees how diligence in the 
 callings, and economy in the habits, of individuals, 
 are alike extinguished by it, and both the tender- 
 
nesses of relationship, and the wider charities of 
 life, are chilled and overborne—we should expect 
 of this friend to the higher intere sts of our species, 
 that he, among all his fellows, would be most in¬ 
 tent on the destruction of a system that so nips 
 the best promises of spiritual cultivation, and, un¬ 
 der the balefulness of whose shadow, are now 
 withering into rapid decay, and sure annihilation, 
 the very fairest of the fruits of righteousness. 
 
CHAP. XI. 
 
 ON THE BEARING WHICH A RIGHt CIVIC ECONOMY 
 HAS UPON PAUPERISM. 
 
 It will be seen, from the last chapter, that we hold 
 the securities for the relief of indigence, which have 
 been provided by nature, to be greatly better than 
 those artificial securities for the same object, which 
 have been provided by legislation; and that the 
 latter have done mischief, because, instead of aid¬ 
 ing, they have enfeebled the former. This matter 
 should have been confided to the spontaneous 
 operation of such sympathy and such principle as 
 are to be found in society, among the individuals 
 who compose it. And when the question is put 
 to us, what is the best system of public manage¬ 
 ment for alimenting the poor, we reply, that the 
 question would come in a more intelligible form, 
 were it asked, which of these systems is the least 
 pernicious; or which of them is the least fitted to 
 hinder or to disturb the operations of the natural 
 system. We, in fact, hold every public manage¬ 
 ment of this concern to have been deleterious; and 
 think that pauperism, according to the definition we 
 have already given of it, should not be regulated, 
 but destroyed. Still, however, this cannot be done 
 instantaneously; and one expedient may be better 
 than another, for committing the cause of poverty 
 back again to those charities of private life, from 
 
 Vot.. II. M 
 
90 
 
 which it has been so unwisely wrested—and, by 
 that same intermeddling spirit too, which has 
 cramped the free energies and operations of com¬ 
 merce. The home trade of benevolence has been 
 sorely thwarted and deranged by the. impolitic 
 bounties, and the artificial channels, and the un¬ 
 natural encouragements, and all the other forcing 
 and factitious processes, that a well-meaning gov¬ 
 ernment has devised for the management of a con¬ 
 cern which should have been left to itself, and to 
 those principles of its own, that would, if alike 
 unhelped and undisturbed, have wrought out a far 
 better result than we have now the misfortune to 
 behold, and in a state of maturity almost big for im¬ 
 mediate explosion. We should have deemed it bet¬ 
 ter, that there had been no organ of administration, 
 either in a town or parish, for the supplies of indi¬ 
 gence; and that kindness and compassion had been 
 left to work at will, or at random, among its fami¬ 
 lies. Yet, one way may be assigned that is prefer¬ 
 able to another, for retracing the deviation which 
 has been made from the right state of matters,— 
 and even although the movement should stop at a 
 point short of the total abolition of public charity, 
 yet, still if there be a conducting of this treatment 
 from a more to a less pernicious system, an impor¬ 
 tant gain shall have been effected to the interests 
 of humanity. 
 
 The public charity of Scotland is less pernicious 
 than that of England, only because less wide in its 
 deviation from nature, and less hostile to the ope- 
 
91 
 
 ration of those natural principles, that prompt both 
 to the cares of self-preservation, and to the exercise 
 of the social and relative humanities of life. It is not 
 because positively more efficacious of good to the 
 poor, that we give it the preference—but because 
 negatively, it is more innocent of any violation to 
 those sympathies and sobrieties of conduct, which 
 form the best guarantees for a population against 
 the sufferings of extreme want. The philanthro¬ 
 pists of England are looking to the wrong quarter; 
 when, convinced of the superiority of our system, 
 they try to discover it in the constitution of our 
 courts of supply, or in the working and mechanism 
 of that apparatus, which they regard as so skilfully 
 adapted for the best, and fittest, and most satisfying 
 distribution of relief among the destitute. When 
 they read of the population of a Scottish parish up¬ 
 held in all the expenses of their pauperism, for the 
 sum of twenty pounds yearly, and that in many a 
 parish of England the pauperism of an equal po¬ 
 pulation costs fifteen hundred pounds, they natu¬ 
 rally ask by what strenuousness of management it 
 is, or by what sagacious accommodation of means 
 to an end, that a thing so marvellous can be ac¬ 
 complished. The truth is, that the administrators 
 for the poor in the Scottish palish, are not dis¬ 
 tinctly conscious of any great strenuousness or sa¬ 
 gacity in the business. The achievement is not due 
 to any management of theirs, but purely to the 
 manageable nature of the subject, which is a po¬ 
 pulation whose habits and whose hopes are accom-. 
 
92 
 
 modated to a state of matters where a compulsory 
 provision for the poor is unknown. The problem, 
 in fact, would.have been resolved in a natural 
 way, had they not meddled with it; and, by the 
 slight deviation they have made from this way, 
 they have only given themselves a little work 
 in trying to bring about the adjustment again. 
 It is by the tremendous deviation of the Eng¬ 
 lish parish from the way of nature, that they 
 have so embarrassed the problem, and landed 
 themselves in difficulties which appear quite inex¬ 
 tricable. 
 
 Between what is peculiarly the English, and 
 what is peculiarly the Scottish style of pauperism, 
 there is a number of parishes in the latter country, 
 in a sort of intermediate or transition state from 
 the one to the other. It is well known, that 
 throughout the majority of Scotland, the fund for 
 the relief of poverty is altogether gratuitous, being 
 chiefly upheld by weekly voluntary collections at 
 the church door, or by the interest of accumulated 
 stock, that has been formed out of the savings or 
 the bequests of former generations. This fund is 
 generally administered by the Kirk-Session, con¬ 
 sisting of the minister of the parish and his elders; 
 and altogether the annual sum, thus expended, bears 
 a very moderate proportion, indeed, to the num¬ 
 ber of inhabitants in the parish. We are greatly 
 within the limits of safety when we say, that 
 throughout all the parishes where this mode of 
 supporting the poor is strictly adhered to, the av- 
 
93 
 
 erage expense of pauperism does not exceed forty- 
 pounds a-year, for each thousand of the population. 
 In some of the parishes, indeed, the relief is quite 
 nominal—not amounting to five pounds a-year, for 
 each thousand. And there is one very palpable 
 and instructive exhibition, that is furnished out of 
 the variety which thus obtains in different parts of 
 Scotland—and that is, that where there is a similar- 
 ity of habits and pursuits, and the same standard 
 of enjoyment among the peasantry, there is not 
 sensibly more of unalleviated wretchedness in those 
 parishes where the relief is so very insignificant, than 
 in those where a compulsory provision for the poor 
 is now begun to be acted upon; and where they 
 are making rapid approximations towards the ample 
 distributions, and the profuse expenditure of Eng¬ 
 land. 
 
 In England, it is well known, the money that is 
 expended on their poor, is not given, but levied. 
 It is raised by the authority of law; and the sum 
 thus assessed upon each parish, admits of being in¬ 
 creased with the growing exigencies of the people, 
 from whatever cause these exigencies may have 
 arisen. As the sure result of such an economy, 
 the pauperism of England has swollen out to its 
 present alarming dimensions; and, in many instan¬ 
 ces, the expenditure of its parishes bear’s the pro¬ 
 portion of a hundred to one with the expenditure 
 of those parishes in Scotland, which are equally 
 populous, but which still remain under the system 
 of gratuitous administration. 
 
94 
 
 Now, in most of the border parishes of Scotland, 
 as well as in many of its large towns, there is the 
 conjunction of these two methods. There is a fund 
 raised by voluntary contribution at the church 
 doors; and, to help out the supposed deficiencies 
 of this, there is, moreover, a fund raised by legal 
 assessment. We can thus, in Great Britain, have 
 the advantage of beholding pauperism in all its 
 stages, from the embryo of its first rudiments in a 
 northern parish, through the successive steps of its 
 progress as we travel southward, till we arrive at 
 parishes where the property is nearly overborne, 
 by the weight of an imposition that is unknown in 
 other countries; and where, in several instances, 
 the property has been reduced to utter worthless¬ 
 ness, and so been abandoned. We can, at the 
 same time, the better judge, from this varied ex¬ 
 hibition, of the effect of pauperism on the comfort 
 and character of those, for whose welfare it was 
 primarily instituted. 
 
 We scruple not to affirm, that we feel it to be 
 a desirable, and hold it to be altogether a practica¬ 
 ble thing, to conduct a parish, of most heavy and 
 inveterate pauperism, back again to that state in 
 which pauperism is unknown, and under which it 
 shall be found, that there is more of comfort, and 
 less of complaining, than before, among all its fam¬ 
 ilies,-—the gradual drying up of the artificial source, 
 out of which relief at present flows, being followed 
 up by such a gradual re-opening of those natural 
 and original sources that we have already pointed 
 
95 
 
 to, as will more than repair all the apprehended 
 evils that could ensue from the legal or compulsory 
 provision for the poor being done away. But, in¬ 
 stead of attempting to describe the whole of this 
 transition at once, let us only at present point out 
 the way in which a certain part of it may be easily 
 accomplished. Instead of setting forth from the 
 higher extreme, and traversing the entire scale of 
 pauperism, down to the lower extreme thereof, let 
 us take our departure from a point that is yet con¬ 
 siderably short of the higher extreme, and travel 
 downwards to a point that is yet also short of the 
 lower extreme, or of the utter negation of all pau¬ 
 perism. We shall not be able to overtake any part 
 of such a journey, without the guidance of such 
 principles as belong essentially to the entire pro¬ 
 blem—nor can we make even but a partial retrac¬ 
 ing movement, without, perhaps, gathering such 
 experience on the road, as may serve to light and 
 prepare us for traversing the whole length of it. 
 It is on this account, that the method of conduct¬ 
 ing a Scottish parish, which has admitted the com¬ 
 pulsory principle into its administrations for the 
 poor, back again to that purely gratuitous system, 
 out of which it had emerged, should not be regard¬ 
 ed with indifference by the philanthropists of Eng¬ 
 land. It is, perhaps, better that the subject should 
 first be presented in this more elementary and man¬ 
 ageable form, and that a case of comparative sim¬ 
 plicity should be offered for solution, before we 
 look to a case of more appalling complexity and 
 
96 
 
 magnitude. It is like learning to creep before we 
 walk, and submitting to a gradual .process of scho¬ 
 larship, ere we shall venture to contend with the 
 depths and intricacies of the subject. In describing 
 part of a journey, we may meet with intimations 
 and finger-posts, by which we shall be instructed 
 and qualified for the whole of it. And, therefore, 
 do we hold it better to explain the retracing move¬ 
 ments which have been proposed for Scotland, or 
 are now practising there, ere we proceed to discuss 
 the specialities that obtain in the pauperism of 
 England. 
 
 And it will be found to stamp a general impor¬ 
 tance on our present explanation, if it shall be 
 made to appear, that the best civic economy which 
 can be instituted, for the purpose of re-committing 
 one of our transition parishes to that purely gratui¬ 
 tous system from which it has departed, is also the 
 best for conducting an English parish to the same 
 point, so soon as such a motion shall be made 
 competent by the legislature; and even until that 
 period shall arrive, that it is the best economy 
 which can be devised for improving the adminis¬ 
 tration, and mitigating the weight of an oppressive 
 and long established pauperism. 
 
 Let us begin, then, with the alterations which 
 appear indispensable in the civic economy of our 
 great Scottish towns, in regard to their pauperism, 
 in order that their present mixed or transition sys¬ 
 tem be reduced to that voluntary system of con- 
 
97 
 
 tributions at the church doors, which obtains 
 throughout the majority of our country parishes. 
 
 The great fault in the administration of city 
 pauperism, is, that it is brought too much under 
 one general superintendence. The whole sum that 
 is raised by assessment for the whole town, is made 
 to emanate through the organ of one general body 
 of management. In some cases, the weekly col¬ 
 lections, which still continue, in all the large towns 
 of Scotland, to be received at the church door, 
 are made to merge into the fund that is raised by 
 the poor’s rates, where it comes under the control 
 and distribution of one and the same body of ad¬ 
 ministrators. In other cases, the collections of the 
 several parish churches are kept apart from the 
 money that is raised by assessment, but still are 
 throw into one common fund, and placed at the 
 disposal of another body, distinct from the former, 
 but still having as wide a superintendence, in that 
 they stand related as a whole to a whole—that is, 
 in having cognizance over all the town, and in hav¬ 
 ing to treat with applications from every part of it. 
 We are aware that these bodies are variously con¬ 
 stituted in different places—and that, just like the 
 sets of our Scottish burghs, they have almost each 
 of them its own speciality, and its own modifica¬ 
 tions. But in scarcely any of those towns which 
 consist of more than one or two parishes, is there 
 a pure independent parochial administration for 
 each of them; but they all draw on a common 
 fund, and stand subordinated to a common man- 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
98 
 
 agement. It is not necessary, save for the purposes 
 of illustration, to advert to the peculiar constitution 
 of the town pauperism in different places, when the 
 object is to expose the mischief of one general pro¬ 
 perty which attaches to each of them. 
 
 At the same time, it should be recollected, that 
 every parish is shared into small manageable dis¬ 
 tricts—each of which has an elder of the church 
 attached to it. It is most frequently his office to 
 verify and recommend the cases of application for 
 relief; and often, though not always, it is through 
 him, personally, that the relief is conveyed to the 
 applicant. When the ecclesiastical and the legal 
 funds are kept asunder, and assigned to distinct man¬ 
 agements, he generally is the bearer of the applica¬ 
 tion for relief to both, but more often the bearer of 
 the relief back again from the former, than from the 
 latter, of these funds. It sometimes also happens, 
 that, instead of carrying up directly the case of an 
 application from his district to the administrators 
 of either of these funds, he carries it up to his own 
 separate session, where it is considered, and if ad¬ 
 mitted, it goes through them to one or other of the 
 fountain heads, along with all the cases that have 
 been similarly approven, and is backed by the au¬ 
 thority of the whole parochial session to which he 
 belongs. The separate sessions thus obtain a gen¬ 
 eral monthly sum for their poor from the higher 
 body of management, to which they are subordi¬ 
 nated—and this sum, parcelled out among the dif¬ 
 ferent members, brings them into contact with 
 
99 
 
 their respective paupers, who call on their elder 
 for the relief that has been awarded to them. 
 
 Now, one evil consequence of thus uniting all 
 the parishes of a town under the authority of one 
 general board, is, that it brings out to greater os- 
 tensibility the whole economy of pauperism, and 
 throws an air of greater magnificence and power 
 over its administrations. This has a far more se¬ 
 ducing effect on the popular imagination than is 
 generally conceived. The business and expendi¬ 
 ture of five thousand a-year for the whole town, 
 have in them more of visible circumstance and pa¬ 
 rade, than would the separate expenditures of as 
 many hundreds in each of its ten parishes. Pau¬ 
 perism would become less noxious, simply by throw¬ 
 ing it into such a form as might make it less 
 noticeable. For that relaxation of economy, and 
 of the relative duties which follows in the train of 
 pauperism, is not in the proportion of what pau¬ 
 perism yields, but of what it is expected to yield, 
 and therefore is it of so much importance, that it 
 be not set before the eye of the people in such 
 characters of promise or of power, as might de¬ 
 ceive them into large and visionary expectations. 
 The humble, doings of a Kirk-Session will not so 
 mislead the families from dependence on their own 
 natural and proper capabilities, as when the whole 
 pauperism of the place is gathered into one reser¬ 
 voir, and made to blaze on the public view, from the 
 lofty apex of a great and conspicuous institution. 
 And it were well, not merely for the purpose of 
 
100 
 
 moderating and restraining the sanguine arithmetic 
 of our native poor, that the before undivided pau¬ 
 perism should be parcelled out into smaller and less 
 observable jurisdictions, but this would also have 
 the happy effect of slackening the importation of 
 poor from abroad. It is not by the actual produce 
 of a public charity, but by the report and the 
 semblance of it, that we are to estimate its effect, 
 in drawing to its neighbourhood those expectant 
 families, who are barely able to subsist during the 
 period that is required to establish a legal residence 
 and claim; thus, bringing the most injurious com¬ 
 petition, not merely on the charity itself, but 
 overstocking the market with labourers, and so 
 causing a hurtful depression on the general comfort 
 of our operative population. 
 
 But, secondly: the more wide the field of super¬ 
 intendence is, the greater must be the moral distance 
 between the administrators of the charity and its 
 recipients. A separate and independent agency 
 for each parish, are in likelier circumstances for a 
 frequent intercourse and acquaintanceship with the 
 people of their own peculiar charge, than are the 
 members and office-bearers of a great municipal 
 institution for the poor of a whole city. In the pro¬ 
 portion that such a management is generalised, do 
 the opposite parties of it recede, and become more 
 unknowing and more unknown, the one to the 
 other. The dispensers of relief, oppressed by the 
 weight and multiplicity of applications, and se¬ 
 cretly conscious, at the same time, of their inability 
 
101 
 
 to discern aright into the merit and necessity of 
 each of them, are apt to take refuge either in an 
 indiscriminate facility, which will refuse nothing, 
 or in an indiscriminate resistance which will suffer 
 nothing but clamours and importunities to overbear 
 it. And, on the other hand, the claimants for re¬ 
 lief, whom the minute inquiries of a parochial 
 agent could easily have repressed, or his mild re¬ 
 presentations, and, perhaps, friendly attentions, 
 could easily have satisfied—they feel no such deli¬ 
 cacies towards the members of a stately and ele¬ 
 vated board, before whom they have preferred their 
 stout demand, and, in safety from whose prying 
 and patient inspection, they can make the hardy 
 asseveration both of their necessities and of their 
 rights. No power of scrutiny or of guardianship, 
 can make compensation for this disadvantage. No 
 multiplication whatever of agents and office-bear¬ 
 ers, on the part of the great city establishment, 
 can raise the barrier of such an effectual vigilance 
 against unworthy applications, as is simply provided 
 by the ecclesiastical police of a parish, whose es¬ 
 pionage is the fruit of fair and frequent intercourse 
 with the families, and can carry no jealousies or 
 heart-burnings along with it. The sure consequence 
 of those intimate and repeated minglings which 
 take place between the people of a parish, and its 
 deacons or elders, is, that a growing shame on the 
 one side will prevent many applications which 
 would else have been made, and that a growing 
 command on the other, over all the details and diffi- 
 
102 
 
 culties of humble life, will lead to the easy dis¬ 
 posal of many more applications, which would else 
 have been acceded to. There may, in fact, be 
 such a close approximation to the poor, on the part 
 of local overseers, as will bring within their view 
 those natural and antecedent, capabilities for their 
 relief and sustenance, that ought, we think, to have 
 superseded the ministrations of pauperism alto¬ 
 gether. By urging the applicant to spirit and 
 strenuousness in his own cause, or by remon¬ 
 strating with those of his own kindred, or by the 
 statement of his case to neighbours, or, finally, 
 if he thought it worthy of such an exertion, by 
 interesting a wealthy visitor in his behalf—may 
 the Christian friend of his manageable district, 
 easily bring down a sufficiency for all its wants, 
 from those fountains of supply which were long 
 at work ere pauperism was invented, and will 
 again put forth their activity after pauperism is de¬ 
 stroyed. But these fountains are too deep and in¬ 
 ternal for the observation of legal or general over¬ 
 seers, nor could they bring them to act, though they 
 would, on the chaos of interminable and widely 
 scattered applications that come before them. In 
 these circumstances, they have no other resource 
 than to meet them legally, which is tantamount, in 
 the vast majority of instances, to meeting them 
 combatively,—and then, other feelings come to ac¬ 
 tuate the parties than those which prompt, on the 
 one side, to a compassionate dispensation, and on the 
 other side, to a humble entreaty, or a grateful ac- 
 
103 
 
 ceptance. It is thus, that a ministration, which 
 ought to have been the sweetener and the cement 
 of society, now threatens to explode it into frag¬ 
 ments : And, sure result of every additional ex¬ 
 penditure through the channels of an artificial 
 pauperism, do we behold the rich more desperate 
 of doing effectual good, and the poor more dis¬ 
 satisfied with all that is done than before. 
 
 But might not the full benefit of a parochial 
 agency be combined, with the general superinten¬ 
 dence and the ample revenue of a large city insti¬ 
 tution? In all our transition parishes, indeed, do 
 not the dispensers of the public charity avail them¬ 
 selves of the information, and often act on the 
 express certificates of the elders? Was not the 
 Town Hospital of Glasgow, whence all the money 
 raised by assessment is distributed, in the habit of 
 being guided by the recommendations of those very 
 men, to whom we ascribe such facilities for the right 
 treatment of all the cases that might offer from 
 among the families ? Ere they found their way to 
 the general body of management, they had to pass 
 through the local, or ecclesiastical agents, of their 
 respective parishes. And the same of the General 
 Session in Glasgow, which was more an exchequer 
 than any thing else, whence money was sent out 
 for the supply of the separate sessions, which, mean¬ 
 while, were at liberty, both by their individual 
 members and in their meetings, to treat with their 
 applicants just as they would have done, had they 
 been thoroughly independent of eacli other. Ad- 
 
104 
 
 niitting the first objection to this complex economy 
 to be valid, it is not in general seen how the se¬ 
 cond is equally so; as the examination and ap¬ 
 proval of the different cases may still lie with the 
 different sessions, very much in the same way 
 as if each session had been left to square its own 
 expenditure with its own separate and peculiar re¬ 
 sources. 
 
 It is of importance plainly and fully to meet 
 these questions, for they apply to the actual state 
 of pauperism in nearly all the large towns of Scot¬ 
 land. There is either a general fund made up of 
 what is levied by assessment, and what is collected 
 at the church doors, placed under one manage¬ 
 ment; or these funds are kept distinct the one 
 from the other, and placed under two separate 
 managements, both of which are alike, however, 
 in that they have the same range of superinten¬ 
 dence over all the families of all the parishes. The 
 Town Hospital of Glasgow is a reservoir for the 
 whole produce of the assessment, and out of which 
 the supplies were made to emanate, alike, on the 
 cases of pauperism which they admitted to relief 
 from the town at large. And the General Session, 
 till lately, was the reservoir for all the weekly col¬ 
 lections that were received throughout the different 
 churches—which were thrown into one fund, and 
 brought under the disposal of this body, and then 
 distributed at their judgment, not among the indi¬ 
 vidual poor, but among the separate sessions—and 
 to these sessions belonged the immediate cogni- 
 
105 
 
 zance of all the Cases that were relieved from this 
 source in then- respective parishes. Now the ques¬ 
 tion is, what will be gained by the reduction of this 
 general management into local and completely in¬ 
 dependent managements ? The good of this change 
 would be obvious enough, if the General Session 
 had been charged with the examination of all the 
 particular cases of pauperism, and now devolved 
 this work on the separate Sessions of the separate 
 parishes. But this, in fact, was the very business 
 of the parochial Sessions under the old system. 
 And the General Session was little more than a de¬ 
 pository where the collections were all lodged, and 
 out of which they were again issued to the paro¬ 
 chial Sessions, after due regard being had to the 
 comparative necessities of each of them. By the 
 change in question, each Session is permitted to 
 retain its own collections, and to make its own un¬ 
 controlled disbursements out of them. How does 
 this, it maybe asked, improve the administration? 
 It vests no new facilities of examination over the 
 cases of particular applicants—for this is what 
 each Session and each elder of that Session could 
 have carried to as great a degree of strictness, and 
 could have conducted as advantageously under the 
 full influence of all theft previous acquaintanceship 
 among their people, before the change, as it is in 
 their power to do after it. 
 
 This brings us to the third objection against the 
 system of a general superintendence over the pau¬ 
 perism of all the parishes, and of a general fund, 
 
 Voi. n. o 
 
106 
 
 out of which each shall draw forits own expendi- 
 ture. We have already, in our first objection, 
 spoken to the mischievous effect which an economy 
 so big and so imposing had upon the expectants of 
 charity.} and we have now to state its mischievous 
 effect on the administrators of charity. The imagi¬ 
 nation of a mighty and inexhaustible fund is not 
 more sure to excite the appetite, and so to relax 
 the frugal and providential habits of its receivers, 
 than it is sure to relax the vigilance of its dis¬ 
 pensers. To leave to each Session the right of 
 sitting in judgment over the cases of its own paro¬ 
 chial applicants, after having wrested from it its 
 own peculiar revenue, and then to deal forth upon 
 it from a joint stock, such supplies of money as it 
 may require for its expenditure, is the most likely 
 arrangement that could have been devised for es¬ 
 tablishing in each parish a most lax, and careless, 
 and improvident administration. For first, it slack¬ 
 ens the interest which each Session would otherwise 
 have taken in the amount of its own income. It 
 will care far less for the prosperity of an income 
 which: is sent upwards to a General Session, and 
 there merges into a common fund for behoof of the 
 whole city, than it would have cared had the in¬ 
 come remained its own, and been appropriated to 
 the exclusive behoof of its own peculiar territory. 
 There will be no such pains to stimulate the 
 weekly collection of any one parish, on the part of 
 its minister and elders, when the good of it is in a 
 great measure unfelt or lost sight of, by its being 
 
107 
 
 buried in the common fund of ten parishes,- and 
 reflected back upon themselves only in a small 
 fraction of income, which they partake along with 
 the rest at the monthly distribution—as when the 
 whole is lodged in their own depository, and en¬ 
 tered upon their own books, and applied to then- 
 own distinct and independent purposes.—But se¬ 
 condly, and what is of more importance still, the 
 complex and general system complained of, slack¬ 
 ens the interest which each Session would otherwise 
 have taken in the strenuousness of its own man-, 
 agement, and the strict economy of its own ex¬ 
 penditure. If we wish to see, in the business of a 
 Kirk-Session, somewhat of the same alertness and 
 quicksightedness, and patient attention, wherewith 
 an individual in private life looks after the business 
 of his private affairs, we must throw it upon its 
 own resources, and so leave it to square its own 
 outgoings by its own incomings. It is not in human 
 nature that any one corporation can be so tender of 
 the funds of another, as it would be of its own— 
 nor is there a more effectual method of encourag¬ 
 ing, in one set of administrators, a facility in the ad¬ 
 mission of new cases, than to place with another 
 set of administrators the fund for supplying them. 
 Under the local and independent system of pau¬ 
 perism in a great tow, the competition among the 
 parishes would be, which shall best square its own 
 separate expenditure by its own separate resources. 
 Under the general system the competition is in the 
 opposite way—which shall draw most from the 
 
108 
 
 common stock, for enabling it smoothly to get 
 over the expenses of its own smooth and indolent 
 management. The effect is unavoidable. A Kirk- 
 Session will be at no pains to augment that local 
 revenue which it is not permitted to appropriate— 
 and it will be at as little pains to husband that gen¬ 
 eral revenue in which it has only a small fractional 
 concern, and out of which, also, its allowances are 
 drawn. It is thus that languor, and listlessness, 
 and easy indifference, will characterise all those sepa¬ 
 rate managements, under which the new cases that 
 are admitted in the first instance, will pour every 
 month, with most pernicious facility, into the domain 
 of pauperism; and against this the scrutinies of ev¬ 
 er}’’ year that take place under the general manage¬ 
 ment, will be found to raise a most vain g,nd impo¬ 
 tent barrier. 
 
 Such a constitution for ten parishes, has the like 
 pernicious influence on the affairs of their pauper¬ 
 ism, as it would have, if adopted by ten individuals 
 for the conduct of their ordinary business. It is 
 conceivable, that each might be left all the year 
 round, to the details both of his own separate 
 counting-house, and of his own family expenditure 
 —only, that he had to throw all his profits into a 
 common stock, and to draw therefrom such sums 
 as.he required, for the maintenance of his estab¬ 
 lishment. It must be quite obvious, how much an 
 arrangement of this sort, would slacken both the 
 labours of the counting-house, and the economics 
 of the family—and that no yearly review by a com- 
 
109 
 
 mittee of the whole number, could prevent such 
 an effect. Not one of them, it is to be feared, 
 would be so careful and industrious in trade, when, 
 instead of realizing his own individual gains, he 
 was only to share them with others, over whose 
 operations in the meantime, he had little or no 
 control. And neither could we feel so secure of 
 his frugality at home, when, instead of drawing 
 from his own peculiar repositories, he drew from 
 the treasury of a general concern. The competi¬ 
 tion between individuals so unwisely assorted to¬ 
 gether, would be, who should labour least in the 
 duties, and who should spend most of the produce 
 of this ill-devised scheme of partnership. But ill- 
 devised as it would be, it just exemplifies the sys¬ 
 tem of a G eneral Session for the whole town, with 
 the Sessions of the various parishes subordinated 
 to its control. It is by the resolution of this com¬ 
 plex mechanism into its separate parts—it is by 
 isolating and individualising each of the parishes— 
 it is by vesting it with a sovereignty over its own 
 income, and leaving it to the burden of its own 
 expenditure—that you give an impulse to eacli 
 Kirk-Session similar to that which presides over 
 the economy of private life, where each man ap¬ 
 propriates his own gains, and pays his own charges; 
 and where, in consequence of so doing, he is both 
 far more diligent in his professional calling, and 
 far more frugal in his household and personal ex¬ 
 penses, than he would have been under such an 
 
no 
 
 artificial combination, as we are now attempting to 
 expose. 
 
 Our desire, that the general system of manage¬ 
 ment for the poor, shall he superseded by the inde¬ 
 pendent local system, is not so much founded on 
 the impulse it would give towards the augmentation 
 of the revenue in each parish, as on the vigilance 
 and care that it would be sure to introduce into the 
 administration of that revenue. It would work both 
 of these effects; but we would be disguising our 
 own views of the truth and philosophy of this 
 whole, subject, did we rate the former of these ef¬ 
 fects as of any importance at all, when compared 
 with the latter of them. We affirm, that a great 
 revenue for public charity is not called for in any 
 parish; but if public charity in some shape or 
 other, is to be perpetuated amongst us, all we hold 
 necessary is, that it be placed under the guardian¬ 
 ship of men, who shall feel themselves under the 
 necessity of being prudent, and considerate, and 
 wary, in the dispensation of it. It is because the 
 general system, releases them from this feeling, and 
 the local or parochial system brings it forth again 
 into practical operation, that we are so anxious for 
 the abolition of the one, and the substitution of the 
 other in its place: And let the income be what it 
 may, we have no fear, under this improved man¬ 
 agement, of each distinct population being upheld 
 on their own capabilities, in greater comfort and 
 independence than before, and that too in the very 
 poorest of the parishes. 
 
Ill 
 
 And, it is not by leaving the poor to a greater 
 weight of endurance, that such an effect is antici¬ 
 pated. By shutting up the modern avenue to relief, 
 they are simply conducted to those good old ways, 
 from which, for a season, they have been allured, 
 but which, so long as the nature of humanity re¬ 
 mains unaltered, they will still find, in every way, 
 as open, and as abundant of kindly and refreshing 
 pasture as before. The closing of that artificial 
 source, out of which the supplies of indigence have 
 emanated for years, would be sensibly felt in any 
 parish, were it not instantaneously followed up by 
 a re-action on the natural sources; and c’id not the 
 withdrawment of what wont to flow upon them 
 from one quarter, find an immediate compensation 
 from other quarters, which were in danger of be¬ 
 coming obsolete, by the unnatural direction that 
 has long been imprest on the ministrations of cha¬ 
 rity. The truth is, however, that there is not a 
 parish in Scotland so far gone in pauperism, but 
 that all which it yet yields could be safely withheld 
 from the population; and a slight addition to their 
 industry, and thrift, and relative duty, and neigh¬ 
 bourly kindness, would greatly more than over¬ 
 balance any imaginary loss, which, it might be 
 feared, would be sustained by the cause of human¬ 
 ity. To all sense there would be as little, and in 
 positive reality, there would be less of unrelieved 
 want under the reformed order of things, than be¬ 
 fore it,—and the whole amount of the change, 
 were a population somewhat more exempted from 
 
112 
 
 distress, and somewhat more prosperous in its 
 general economics, with the mighty advantage of 
 a more healthful moral regimen, from the impulse 
 and free play that had been restored to the sobrie¬ 
 ties and the sympathies of our nature. 
 
 But this need not remain a mere theoretical anti¬ 
 cipation—nor will it he enough to satisfy the pub¬ 
 lic, that it is announced in the oracular phraseology 
 of one, who may be rendering to the picture of 
 his own sanguine imagination, that homage which 
 is only due to truth, in one of her living fulfilments, 
 or, in one of her actual exhibitions. This matter 
 admits of being brought to the test of experiment; 
 and the demand of all practical men is for facts, 
 rather than for principles. And yet, in affirming 
 principles, one may he only affirming such truths 
 as are strictly experimental. The urgency of the 
 law of self-preservation, is an experimental truth; 
 and the certainty wherewith this law will operate 
 to the revival of a certain measure of economy, on 
 the removal of those temptations which had served 
 to relax it, is another; and the great strength of 
 relative attachments, is another; and the dread of 
 all that disgrace which would be incurred by the 
 unnatural abandonment of those parents or kin¬ 
 dred, to whom pauperism no longer holds out an 
 asylum, is another; and the force of mutual sym¬ 
 pathy among neighbours, is another; and the 
 greater alacrity of that spontaneous kindness which 
 is felt by the rich towards the poor, when the irri¬ 
 tation of legal claims, and legal exactions, does not 
 
113 
 
 extinguish it, is another: And, on the strength of 
 all these know and oft ascertained principles of 
 our nature, may it be not rashly conjectured, but 
 most rationally inferred, that when pauperism is 
 swept away, there will be a breaking forth of re¬ 
 lief upon the destitute, from certain other outlets 
 which pauperism had stopt, or, at least, the effusion 
 of which, pauperism had stinted. Still, however, 
 it were far more satisfactory that the thing be tried, 
 than that the thing be argued; and of vastly greater 
 authority than any speculation however ingenious, 
 upon universal principles of our nature however 
 sound, would we hold the specific result of any 
 experiment that may have been made on a specific 
 territory. | 
 
 It is on this account that we feel disposed to es¬ 
 timate at so high a value the experience of Glasgow; 
 nor are we aware of any given space on the whole 
 domain at least of Scottish pauperism, where a 
 touchstone so delicate and decisive of the question 
 could possibly be applied—and we are most confi¬ 
 dently persuaded, that if the progress of this 
 city towards the English system could possibly be 
 arrested, then it may also be arrested with equal 
 or greater facility in any parish of Scotland—-judg¬ 
 ing that to be indeed an experimentum cruris, 
 which is made with such materials as an exclusively 
 manufacturing population, and at such a time too 
 as that of the greatest adversity which the trade of 
 the place had ever to sustain in the history of its ma¬ 
 ny fluctuations. But it will be necessary to premise 
 
 Vm.. II. p 
 
114 
 
 a short general account of the method in which its 
 pauperism wont to be administered. 
 
 Each parish is divided into districts called pro¬ 
 portions, over which an elder is appointed} whose 
 business it is to receive from the people belonging 
 to it, and who are induced to become paupers, their 
 first applications for public relief. The fund which 
 principally arises from the free-will offerings that 
 are collected weekly at the church doors of the 
 different parishes, is kept distinct from the fund 
 that arises out of the legal assessments: so that 
 when any application was made to the elder from 
 his district, he had to judge whether the case was 
 of so light a nature, as that it could be met and 
 provided tor out of the first and smallest of these 
 funds; or whether it was a case of such magnitude 
 as justified the immediate transmission of it to the 
 administration of the second fund. It so happens, 
 that excepting on rare occasions, the primary ap¬ 
 plications for relief, are brought upon the fund 
 raised by collections, and therefore comes in the 
 first instance, under the cognizance and control of 
 the Kirk-Session of that parish, out of which the 
 applications have arisen. So that generally at the 
 first stage in the history of a pauper, he stands 
 connected with the Kirk-Session to which he be¬ 
 longs, and is enrolled as one of their paupers, at the 
 monthly allowance of from two to five shillings. 
 
 It is here, however, proper to remark, that the 
 different Kirk-Sessions did not retain their own 
 proper collections, for a fund out of which they 
 
115 
 
 might issue their own proper disbursements; but 
 that all the collections were thrown into one mass, 
 subject to the control of a body of administrators, 
 named the General Session, and made up of all 
 the members cf all the separate Sessions of the 
 city. From this reservoir, thus fed by weekly pa¬ 
 rochial contributions, there issued back again such 
 monthly supplies upon each subordinate Session, 
 as the General Session judged to be requisite, on 
 such regard being had, as they were disposed to 
 give to the number and necessities of those poor 
 that were actually on the roll of each parish. So, 
 that in as far as the administration of the voluntary 
 fund for charity was concerned, it was conducted 
 according to a system that had all the vices which 
 we have already tried to enumerate, and the mis¬ 
 chief of which was scarcely alleviated, by the oc¬ 
 casional scrutinies that were made under the autho¬ 
 rity of the General Session, for the purpose of 
 purifying and reducing the rolls of all that pauper¬ 
 ism, which lay within the scope of their jurisdiction. 
 
 But we have already stated, that even in the first 
 instance, some cases occurred of more aggravated 
 necessity and distress, than a Kirk-Session felt it¬ 
 self able for, or would venture to undertake. These 
 were transmitted direct to the Town Hospital, a 
 body vested with the administration of the com¬ 
 pulsory fund, raised by legal assessment, through¬ 
 out the city, for the purpose of supplementing that 
 revenue which is gathered at the church door, and 
 which, with a few trifling additions from other sour- 
 
116 
 
 ces, constitutes the sole public aliment of the poor, 
 in the great majority of our Scottish parishes. 
 There were only, however, a small number who 
 found their way to the Town Hospital, without 
 taking their middle passage to it by the Kirk-Ses¬ 
 sion; so that the main host of that pauperism which 
 made good its entry on the compulsory fund, came 
 not directly and at once from the population, but 
 through those parochial bodies of administration 
 for the voluntary fund, whose cases, as they either 
 multiplied in number, or became more aggravated 
 in kind, were transferred from their own rolls to 
 those of this other institution. This transference 
 took place when the largest sum awarded by the 
 Session was deemed not sufficient for the pauper, 
 who, as he became older, and more necessitous, 
 was recommended for admittance on their ampler 
 fund, to the weekly committee of the Town Hos¬ 
 pital. So that each Session might have been regard¬ 
 ed as having two doors—one of them a door of 
 admittance from the population who stand at the 
 margin of pauperism; and another of them, a door 
 of egress to the Town Hospital, through which the 
 occupiers of the outer court made their way to the 
 inner temple. The Sessions, in fact, were the 
 feeders or conductors by which the Town Hospital 
 received its pauperism, that after lingering a while 
 on this path of conveyance, was impelled onward 
 to the farther extremity, and was at length thrust 
 into the bosom of the wealthier institution, by the 
 pressure that constantly accumulated behind it. 
 
117 
 
 It will be seen at once, how much this economy 
 of things tended to relax still more all the Sessional 
 administrations of the city; and with what facility 
 the stream of pauperism would be admitted at the 
 one end, where so ready and abundant a discharge 
 was provided for it at the other. We know not 
 how it was possible to devise a more likely arrange¬ 
 ment for lulling the vigilance of those who stood 
 at the outposts of pauperism—and that, too, at a 
 point where their firm and strenuous guardianship 
 was of greatest importance; even at thepoint where 
 the first demonstrations towards public charity were 
 made on the part of the people, and when their in¬ 
 cipient tendencies to this new state, if judiciously, 
 while tenderly dealt with, might have been so 
 easily repressed. To station one body of men at 
 the entrance of pauperism, and burden them only 
 with the lighter expenses of its outset, from which 
 they have the sure prospect of being relieved by 
 another body of men, who stand charged both with 
 the trouble and expense of its full and finished ma¬ 
 turity—there could scarcely have been set a-going 
 a more mischievous process of acceleration towards 
 all the miseries and corruptions which are attendant 
 on the overgrow charity of England. In some re¬ 
 cent years, the pauperism of Glasgow has about 
 trebled the amount of what it stood at in 1803. 
 
 The great thing wanted, in these circumstances, 
 was to make full restitution to a Kirk-Session of 
 those elements which are indispensable to the pros¬ 
 perity of every other management, and both to 
 
118 
 
 the spirit and success wherewith it is conducted— 
 to assign to it an undivided task, and furnish it 
 with independent means for its thorough accom¬ 
 plishment—to throw upon it the whole responsi¬ 
 bility of acquitting itself of its own proper business, 
 on the strength of its own proper resources—and, 
 for this purpose, to cut it off by a conclusive act 
 of separation, from all those bodies, a connection 
 with which had made it alike indifferent either to 
 the matter of its own revenue, which it felt no in¬ 
 terest to augment, or to the matter of its own ex¬ 
 penditure, which it felt no interest to economise. 
 To disjoin it from the Town Hospital, all that 
 seemed necessary was to shut the door of egress, 
 by which its pauperism had been in the habit of 
 finding vent to that institution, and to make the 
 door of ingress from the general population, the 
 only place of public repair, not merely for the 
 lighter, but for the more urgent and aggravated 
 cases of distress that occurred among its families. 
 To disjoin it from the General Session, all that 
 seemed necessary, was a permission to it from that 
 body, to retain its own proper collections, and to 
 have one unm ix ed and unfettered control over the 
 distribution of them. It appeared likely that in 
 this way a healthful impulse might be given both 
 to the congregation who furnished the Sessional 
 revenue, and to the agency who expended it—that 
 the latter more particularly thrown upon their own 
 means, and their own management, would have 
 the greatest possible excitement for suiting the one 
 
119 
 
 to the other—that in this way the initial move¬ 
 ments towards pauperism would meet with the re¬ 
 quisite vigilance, and have to undergo the most 
 strict and attentive examinations. And, though 
 this might seem to lay a great additional burden of 
 superintendence on each Session; yet, was there 
 reason to believe, that under such a system the 
 labour of management would eventually be re¬ 
 duced with them all; for, in proportion to the pains 
 bestowed on each new application, was it hoped, 
 that the number of them would be greatly dimin¬ 
 ished, by the very knowledge, on the part of the 
 population, of the now more searching ordeal 
 through which they had to pass. There would be¬ 
 sides, be a mighty alleviation to the fatigues of 
 office, by the very simplification of its attentions, 
 and duties, and by the release that would ensue 
 from the attendance which was required of each 
 elder, on those more general bodies wherewith his 
 own parochial Session was joined and complicated, 
 into a most unwieldy system of operations. It had 
 really all the feeling of emancipation, to break 
 loose from the control, and the controversy, and 
 the inextricable confusion, which attached to such 
 a piece of ponderous and overgrown mechanism, 
 to retire from it into one’s own snug and separate 
 corner, whereon he could draw near to the subjects 
 of his own petty administration, and bestow upon 
 them an attention and a care, from which he was 
 no longer distracted by those generalities that had 
 before bewildered him—to have the degradation 
 
120 
 
 incurred by the abridgment of that territory on 
 which the minister and his elders shared in autho¬ 
 rity and importance with the great city corporation, 
 most amply made up by the charm of that newly 
 felt liberty, wherewith they might now preside over 
 all the details of then’ own little concern, and 
 wield an unfettered sovereignty within the bounds 
 of their own limited but now thoroughly indepen¬ 
 dent jurisdiction. 
 
 But we ought not to animadvert on the errors 
 of an old system, without remarking how very lit¬ 
 tle the fault of them, or the absurdity of them, are 
 chargeable on any living individuals. The General 
 Session of Glasgow, like the similar bodies of 
 management for the poor, in other great towns, 
 was originally the parochial Session of its one 
 parish, and was simply continued in the existence 
 of its authority after the division and multiplication 
 of parishes. It did not originate in any scheme 
 of combination, and is more the vestige of a for¬ 
 mer state of things, than a recent economy that 
 has been framed and adapted to our actual circum¬ 
 stances. Its utter unsuitableness to another state 
 of things than that which obtained at the time of 
 its institution, bears in it no reflection upon the 
 sagacity either of our present or any former race 
 of public administrators. The mal-adjustment that 
 there is between an old institution and a new state, 
 is the fruit not of mismanagement, but of history, 
 the events of which no wisdom could have foreseen, 
 and no authoiity could or ought to have counter- 
 
121 
 
 acted. That should not be branded as an ill-devised 
 scheme, which may at the first have been founded 
 in wisdom; and has been perpetuated down to the 
 present times, not by the folly, but merely by the 
 vis inertia ? of succeeding generations. In the con¬ 
 duct of the public men of Glasgow, respecting its 
 pauperism, there is no room for criticism, but 
 much for admiration and gratitude. The mighty 
 obstacle in the way of every civic reformation, is 
 the adhesiveness of our civic rulers to that trodden 
 walk of officiality, on which, as if by the force and 
 certainty of mechanism, they feel a most obstinate 
 tendency to persevere—and there is no disturb¬ 
 ance more painful, no dread more sore and sensi¬ 
 tive, than that which is excited in their bosoms, 
 by schemes and systems of innovation. And there¬ 
 fore was it the more fortunate, that, with a manage¬ 
 ment full of incoherence, and ready to sink under 
 the load of its own unwieldiness, there should, at 
 the same time, have been such an unexampled 
 largeness and liberality of spirit among its adminis¬ 
 trators, and an openness to the lights of generaliza¬ 
 tion, that is rarely to be met, associated with the 
 detail and the tenacious habit of practitioners. 
 
 We should not have dwelt at such length on the 
 old constitution of pauperism in Glasgow, had it 
 not exemplified the most essential vices which still 
 attach to almost all the great towns of Scotland. 
 We are not aware of any such town, consisting of 
 more than one parish, where there is an indepen¬ 
 dent fund, and an independent management, for 
 
 Vol. II. Q 
 
122 
 
 each of the parishes. They are generally impli¬ 
 cated, though in various ways, the one with the 
 other; and there are even instances, where, instead 
 of being landed unawares into such an arrangement, 
 by the increase and multiplication of parishes, the 
 merging of the separate and local jurisdictions into 
 one comprehensive of them all, has been deliber¬ 
 ately entered upon, for the purpose of giving greater 
 weight and efficiency to the administration. It has 
 been thought that the wisdom, and the vigilance, 
 and the strenuousness, would have been augmented, 
 by this extension and complication of the mecha¬ 
 nism. But this, at least, is one department of hu¬ 
 man experience, where the maxim has been found 
 not to apply, that in the multitude of counsellors 
 there is safety. We have already, however, suffi¬ 
 ciently expounded our reasons for thinking, that, 
 in every instance, this process of generalization 
 ought to be retraced; that both an independent 
 revenue, and an independent control should be re¬ 
 stored to each of the parishes: And, we are 
 most thoroughly persuaded, that with no other re¬ 
 venue, than that which is obtained by weekly 
 collections at the church doors, and no other su¬ 
 perintendence than that which may be severally 
 and distinctly exercised by each of the Kirk-Ses¬ 
 sions, it were a most practicable achievement to 
 bring the whole pauperism of our large towns un¬ 
 der a most strictly parochial economy, in the course 
 of a few years; and thus to re-establish, even in 
 those places which are most deeply and virulently 
 
123 
 
 affected by the example of our sister country, the 
 old gratuitous system of public charity, which ob¬ 
 tained at one time universally in Scotland. 
 
 And, for this purpose, it is not necessary to with¬ 
 draw, or in any way to meddle with the allowance 
 of any existing pauper. He may be upheld in his 
 present aliment; and that, too, under the present 
 economy, which may be allowed to subsist in all 
 its wonted relationships to the pauperism that is 
 already framed, until that pauperism shall be swept 
 away by death. Should, for example, so many of 
 the poor have been admitted on the fund raised by 
 assessment, and placed under a peculiar administra¬ 
 tion of its own, as in Glasgow—these poor may 
 be left untouched, and suffered to receive of that 
 fund just as before. It is only necessary that no 
 new cases be henceforth admitted upon it, in or¬ 
 der, by the dying away of the old cases, to operate 
 a sure, though gradual, relief on this compulsory 
 provision, which thus, in a few years, might be done 
 away with altogether. Meanwhile, each parish 
 should be left to its own treatment of its own new 
 applicants, and that, on its own proper resources. 
 Or, if instead of a fund by assessment, vested in 
 a separate body of management, this and other 
 charitable funds are united into one, and brought 
 under the control and cognizance of one court, as 
 a General Session, or a body made up of repre¬ 
 sentatives from the various corporations of the 
 place, there were still a way of meeting, by a tem¬ 
 porary arrangement, all who are already taken on as 
 
124 
 
 paupers, so as that they shall be alimented as for¬ 
 merly ; while each parish, released from all foreign 
 jurisdiction, could give its unfettered care and at¬ 
 tention to the new applications. Thus, the united 
 fund that is distributed over the whole city, will, 
 of course, send forth its largest proportions to the 
 poorest parishes. And the sum presently expended 
 on the pauperism of such a parish, may very greatly 
 exceed the sum collected at its church doors. 
 Now, the way to accommodate this matter, were 
 for the managers of the united fund to allocate to 
 that parish as many of its poor as were equivalent 
 to its collections—and after they had resigned these 
 poor, and the collections along with them, they 
 would find themselves just as able as before, with 
 their remaining fund, for the remaining poor that 
 were still left upon their hands, of whom, however, 
 by the operation of death, they would speedily be 
 relieved altogether. Again, it is conceivable of 
 one of the richer parishes, that the expense of its 
 poor may fall short of its collections, in which case, 
 the managers of the united fund might retain as 
 much of the surplus as would enable them to ali¬ 
 ment that excess of poor which had been devolved 
 upon them from the poorer parishes. As these 
 popr die, however, there will always less of this 
 surplus be required, which, when disengaged, ought 
 to remain with the richer parish from which it had 
 emanated. We are quite aware of a tendency and 
 a temptation here to connect the rich parish perma¬ 
 nently with the poor one—to keep up a stream of 
 
125 
 
 communication between the wealth that is in the 
 one, and the necessities which are conceived to be 
 in the other. And for this purpose, there must be 
 kept up an organ of transmission, or court, to di¬ 
 rect and sit in judgment over this generalizing and 
 equalizing process; or, in other words, a superin¬ 
 tendence still, over the pauperism of the whole city. 
 There is no obstacle in the way of reformation, 
 which we more dread, than the imagination that 
 there is, of a justice and an expediency in taxing 
 the wealthier departments of the town for the pau¬ 
 perism of the whole—or, which is tantamount to 
 this, in drawing the excess of the larger collec¬ 
 tions to those parishes, where the demand for re¬ 
 lief is more urgent, and the collections smaller. 
 This may be necessary till the whole of that 
 existing pauperism, which has been accumulated 
 under the present system, shall be seen to its ter¬ 
 mination. But, most assuredly, it is not necessary 
 that it shall be perpetuated after this. There is not 
 a district of the town, however poor, the economy 
 of which will not be more prosperous in all the 
 branches of it, by having all its public charity 
 placed under an internal management of its own, 
 and thrown upon the resources which are inherent 
 to itself, than by having its Sessional revenue fed 
 and amplified from a foreign quarter. This is a 
 system which ought to expire with the expiration 
 of all the cases that have been admitted under it; 
 for, if upheld or revived in any shape whatever, it 
 will re-land the- parishes in all the evils of a lax 
 
126 
 
 administration, on the part of the managers, and a 
 rapacious expectancy on the part of the people. 
 This is a matter which can easily be brought to the 
 test of experience. Let the poorest city parish in 
 Scotland be taken up as it at present stands—let 
 its present collection he compared with the present 
 expense of its pauperism—let it be relieved of the 
 whole excess of its poor by the existing management, 
 and be thrown on its own resources, with just such 
 a number of paupers as can be maintained in their 
 present allowances, on the proper and peculiar re¬ 
 venue of the Kirk-Session to which they belong, 
 —let the elders go forth upon their tasks with this 
 simple change in their feeling, that they have now 
 an expenditure to preside over which they must 
 suit to that free and separate income that has been 
 left in their hands,—and, though a little more of 
 strenuousness may be required at the outset, than 
 they had wont to bestow on the duties of their of¬ 
 fice, yet will they be sure to find, that pauperism 
 is a bugbear, which shrinks and vanishes almost 
 into nothing, before the touch of a stricter inquiry, 
 and a closer personal intercourse with the families. 
 They will find, that by every new approach which 
 they make to the subjects of their care and guard¬ 
 ianship, the capabilities of the people themselves 
 rise upon their observation; and that every utter¬ 
 ance which has been made about the stimulating 
 and the re-opening of the natural sources for the 
 relief of indigence, in proportion to the closing 
 of the artificial source, is the effusion not of fancy, 
 
127 
 
 but of experience. The task may look a little 
 formidable to them at its commencement. But 
 they may be assured of the facility and the plea¬ 
 sure in which it will at length terminate—and that 
 clamour, and urgency, and discontent, will sub¬ 
 side among the poor, just according as they are 
 less allured from the expedients of Nature and 
 Providence for their relief, by the glare and the 
 magnitude of city institutions. Along with the 
 humbleness, there will also soon be the felt kindli¬ 
 ness of a parochial economy, after the heartless 
 generalities of the present system have been all 
 broken up and dissipated—and, baiting a few out¬ 
 cries of turbulence or menace, which would have 
 been far more frequent and more acrimonious under 
 the old economy than the new, will every Kirk- 
 Session, that enters fearlessly upon the undertaking, 
 speedily make its way to the result of a parish bet¬ 
 ter served, and better satisfied than ever. 
 
 And, the more to encourage and to open the 
 way for such an enterprise as this, it were well, at 
 the outset, to hold out more favourable terms to the 
 poorer of our city parishes. It were no great addi¬ 
 tion to the burden of the general management, if, 
 in the case of a parish where the collection is small, 
 and which is at the same time among the most 
 heavily laden of any with its existing pauperism, 
 the whole of this pauperism was lifted away from 
 the parochial management, and the collection were 
 freely and altogether given up to it. This were 
 only the surrender or the loss of the collection on 
 
128 
 
 the part of the general body of management, 
 which, might be made up, for the first year, by a 
 small addition to the assessment; and which, at all 
 events, would most amply be atoned for in a very 
 short time, by the dying away of old cases, with¬ 
 out the substitution of any new cases whatever in 
 their place. Meanwhile} the Kirk-Session, left to 
 an unfettered control over its small but indepen¬ 
 dent revenue, and having no other pauperism to 
 meet with, but that which shall be formed and ad¬ 
 mitted by itself, would feel themselves incited to 
 the uttermost patience and industry, and diligent 
 plying of all their expedients in the treatment of 
 the new applications. To begin with, in fact, they 
 would have a revenue without an expenditure, and 
 their weekly collections would, for a time, outstrip 
 the gradual monthly additions which they made to 
 their new pauperism. The extent to which that 
 time might be prolonged, would depend on the 
 stimulus which they gave to the liberality of the 
 congregation, and still more on the stimulus they 
 would receive themselves, to a careful and consi¬ 
 derate administration. There is not a Session so 
 poor of income, as not, under such an economy, to 
 accumulate a little stock, in the first instance,— 
 but, let it ever be recollected, that the final success, 
 in all cases, would be mainly due, not to the means, 
 but to the management. With both together, there is 
 not a parish so sunk in helplessness, that might not 
 be upheld in public charity on the strength of its 
 own proper and inherent capabilities. And this, 
 
129 
 
 without harshness; without a tithe of those asperi¬ 
 ties and heart-burnings among the people, which 
 are the sure attendants on a profuse dispensation; 
 without the aspect at all of that repulsive disdain 
 which frowns on the city multitude, from the great 
 city institution. This is one of the precious fruits 
 of locality, and of a local administration. Its 
 nearer and more frequent mingling with the fami¬ 
 lies, would both reveal the natural sources which 
 exist in every community, for the relief of indi¬ 
 gence ; and would further act upon those sources 
 so powerfully, though silently, as to admit, without 
 violence, of the great artificial source being nearly 
 dried up altogether. The sure result, at all events, 
 would be a far blander and more pacific society; 
 and with greatly less of public and apparent dis¬ 
 tribution among the poor, would there, at the same 
 time, be greatly less of complaining on our streets 
 than before. 
 
 It will be perceived, that nothing can be more 
 smooth, and more successive, than the retracing 
 process, which is here recommended. There is no 
 violence done to any existing pauper. There is 
 no sudden overthrow of any old general institution, 
 which simply dies its natural death with the dying 
 out of the old cases. There is no oppressive or over¬ 
 whelming load placed upon any of the local institu¬ 
 tions, which, however humble be its means, is left to 
 treat with the new cases alone, and will, therefore, 
 have a very humble expenditure to begin with. 
 The pauperism that has been accumulated under 
 
 Vor.. II. II 
 
130 
 
 a corrupt system, surely but silently melts away 
 under the operation of mortality. And all that we 
 have said of pauperism being an unnecessary and 
 artificial excrescence upon the body politic, obtains 
 its experimental fulfilment in the fact, that every 
 city parish, disengaged from the former economy 
 of matters, and thrown on its own proper resour¬ 
 ces, however scanty, will weather the whole de¬ 
 mand that is made for public charity, up to the 
 full weight and maximum of the new applications. 
 
 And, yet though the process be a very sure, it 
 will be found that it is a very short one. In Scot¬ 
 land, we should think, that the average for a gen¬ 
 eration of pauperism, will not exceed five years. 
 In that period, the old generation will have well 
 nigh disappeared, and have been replaced in the 
 full magnitude which need ever be attained by the 
 new generation. The bulky and overgrown parent, 
 that wont to scare and burden the whole city— 
 and that, both from its size and its expensive habits 
 of indulgence, will be succeeded by a few small, 
 docile, and manageable children. The old gene¬ 
 ral institution, relieved altogether of its charge, 
 will cease its heavy assessments for a maintenance 
 that ever craved, and was never satisfied: And, 
 each member of the subdivided management into 
 which it has been rendered, will have its own sepa¬ 
 rate task, and with means inconceivably less than 
 its wonted proportion, will be at no loss for its own 
 separate achievement. And we again affirm, that 
 under the new regime, moderate of income as it 
 
131 
 
 is, its administrators will see far less of penury, 
 and feel far less of pressure, than they ever did 
 under the old one. 
 
 It is thus, that in a very few years, all the tran¬ 
 sition parishes of Scotland, maybe conducted back 
 again to that purely gratuitous system from which 
 some of them have been receding and widening 
 their distance, for several generations. It is well, 
 that the method of collection on the Sundays, has 
 not been totally abandoned in any of these parish¬ 
 es: for this furnishes a distinct object to which the 
 retracing operation may be made to point, and 
 whither, with no great strenuousness of attention, 
 on the part of the parochial administrators, it may 
 be made very shortly to arrive. It is true, that 
 since the introduction of assessments into the coun¬ 
 try parishes, there has been a very natural decline 
 of the collection at the church doors. But small 
 as it is from this cause, it would revive again under 
 any arrangement that pointed to the abolition of a 
 poor’s rate. But we again repeat, that the success 
 of such an experiment depends not on the sufficiency 
 of the positive means, but on the certainty where¬ 
 with the people maybe made to accommodate their 
 habits of demand and expectation, to any new sys¬ 
 tem of pauperism that may be instituted, provided 
 that it is introduced gradually, and without vio¬ 
 lence. In the transition parishes of the country, 
 the collection is generally throw into a common 
 fund, with the money raised by assessment; and 
 the whole is placed under the joint management 
 
132 
 
 of the Heritors and Kirk-Session. The retracing 
 process, in such a case, is very obvious. Let the 
 Kirk-Session be vested with the sole management 
 of the gratuitous fund, in which it will be the wis¬ 
 dom of the Heritors not to interfere with them. 
 Let all the existing cases of pauperism, at the out¬ 
 set of the proposed reformation, be laid upon the 
 compulsory fund, and seen out without any differ¬ 
 ence in their relation, or in the rate of their allow¬ 
 ance, from what would have obtained under the 
 old system. Let the Session undertake the new 
 cases alone, with the money raised from the free¬ 
 will offerings at the church doors, which offerings 
 they may stimulate or not as they shall see cause. 
 Let them give their heart and their energy to the 
 enterprise, and a very few years will find the pa¬ 
 rish totally relieved of assessments, by the dying 
 away bf the old pauperism; and the revenue of 
 the Session, as drawn from purely Scottish sources, 
 will be quite competent to the expenses of the new 
 pauperism. 
 
 Even though the experiment should at length 
 fail—though in two or three years it should be 
 found, that the collection is overtaken and out- 
 stript by the new applications—it has one very 
 strong recommendation which many other experi¬ 
 ments have no claim to. There will have been no 
 loss incurred by it. Matters will not be in a worse, 
 but to a moral certainty, will be in a better situa- 
 tioh than they were at the commencement of the 
 Undertaking. There can be no doubt, that, as the 
 
133 
 
 effect of the proposed arrangement, more care and 
 caution will be expended on the new admissions 
 than before ; and that thus the influx of all the 
 recent pauperism will be more restrained than it 
 would otherwise have been. The old pauperism, 
 in the hands of the old administrators, will melt 
 away at a faster rate than the new pauperism in the 
 hands of the Kirk-Session will be accumulated; 
 and even though the Kirk-Session should at length 
 be overpowered by this accumulation, and have to 
 give in as before, to the necessity of recurring 
 again upon the fund by assessment, they will meet 
 that fund lightened upon the whole by the period 
 of their separation, and refreshed by the breath¬ 
 ing time which it has gotten for the new draughts 
 and demands that may be made upon it. We have 
 no apprehension ourselves of any such necessity; 
 but it ought certainly to encourage the trial of 
 what has been suggested, that even, on the worst 
 supposition, and though the trial should ultimately 
 misgive, the result will, at all events, be perfectly 
 innocent, and, on the whole, be in some degree 
 advantageous. 
 
 But we have no hesitation as to the final success 
 of the experiment; and it is thus that we meet 
 the imputations of wild and theoretical, which have 
 been so clamorously lifted up against the enemies 
 of pauperism. We know not how a more close, 
 and pertinent, and altogether satisfactory proof can 
 be attained of the truth of any principles whatever, 
 than that which is so patently and directly accessi- 
 
134 
 
 ble on the question before us. The affirmation 
 
 is, that if the people of a parish are not lured 
 away from their own proper and original ex¬ 
 pedients for the relief of human suffering, by 
 the pomp, and parade, and pretension, of a great 
 public charity—there will be less of complaint, 
 and less, too, of distress in that parish, than 
 when such a charity is flashed upon their notice, 
 and so the eye and disposition of the people are 
 turned towards it. We know not how a way more 
 effectual can possibly be devised for reaching the 
 evidence by which to try the soundness of this af¬ 
 firmation, than simply to dissociate a city parish 
 from all those magnificent generalities of the place 
 wherewith it stood related formerly, and thus to 
 cause its administration for the relief of the poor 
 shrink into the dimensions of a humble and se¬ 
 parate parochial economy. Let it not be burden¬ 
 ed with the liquidation of the old pauperism, but 
 let it be tasked with the management of the new. 
 When a Kirk-Session has thus had the spring and 
 the stimulus of its own independence restored to 
 
 it, let it be abandoned to its own specific treat¬ 
 ment of all the specific applications. We do not 
 ask it to blink or to evade, but openly to face all 
 the complaints, and all the claims, which are pre¬ 
 ferred against it,—not to go forth upon this new 
 charge steeled against the lo^.'s and the language 
 of supplication, but giving a courteous reception 
 to every proposal, patiently to inquire, and kindly 
 and Christianly to dispose of it. There is only 
 
135 
 
 one expedient, the use of which, on every princi¬ 
 ple of equity and fair self-defence, must be con¬ 
 ceded to them. They should be protected against 
 the influx of poor from other parishes; and, if 
 there be no law of residence mutually applicable 
 to the various districts of the same city, then it is 
 quite imperative on the Session that is disengaged 
 from the rest, not to outstrip, in liberality of allow¬ 
 ance, the practice which obtains under that prior 
 and general management from which it has sepa¬ 
 rated: else there would be an overwhelming im¬ 
 portation of paupers from the contiguous places. 
 It is enough surely for the vindication of its treat¬ 
 ment, if it can make out, in every specific instance, 
 that the applicant has been as generously dealt 
 with, as any other in like circumstances, and whose 
 case has been as well sifted and ascertained, would 
 have been in any other department of the town. 
 With this single proviso, let a detached and eman¬ 
 cipated Kirk-Session go forth upon its task—and let 
 it spare no labour on the requisite investigations, 
 and let it ply all the right expedients of preven¬ 
 tion, the application of which is more for the in¬ 
 terest of the claimant than for the interest of the 
 charitable fund—let it examine not merely into his 
 own proper and personal capabilities, but let it 
 urge, and remonstrate, and negotiate with his re¬ 
 latives and friends, and lay down upon himself the 
 lessons of economy and good conduct,—in a word, 
 let it knock at the gate of all those natural foun¬ 
 tains of supply which we have so often insisted on, 
 
136 
 
 as being far more kindly and productive than is 
 the artificial fountain of pauperism, which it were 
 well for the population could it be conclusively 
 sealed and shut up altogether,—let every attempt, 
 by moral suasion, and the influence of a growing 
 acquaintanceship with the families, be made on 
 the better and more effective sources for the relief 
 of want, ere the Session shall open its own door, 
 and send forth supplies from its own store-house, 
 on the cases that have been submitted to it; and it 
 will be found, as the result of all this management, 
 prosecuted in the mere style of nature and common 
 sense, that the people will at once become both 
 more moderate in their demands, and, on the 
 whole, more satisfied with the new administration 
 under which they have been placed. We are 
 really not aware how this question can be brought 
 more closely and decisively to the test of experi¬ 
 ment, than by a body of men thus laying their 
 immediate hand upon it; and, surely, it were only 
 equitable to wait the trial and the failure of such 
 an experiment, ere the adversaries of pauperism 
 shall be denounced either as unpractised or as un¬ 
 feeling spectators. 
 
137 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 ON THE PRESENT STATE AND FUTURE PROSPECTS OF 
 PAUPERISM IN GLASGOW. 
 
 It will be seen, from the exposition that has been 
 already given of the state of pauperism in Glas¬ 
 gow, that, previous to the breaking up of its old 
 economy, each distinct parish had its sessional 
 poor, who were maintained out of the share that 
 was adjudged for their support by the General Ses¬ 
 sion; and it had its more advanced of hospital 
 poor, who had, either in the shape of inmates or of 
 out-pensioners, been transferred to the fund raised 
 by assessment. The expense of the hospital poor 
 greatly exceeded that of the sessional, in as much 
 as the revenue of the former institution greatly 
 exceeded that of the latter,—the sum raised by as¬ 
 sessment being once so high as twelve thousand 
 pounds a-year, whereas the annual collections at 
 the church doors, seldom or never reached two 
 thousand pounds. When the parish of St. John’s 
 was founded in September, 1819, the cost of the 
 sessional poor within its limits, was only two hun¬ 
 dred and twenty-five pounds, yearly, though its 
 population amounted then to upwards of ten thou¬ 
 sand; and, after the deduction which has been 
 made from it by the still more recent parish of 
 St. James’, amounts now to upwards of eight 
 thousand, which is something more than a tenth 
 
 VOL. II. s 
 
138 
 
 part of the population of the whole city. In re" 
 spect of wealth, too, we should hold it to be con¬ 
 siderably beneath the general average of the inhab¬ 
 itants of Glasgow; consisting, as it does, almost 
 exclusively, of an operative population. So that 
 had it remained under the general system for the 
 other parishes, its Session could not have been 
 charged with glaring mismanagement, should it 
 have been found, at the end of a period of years, 
 that the expense of the whole poor of St. John’s 
 amounted to a tenth part of the sessional and hos¬ 
 pital revenue for the whole city—adding, of course, 
 to the money that went directly for the personal 
 subsistence of the paupers, the money that was 
 necessarily expended in the service and various of¬ 
 fices of the two general institutions. In other 
 words, under the average and ordinary style of 
 management for one tenth of the population of 
 Glasgow, in the average circumstances of that 
 population, the whole expense of its pauperism 
 should be from twelve to fourteen hundred pounds, 
 yearly. 
 
 The experience of a few former years in another 
 parish of Glasgow, warranted the anticipation of an 
 annual collection at the church door of St. John’s, 
 of about four hundred pounds. By detaching this 
 parish, then, from the General Session, there was a 
 surrender made on the part of that body, of the 
 whole difference between the sessional revenue of 
 St. John’s, and its sessional expense, which a- 
 mounted, at the commencement, to only two hun- 
 
139 
 
 tired and twenty-five pounds, yearly. It is true, 
 that this surrender would ultimately be felt by the 
 Town Hospital, on which institution the burden 
 of all the deficiencies, of all the parishes, was laid. 
 But, then, the compensation held out for this sur¬ 
 render, to the Town Hospital, was, that it should 
 be relieved from the burden of all the future pau¬ 
 perism, which else would have flowed into it from 
 the parish of St. John’s. The door of egress from 
 the Session of that parish to the Town Hospital, 
 was forthwith and conclusively to be shut—while 
 the door of ingress to the Session from the parochial 
 population, was to be opened more widely than 
 before, by its being made the only place of admit¬ 
 tance both for the lighter and the more aggravated 
 cases of necessity that might occur. Still it was 
 a generous compliance on the part both of the 
 General Session, and of the Town Hospital, thus 
 to forego the immediate good of a hundred and 
 seventy-five pounds, and this for the distant, even¬ 
 tual, and, as yet, precarious good, of one-tenth of 
 the territory of Glasgow being finally reclaimed 
 from the dominion of its general pauperism. It 
 was true, that this surplus of £Y15, was all that the 
 Kirk-Session of St. John’s had to count upon, for 
 extending the allowance of its paupers, at that 
 state of their advancing necessity, when they 
 wont, under the old system, to be transferred to 
 the Town Hospital; and it maybe thought to have 
 been a little adventurous, perhaps, on the side of 
 one of the parties in this negotiation, to have un- 
 
140 
 
 dertaken, on a revenue of four hundred pounds, 
 to meet all the expenses of a concern, which, un¬ 
 der another system of administration, might easily 
 have absorbed, at least, three times that sum, 
 yearly. But, on the other hand, there was still 
 an uncertainty that hung over the issue of this un¬ 
 tried speculation; and, therefore, the utmost cre¬ 
 dit is due to the other parties in this negotiation, 
 for the facility wherewith they acceded to the pa¬ 
 rish of St. John’s, a favourite and much desired 
 arrangement. 
 
 In the following brief statement of the opera¬ 
 tions which took place under this arrangement, it 
 were of importance, that the reader should separate 
 what properly and essentially belongs to the mat¬ 
 ter of pauperism, from that which, though con¬ 
 nected with the details of its management, was 
 in no way indispensable to the success that has at¬ 
 tended them,—else he might be led to regard it as 
 a far more ponderous and impracticable business 
 than it really is, and, therefore, not so readily imi- 
 table in other parishes. 
 
 Of this collateral description, we hold to be the 
 institution of Deacons. This was adopted in the 
 parish of St. John’s, not so much for a civil as for 
 an ecclesiastical purpose—more for the sake of dis¬ 
 joining the elders from pauperism, than for the 
 right administration of pauperism itself. The 
 truth is,- that it could not be distinctly foreseen, at 
 the commencement, what would be the requisite 
 degree of vigilance and examination under the 
 
141 
 
 new system; and, therefore, was it deemed of im¬ 
 portance, that the elders, whose office was more of 
 a spiritual character, should be relieved from the 
 labour and the invidiousness that might have at¬ 
 tached to the strict treatment of all the new appli¬ 
 cations for public charity. As the matter has 
 turned out, however, it is now decisively ascer¬ 
 tained, that pauperism, under an independent pa¬ 
 rochial regime, is a thing so easily managed, and 
 so easily reducible, that an order of deacons, how¬ 
 ever to be desired on other grounds, is not indis¬ 
 pensable to the specific object for which they are 
 appointed. We certainly prefer that elders should 
 be protected from any violation, however slight, 
 on the strictly ecclesiastical character which belongs 
 to them; and one of the sorest mischiefs that at¬ 
 tached to the old system in Glasgow, was the 
 grievous mutilation inflicted upon this character, 
 by this body of men being so implicated with the 
 concerns of an overgrown and rapidly accelerating 
 pauperism. On the setting up of a separate pa¬ 
 rochial system, it will be found, that this evil is 
 greatly mitigated. For our own parts, we hold the 
 utter extirpation of what is evil, to be a better thing 
 than its mitigation—and, therefore, while pauper¬ 
 ism, in its very humblest degrees, is to be perpetu¬ 
 ated, we count it desirable, that in each parish 
 there should be an order of deacons. Others, how¬ 
 ever, may not attach the same value to this con¬ 
 sideration; and, therefore, for the purpose of 
 distinguishing things which are really distinct, do 
 
142 
 
 we affirm, that for the one design of conducting a 
 transition parish back again to the pure and gratui¬ 
 tous system of Scottish pauperism, an order of 
 deacons is not indispensable. 
 
 There was another circumstance connected with 
 the pauperism of St. John’s, that had also more of 
 an accessory or fortuitous character, than any es¬ 
 sential relationship with the success of its admini¬ 
 stration. This was the institution of an evening 
 church service, on the Sabbaths, for the accom¬ 
 modation of parishioners. Neither is this of es¬ 
 sential imitation by other parishes—the purpose of 
 such an arrangement being purely ecclesiastical. 
 But the reason why it is here introduced, is, that 
 it enables us more distinctly to mark the operation 
 of the new system, in the two great branches into 
 which it is resolvable. The first branch consists of 
 the sessional paupers, that had already been admit¬ 
 ted, anterior to the commencement of our proceed¬ 
 ings, and whose annual expense, as already stated, 
 amounted to two hundred and twenty-five pounds. 
 These the elders retained under their management, 
 and to meet the charges of which, they had the 
 produce of the weekly offerings of the day or 
 general congregation, assigned to them. The 
 second branch consists of the new applicants for 
 parochial relief, the consideration and treatment 
 of whose cases, were devolved upon the deacons, 
 and who, meanwhile, were putin trust and keeping 
 of the evening collections, or the free-will offer¬ 
 ings of the parochial congregation. This arrange- 
 
143 
 
 ment does not materially affect the process, but it 
 serves to throw a clearer and more discriminative 
 light upon it; and leads us to ascertain, first, in 
 how far a Town Hospital, or a compulsory fund, is 
 called for, to provide for the advancing necessity of 
 those who have previously been admitted on the 
 lists of pauperism—and, secondly, in how far a 
 very large collection at the church doors, or the 
 accumulation of a sessional capital from this source, 
 is called for, to provide for the eventual demands 
 that may, for aught that was previously known, 
 have been thickened and multiplied to a degree 
 that was quite overwhelming, in consequence of 
 the number and urgency of new applications. 
 
 The charge upon the elders’ fund, it will be 
 seen, was liable to an increase from one source, 
 and to a diminution from another. The expense 
 of the pauperism laid upon this fund at the outset, 
 was two hundred and twenty-five pounds, yearly. 
 But, on the one hand, the state of many of the 
 paupers would become more necessitous, as they 
 grew older and more infirm, and, but for the new 
 arrangement, they would have been transferred to 
 the larger allowances of the Town Hospital,—and 
 as that co mm unication was now shut, the extension 
 of the allowances devolved upon the Session. On 
 the other hand, there was a relief upon the fund 
 from the death of paupers; and the uncertainty, 
 at the commencement of their proceedings, was, 
 whether the extended allowances by the Session, in 
 lieu of the Town Hospital allowances, would be 
 
144 
 
 more or less than compensated by the gradual dis¬ 
 appearance of the existing cases from death. The 
 anticipation was, that, at the first, the increase of 
 expense from the one quarter, would prevail over 
 the diminution of expense from the other; but, 
 that, after a short temporary rise of demand 
 upon their revenue, there behooved to be a very 
 rapid subsidency by death. Meanwhile, it was 
 thought, that could the evening collection be 
 found to meet, for a time, the new applications, 
 the day collection might, at length, be relieved, 
 even of all the pressure which originally lay upon 
 it,—in which case, it might either be accumu¬ 
 lated for the purpose of meeting the burden of the 
 new cases, when they became too heavy for the 
 deacons’ fund; or be applied to any other legiti¬ 
 mate purpose that stood connected with the good 
 of the parish. It is remarkable, that the charge 
 on the elders’ fund, did experience the slight in¬ 
 crease of a few pounds, sterling, during the first 
 year of their separate and independent administra¬ 
 tion; but, that, now, as was to be expected, the 
 cause of diminution by death, largely and rapidly 
 prevails over the cause of increase by extended 
 allowances. This was soon to be looked for in the 
 course of nature—as, generally speaking, in Scot¬ 
 land pauperism implies considerable age—so that 
 a generation of pauperism passes rapidly away. 
 The expense of the Session, for the maintenance of 
 those original cases that were devolved upon them, 
 in September, 1819,-^-an expense that is defrayed 
 
145 
 
 from the offerings of the day congregation, is now 
 considerably less than it was at the commencement, 
 and is in a course of rapid diminution. 
 
 But the far most interesting branch of this whole 
 process, and that on which the success of the at¬ 
 tempt most essentially hinged, was the treatment 
 of the new cases to be admitted on the evening 
 collection, after they had undergone the requisite 
 examination by its distinct administrators. The 
 fund placed at their disposal, was not one-fifth of 
 the fund assigned to the elders for their operations, 
 —being contributed by a much poorer congrega¬ 
 tion. But, then, at the outset, at least, of their 
 proceedings, they had little, or more properly, no¬ 
 thing to do. They had no previous stock of al¬ 
 ready formed pauperism to begin with—their only 
 business being to meet, with the means intrusted 
 to them, all the future applications. It will, there¬ 
 fore, be seen, how gradually and successively the 
 burden of their management and expenditure, be¬ 
 hooved to grow upon them—and that, even scanty 
 as the evening collection was, a little capital might 
 accumulate in their hands during the earlier period 
 of their administration: And the uncertainty, that 
 time alone could resolve, was, how long it might 
 take ere the expense of the new cases equalised 
 the humble revenue that was confided to them, and 
 ere the capital was consumed, and ere the neces¬ 
 sity arrived of calling in the aid of the day collec¬ 
 tion, to make head against the accumulation of 
 new applicants. The question could only be de- 
 
146 
 
 cided by experience, and the result has, indeed, 
 been most satisfactory. At the end of two years 
 and a-half, the evening collection is still more than 
 equal to the maintenance of the new cases; and 
 the small capital that has been formed from this 
 source alone, is still upon the increase; and, judg¬ 
 ing by the rate of application from the commence¬ 
 ment, during a season, too, of singular adversity, 
 there is a most warrantable confidence, that the 
 deacons’ fund will be found equal to the full weight 
 of cases, the maximum of which will be attained 
 when the period of an average generation of pau¬ 
 perism is completed. And, should the evening or 
 parochial collection be actually found to weather 
 the lapse of the old, and the coming on of the new 
 generation, then will the Session, relieved, in a 
 few years, by death, of all the existing pauperism 
 of 1819, have the fund, constituted by the general 
 or day congregation, transferrable to any other phi¬ 
 lanthropic purpose, that might be deemed most 
 conducive to the good of the labouring classes in 
 the parish ; and the gratifying spectacle will be ex¬ 
 hibited, of all the parochial pauperism upheld by 
 the parochial offerings on the Sabbath evening,— 
 Or, in other words, a large and, almost, entirely 
 plebeian district of the town, defraying all the ex¬ 
 penses of its own pauperism, on the strength of its 
 own unaided capabilities. 
 
 A result so gratifying has certainly exceeded 
 our own anticipations. We have never thought, 
 that public charity, for the relief of indigence, was 
 
147 
 
 at all called for by the state and economy of social 
 life—or, that, the artificial mechanism of a legal 
 and compulsory provision for the poor, had ever 
 any other effect than that of deranging the better 
 mechanism of nature. But we did not think, that 
 a population would have conformed so speedily to 
 the right system, after that the poison and perver¬ 
 sion of the wrong system had been so long diffused 
 among them—or, that, when the great external 
 reservoir was shut, out of which the main stream 
 of pauperism wont to emanate, they would have 
 found such an immediate compensation, by their 
 immediate recourse to those fountains of supply, 
 which exist within themselves, and lie embosomed 
 among their own families, and their own neigh¬ 
 bourhood. But so it is,—and that, without any 
 other peculiarity of management on our part, than a 
 careful, and considerate, and, we trust, humane 
 examination of every new claim that is preferred 
 upon us. The success of this enterprise, in fact, 
 is not so much the doing of the agency, as it is of 
 the people themselves—and it hinges not so much 
 on the number of applications repressed by the one 
 party, as on the greatly superior number of appli¬ 
 cations that are forborne or withheld by the other 
 party. We do not drive back the people; but the 
 people keep back themselves—and that, simply 
 because there is none of the glare or magnificence 
 of a great city management to deceive their ima¬ 
 ginations, and allure them from their own natural 
 shifts and resources; and because they are further 
 
148 
 
 aware, that should they step forward, they will 
 be met by men, who can give them an intelligent 
 as well as a civil reception; who are thoroughly 
 prepared for appreciating the merits of every ap¬ 
 plication, and, at the same time, firmly determined 
 to try every right expedient- of prevention, ere the 
 humiliating descent to pauperism shall be taken 
 by any family within the limits of their superin¬ 
 tendence. The very frankness with which this is 
 announced, is liked by the people; and let there 
 be but an easy and a frequent mingling between 
 the managers and the subjects of their administra¬ 
 tion, and there will be no difficulty in establishing 
 a community of sentiment between them; the very 
 tone of hostility towards pauperism that is mani¬ 
 fested by the former, being positively caught and 
 sympathized with by the latter, who, though of 
 humblest rank in society, can, when rightly treat¬ 
 ed, display a nobility of heart, that makes them 
 the best coadjutors in this undertaking. The pa¬ 
 rochial agency, in fact, have had little more to do 
 than to hold out a face of intelligence to the peo¬ 
 ple, on the subject of their necessities; and this 
 has been followed up by an instantaneous slacken¬ 
 ing of the parochial demand. There is not one 
 of them, who will not attest, that, the trouble and 
 management of his assigned district, fall marvel¬ 
 lously short of his first anticipations. The truth 
 is, that there is not one application for five, that 
 there wont to be under the old system. It is un¬ 
 fair to deceive a population,—and a population are 
 
149 
 
 vastly too generous to like one the worse for com¬ 
 ing to an open and decisive understanding with 
 them. Our object is not to devise for the people 
 new expedients of relief, but as much as in us lies, 
 to keep them closely at their own expedients—not 
 to perform more than in other parishes, but to pro¬ 
 mise less—not to strike out any additional sources, 
 from which to send forth an abundant administra¬ 
 tion upon human necessity; but, wherever it is 
 possible, to commit it back again to those pre-exis¬ 
 tent sources, from which it ought never to have 
 been tempted away, in quest of a remedy that lay 
 more nearly and comfortably within its reach. 
 We have no new way, by which to maintain the 
 poor. We have only abandoned that old way, 
 which so grievously misled them. And when the 
 people are not misled, they do not move. If they 
 are not previously set agog, they give little or no 
 disturbance. If they are not seduced from their 
 own capabilities, they silently abide by them—and 
 every act of friendly intercourse on the part of 
 any observant philanthropist, with the lower orders, 
 will serve to satisfy him the more, how much our 
 distance from the people has kept us in entire de¬ 
 lusion regarding them; and led us, more particu¬ 
 larly, to underrate both their own sufficiency for 
 their own subsistence, and the noble spirit by which 
 they are already actuated, or, which, under a 
 right system of attentions, can most speedily be 
 infused into them. This has been the whole drift 
 of our experience. To make it universal, the 
 
150 
 
 principle of locality has only to be connected with 
 pauperism, and to be carried downwards by a mi¬ 
 nute enough process of subdivision, and to be 
 freed of all those obstructions, which lie in the 
 way of its close and unfettered application. The 
 problem of pauperism is resolved simply on the re¬ 
 moval of certain disturbing forces, which ought 
 never to have been put into operation. To ar¬ 
 rive at it, we have not to do what is undone, but 
 to undo what is done. To break up the general 
 management of a gr.eat city, and substitute small 
 and separate managements in its place, is an im¬ 
 portant step of this process. And, we repeat it, 
 that it operates not so much by a positive good in¬ 
 fluence emanating from the new machinery that is 
 thus formed, as by the withdrawment of the posi¬ 
 tive bad influence, which emanated from the old 
 machinery. The credit of a prosperous result, is 
 not so due to the manner in which the agents of 
 the new system conduct themselves under it, as to 
 the manner in which the people, of their own ac¬ 
 cord, conduct themselves under it. And let it al¬ 
 ways be understood, that the efficacy of a near, 
 and vigilant, and local superintendence, operating 
 independently, and within itself, and left to its 
 own means, and its own management, does not 
 lie so much in the resistance which it actually puts 
 forth against advances which are actually made, as 
 in the powerful, and almost immediate tendency of 
 such an arrangement, to beget a general quiescence 
 among the families of that territory over which 
 it operates. 
 
151 
 
 And, to prove that there js nought whatever of 
 peculiar might or mystery, in our transactions, be¬ 
 yond the reach of most ordinary imitation, it may 
 be right to state the very plain steps and inquiries, 
 which take place, when any applicants come for¬ 
 ward. This, perhaps, will be most effectually 
 done, by simply transcribing the method of pro¬ 
 ceeding that was adopted, and has been persevered 
 in from the commencement of our operations. 
 
 “ When one applies for admittance, through his 
 deacon, upon our funds, the first thing to be in¬ 
 quired into is, if there be any kind of work that 
 he can yet do, so as either to keep him altogether 
 off, or, as to make a partial allowance serve for 
 his necessities. The second, what his relations 
 and friends are willing to do for them. The third, 
 whether he is a hearer in any dissenting place of 
 worship, and whether its Session will contribute 
 to his relief. And, if, after these previous inqui¬ 
 ries, it be found, that further relief is necessary, 
 then there must be a strict ascertainment of his 
 term of residence in Glasgow, and whether he be 
 yet on the funds of the Town Hospital, or is ob¬ 
 taining relief from any other parish. 
 
 “ If, upon all these points being ascertained, 
 the deacon of the proportion where he resides, still 
 conceives him an object for our assistance, he will 
 inquire whether a small temporary aid will meet 
 the occasion, and states this to the first ordinary 
 meeting. But, if instead of this, he conceives 
 him a fit subject for a regular allowance, lie will 
 
152 
 
 receive the assistance of another deacon to com- 
 plete and confirm his inquiries, by the next ordi¬ 
 nary meeting thereafter,—at which time, the ap¬ 
 plicant, if they still think him a fit object, is brought 
 before us, and received upon the fund at such a 
 rate of allowance as, upon all the circumstances 
 of the case, the meeting of deacons shall judge 
 proper.” 
 
 Of course, pending these examinations, the 
 deacon is empowered to grant the same sort of dis¬ 
 cretionary aid, that is customary in the other 
 parishes. 
 
 On the strength of these simple regulations, and 
 in virtue, too, of our separate and independent 
 constitution—such is the stimulus that has been 
 given, on the one hand, to our parochial manage¬ 
 ment, and such are the wholesome restraints, on 
 the other hand, that have been laid on the paro¬ 
 chial demand, as have enabled us to economise 
 our recent pauperism, at least, ten-fold beyond 
 what we either could or would have done under 
 the general and complex system, from which we 
 count it our privilege to have been so totally dis¬ 
 engaged. With our small but separate revenue, 
 we have more of the feeling of sufficiency, than 
 when the door was open for us to all the wider and 
 wealthier charities of the place: And if the princi¬ 
 ple he admitted, that as much good is done by a 
 provision for human want, through the stimulated 
 economy of individuals, or the stimulated kindness 
 of those whose duty it is to relieve it—then are 
 
153 
 
 we persuaded, that, small as our dispensations are, 
 we have as well served and as well satisfied a pa¬ 
 rish, as any other that can be referred to in the 
 city. 
 
 The thing of greatest importance in this state¬ 
 ment is, that the success of the enterprise does not 
 at all hang by the magnitude of the collection. It 
 is not upon the strength of the means, but upon 
 the strength of the management, that the expense 
 of one of the poorest of our city parishes has been 
 transferred, from the fund raised by assessment, to 
 the fund raised by the free-will offerings at the 
 church-door. There is nothing, it must at once be 
 perceived by the attentive reader, that ought to 
 deter the imitation of other parishes, in the oft-alleg¬ 
 ed superiority of that revenue which lies at the 
 disposal of the Kirk-Session of St. John’s. It is 
 not, let it be well remarked, by that revenue, that 
 the most essential step of this much contested pro¬ 
 blem has been overcome. The only alimentary 
 use to which the day collection has been put, is 
 in upholding the Sessional pauperism that had been 
 previously formed, and was actually found, at the 
 commencement of this operation; and this it has 
 done so effectually, that a great yearly surplus over 
 the yearly expenditure, and a surplus too which 
 must rapidly increase, is left in the hands of the 
 Kirk-Session. But the whole amount of any ex¬ 
 isting pauperism soon passes away; and by far the 
 most interesting question relates to the present 
 management, and the future probable amount of 
 
154 
 
 the new pauperism wherewith it shall be replaced. 
 Now it ought, most demonstrably, to prove how 
 little essential a great revenue is to the object of 
 meeting and of managing this pauperism, when it 
 is made known that all the new applications have 
 been satisfactorily disposed of for two years and a 
 half, under the administration of the Deacons, 
 whose alone ordinary fund consists of the evening 
 collection, the annual amount of which docs not 
 exceed eighty pounds sterling. We have no doubt, 
 that on this humble revenue alone, the new appli¬ 
 cations will continue to be met, till the whole pau¬ 
 perism accumulated under the old system, shall 
 have died away. Then will the parish of St. John’s 
 be simply and purely in the condition of a Scottish, 
 country parish, with the whole expense of its pau¬ 
 perism defrayed, not by the offerings of wealthy 
 day-hearers from all parts of the city, but by the 
 humble offerings of an evening congregation that 
 consists chiefly of parishioners, and of those in the 
 labouring classes of society. 
 
 We fondly hope then, that one great difficulty 
 which is often conjured up in opposition to this 
 undertaking will, henceforth, be conclusively done 
 away— viz. that the means of the parish of St. 
 John’s are so exceedingly ample as to place its 
 process, for the extinction of pauperism, beyond 
 the reach of imitation by the other parishes. An¬ 
 other, which has been frequently alleged, is that 
 the management must be so very strenuous, as that 
 the labour of it will only be submitted to by men 
 
155 
 
 ■who act under the impulse of novelty, or who feel 
 their responsibility and honour involved in the suc¬ 
 cess of what many have stigmatized as a wild and 
 irrational speculation. We are quite sure that 
 there is not a Deacon belonging to the parish who 
 could not depone, from his own experience, to the 
 utter futility of this imagination. They all, with¬ 
 out exception, find to be true what we have al¬ 
 ready affirmed, that the problem for the extermi¬ 
 nation of pauperism, is not resolved by any forth- 
 going of unexampled wisdom or activity on their 
 part, but by a ready accommodation, on the part 
 of the people, to a new system of things, in which 
 they have willingly, and almost without a murmur, 
 acquiesced. The task may look insuperable in the 
 gross, but its obstacles all vanish in the detail. 
 When the territory is once split into its several 
 portions, and assigned to the several agents, each 
 of them is sure to find, that the whole time and 
 trouble of the requisite inquiries fall marvellously 
 short of his first anticipations. We deny not that 
 upon each particular application, more of care may 
 be expended than under the lax and complicated 
 administration of other days; but this is amply 
 compensated by a great and immediate reduction 
 in the number of these applications—so, in fact, 
 as almost to reduce into a sinecure that office, 
 which when regarded from a distance, had been 
 magnified into one of mighty and almost insur¬ 
 mountable labour. We arc the more solicitous to 
 do away this objection, for we too should decry 
 
156 
 
 every plan to the uttermost, as bearing upon it the 
 character of Utopianism, that could not be accom¬ 
 plished by every-day instruments, operating on 
 every-day materials. Any exemplification, how¬ 
 ever imposing, if gotten up by such extraordinary 
 means, and such extraordinary management, as to 
 distance all imitation, were but a useless and un¬ 
 substantial parade—the treacherous glare and 
 splendour of a meteoric flash that soon passed 
 away; instead of radiance from such calm and en¬ 
 during light as might diffuse itself throughout all 
 the abodes, and be mingled with all the doings of 
 humanity. 
 
 And, as we are now engaged in treating with the 
 scepticism of our many antagonists, let us here recur 
 to another evasion, by which they have tried to dis¬ 
 pose of the undoubted success of the parochial expe¬ 
 riment in St. John’s. This success has been repeat¬ 
 edly ascribed to the efflux of the poor from the 
 parish of St. John’s, on the other parishes of Glas¬ 
 gow; as if they w r ere glad to escape from the par¬ 
 simonious administration that had been established 
 there, to those quarters of the city, where the 
 stream of public charity flowed as kindly and as 
 abundantly as before. But neither is this a true 
 solution of the phenomenon in question. There 
 is nought of which the whole agency in St. John’s 
 are more desirous, than the establishment of the 
 same barrier of mutual protection, among the pa¬ 
 rishes within the royalty, that is raised by the law 
 of residence between the parishes of Scotland in 
 
157 
 
 general. They are quite sure that they would be 
 gainers by such ail internal arrangement among 
 the parishes of Glasgow, and would be most wil¬ 
 lingly responsible for the maintenance of all who 
 had gotten a legal residence within their own ter¬ 
 ritory, could they be alike defended from the in¬ 
 roads of the poor, or of the paupers that belong to 
 other parts of the city. The truth is, that on the first 
 year of the reformed pauperism in St. John’s, the 
 importation of paupers from the city into that pa¬ 
 rish, just doubled the exportation of paupers from 
 the parish into the city; and ever since, the balance 
 has been greatly to our disadvantage. It is fur¬ 
 ther understood, that when part of the parish was 
 sliced off and incorporated with the new parish of 
 St. James’, several of the poorer families left the 
 district that had been thus alienated, and retired 
 within the present limits of the parish of St. John’s. 
 Such are the facts, whatever difficulty may be con¬ 
 ceived to attend the explanation of them. And it 
 may, perhaps, help our comprehension of it, if we 
 reflect that judgment and firmness need only to be 
 tempered with civility, in order to make them vir¬ 
 tues of great and popular estimation—that the 
 connivance which yields to the unfair or extrava¬ 
 gant demands of the poor, has really not the same 
 charm to their feelings as the courtesy which does 
 them honour—that the lower orders of society can 
 bear to be dealt with rationally, if they be, at the 
 same time, dealt with frankly,, and ingenuously, 
 and openly—that, when the cause of human indi- 
 
158 
 
 gence is thrown on the co-operation of their own 
 efforts, and their own sympathies in its behalf, it is 
 then placed in the very best hands for the mitigation 
 of all its sufferings—and that a very slight impulse, 
 given to the general heart of any assembled popu¬ 
 lation, will greatly more than compensate for the 
 deprivations which ensue, when the pomp and 
 the circumstance of all visible charity have, at 
 length, been done away. 
 
 But the thought will recur again, that the peo¬ 
 ple cannot be served under such an arrangement, 
 and therefore cannot be satisfied—that suffering 
 and starvation must be the necessary accompani¬ 
 ments of an abridged pauperism—that one must 
 bring a cold heart, as well as a cold understanding, 
 to this sort of administration—that a certain unre¬ 
 lenting hardness of temperament, on the part of 
 those who preside over it, is altogether indispen¬ 
 sable to its success—and that, when the success is 
 at length obtained, it must have been at the ex¬ 
 pense of pained, and aggrieved, and neglected 
 humanity. 
 
 Coldness, and cruelty, and hardihood, are the 
 inseparable associates of legal charity, and it is un¬ 
 der the weight of its oppressive influences that all 
 the opposite characteristics of our nature—its ten¬ 
 derness, and gentleness, and compassion, have been 
 so grievously overborne. These, however, arc 
 ready to burst forth again in all their old and na¬ 
 tive efflorescence, on the moment that this heavy 
 incumbrance is cleared away from the soil of hu- 
 
159 
 
 inanity. It is indeed strange, that the advocates 
 of pauperism should have so reproached its ene¬ 
 mies for all those stern qualities of the heart, 
 wherewith it is the direct tendency of their own 
 system to steel the bosoms of its hard and hack- 
 nied administrators; or, because the latter have 
 affirmed that the cause of indigence may safely be 
 confided to those spontaneous sympathies which 
 nature has implanted, and which Christianity fos¬ 
 ters in the bosom of man, they should therefore 
 have been charged by the former with a conspiracy 
 to damp and to disparage these sympathies—with 
 an attempt to eradicate those very principles on 
 which they repose so much of their dependence, 
 and to the power of which, and the importance 
 of which, they have rendered the award of a most 
 high and honourable testimony. 
 
 The difference between the administration of a 
 great public revenue for indigence, and the ad¬ 
 ministration of a small one, seems to be this. The 
 dispensers of the former are not naturally or neces¬ 
 sarily led to bethink themselves of any other way 
 by which a case of poverty can be disposed of, than 
 simply by the application of the means wherewith 
 they are entrusted. And as these means, under a 
 system of assessment, admit of being augmented 
 indefinitely, they are apt to conceive that there is 
 an adequacy in them to all the demands of all the 
 want that can be ascertained. At any rate, they 
 seldom reckon on any other way of providing for 
 human need, than by the positive discharge of 
 
160 
 
 legal aliment thereupon. So that their only, or, 
 at least, their chief business in the intercourse they 
 have with the applicants, is simply to rectify or to 
 dismiss their claim, on the investigation they have 
 made into then- palpable resources, upon the one 
 hand, compared with their palpable exigencies, 
 upon the other. In the whole of this process, 
 there is much of the coldness and formality of a 
 court of law; and the very magnitude of the con¬ 
 cern, along with the unavoidable distance at which 
 the members of such an elevated board stand from 
 those who venture to approach it, serves to infuse 
 still more of this character into all the large and 
 general managements of pauperism. All is pre¬ 
 cise, and rigorous, and stately; or, if any human 
 feeling be admitted, it is not the warmth of kind¬ 
 ness, but the heat of irritation. The repeated ex¬ 
 perience of imposition; and the consciousness of 
 inability thoroughly to protect themselves from 
 the recurrence of it; and the sensation of a grow¬ 
 ing pressure, against which no other counteractive 
 is known, or even put into operation, than that of 
 a stern, or a suspicious treatment, which only calls 
 forth a more resolute assertion, on the part of the 
 aggressors upon public charity—these are what 
 have instilled a certain acerbity into all its minis¬ 
 trations. So that, with the thousands that are 
 scattered over that multitude which the great city 
 institution hath drawn around it, there is not one 
 softening moral influence which is thereby carried 
 abroad amongst them—no exhibition of tenderness 
 
161 
 
 upon the one hand, and no gratitude, that can only 
 be awakened by the perception of such tenderness, 
 upon the other—no heart-felt obligation among 
 those whose plea hath been sustained; while 
 among those who are non-suited, may be heard the 
 curses of disappointment, the half-suppressed mur¬ 
 murs of deep and sullen indignation. 
 
 It is least of all from a quarter like this, that the 
 administrators of a small parish revenue ought to , 
 be charged, with any defect of sensibility in the 
 work that they have undertaken. The very cir¬ 
 cumstance of having adventured themselves upon 
 it with a revenue that is small, proves a confidence 
 in the other resources that nature has provided for 
 the alleviation of human want; and it is in the act 
 of stimulating these resources, or of pointing the 
 way to them, that they get into close and kindly 
 approximation with the humblest of the families. 
 There is not a more cheering experience that has 
 met us on our way, than the perfect rationality of 
 the lower orders, when rationally and respectfully 
 dealt with; and the pliancy wherewith they defer 
 to a remonstrance that is urged with civility, and, 
 at the same time, has the force and the weight of 
 its own moral justness to recommend it. It is the 
 more minute, and frefe, and familiar intercourse 
 which takes place between a population and their 
 parochial office-bearers—it is this which throws a 
 sort of domestic atmosphere around the doings of 
 a Sessional administration. The scantiness of its 
 means, it may be alleged, will necessarily reduce 
 
 Voi.. II. " x 
 
the elder or the deacon to his shifts, in the manage¬ 
 ment of his district. And so it does. But they 
 are the very shifts by which the business of human 
 charity is transferred to its right principles; and, 
 after this is accomplished, there is both more of 
 genuine satisfaction among the poor, and more of 
 genuine sympathy among all those whose duty it 
 is to succour or to uphold them. The whole of 
 our delightful experience on this matter has gone 
 to assure us, of the cheapness and the facility 
 wherewith the* substitution may be completed of a 
 natural for an artificial charity. And, let it never 
 be forgotten, that the main springs of this natural 
 charity are all to be found among the population 
 themselves; and, that by dint of persuasion and of 
 friendly intercourse, they are easily led to re-open 
 them. That all who are able, should charge them¬ 
 selves with the maintenance of their aged rela¬ 
 tives—that to the uttermost, a man’s own hands 
 should minister to his own necessities, and those 
 who are with him—that every exorbitant demand 
 on the liberality of others, is an injurious encroach¬ 
 ment on the fund that is destined for the relief of 
 real and unquestionable misery—that the poor who 
 are moderate in their applications, or who forbear 
 them altogether, are the best friends of all those who 
 are poorer than themselves—that no inferiority of 
 station, therefore, exempts from the virtue of be¬ 
 neficence; and that the humble contributions of 
 time, and service, and such little as they can spare, 
 by the lower orders, form by far the most impor- 
 
163 
 
 tant offerings that can be rendered to the cause of 
 charity—that pauperism is the last and the worst 
 expedient to which they can betake themselves, 
 and which ought never to be tried but in cases of 
 extreme urgency, and when all the previous re¬ 
 sources have been exhausted*—Let any philan¬ 
 thropist go forth among the people, and having 
 earned their confidence, let him fill his mouth with 
 such arguments as these; and he will never find 
 them tobe an unwilling or an impracticable auditory. 
 To charge such a regimen as this with coldness and 
 hardihood, and remoteness from all sympathy with 
 human feeling, is a gross paralogism on all truth 
 and all nature. It is true, that under its influence', 
 the expenses of public charity may lessen every 
 year—yet so far from this being any indication of 
 extinct tenderness, or frozen sensibilities in the 
 midst of us, it may serve most authentically to 
 mark the growth of all those better habits, and of 
 all those neighbourly regards, which ensure to ev¬ 
 ery parochial family the greatest comfort and the 
 greatest contentment, that in the present state of 
 humanity, are attainable. 
 
 We have now breathed in both these elements— 
 that of a parish, whose supplies for the poor were 
 enforced by stout legality; and that of a parish 
 
 * If those previous resources were brought rightly to hear on every case 
 of human suffering, they would anticipate the operations of pauperism al¬ 
 together. 
 
164 
 
 where this way of it has been totally superseded 
 by the gratuitous system: and, certainly, our feel¬ 
 ing is, that the air in which we now move, is of a 
 softer and more benignant quality than before. 
 Nor is it difficult to comprehend why, in this new 
 state of things, many asperities ought to have sub¬ 
 sided. When a people are more thrown upon 
 themselves, they soon find, that as it were by ex¬ 
 pression, they draw additionally more out of their 
 own proper resources, than they ever drew from 
 public charity—so as to be positively in circum¬ 
 stances of greater comfort and sufficiency than 
 ever. But more important still: Whatever of inter¬ 
 course there is between the rich and the poor un¬ 
 der this reformed economy, is purified of all that 
 soreness and bitterness which attach to the minis¬ 
 trations of charity, so long as the imagination of 
 a right is made to adhere to it. There no longer 
 remaineth this freezing ingredient, either to chill 
 the sympathies of the one party, or the gratitude 
 of the other. And, on the whole, there is nothing 
 more certain, than that when compulsory pauper¬ 
 ism is abolished in any parish, and the interest it 
 would provide for is left to the operation of spon¬ 
 taneous charity, then does the tone of this little 
 commonwealth become less harsh and less refrac¬ 
 tory than it was—a kindlier spirit is felt through¬ 
 out; and it soon becomes palpable as day, under 
 which of the two systems it is that we have the 
 more humanized, and under which of them it 
 
165 
 
 is that we have the more hard-favoured popula¬ 
 tion.* 
 
 • It was by an unlooked-for coincidence, tiiat while engaged in tile pre¬ 
 paration of this Chapter, tile Author had to make his appearance at tile 
 bar of the General Assembly, which is tile supreme Ecclesiastical Court in 
 Scotland; and bad there to advocate his measures for the reformation of the 
 pauperism of St John’s. He has since published tile Speech which was 
 delivered on that occasion; and by a long appendix to it, has relieved him¬ 
 self of much of that matter, which, perhaps, would have been of too local and 
 ephemeral a character for a more general work. There, in p. 59—fi t, the 
 reader will find a few of those more minute and specific instances of paro¬ 
 chial management; which may serve, perhaps, to appease the humanity that 
 had been before offended, by the imagination of a certain cold-blooded severi¬ 
 ty in the system, that went to explode all public charity. To that list of 
 instances, we shall just subjoin one more, for the purpose of correcting 
 another imagination that lies in the opposite extreme from the one advert¬ 
 ed to in the text. 
 
 We have heard it insinuated, then, by another and distinct class of sceptics 
 from tile former, that we have hitherto succeeded in our experiment not 
 by the harshness of our treatment, but by its excessive kindness and liber¬ 
 ality. The suspicion is, that there may be a sort of secret or underhand 
 juggle on the part of our agents—as if we appeased hy stealth the cla¬ 
 mours of our else dissatisfied population, and bribed their acquiescence in an 
 economy, to the success and establishment of which, we have so strongly 
 committed ourselves. Here, too, our antagonists arc just as wide of the 
 truth, as in all their other attempts to explain away the undoubted prosper¬ 
 ity of this much questioned and much resisted enterprise. There can be no 
 doubt, that the abolition of legal charity would be instantly followed up by 
 tile growth and tile more busily extended operation of private and personal 
 charity; and this so far from being an argument against the abolition, is one 
 of the best and most effective considerations in its favour. But most as¬ 
 suredly, the far promptest and most productive sympathy that were then 
 called into action, would be the mutual sympathy of neighbours and resi- 
 denters among the population themselves: and. we should deem this of 
 tenfold greater importance to the poor, than the whole amount of bene- 
 
166 
 
 The parish of St. John’s is no longer solitary in 
 regard of its pauperism. The Outer-Kirk parish 
 
 Some of them, we are proud to say, have nought but personal worth anil 
 wisdom to qualify them for the charge which they have kindly undertaken. 
 We do not hold the wealth of our office-bearers, to be at all indispensable 
 to the prosperous management even of the poorest districts in the parish; 
 and, if we are sensible of any difference between those proportions where 
 relief might be conveyed to the indigent in this way, and those other pro¬ 
 portions where there can be none, we would say, that upon the whole, the 
 latter are in the more quiescent and satisfied state of the two; and that 
 whatever outbreakings of rapacity, or of undue expectation have occurred, 
 come chiefly, as was to he anticipated, from the former. 
 
 Yet we cannot, therefore, say. that it is the part of an elder or deacon, 
 if he have of this world’s goods, to shut his bowels of compassion against 
 any actual case of necessity that comes before him. Tliis were his duty as 
 a Christian man in any condition of life; and there is nought surely in his 
 assumption of a Christian office, nor is there ought in his peculiar relation¬ 
 ship with those who have their geographical position upon his assigned ter¬ 
 ritory, that should reverse his obligations, or lay an arrest on the spontaneous 
 flow of his liberalities towards them. It is his part, precisely as it is that 
 of others, to do good unto all as he has opportunity—and should the oppor¬ 
 tunity be more patent and of more frequent reiteration within the district 
 of his superintendence than beyond it; this, of course, decides the question 
 for him, as to the place and the people, to whom his private beneficence 
 will take its most abundant and natural direction. Let human sympathy 
 come as oft as it may into contact with human suffering, and let what 
 will come out of it. To qualify a man for this peculiar charge, it is 
 surely not necessary to put violence upon his faculties or his feelings; to lay 
 his heart under some process of artificial coagulation; or to hear down the 
 workings of his own free inclination towards any act of kindness or liberality 
 among the families of his population, that with the same converse, and the 
 same observation, he would have been prompted to among other families. 
 But if not necessary to thwart his benevolent propensities by laying an in¬ 
 terdict upon them, neither is it necessary to urge them onward by any ar¬ 
 tificial stimulant whatever. Let a philantliropist but assume several hun¬ 
 dreds of a contiguous population, and let him move amongst them daily, if 
 he will, not however in the ostensible character of an almoner, but of a 
 friend—and he will not, in the prosecution of his labours, meet with more of 
 solicitation, because of their temporal wants, than lie will know dearly and 
 
167 
 
 of Glasgow has also made its conclusive separation 
 from the Town Hospital; and it did so, on more 
 
 good Olid to communicate, in his own person, still lie will not find that lie 
 stands either in an unmanageable or in a ruinously expensive relationship 
 towards them. He may have to describe an initial period-of simplicity and 
 alarm upon liis own part, and, perhaps, of occasional exaggeration upon 
 theirs. But after that he 1ms been fairly disciplined into a sound experience 
 upon the subject, and tile matter has been reduced under his hands to its just 
 
 and rational dimensions, then will he find how true is the exclamation of 
 Hannah More, “ 0 how cheap is charity, O how expensive is vanity!’’ 
 
 Now’, if an individual could thus stay the importunities of a whole dis¬ 
 trict, this of itself were argument enough of such capabilities among the 
 people themselves, as marked pauperism to he a tiling uncalled for. All 
 that lie could ever do on the uttermost stretch of his liberality, were so mere 
 a bagatelle to the subsistence of bis many families, as to form in itself no 
 substitute at all for tile provisions of a legal charity; and if, therefore, he 
 without inconvenience, or even so much as the feeling of a sacrifice, could 
 
168 
 
 generous terms, and at a bolder adventure, than 
 characterized the outset of the enterprise in St. 
 John’s. For there was no excess of its Sessional 
 
 more than 100 miles, and were not able to transport him in that careful and 
 sheltered way, which the state of his health had made so requisite. In these 
 circumstances, the deacon certainly did give his best attention to the pecu¬ 
 liar exigencies of the case; and, among other things, made interest with 
 the proprietor of a stage-coach, to allow him an inside birth for the fare of 
 an outside passenger. Such easy services in behalf of a sufferer as these, 
 are never lost on that little neighbourhood of sympathy and observation by 
 which he is surrounded: And, accordingly, in the present instance, neigh¬ 
 bours did lend their most walling co-operation to this labour of love: and a 
 subscription had only to he headed, and set a-going amongst themselves; 
 and, while the sum that was thus raised formed by far the most precious 
 contribution to the necessities of the case, it also carried the gratifying evi¬ 
 dence along with it, of the power that lies in a little leaven of well-timed 
 charity—how leavening the entire mass, and working its rnra quality through¬ 
 out all the members of it, it can thus enlist upon its side the alacrity and 
 tile spare means of a whole population. It was not by the importation of 
 money from without, but by the healtliful operation of motives and princi¬ 
 ples within that the difficulty was provided for. A parochial agent may he 
 in humble circumstances: but there are other tokens by which good-will is 
 manifested than the giving of silver and gold. Such as he has he may give— 
 his advice—the aid of his time and trouble—and on the strength of these, 
 he will earn such a moral ascendency as shall stimulate like processes for 
 like emergencies, and call forth those powerful and harmonized efforts which 
 form an equivalent defence against all the extremities to which our species 
 are liable. It is thus, that a man of sense and of character may fearlessly 
 take upon himself the superintendence of a lot of population; and that, 
 without a farthing to bestow upon their necessities, but on the strength of 
 their inward capabilities alone, either rightly directed, or even left to their 
 undisturbed operation. Unless, by a blight on tile face of nature, or some 
 peculiar and extraordinary visitation, not one instance of starvation will 
 ever .occur amongst them. The tiling in the even and ordinary course of 
 human life is morally impossible. And while this ought not to set aside 
 among the rich, that ancient law of sympathy, which is coeval with na¬ 
 ture, and re-echoed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, throughout all its pages, 
 it ought certainly to set aside the provisions of a modem and artificial pau- 
 
169 
 
 revenue over its Sessional expenditure. The ex¬ 
 pense of poor that were upon it at the time of its 
 disruption from the old system, was about equal to 
 its collections 5 and yet, without any surplus, did 
 it simply withdraw itself from the wealthier insti¬ 
 tution, and undertake both to send no more pau¬ 
 pers there, and to meet, upon its own resources, 
 all the new cases that offered from then- own popu¬ 
 lation. In defect of all present pecuniary means 
 for such an achievement, it first instituted a scruti¬ 
 ny of the existing poor upon its roll; and then 
 stimulated the weekly collection by the announce¬ 
 ment of their new system from the pulpit; and, 
 last of all, resolved on a most strict and careful in¬ 
 quiry into the claims and circumstances of all fu¬ 
 ture applicants. Its experience was in striking 
 harmony with that of the Kirk-Session of St. 
 John’s in one particular. There took place a sud¬ 
 den diminution in the number of applications. 
 We should not like to be too minute, or too 
 prying of inspection into the concerns of others: 
 But it is not too much to say in the general, 
 that, by our latest information, they were going 
 on most prosperously, and most hopefully; and 
 we feel confident, that by the dying away of 
 the old cases belonging to that parish, which are 
 on the funds of the Town Hospital, and by the 
 arrest that has been laid on. the influx of all new 
 cases to that institution, there will another large 
 department of Glasgow be speedily cleared of all 
 its compulsory pauperism. 
 
 Vot.. 11. v 
 
170 
 
 The General Session has now ceased altogether 
 from its charge of the weekly collections at the 
 church-doors of any of the parishes in Glasgow. 
 Each Kirk-Session retains its own—and those of 
 them that need to have the expenses of their 
 pauperism supplemented by foreign aid, stand con¬ 
 nected simply and exclusively with the Town Hos¬ 
 pital. The complexity of the old mechanism is 
 in so far reduced, as that the combination of the 
 parishes, one with another, in all the matters of 
 ordinary administration for the poor, is now bro¬ 
 ken up. And things are certainly more manage¬ 
 able than before, for the work of ulterior refor¬ 
 mation—in that each parish may, without thwart¬ 
 ing, or opposition from its neighbours, negotiate its 
 own separate and peculiar arrangement with the 
 Town Hospital. 
 
 There are ten parishes in Glasgow. Two of 
 them, St. John’s and the Outer Kirk, have reached, 
 or are in certain progress, toward the ultimate con¬ 
 dition of parishes that are under a strict gratuitous 
 economy. To be delivered of the assessment, it 
 is necessary that the remaining eight parishes 
 should be reduced to this condition also. It so 
 happened of three of these, viz. the North West, 
 St. George’s, and St. James’, that the expense of 
 their Sessional poor was beneath the amount of 
 their weekly collections—so that, on the dissolution 
 of the General Session, they found themselves all 
 at once in fair circumstances for separating from 
 
171 
 
 the Town Hospital, and each attempting its own 
 pauperism single-handed. And, accordingly, they 
 have partially, or rather almost totally, begun their 
 own independent expenditure on their own inde¬ 
 pendent resources. There is still, we understand, 
 a remainder of occasional aid, that more by the 
 force of habit than of necessity, they still conti¬ 
 nue to receive from the Town Hospital. But, 
 with this exception, and an exception that could 
 well be dispensed with, they take the whole of 
 then new pauperism upon their own funds: And 
 having now ceased the transmission of their cases 
 to the fund by assessment, they have only to wait 
 the'disappearance of their Hospital pauperism by 
 death, when they too shall arrive at the desired 
 landing-place. 
 
 And here would we urge it on the Kirk-Ses¬ 
 sions of these three parishes, how desirable it were, 
 that they acted on the principles of a total and con¬ 
 clusive separation from the Town Hospital; that 
 they ceased from every sort of intromission with 
 it; and swept away even the last vestiges of depen¬ 
 dence, by which the need or importance of such 
 an institution could at all be recognized. It were 
 greatly better, if in as far as their poor too are con¬ 
 cerned, the faintest shadow of argument for a 
 compulsory provision were utterly done away. 
 Pity it were, that for the sake of a few rare and 
 trifling extraordinaries, the whole burden of which 
 they could most easily take upon themselves, they 
 
172 
 
 should forfeit that place of entire and absolute in¬ 
 dependence, which they are so well entitled to oc¬ 
 cupy, and so abundantly able to maintain. In the 
 present style of their operations, they are laying 
 no material burden on the fund by assessment; 
 and why keep up even so much as a nominal ob¬ 
 ligation to it, or offer any sort of quit-rent acknow¬ 
 ledgment at all, to a superiority that ought now to 
 be cast off, and suffered to fall into utter and irre¬ 
 coverable desuetude. Were it a mere question of 
 complimentary deference to the Town Hospital, 
 this might willingly be rendered. But it ought 
 never to be forgotten, that any accession, however 
 trivial, to the need of its services, bears along with 
 it an accession to the need of its existence. It is 
 because of this, that the acceptance even of the 
 slightest boon from that institution is greatly to be 
 deprecated. The homage may be insignificant— 
 but it is not innocent—because it will be magnified 
 into an arrangement for the continuance of a sys¬ 
 tem that ought to be razed from the foundation. 
 Pauperism will never be brought under a right 
 economy, till all that is legal and compulsory in 
 its administrations, shall be not regulated, but 
 destroyed. At all events, with these three par¬ 
 ishes, there do exist, in their present means, and 
 with but one step more, in their recent change of 
 management, the capabilities of their own entire 
 independence—in which, should they persevere for 
 a very few years, then, by the operation of death 
 
173 
 
 on their present hospital cases, shall we behold 
 half the domain of Glasgow altogether cleared of 
 its compulsory pauperism. 
 
 But there still remain five parishes, which though 
 not now connected with each other by the inter¬ 
 medium of a General Session, are still connected 
 each by its own separate tie of dependence and 
 obligation with the Town Hospital. The expen¬ 
 ses of their Sessional poor, at the resolution of the 
 old system into its separate parts, went beyond 
 their receipts by collection; and each of the Ses¬ 
 sions has this difference made good to it by distinct 
 supplies of money from that institution. And be¬ 
 sides this, the transference of paupers goes on, as 
 formerly, from the Sessional to the Hospital lists; 
 so that there still remain five open ducts of convey¬ 
 ance from about one half of Glasgow to the fund by 
 assessment. The truth is, that without some such 
 initial arrangement as we have all along recom¬ 
 mended, the present state of matters was quite 
 unavoidable. None of these Sessions had the means 
 to defray the allowances, even of the existing pau¬ 
 pers upon then- roll—and far less was it to be ex¬ 
 pected, that they would undertake each the bur¬ 
 den of its whole new pauperism, without the 
 conveyance of its future excesses to the Town 
 Hospital. They were already labouring under the 
 weight of a present excess; and without a special 
 act of accommodation on the part of the Town 
 Hospital, towards each of the parishes so circum- 
 
174 
 
 stanced, their emancipation from compulsory pau¬ 
 perism appears to be impracticable. 
 
 Were these parishes barely relieved by the Town 
 Hospital of the overplus of their Sessional poor— 
 were so many made to pass into the state of its 
 out-pensioners, and so many left on each Session, 
 as should just, with their present allowances, ab¬ 
 sorb the whole of its own proper revenue, we think 
 that even on this arrangement, there is not one of 
 them which could not, with the buoyancy of then- 
 new felt and conscious independence, so stimulate 
 its means upon the one hand, and its management 
 upon the other, as to weather the demands of its 
 new pauperism, aye and until its old pauperism, by 
 the operation of mortality, had all been swept away. 
 But we should be inclined to grant a more favour¬ 
 able outset—to pass still more of their Sessional 
 paupers into the lists of the Town Hospital, and 
 perhaps, in some instances, to relieve them of the 
 whole weight of their existing pauperism. At all 
 events, we should rather, for the sake of their 
 encouragement, that they started with an excess 
 of revenue above their present expenditure—but 
 with the full understanding, that to their treat¬ 
 ment of all the future applications, we looked for 
 the conclusive deliverance of the Town Hospital 
 from the influx of all new pauperism. We again 
 affirm our unqualified confidence in their success; 
 and that nothing is wanting but the consent of the 
 proper parties to these arrangements, for the extir- 
 
175 
 
 pation of compulsory pauperism from the whole of 
 Glasgow. 
 
 The vices of sue]; a system as that under which 
 they are now acting, we have already endeavoured 
 to expose. Nothing can be worse, than to place 
 the management of pauperism with one set of ad¬ 
 ministrators, and the finding of ways and means 
 for the expense of it with another. They, more 
 especially, who stand at that place where the first 
 movement is made by the population towards pub¬ 
 lic charity, should be under every possible excite¬ 
 ment to a close investigation; and, above all, to a 
 diligent use of those various expedients of preven¬ 
 tion, by which the application may either be stayed 
 or be postponed. Now this is the very place that 
 is occupied by the members of Kirk-Sessions in 
 Glasgow—and a more effectual method could 
 not be devised of opening the widest possible door 
 for the influx of new cases, than to charge a Kirk- 
 Session with the primary examinations of pauper¬ 
 ism, and to lay the ultimate expense of it on 
 another institution. In these circumstances, it is 
 not only a most conceivable, but a most likely 
 thing, that disunited though the Town Hospital 
 should be from the charge of five of the city pa¬ 
 rishes, there will no sensible relief be felt, because 
 of an almost instantaneous compensation in the 
 augmented expense of the remaining five that ad¬ 
 here to them. The disease which had been cleared 
 away from one half of the domain, might, and 
 
176 
 
 from the pure operation of the faulty economy 
 alone, gather to such increased virulence in the 
 remaining half, as to perpetuate an unalleviated 
 and, perhaps, growing burden upon the communi¬ 
 ty—and cause the ignorant and unthinking to won¬ 
 der, why pauperism should be at once so reduced 
 in its geographical dimensions, and so unreduced 
 in its demands on the still assessed and heavy lad¬ 
 en citizens. 
 
 Even, though one-half of Glasgow should, by 
 the adoption of the parochial system, free itself 
 of all dependence on the Town Hospital, yet let 
 the other half remain on its present footing with 
 that institution, and nothing more likely than that 
 the assessment over the whole city, shall not only 
 maintain its present amount, but shall press for¬ 
 ward as urgently to its own increase as ever. All 
 will depend on the practical administration of it. 
 Should those who are in the management feel the 
 impulse of a rival spirit with the emancipated pa¬ 
 rishes, they may certainly, by dint of strenuous¬ 
 ness, and of determined endeavour, keep down, 
 and even reduce their expenditure. But, on the 
 other hand, it is equally possible, that by a very 
 slight relaxation of care and vigilance on their 
 part, the demand may be just as overbearing from 
 that fragment of the population wherewith they 
 shall then have to do, as formerly from the whole 
 mass. In affirming this, we do not charge the 
 office-bearers of a compulsory pauperism, either 
 
177 
 
 with incapacity, or with any defect of conscien¬ 
 tious regard to the public interest. The charge that 
 we prefer is not against them, but against the ar¬ 
 rangements of that economy, wherewith it is their 
 misfortune, and not their fault, that they are im¬ 
 plicated. They must, in fact, have more of care 
 and of principle, than are to be looked for in aver¬ 
 age humanity, should they be able to make head 
 against the disadvantages of their most awkward 
 and ill-assorted system. The falling away of two 
 or more parishes from their superintendence, will, 
 doubtless, be a relief to them in the mean time. 
 But nothing is more natural, than that the very feel¬ 
 ing of relief should induce a certain, though almost 
 insensible remissness of practice, and a consequent 
 facility in the admittance of new cases from that 
 part of the territory which is still attached to them. 
 The very men who would make a stand and an ef¬ 
 fort to prevent any addition to the burden of the 
 community, might not feel just so intense a desir¬ 
 ousness for the purpose of lightening the burden 
 beneath that degree to which the community are 
 already habituated. And from the moment, that 
 they let down, though by ever so little, the de¬ 
 fences of caution, and watchfulness, and strict in¬ 
 vestigation, from that moment they will let in ad¬ 
 ditional pauperism. They may soon draw around 
 them, from their remaining parishes, such a force 
 and vehemency of new applications, as shall keep 
 up, in its former magnitude, the whole business of 
 their administration ; and then the wonted pressure 
 
 Vm„ II. Z 
 
178 
 
 of demand from without, shall be in its old state of 
 equilibrium, with the wonted re-action of prompt 
 and vigorous resistance from within. 
 
 Should this be the actual result of the late 
 changes that have taken place in Glasgow—should 
 a few of it parishes have wrought back their way 
 to the gratuitous system, and the rest be still found 
 as burdensome as formerly were all the parishes 
 put together, we cannot think of a more impres¬ 
 sive exhibition of the truth of our whole argu¬ 
 ment. To every considerate beholder, it must 
 carry a demonstration along with it of the effici¬ 
 ency of the parochial administration on the one 
 hand, and of the ruinous, and irrepressible, and 
 altogether indefinite mischief that lies in a general 
 and compulsory system, upon the other. It will 
 prove, that wherever the principle of legal charity 
 is acted upon, there is in it a creative power of 
 evil, which can be kept under by no device of 
 management, and be restrained by no limitation of 
 territory—a virus that will scarcely admit of being 
 mitigated, and from which society can never be 
 delivered, but by its total extirpation. 
 
 Yet such is the blind impetuosity wherewith 
 every suggestion for the reformation of existing 
 abuses is liable to be opposed—such is the sensitive, 
 instead of the rational style of that hostility, through 
 which the course of improvement has frequently 
 to force its way—so resolute often are the preju¬ 
 dice and the pre-determination that urge on the 
 unreflecting cry of its adversaries, that it were no 
 
179 
 
 astonishment to us, though a phenomenon so pal¬ 
 pably decisive of the tendency of assessments, as 
 that of them continued increase on a curtailed ter¬ 
 ritory, should have an altogether contrary inter¬ 
 pretation given to it; and it be even appealed to as 
 an argument for recurrence to the old system, that 
 in spite of all the abridgments which have been 
 made upon it, the public burden is still unlightened, 
 and no relief hath come out of the boasted innova¬ 
 tions. 
 
 It is not he who is most versant in the detail, and 
 drudgery, and penmanship of an old system—it is 
 not he who is most qualified to pronounce on the 
 merits or demerits of a new. All familiar though 
 he be with the records, and the documentary in¬ 
 formations of office, he may still be an utter 
 stranger to the alone competent arena for the de¬ 
 termination of this controversy. The experience 
 of a mere practitioner in some of the inner de¬ 
 partments of a poor’s house, is totally dissimilar 
 from the experience of a diligent observer on the 
 hearts, and habits, and household economy of the 
 poor—and it were well if this distinction was more 
 adverted to by those who are loudest in their de¬ 
 mand for practical wisdom, and in their outcry 
 against the rash and confident anticipations of the¬ 
 ory. It is not the man who has wildered all his 
 days among the bye-tracts of error, it is not of 
 him that you would most readily inquire the high¬ 
 way to truth; and his very familiarity with the 
 windings and ambiguity of that labyrinth in which 
 
180 
 
 he long has been involved, forms in our mind 
 a presumption against any deliverance of his on the 
 question at issue. It is on this account, however, 
 that a ten-fold homage is due to him, who, though 
 nurtured from the infancy of his public life among 
 institutions that are wrong, has nevertheless, by 
 the pure force of a vigorous homebred sagacity, 
 seized upon and readily apprehended that which 
 is right. This is not wisdom aided by the lights 
 of a local or personal experience—but, much high¬ 
 er exhibition, it is wisdom forcing her way through 
 the besetting obstacles wherewith she was encom¬ 
 passed ; and evolving herself into the clear region 
 of day, through all the intricacies of a mechanism, 
 that only serves to cloud and to confuse the ap¬ 
 prehensions of ordinary men. This has been fine¬ 
 ly exemplified by the civil and municipal func¬ 
 tionaries of Glasgow—and, on closing our narrative 
 of the present state and future prospects of pau¬ 
 perism in that city, we gladly offer the meed of 
 our acknowledgments to men, without whose 
 prompt and intelligent concurrence, there might 
 never have been opened the only practicable ave¬ 
 nue to reformation. 
 
 The Barony of Glasgow is one of its suburb 
 parishes, and has now a population of more than 
 fifty thousand. There is something very instruc¬ 
 tive in the history of its pauperism. The assess¬ 
 ment was first resorted to in 1810 —much against 
 the advice and opinion of those who were most 
 
181 
 
 versant in the details of the administration for the 
 poor, antecedently to that period. We know not 
 on the one hand, how to quote a more decisive ex¬ 
 perience against the wisdom of a compulsory pro¬ 
 vision, even for a large and wholly manufacturing 
 population, than by appealing to the fact, that 
 till 1810, the expenditure of this parish, the most 
 populous in Scotland, seldom exceeded ,§£600 an¬ 
 nually—proving, that for the legal system of relief, 
 there exists no natural and permanent necessity, in 
 any circumstances whatever—though, after it is 
 once adopted, there will arise, in all circumstances, 
 an artificial necessity of its own creating, which 
 will furnish the advocates of pauperism with a 
 ready argument for its continuance. And we 
 know not, on the other hand, a more striking evi¬ 
 dence of the effect of an enlarged public charity, 
 to multiply its cases, and enlarge the boundaries of 
 its own operation, than that after 1810, the ex¬ 
 penditure became about five times greater than 
 before, in the short space of seven years. We 
 would put the question to those among the heri¬ 
 tors of the Barony, who were most in earnest for 
 the establishment of a poor’s rate, if they are sen¬ 
 sible of having made the slightest progress towards 
 the fulfilment of their benevolent anticipations— 
 Can they say, that the poor are at all better off, un¬ 
 der the present regime, than before?—or, that 
 they have landed their parish in a better economy 
 than that from which they have so recently de¬ 
 parted ? It is still time for them to retrace their 
 
182 
 
 movement—and not, most assuredly, for the sake 
 of their property, but for the sake of what is far 
 more valuable, the comfort and character of a nu¬ 
 merous population, would we like to see their 
 promptitude and vigour embarked on what some 
 might denounce as a cause of selfishness, but which, 
 in the most emphatic sense of the term, is indeed 
 a cause of true philanthropy and patriotism. 
 
 The following occurs to us as the proper steps 
 for the retracing movement that we now have sug¬ 
 gested. Let the church, and each of the three 
 chapels of ease, be permitted to retain their own 
 collections; and let each have a defined locality 
 annexed to it, within which it shall be the busi¬ 
 ness of the respective office-bearers to meet all the 
 demands of the new pauperism. There behooved 
 to be, at first, a slight extension of the assessment, 
 for the old pauperism, in order to make up for 
 this surrender of the church and chapel collections. 
 But for this there would be a speedy compensation 
 in the death of the existing paupers—for, mean¬ 
 while, from the districts that had been assigned to 
 the new managements, there would be no additional 
 cases transmitted to the compulsory fund. And 
 we repeat, that it will be due not to the want of 
 means, but to the want of management, if the 
 collections, at these various places of worship, be 
 not found adequate to all the fair demands of their 
 respective territories. 
 
 But even after the present system is broken up 
 thus far, the separate managements would still 
 
183 
 
 be too unwieldy.* These could gradually be re¬ 
 lieved by the erection of additional chapels, a 
 
 * Some years ago, Dr. Mitchell of Andcrston, a most estimable and 
 highly respectable minister of the United Secession, offered to undertake 
 the pauperism of a locality in the Barony parish, with the collections at 
 his Chapel, on an equitable condition of relief, from the assessment, to the 
 members of his congregation. If this offer were repeated, and followed up 
 by similar offers, in other quarters of the parish, it might he the germ of a 
 very important reformation. Should the dissenting ministers in large towns, 
 consent to assume a locality, they would find, most assuredly, nothing op¬ 
 pressive in the management of its new pauperism. For the small part of 
 their collections, that they should find it necessary to expend, they would 
 soon obtain compensation, in the relief of their wealthier hearers, from the 
 assessment that is now levied upon them. And wq should look, in time, 
 for a compensation still more gratifying. Die office-bearers of each dissent¬ 
 ing chapel, would, under this arrangement, be exposed to frequent calls of 
 intercourse with the population of their assigned districts—and their right 
 of entrance and inquiry, would soon come to he recognised throughout all 
 the families—and many are the expedients and facilities that might thus oc¬ 
 cur, for carrying the lessons of Christianity amongst them—and the ministers 
 of our Secession would instantly be translated into the full benefit and in¬ 
 fluence of locality—and they might earn in consequence a rich moral and 
 spiritual harvest, wherewith to uphold and recruit their various congre¬ 
 gations. And so little jealousy do we entertain of this progress, that we 
 should rejoice in it as a precursor to those liberal and enlightened views, 
 which have been promulgated by the venerable pastor of the Barony. The 
 day is perhaps coming, when localities primarily assumed by Presbyterian 
 ministers of the Dissent, for the reduction of pauperism, may, at length, be 
 transformed into parishes; and, they retaining their own style of patronage, 
 and tolerating us in ours, may, at length, with the only important difference 
 betwixt us thus compromised, consent to sit down beside us, under the 
 canopy of our national establishment. 
 
 But, if such be the repulsion between the zealots of the establishment on 
 the one hand, and the zealots of dissenterism on the other, that any entire 
 co-alition of the parties is nauseous to both, and even the first step of the 
 
 it is peculiarly incumbent on the 
 this mighty instrument, to turn it i 
 
 antages 
 
184 
 
 measure that might be advocated on higher grounds 
 than the advantage of a reduced and rectified pau¬ 
 perism. Yet we should rejoice, if on this latter im¬ 
 pulse only, men of wealth and influence could be 
 prevailed upon to lend their aid to a cause, that 
 has better considerations to recommend it, than 
 even its subserviency to the best of all civic refor¬ 
 mations. 
 
 title. The extinction of pauperism is only one of those advantages and bles¬ 
 sings, to the achievement of which the present apparatus of our church 
 establishment is very nearly commensurate, hut which would be prodigious¬ 
 ly accelerated by the multiplication of chapels, or the subdivision of par- 
 
185 
 
 CHAP. XIII. 
 
 ON THE DIFFICULTIES AND EVILS WHICH ADHERE 
 EVEN TO THE BEST CONDITION OF SCOTTISH PAU¬ 
 PERISM. 
 
 The Gorbals of Glasgow forms the other of its 
 suburb parishes. Its inhabitants amount to up¬ 
 wards of twenty-two thousand, whose occupations 
 are wholly of a mercantile and manufacturing cha¬ 
 racter. Unlike to the Barony, it has no landed 
 wealth whence it might derive those supplies for the 
 relief of indigence, which many deem to be in¬ 
 dispensable among families that are subject to all 
 the vicissitudes attendant upon trade. This, then, 
 in the eyes of many, were the likeliest of parishes 
 for a compulsory pauperism, and a rapidly grow¬ 
 ing assessment—and did there really exist any natu¬ 
 ral necessity for such a provision, one should think 
 that of all other places, it was here where the ne¬ 
 cessity would be most urgently and imperiously felt, 
 and where a poor’s rate would be most unavoid¬ 
 able. But if, instead of this, the Gorbals shall be 
 found to have kept the simple parochial economy 
 that was bequeathed to us from our ancestors, and 
 to have flourished under it—this might well lead 
 us to suspect, whether after all, a system of pub¬ 
 lic and legalised charity, be essential to the well¬ 
 being of any population. 
 
186 
 
 This parish never has admitted an assessment— 
 and the whole of its sessional expenditure for the 
 poor, is defrayed from a revenue of about .§£400 an¬ 
 nually. So little, in fact, has the circumstance of 
 its being an exclusively manufacturing parish, 
 brought along with it the necessity for a poor’s 
 rate, that its expenditure is fully as limited as in 
 many of the most retired and wholly agricultural 
 parishes of the north. It does not amount to £25 
 a-year for each thousand of the population—and 
 yet, on the general blush and aspect of this indus¬ 
 trious community, may it be confidently affirmed, 
 that it not only offers to our notice an aggregate 
 of families, in every way as well-conditioned, and 
 as exempt from the rigours of extreme wretched¬ 
 ness, as are those of the assessed city to which it 
 is contiguous; but that it will bear, in this respect, 
 a comparison with the most heavily assessed towns, 
 in any of the great manufacturing districts of Eng¬ 
 land. There must be a mockery in the magnifi¬ 
 cence of those public charities, which have not 
 to all appearance bettered the circumstances, or 
 advanced the comforts of the people among whom 
 they are instituted, beyond those of a people 
 where they are utterly unknown. And, when we 
 look to such a parish as the Gorbals, still an un¬ 
 impaired monument of the olden time, though in 
 full exposure to all those failures and fluctuations 
 of commerce, which form the chief argument on 
 the side of modern pauperism—the conclusion is 
 irresistible, that had there been enough of wisdom 
 
187 
 
 •jn the other towns and parishes of Scotland for 
 withstanding the first introduction of a poor’s rate 
 among them, there would have been as little of 
 unreached and unrelieved poverty in each as there 
 is at this moment; and the charity of good will, 
 unaided by the charity of compulsion, would have 
 sufficed, at least as well as now both do together, 
 for all the wants and sufferings of our land. 
 
 It may be thought by some a little gratuitous to 
 affirm, at a glance, that the lower orders of unas¬ 
 sessed Gorbals are in circumstances of as great 
 comfort and sufficiency, as are those of the assessed 
 Barony, and of the still more heavily assessed Glas¬ 
 gow. But on this subject there was a very inter¬ 
 esting numerical exhibition afforded in the year 
 1817, a year of such low trade and miserable 
 wages, that it was deemed necessary to raise an 
 extraordinary subscription, of more than j£10,000, 
 for the relief of our operative population, both 
 in the city and suburb parishes. The population 
 of Gorbals is greatly inferior to either that of 
 Barony or of Glasgow—being somewhat beneath 
 one-half of the former, and one-third of the latter. 
 But the whole relief awarded to it, by the commit¬ 
 tee, did not come to one-third of the relief granted 
 to the Barony, nor to one-seventh of that granted 
 to Glasgow. So that, in the judgment of practical 
 men, sitting in examination over the number and 
 urgency of all the applications that actually came be¬ 
 fore them, the distress of the Gorbals, in the season 
 of a great common calamity, was far short of that of 
 
188 
 
 the other two . portions of the manufacturing com¬ 
 munity that were alike involved in it. And, if we 
 -are to estimate the relative degrees of sufficiency 
 in ordinary times, by the inverse degrees of suf¬ 
 fering in a time of extraordinary depression, there 
 is room to believe, that the establishment of a com¬ 
 pulsory provision has not only not advanced the 
 condition of the labouring classes, but has positive¬ 
 ly aggravated the hardships to which they are lia- 
 -ble. It has, in fact, unsettled their habits of eco¬ 
 nomy and foresight; and, cruellest of all imposi¬ 
 tions, has misled them, by lying promises, from 
 the only true source of a people’s comfort ancl 
 independence. 
 
 But before we leave the instance of Gorbals, 
 we must advert to one observable peculiarity in 
 the administration of its pauperism. It is well 
 known, that in Glasgow, the elders, generally 
 speaking, live at a considerable distance from their 
 respective proportions—so as to have but a very 
 slight acquaintance, and but very rare and occa¬ 
 sional intercourse with the families. In Gorbals it 
 is not so. It has been the practice there, when 
 •a vacancy occurs in the eldership, to seek for a 
 successor among the inhabitants of the local dis¬ 
 trict that falls to be provided. It is true, that this 
 arrangement is liable to be disturbed to a certain 
 extent, by changes of residence. But still upon 
 the whole, the sessional affairs of the parish have 
 the benefit of being conducted by a residing agen¬ 
 cy, where many of the members have their own 
 
189 
 
 dwelling-places within the territory of their own 
 special superintendence. Now, were there any 
 urgent and indispensable call for a large charitable 
 revenue to a large population, or any glaring mal¬ 
 adjustment between so small a public expenditure, 
 on the one hand, and so vast a multitude of arti- 
 zans and labourers on the other, as we find in the 
 parish of Gorbals—then the best thing for its ses¬ 
 sional administrators would be to live at the greatest 
 possible distance from their respective territories— 
 that so they might evade the force and vehemence 
 of the many applications with which they might 
 be otherwise encompassed. It must be a puzzling 
 phenomenon to all who strenuously advocate the 
 cause of pauperism, that in the Gorbals we should 
 behold a parish with upwards of twenty thousand 
 people served, and, on the whole, satisfied, by a 
 public expenditure of about £400 a-year. Now, 
 were a result so marvellous in their eyes brought 
 about by any dexterous or unfair juggle, surely 
 the right policy for the operators thereof would be 
 to retreat as far as they could from all converse, and 
 observation, and criticism on the part of the com¬ 
 mon people—and we should behold the elders of 
 this parish, each skulking in distance and conceal¬ 
 ment from the clamour of unappeased families, 
 and the remonstrance and outcry of their sympa¬ 
 thizing neighbourhood. Instead of which, they 
 place themselves fearlessly down in the very midst 
 of all these possibilities; and on their slender 
 means do they brave an encounter with all the real 
 
190 
 
 or imagined poverty that is around them; and 
 surely if there were an outrageous shortcoming, on 
 their part, from the fair and honest claims of the vi¬ 
 cinity in which they dwelt, they could not have 
 the toleration, and much less the esteem that we 
 doubt not they enjoy. It is a truly instructive ex¬ 
 hibition, to witness the solicitude of the able and 
 experienced minister of that parish, for elders who 
 shall have their personal occupancy each within the 
 limits of that district which is assigned to him as 
 the field of his labours. Did he feel burdened by 
 the inadequacy of his parochial means to his paro¬ 
 chial necessities, it would be his policy to have el¬ 
 ders as much beyond the reach of his population as 
 possible, rather than to have them placed at the dis¬ 
 tance of a walk of five minutes from one and all 
 of the families. It would be his interest, that the ad¬ 
 ministrators of this humble revenue never could 
 be found, rather than be found, as they now are, 
 at all times; because they generally live upon the 
 domain of their own jurisdiction, and mingle 
 hourly and familiarly with the people of their own 
 charge. So to station these parochial office¬ 
 bearers, each within his own portion of the mass 
 of parochial pauperism, is one of the closest and 
 most satisfying applications that can well be made 
 of the touch-stone of experience to this question. 
 There can be no blinking of the question with 
 such a treatment of it. And the thing that has 
 been proved, or rather the thing that has been 
 found in consequence, is, that the way of bring- 
 
191 
 
 ing pauperism down to its right dimensions, is 
 to face, and not to flee from it—that, instead of 
 starving it by unmanfully running away, the 
 better method of reducing it is by proximity and 
 thorough investigation, to probe it to the utter¬ 
 most—that the nearer you come to it, it dwindles 
 the more into insignificance before you—that it 
 grows into real magnitude by the distance of its ad¬ 
 ministrators, as well as grows into a still greater 
 apparent magnitude, when seen through the me¬ 
 dium of distance by beholders—but, that from 
 thence it may, by personal approximation and in¬ 
 tercourse, be followed back again into the nonen¬ 
 tity from which it never would have sprung, had 
 it not been conjured up by the wand of legis¬ 
 lation. 
 
 Wherever there is jugglery between two parties, 
 there is disguise with the one or the other of them 
 —and disguise is certainly favoured by the mutual 
 distance at which they stand. When the parochial 
 office-bearers and the poor, mingle so intimately 
 together, as in Gorbals, and a cheap administra¬ 
 tion is the result of it, we infer that this is all 
 which is genuinely required by the real state and 
 exigencies of the population. But when they 
 stand more widely apart the one from the other, 
 as in Glasgow, and a profuse or expensive adminis¬ 
 tration comes out of it, we should say of this, 
 that it was partly owing to a delusion between the 
 parties, because of their intervening distance. So 
 that, instead of inferring from the moderate ex- 
 
192 
 
 penditure of Gorbals, that any juggle bait; been 
 practised there on those who apply for public cha¬ 
 rity, we should rather infer, from the profuse ex¬ 
 penditure of Glasgow, that a juggle is in daily 
 practice and operation there, on those who dis¬ 
 pense it. 
 
 Now we think that by the retracing process, which 
 in our former chapters we have so often explained,* 
 there is not an assessed parish in Scotland which 
 does not admit of being conducted back again to 
 that state from which the Gorbals never has de¬ 
 parted. And yet, it ought not to be concealed 
 that there are evils and difficulties even in the 
 very best condition of Scottish pauperism. It has 
 done less mischief than the pauperism of England, 
 only because less outrageous in its deviation from 
 the system of a free charity, prompted by nature, 
 and stimulated as much as it may by the spirit of 
 Christianity. But there is still a taint and a mis¬ 
 chief belonging to it, which it would be well to 
 expose—and that, both injustice to the real truth 
 and philosophy of the subject, and also for the sake 
 of our southern neighbours, many of whom have 
 been misled into an unqualified veneration for the 
 economy of our Scottish parishes. We do con¬ 
 ceive that the overgrown pauperism of England is 
 reducible; but we think that a still better landing- 
 place might be provided for it, than even our own 
 
 See Vol. II. Chap. XI. p. 131. 
 
193 
 
 parochial administration. It is good in every 
 reformation to point well from the very.outset.:. 
 And if such a movement of reformation, on the 
 part of England, shall ever be attempted, it were 
 certainly right that the best of possible directions 
 should be given to it; and, instead of a change 
 from the more to the less imperfect, it were de¬ 
 sirable that the line of regress from its present 
 system should be so drawn, as to terminate in that 
 system which is most accordant with the universal 
 and abiding principles of our nature. We are 
 aware of many in England, who would rejoice in 
 a translation from their own corrupt and oppressive 
 method of public charity, to the comparatively 
 light expenditure of the North. But if any tran¬ 
 slation is to be adventured on, and the hazards of a 
 great revolution in our domestic policy are to be 
 encountered, at any rate, then the purely rectili¬ 
 near path of sound principle had rather be chosen, 
 than another path, however slightly divergent it 
 may be from the former one.* It is on this ac¬ 
 count that we should like to estimate the precise 
 amount of our own error, and our own divergency. 
 It may both serve as a land-mark by which to 
 guide our future suggestions on the pauperism of 
 England; and, by its tendency to expose, and per¬ 
 haps to remedy the evils of our own peculiar sys- 
 
 * That we do not vindicate Scottisii pauperism as being in itself a good, 
 but merely indulge it as being tbe less of two evils, must be apparent from 
 the whole of Chapter X. and the-introduction to Chapter XT. of this work. 
 Vot.. II. II b 
 
194 
 
 tem, may form an appropriate close to our ob¬ 
 servations upon Scottish pauperism. 
 
 We hold it then to be an evil, attendant even on 
 the very humblest of our sessional administrations, 
 that still their efficiency, for the relief of indigence, 
 is so apt to be overrated. There is a great defect 
 of arithmetic in the popular mind. It is the crea¬ 
 ture of imagination and habit; and easily imposed 
 upon by the glare of publicity, does it often award 
 a delusive power and importance to the objects of 
 its' contemplation. It is thus, that even a Kirk- 
 Session, stands in loftier guise to the eye of pa¬ 
 rishioners, than is at all warranted by the might or 
 the magnitude of its operations. There is about it 
 an air of promise and of pretension, that is greatly 
 beyond its power—nor is it easy to unmask this 
 imposture, or, exposing the actual dimensions of 
 our public charity, to convince our population of 
 the real insignificance which belongs to it. 
 
 Now, this of itself is a serious mischief. The 
 disturbance which an artificial process of charity 
 gives to the natural processes, is not in proportion 
 to the quantity of relief that is administered there¬ 
 by, but in proportion to the quantity of relief that 
 is counted upon. The relaxation of economy, on 
 the part of an expectant upon public charity, is 
 in the accurate ratio of the hope that is felt, and 
 not of the hope that is realised. It is enough for 
 the purpose of a vitiating influence among a popu¬ 
 lation, to set up a visible appearance of distribution 
 in the midst of them, with even an undefined 
 
195 
 
 chance of its being made, on given emergencies, 
 to bear upon one or other of the families. It is no 
 satisfying answer to this, that the produce of our 
 parochial charity is but small—for the anticipation, 
 in almost all cases, greatly outstrips the experience 
 —and thus, to a certain degree, are the people 
 lured away from self-dependence—the only solid 
 basis on which their prosperity can be reared. 
 And more than this—the delusion to which we 
 now advert, is not confined to the poor. They, 
 whose duty it is to succour them, fully participate 
 therein—and the existence of a court of supply 
 has often appeased those personal sensibilities, 
 which would have been ten times more available to 
 the cause of charity. Neighbours feel, to a cer¬ 
 tain extent, disburdened of their obligation, be¬ 
 cause of the perceived calls and inquiries that have 
 been instituted by a Kirk-Session upon a dis¬ 
 tressed household—and of the periodical allowance, 
 however meagre, which they understand to be 
 rendered to it. Both the hand of industry, and 
 the hand of private benevolence, are slackened 
 by the presence of this meddling intruder, on the 
 natural habits and sympathies of men: and if we 
 think that the lower classes of society in England 
 are worse conditioned than they else would have 
 been because of their poor rates—we do truly and 
 conscientiously think, that the collections of Scot¬ 
 land might, though in but a fractional degree, 
 work a degradation both on the comfort and char¬ 
 acter of the peasantry of our land. 
 
196 
 
 It is cruel first to raise a hope, and then to dis¬ 
 appoint it—and there are two expedients by which 
 this cruelty might be done away. The first and 
 most obvious expedient, were to meet the hope by 
 'a liberality more adequate to the high pitch at 
 tvhich it is entertained. This has been attempted in 
 England—and we venture to affirm, as the conse¬ 
 quence of it, a tenfold amount of unappeased ra¬ 
 pacity, and of rancorous dissatisfaction, and of all 
 that distress which arises where the expectation 
 'has greatly overshot the fulfilment. The second 
 "expedient were utterly to extinguish the hope, by 
 the total abolition of public charity for the relief 
 of indigence. This "has not been attempted in 
 Scotland—and there are reasons, both of a pruden¬ 
 tial and of an absolute character, why we should 
 deem the attempt to be not advisable. Bui, mean¬ 
 while, if the sessional charity of Scotland is to be 
 kept up, it is but honesty to proclaim its utter in¬ 
 significance in the hearing of all thepeople. They 
 should be taught that in trusting to it, they only 
 trust to a' lying mockery. The way to neutralise 
 the mischief of our parochial dispensations, is by a 
 frank and open exposure of their utter worthless¬ 
 ness—for we know not how a more grievous injury 
 can be done to the poor, than by holding out such 
 a semblance of aid to them as might either reduce, 
 by ever so little, their oWn economy, or deaden, 
 by ever so little, the sympathy of their fellows. 
 A full feeling of responsibility to the demands of 
 human want and human suffering should be kept 
 
197 
 
 alive among the families of every neighbourhood— 
 and for this purpose ought it to be a matter of 
 broad understanding and notoriety, that there is 
 positively nothing done by any of our Kirk-Sessions 
 which should supersede the care of individuals for 
 themselves or their keepership one for another. 
 The elder who effectually teaches this lesson in his 
 district, does more for the substantial relief of its 
 needy, than by any multiplication whatever of pub¬ 
 lic allowances—and even without one farthing to 
 bestow, may thus be the instrument of a great 
 alleviation to the ills and hardships of poverty. 
 It is a downright fraud upon our population, to 
 keep up the forms of a great public distribution, 
 without letting them know that the fruits of it 
 are so rare and scanty, as to be wholly undeserving 
 of all notice or regard from them. The under¬ 
 standing should go abroad over a whole parish, 
 that none are relieved from their duties. Each 
 Kirk-Session ought to make full demonstration of 
 its own impotency—and better far, that its func¬ 
 tions as a public almoner were forthwith to cease, 
 than that in the slightest degree, it should either 
 lull the vigilance of self-preservation, or seduce 
 kinsfolk and neighbours from that post of benevo¬ 
 lent guardianship which they else would occupy. 
 
 It may startle some of our countrymen to be 
 told, that the sessional charity of Scotland may be 
 deleterious, and certainly is not indispensable to 
 the well-being, or to the right economy of any of 
 its parishes. The English reader has much greater 
 
198 
 
 reason to be startled by the affirmation, that his 
 parish, of a thousand people, with its expenditure 
 for the year of fifteen hundred pounds, might 
 have its public charity reduced to twenty pounds 
 a year, and with infinitely less of clamour and 
 disaffection among its families than there is at 
 this moment. Now, if a parish could survive the 
 shock of a revolution so marvellous, what is the 
 mighty explosion or overthrow that would ensue, 
 if the last remaining fragments of the system were 
 made to disappear ? If an English parish could 
 be reduced to the condition of a Scotch one, in re¬ 
 spect of its pauperism, then it were but adding one 
 little step more to a wide and gigantic transition, 
 should the Scottish pauperism be altogether swept 
 away. And, when we wonder at the prejudice 
 and incredulity of the South, as to the competency 
 of the former achievement, let it not be forgotten, 
 that this is fully overmatched by the incredulity of 
 our own countrymen, when they protest against 
 the latter achievement as wholly impracticable. 
 
 We are unable to comprehend on what princi¬ 
 ple a charitable expenditure of less than £500 a 
 year, can be deemed essential to the good economy 
 of a parish, with more than 20,000 people—or 
 how the abolition of such an expenditure, would 
 inflict a great and permanent derangement on the 
 state of such a community. A very slight impulse 
 indeed, on the popular feeling and popular habits, 
 would fully balance the'loss of so paltry a ministra¬ 
 tion. And the change in question, would, of it- 
 
199 
 
 self, create such an impulse. We believe that a 
 most wholesome reaction would ensue on the ces¬ 
 sation of all public charity; and that private charity, 
 then emancipated from delusion, would come 
 forth with a tenfold blessing upon the poor of our 
 land. 
 
 In the great majority of our Scottish parishes, all 
 which the administrators of the public charity pro¬ 
 fess to do, is to “ give in aid.” They do not hold 
 themselves responsible for the entire subsistence of 
 any of their paupers; they presume in the general, 
 on other resources, without inquiring specifically 
 either into the nature or the amount of them. It 
 says much for the truth of our whole speculation, 
 that in this presumption they are almost never dis¬ 
 appointed; and that whether in the kindness of 
 relatives, or the sympathy of neighbours, or the 
 many undefinable shifts and capabilities of the pau¬ 
 per himself, there do cast up to him the items of a 
 maintenance. It is instructive to perceive how 
 small a proportion the monthly allowance of a 
 Kirk-Session must often bear to the whole support 
 of an individual, who yet has no other visible means 
 that can be specified: and the only inference to be 
 made from this is, that the public charity of Scot¬ 
 land has not yet superseded those better operations 
 of care and kindness among families, on which we 
 think that the whole of human indigence might be 
 fearlessly devolved. All that a Kirk-Session gene¬ 
 rally does is to come forth with a minute and in¬ 
 significant fraction, as its offering to the cause: 
 
and still the question remains, Whether in so doing 
 it does not abridge the supply that cometh from 
 other quarters, more than it supplements them. 
 We feel no doubt in our minds, that upon the 
 whole, it does so—that there is a state, and a cir¬ 
 cumstance, and a form about the proceedings of 
 this body, calculated to magnify the hope of its 
 expectants, and of their friends, greatly beyond its 
 power to meet or to gratify the appetite which it 
 may have kindled—that, had it not been for its 
 own little contribution, the whole present aliment 
 of almost all its pensioners, would have been over¬ 
 passed by the free and undeluded benevolence of 
 nature, more powerfully aided, as it then must have 
 been, by that economy which even the humble 
 pauperism of Scotland has somewhat relaxed, and 
 by that duteous attention among friends and kins¬ 
 folk, which it has somewhat superseded. We do 
 not believe that the whole sessional charity of 
 Scotland, in those parishes where assessments are 
 unknown, renders more than a fifth part to the main¬ 
 tenance of all its enrolled paupers. The remain¬ 
 ing four-fifths are yielded from other sources, 
 which, if not disturbed, and somewhat enfeebled 
 by the sight of an imposing apparatus of relief, 
 would have more than made good the deficiency 
 which now is not permitted to be thus overtaken. 
 And therefore do we think, that without that show 
 of charity which is held forth by the parochial 
 system of Scotland, but which is riot substan¬ 
 tiated, the peasantry of our land would, on the 
 
' 201 
 
 strength of their own unseduced habits, have ex¬ 
 hibited an aspect of greater comfort, and been in 
 a still higher condition than they now occupy. 
 
 But, save for a great , purpose, an innovating 
 hand should not be stretched forth against the in¬ 
 stitutions and the established practices of a coun¬ 
 try—and, therefore, would we not plead for the abo¬ 
 lition of our Scottish pauperism. We think that 
 its comparatively harmless character entitles it to 
 this toleration; nay, that it is susceptible of such im¬ 
 provements, in the administration of it, as to make 
 it altogether innocent, if not salutary. There is 
 even a way, that we shall explain presently, by 
 which it might be made the organ of unquestion¬ 
 able benefit to the population, and especially in 
 great towns, might be turned to the direct object 
 of elevating both the morality and the scholarship 
 of our land. Yet, however adapted to the good of 
 a country where it has long been established, this is 
 no reason why it should be introduced, with all its 
 peculiarities, into a country where it is still un¬ 
 known : nor does it follow, that because unwise to 
 put down the existing economy of our Scottish 
 parishes, it should therefore be held forth as a 
 faultless model, or proposed as the best substitute 
 for the. present pauperism of England. 
 
 We have already said that the first evil of Scottish 
 pauperism was that which attached to all public 
 charity,—its liableness to be over-rated. It is not 
 enough to say that experience will correct this evil. 
 There is a want of arithmetic among the poor, in 
 
 Vor.. II. c c 
 
virtue of which a monthly half-crown, or a quar¬ 
 terly half-guinea sounds far more magnificently in 
 their hearing than either a penny, or three half¬ 
 pence a day. The daily meal that is sent by a 
 kind neighbour dwindles into a thing of nought 
 when compared with the wholesale allowance which 
 issues either from the city Board or the parochial 
 vestry; and the neighbour himself feels relieved of 
 the obligation that lies upon him, by a spectacle 
 which deceives him as much as it does the object 
 of his sympathy. Rather than this, it were well 
 that the cause of human want should be thrown, 
 an unprotected orphan, on the random charities by 
 which it is every-where encompassed. But if this 
 may not be, let all such public charity as ours be 
 preceded by the herald of its insignificance. Let 
 each elder make open demonstration of its nullity 
 to the people under his charge; and that, both to 
 keep alive, as far as may be, the self-dependence 
 of the poor, and to keep alive, among all who have 
 aught to give, an unabated sympathy with the 
 needs and the sufferings of our species. 
 
 When accompanied by such a corrective as this, 
 the parochial charity of Scotland may be disarmed 
 of all its mischief, and even be transformed into an 
 instrument for raising and'purifying still more the 
 economic habits of her people. It brings the low¬ 
 est of them into frequent and familiar converse 
 with men, so far elevated above the common mass 
 of society, as to have been intrusted with the duties 
 of an office, that is both sacred in its nature, and 
 
203 
 
 implies a certain superintendence over the con¬ 
 cerns and the character of families. Let him who 
 fills this office be at once both worthy and enligh¬ 
 tened; and by every act of intercourse may he 
 bring a distinct good even upon the secondary 
 habits of the population. Even an application for 
 sessional relief might be so improved, and so turned 
 by him. He might evince to their satisfaction the 
 arithmetic of its worthlessness. He might remon¬ 
 strate with them on the folly of making so great 
 and humiliating a descent, for so paltry a compen¬ 
 sation. He might go round with this argument 
 among all the relatives, and draw from them a li¬ 
 berality and an aid that would put parish charity 
 to shame, and bring it down to its right place in 
 the popular estimation. Such an elder as this may 
 at once heighten the delicacies of the poor, and 
 quicken the sympathies of the beneficent in his dis¬ 
 trict ; and the blessing that he might thus confer 
 upon the families, can only be equalled by the mis¬ 
 chief that would ensue, were he to share with them 
 in the delusion, that the charity of a Kirk-Session 
 was the grand specific for human want, and make 
 use of it accordingly. If the blind lead the blind, 
 there will be unavoidable degradation. Blit when, 
 instead of this, the whole truth and principle of 
 the matter are completely unfolded; and the fair 
 and friendly conference is often entered upon; and 
 the duty is fearlessly pointed out, both that the 
 poor man ought to economise, and that friends and 
 relatives ought to feel for him,—then it is wonderful 
 
204 
 
 how soon a kind and common understanding may 
 Come to be established between the elder who so 
 expatiates over his territory, and the people who 
 occupy'it. Every thing can. be made of them 
 when they are dealt with frankly and rationally. 
 No truth heeds to be kept up from them, and there 
 is nothing to fear from the. announcement, in their 
 hearing, of whatever has its own sense, and its own 
 moral justness to recommend it. And, more par¬ 
 ticularly, let the revenue of the Session be only 
 made to take a sound direction—let it be appro¬ 
 priated to some object that is at once popular and 
 salutary—let it be allocated to the endowment of 
 schools, or to a full provision for the unforeseen 
 ithpotency, whether of body or of mind, wherewith 
 Nature marks off a given, number of unfortunates, 
 in every neighbourhood, for the unqualified ten¬ 
 derness of all their fellows—let it be made palpable 
 as day, that every one whom the hand of Provi¬ 
 dence hath smitten with blindness, or derange¬ 
 ment, or Some such special infirmity as hath made 
 him through life the child of helplessness, is cher¬ 
 ished and upheld to the uttermost—and let the 
 elder be enabled to go forth among his people with 
 the argument, that by the forbearance of their de¬ 
 mands, they allow a more copious descent of liber¬ 
 ality on families more abject than their own; and 
 we despair not, at length, of a full concurrence, 
 on their part, in that system by which indigence 
 is left to the compassions of private benevolence, and 
 unforeknown impotency alone is left to the care of 
 benevolent institutions. 
 
205 
 
 But there is another evil of more recent origin 
 in Scottish pauperism, and which is a serious ob¬ 
 stacle in the way of a good practical understand¬ 
 ing between the managers of a parish and its popu¬ 
 lation—and that is, the imagination of a legal right 
 which a poor man has to subsistence from the 
 hands of the Kirk-Session. This is a new spirit 
 among our countrymen; but it is growing apace in 
 all those districts where assessments have been in¬ 
 troduced, and the effect is just what may have 
 been anticipated. There is not one of those prin¬ 
 ciples in our nature, which if left to their own un¬ 
 fettered operation, would have wrought the best 
 and the kindliest distribution of relief, that this 
 hard and heterogeneous legality does not counter¬ 
 act. For it gives a tenfold edge to the rapacity of 
 expectants—and it arms, with a kind of defensive 
 jealousy and rigour, the hearts of the administra¬ 
 tors against them—and it displaces from what 
 would else have been a business of charity, all the 
 feelings, and all the characteristics of charity—and 
 it associates the complacency of justice, and of a 
 conscious right, with that neglect, on the part of 
 relatives and neighbours, of which they would have 
 otherwise been ashamed—and so, the elder who 
 goes forth upon his territory, the conceived object 
 of responsibility and of prosecution for all the dis¬ 
 tress that may be found in it, is not in such cir¬ 
 cumstances for a pleasing and a prosperous man¬ 
 agement, as if, delivered from the obligations of 
 Law, he went forth on the footing of spontaneous 
 
philanthropy. In the one way of it, friends are 
 apt to do little, that they may leave the largest 
 possible space for the attentions of the elder. In 
 the other way of it, a very small attention from the 
 elder would be so seconded by the charity of po¬ 
 pular benevolence, that however large the space he 
 might leave to be filled up, it were sure to be over¬ 
 taken. An elder with the legal means of a Kirk- 
 Session in his hand, but at the same time, under 
 the weight of its legal obligations, is not in so fit a 
 condition for being the benefactor of his district, 
 as if, without either the means or the obligations 
 that now attach to his office, he went with nought 
 but the visits, and the inquiries, and the recom¬ 
 mendations of Christian kindness among its fami¬ 
 lies. The people make common cause against the 
 man on whom they fancy that the needy have a 
 claim; and they make common cause with the 
 man from whom the needy obtain a sympathy and 
 an aid that are altogether gratuitous. The pau¬ 
 perism of Scotland has done somewhat to thwart 
 the operation of this principle; and we think that 
 it has locked up more of private benevolence 
 through the land, than it has replaced by its own 
 distributions. 
 
 It is on this account that we have often looked 
 both with admiration and envy to the method of 
 public charity that obtains among many of our 
 Scottish dissenters. The produce of their weekly 
 collections, or at least part of it, is often distributed 
 among the poor of their own congregations, and 
 
207 
 
 who, at the same time, sustain a character that 
 makes them admissible to Christian ordinances. 
 There is nought of legality whatever in this ad¬ 
 ministration, and much, we are persuaded, of the 
 precious feeling both of sympathy and gratitude 
 still adheres to it. We should deem it a mighty 
 improvement in our pauperism, were this practice 
 tolerated by our Courts of Law in the congregations 
 of the establishment; and were a Kirk-Session held 
 to acquit itself of all its obligations to the poor, by 
 simply alimenting those poor who were the mem¬ 
 bers of its own church. We should have no fear, 
 under this arrangement of things, for the outfield 
 population, who, in many of our country parishes, 
 bear no sensible proportion to the whole, though^ 
 in great towns, they form the vast majority of our 
 lower orders. Yet such is our confidence in those 
 native forces of sympathy arid of self-preservation, 
 that we have so oft insisted on, as to believe of our 
 general poor that a surer comfort and sufficiency 
 would accrue to them, were they dissevered from 
 sessional relief altogether. Not that we recom¬ 
 mend the abolition of our present territorial super¬ 
 intendence by elders, whose office it is to render 
 the attentions, and to exemplify the virtues of 
 Christianity among the people of their assigned 
 charge. But sure we are, that even as the bene¬ 
 factors of the poor, they would be translated into 
 tenfold efficiency did they cease to be the objects 
 of any legal demand or legal expectation; and they 
 would speedily demonstrate, both by the more 
 
208 
 
 quiescent state of their districts, and the actually 
 better economy which obtained among their fami¬ 
 lies, that neither a public fund by assessment, nor 
 a public fund by collections , for the relief of indi¬ 
 gence, was indispensable, or even added to the 
 well-being, of any population. 
 
 It: is. conceivable of some one parochial domain 
 in Scotland, that within its limits the law- of pau¬ 
 perism had ceased to be inforce—that the people 
 there , had been , thrown beyond the pale, or the 
 fancied protection of this law—that, unlike to the 
 consecrated ground on which no debtor could be 
 legally apprehended, it was a. kind of outcast or 
 proscribed territory on which no poor man could 
 legally demand one morsel of aliment to keep him 
 from famishing. Let it comprise some thousands 
 of our operative and city population, and be with¬ 
 out more of recognition from the upper classes of 
 society, than the ordinary apparatus of a church, 
 and a minister, and an eldership would naturally 
 attach to it. We affirm, from all that we have seen 
 or learned of the internal structure of every such 
 community, that its ecclesiastical office-bearers are 
 in better circumstances for upholding a well-served, 
 and a well-satisfied parish, without the law of pau¬ 
 perism, than with that law. Every movement of 
 benevolence that was made by them to a poor 
 family, would call out a tenfold power of co-opera¬ 
 tion from, the surrounding observers. The effect 
 of such an arrangement on the hopes, and habits, 
 and sympathies of the people, would just be less 
 
209 
 
 of actual necessity among them; and that neces¬ 
 sity, when it did occur, more promptly and abun¬ 
 dantly met by a busier operation of internal cha¬ 
 rity than before. It would thus become clear as 
 day, that Law had acted as a drag on the liberali¬ 
 ties of our nature; and that, on the removal of 
 this drag, these liberalities had found their own 
 surer and speedier way among the families of the 
 destitute. Law has wrought a twofold mischief. 
 It lias both whetted the appetency for relief, and 
 stinted the supplies of it. The abolition of the 
 law of pauperism would curtail this misery at both 
 ends. That the starvation of a single individual 
 would ever arise from such a state of things, we 
 affirm to be a moral impossibility; but, as a certain 
 result of it, would we at length be landed in a 
 more peaceful and prosperous community than be¬ 
 fore. 
 
 Were such an experiment tried, and did such a 
 result come out of it, it would be held by many as 
 decisive of the truth of our speculation. But, on 
 a little reflection, they will perceive, that the ex¬ 
 periments which have actually been made, though 
 not so striking, are still more decisive. In truth, 
 the state of every unassessed parish in Scotland 
 maybe regarded as a distinct evidence against the 
 need of any public charity for indigence. The 
 whole expenditure, in many of them, does not 
 amount to twenty pounds sterling, in the year, for 
 each thousand of the population—a mere show of 
 relief, that might well have been dispensed with, 
 
210 
 
 as more fitted to impede the charity of nature than 
 to supplement it; and that a parish should he up¬ 
 held under such an economy, is proof in itself, that 
 it could have been as well, if not better upholden, 
 without any artificial economy at all. The result 
 of a well-satisfied parish is not in consequence of 
 the sessional revenue, but in spite of it; and this 
 holds eminently true both of Gorbals, and of the 
 retracing parishes in Glasgow, where the manage¬ 
 ment is conducted under the heavy disadvantage 
 of a population tinctured, in some degree, with the 
 legal imaginations of England. It were an easier 
 management far, to have both the revenue of the 
 one party, and the right of the other, utterly swept 
 away; and sure we are, that with such an arrange¬ 
 ment, there would be less than now of actual and 
 unrelieved want in our parishes. In a word, our 
 sessional apparatus, with all the hopes and desires 
 that it carries in its train, is to be regarded, not in 
 the light of a facility, but of an obstruction; and that 
 we have succeeded therewith, in warding off a com¬ 
 pulsory - provision, is a more impressive demon¬ 
 stration still of the native capability which there is 
 among a people to supersede pauperism, than if, 
 without one farthing of public expenditure, we had 
 arrived at the same result with a people that urged 
 no claim, and felt no expectation. 
 
 We are quite aware, at the same time, of the 
 strength of our Scottish predilections on the side 
 of a Sabbath offering. The removal of the plates 
 from the church-doors would be felt as a sore de- 
 
211 
 
 secration, both by many of our priests, and by 
 many of our people. And, deeming as we do, 
 that it is in the power of a good administration, 
 very much to neutralise the mischief that is inhe¬ 
 rent in this as in all other public charity; and that, 
 even with certain precautions which we are to en¬ 
 ter upon, is convertible into an instrument of great 
 positive benefit to all our parishes, we, among 
 others, should regret the abolition of it. What 
 has been found so innocent in practice might well 
 be tolerated in a country where it has been long 
 established, even notwithstanding its unsoundness 
 in principle. So that were it the only question, 
 What is best to be done with pauperism in Scot¬ 
 land ?—we should incline to its remaining as it is, 
 in all those parishes where assessments are un¬ 
 known : and only setting up an impassable barrier 
 between the gratuitous and the compulsory systems 
 of public charity, we should restrain its perpetual 
 tendency to merge, as it has done throughout our 
 border counties, into English pauperism. And we 
 should be further satisfied that in those latter pa¬ 
 rishes, by the methods which we have already ex¬ 
 plained, the minister and elders were to take their 
 direction back again to the good old way of their 
 forefathers. But though it were wrong to offer 
 pain or disturbance to the old and confirmed asso¬ 
 ciations of one country, that is no reason why, in 
 another country, free from these associations, there 
 should be the blind unvarying adoption of a sys¬ 
 tem that is at all exceptionable; or that, on the 
 
212 
 
 question, What is best to be done with the pau¬ 
 perism of England? any deliverance should be 
 given that is not conformable, at all points, to the 
 sound and universal principles of our nature. 
 
 But ere we pass on to this momentous and in¬ 
 teresting part of our argument, let us advert to 
 a few of those leading principles, on which, we 
 hold it a practicable thing, to perfect the adminis¬ 
 tration of our Scottish pauperism. 
 
 And, first, we think that a great moral good 
 would ensue, and without violence done to hu¬ 
 manity, were the Kirk-Session forthwith to put a 
 negative on all those demands that have their di¬ 
 rect and visible origin in profligacy of character. 
 We allude more particularly to the cases of ille¬ 
 gitimate children, and of runaway parents. It 
 should ever rank among those decent proprieties 
 of an ecclesiastical court, which can, on no ac¬ 
 count, be infringed, that it shall do nothing which 
 might extend a countenance, or give a security to 
 wickedness. In the case of exposed infants, a ne¬ 
 cessity may be laid upon it. But sure we are, that 
 generally, and without outrage to any of our sym¬ 
 pathies, the criminal parties may be safely left to 
 the whole weight of a visitation that is at once the 
 consequence and the corrective of their own trans¬ 
 gression. We know not a more pitiable condition 
 than that of a female who is at once degraded and 
 deserted; but many are the reasons why it should 
 be altogether devolved on the secret and unob¬ 
 served pity which it is so well fitted to inspire. 
 
213 
 
 And we know not a more striking exhibition of 
 the power of those sympathies, that we have so of¬ 
 ten quoted as being adequate, in themselves, to all 
 the emergencies of human suffering, than the un¬ 
 failing aid, and service, and supply, wherewith 
 even the child-bed of guilt is sure to be surround¬ 
 ed. It is a better state of things when, instead of 
 the loud and impudent demand that is sometimes 
 lifted upon such occasions, the sufferer is left to a 
 dependence upon her own kinsfolk, and neigh¬ 
 bours, and to the strong moral corrective that 
 lies in their very kindness towards her. We 
 think, that if every instance of a necessity which 
 has been thus created, were understood to lie with¬ 
 out the pale of the sessional administration, and to 
 be solely a draught on the liberalities of the bene¬ 
 volent, we both think that these liberalities would 
 guarantee a subsistence to all who were concerned, 
 and that, at the same time, in a more intense popu¬ 
 lar odium, there would arise a defensive barrier 
 against that licentiousness which the institutions of 
 our sister country have done so much to foster and 
 to patronise. It must shed a grievous blight over 
 the delicacies of a land, when the shameless pros¬ 
 titute is invested with a right, because of the very 
 misdeeds which ought to have humbled and 
 abashed her—when she can plead her own disgrace 
 as the argument for being listened to, and, on the 
 strength of it, compel the jurisdictions of the 
 country to do homage to her claim—when crime 
 is thus made the passport to legal privileges, and 
 
the native unloveliness of vice is somewhat glossed 
 and overborne, by the public recognition which has 
 been thus so unwisely extended to it. 
 
 In the case of a family that has been abandoned 
 by its regardless and unnatural father, and where 
 there is no suspected collusion between the parents, 
 there is pity unmingled with reproach to the help¬ 
 less sufferers. And our whole experience assures 
 us, that this pity would be available to a far larger, 
 and more important aid, than is rendered, on such 
 occasions, by any of the public charities in Scot¬ 
 land. The interference of the Kirk-Session has 
 the effect of contracting the supplies within the 
 limits of its own rigid allowance; and better even 
 for the members of the deserted household, that 
 they had been suffered, each to merge into such an 
 asylum of protection and kindness as the neigh¬ 
 bourhood would have spontaneously afforded. 
 But better still—there would, under such a regimen 
 as this, be fewer instances of abandonment. The 
 man who, without remorse, could leave his offspring 
 to the charge of a public body, and a burden on a 
 public fund, would need to have still more of the 
 desperado in his heart, ere lie could leave them at 
 random to the care of his old familiars in society. 
 To the honour of our nature, there is a moral cer¬ 
 tainty in this latter case, that there will be no star¬ 
 vation; but the sympathy of individuals will not 
 be so often put to the trial of such a runaway ex¬ 
 periment, as would the care and responsibility of a 
 Kirk-Session. And better, surely, that such an 
 
215 
 
 occurrence as this should be placed in the list of 
 those casualties for which no legal provision has been 
 made, than that any thing in the institutions of our 
 country should tend to slacken or to supersede the 
 ties of relationship. In a community that had not 
 been thrown into derangement by pauperism, the 
 desertion of a family would be as rare and appal¬ 
 ling a visitation, as the destruction of their all by 
 fire; and, like it too, would call forth as prompt 
 and productive a sympathy from neighbours, while 
 the indignation felt by all at the calamitous event, 
 in which all had been made to take an interest, 
 would strengthen the popular habit the more on 
 the side of all the relative and family obligations. 
 
 It might appear to many a harsh and unfeeling 
 suggestion, thus to withdraw the hand of public 
 charity either from illegitimate or deserted chil¬ 
 dren. We are satisfied that both human crime 
 and human suffering would be greatly abridged 
 by it—that, in the first instance, a much smaller 
 number of these unfortunates would fall to be pro¬ 
 vided for—and that, in the second instance, there 
 would come forth, from some quarter or other, an 
 actual sustenance to all. Such is the result which 
 we would most confidently anticipate, and it would 
 most strikingly demonstrate the alertness of indi¬ 
 vidual benevolence, when no artificial economy 
 stood in its way. 
 
 But, secondly, if that indigence which is the ef¬ 
 fect of crime might be confined to the charities of 
 private life, we maybe very sure that the indigence 
 
216 
 
 which is not associated with crime will be largely 
 and liberally met by these charities. In the ab¬ 
 sence of all legal provision there would be greatly 
 less of this indigence, and greatly more of this li¬ 
 berality; but as there does exist a legal provision, 
 then is it the part of him who is intrusted with 
 the dispensation of it, so to manage, as that the 
 one shall be prevented, and the other shall be pro¬ 
 moted to the uttermost. For this purpose he should 
 ever ply the lesson among his people, that the cha¬ 
 rity of a Kirk-Session is the last resort which 
 should come in the train of every other lawful ex¬ 
 pedient—that it is the duty of all to ward off the 
 necessity of this humiliation from the poor brother 
 who is just standing upon the verge of it—that, in 
 this cause, it is the duty of the applicant himself to 
 put forth all his powers of economy and labour, and 
 the duty of his relatives to minister to his need, 
 and the duty of his neighbours to interpose, and, 
 if possible, to save him from the parish: and lest 
 the minister or the elder who so expatiates should 
 appear to be one of those who would lay burdens 
 on .the shoulders of other men, which he himself 
 will not touch with one of his fingers, it is his duty 
 to exemplify all that he thus strenuously recom¬ 
 mends. It is not known at how cheap a rate the 
 demand from whole thousands of a city population 
 could thus be disposed of, or how soon, by this 
 culture of honesty and frankness, their families 
 could be weaned from all desire, and all depen¬ 
 dence upon public charity. 
 
217 
 
 And we have only to add, on . this part of the 
 subject, that while ’such a state of things would 
 naturally, and of itself,- bfing on a far closer inter- 
 change of kindness between the higher and lower 
 classes, this, however, desirable for its own sake, is 
 not. indispensable for the sake of-filling up the va¬ 
 cancies that might be created by the withdrawment 
 of public charity. It is the unquestionable duty, 
 and ought, at all times, to be the delight of the 
 rich, fairly to meet with poverty, and to investigate 
 and to bestow. -One.of our chief arguments for 
 re-committing the business of alms to a natural 
 economy, is, that the wealthy and the poor would 
 thereby come more frequently into contact, and 
 that would be made to issue upon the destitute, 
 from the play of human feelings, which is now 
 extorted without good-will on the one side, or 
 gratitude on the other, by the authority of hu¬ 
 man law. It were an incalculable. good, if, in 
 this way, the breath of a milder and happier spi¬ 
 rit could be infused into society: But, arith¬ 
 metically, it is not true, that, the free-will, of¬ 
 ferings of the rich are essential as a succedaneum 
 to the allowances of pauperism-^or, that, unless 
 the former to some given extent, can surely be 
 reckoned upon, the latter must, to a certain ex¬ 
 tent, continue to be upholden. The practical re¬ 
 sult that would come out from the cessation of all 
 public charity, were, in. the first instance, a very 
 great abridgment of expectation or demand on 
 the part of the applicants—and, secondly, while 
 
218 
 
 the personal attentions and. liberalities of the rich 
 would be multiplied in consequence, on those poor, 
 who shall be with us always; yet, confident we are, 
 that even in the most plebeian of our city parishes, 
 these poor would, in the stimulated kindness of 
 relatives and neighbours, meet with far their most 
 effectual redress, and by far their fittest and readi¬ 
 est compensation. 
 
 But, thirdly, there is a class of necessities in the 
 relief of. which public charity is not at all deleteri¬ 
 ous,'and which she might safely be left to single out 
 and to support, both as liberally and as ostensibly as 
 she may. We allude to all those varieties, whether 
 of mental or of bodily disease, for which it is a 
 wise and salutary thing to rear a public institution. 
 We hold it neither wise nor salutary to have any 
 such asylum for the impotency that springeth from 
 age; for this is not an unforeseen exigency, but 
 one, that, in the vast majority of instances, could 
 have been provided for by the care of the indi¬ 
 vidual. And neither is it an exigency that is des¬ 
 titute of all resource in the claims and obligations 
 of nature, for what more express, or more clearly 
 imperative, than the duty of children ? A sys¬ 
 tematic provision for age in any land, is tantamount 
 to a systematic hostility against its virtues, both of 
 prudence and of natural piety. But there are other 
 infirmities and other visitations, to which our na¬ 
 ture is liable, and a provision for which stands 
 clearly apart from all that is exceptionable. We 
 refer not to those current household diseases, which 
 
219 
 
 are incidental, on the average, to every family, but 
 to those more special inflictions of distress, by which 
 in one or more of its members, a family is some¬ 
 times set apart and signalized. A child who is 
 blind, or speechless, or sunk in helpless idiotism, 
 puts into this condition, the family to which it be¬ 
 longs. No mischief whatever can accrue from 
 every such case being fully met and provided for— 
 and it were the best vindication of a Kirk-Session, 
 for the spareness of its allowances, on all those 
 occasions where the idle might work, or kins¬ 
 folk might interpose, that it gives succour to the 
 uttermost of its means, in all those fatalities of na¬ 
 ture, which no prudence could avert, and which 
 being not chargeable as a fault, ought neither to be 
 chargeable as an expense, on any poor and strug¬ 
 gling family. 
 
 It may be at once seen, wherein lies the distinc¬ 
 tion between the necessities of signal and irreme¬ 
 diable disease, and those merely of general indi¬ 
 gence. A provision, however conspicuous, for the 
 former, will not add one instance of distress more 
 to the already existing catalogue. A provision for 
 the latter, if regular and proclaimed, will further¬ 
 more be counted on—and so be sure to multiply 
 its own objects, to create, in fact, more of general 
 want than it supplies. • To qualify for the first kind 
 of relief, one must be blind, or deaf, or lunatic, or 
 maimed, which no man is wilfully—so that this 
 walk of charity can be overtaken, and without 
 any corrupt influence on those who are sustained 
 
220 
 
 by it; To qualify for the second kind of relief, 
 ode lias only to be poor, which many become wil¬ 
 fully* and always too in numbers which exceed the 
 promise and the power of public charity to up¬ 
 hold them-^-so that this walk can not only never 
 be overtaken, but, by every step of advancement 
 upon it; it stretches forth to a more hopeless dis¬ 
 tance than before; and is also more crowded with 
 the thriftless, and the beggarly, and the immoral. 
 The former cases are put into our hand by nature, 
 in a certain definite amount—ahd she has farther, 
 established in the human constitution such a recoil 
 from pain, or from the extinction of any of the sen¬ 
 ses, as to form a sure'guarantee against the multipli¬ 
 cation of them. The latter cases are put into our 
 hands by man, and his native love of indolence or 
 dissipation becomes a spontaneous and most produc¬ 
 tive fountain of poverfy, in every land where public 
 charity has interposed to disarm it of its terrors. 
 It is thus; that while pauperism has most egregi- 
 ously failed to provide an asylum, in which to 
 harbour all 'the indigence of a country, there is 
 no such impossibility in the attempt to harbour de¬ 
 rangement* of special impotency and disease. The 
 one Enterprise/ must ever fall short of its design, 
 and, at the same time, carry a moral deterioration 
 in its train. The other may fulfil its design to the 
 uttermost* and without the alloy of a single evil 
 that either patriot or economist can fear. 
 
 : The doings of our Saviour in the World, after he 
 entered on his career as a minister, had in them 
 
much of the eclat of public charity. Had he put 
 his miraculous power of feeding into full opera¬ 
 tion, it would have thrown the people loose from 
 all regular habits, and spread riot and disorder 
 over the face of the land. But there was no such 
 drawback to his miraculous power of healing. And 
 we think it both marks the profoundness of his 
 wisdom, and might serve to guide the institutions 
 and the schemes of philanthropy, that while we 
 read of but two occasions on which he multiplied 
 loaves for a people who had been overtaken with 
 hunger, and one on which he refused the miracle 
 to a people who crowded about him for the purpose 
 of being fed, he laid no limitation whatever on his 
 supernatural faculties, when they followed him for 
 the purpose of being cured. But it is recorded of 
 him again and again, that when the halt, and the 
 withered, and the blind, and the impotent, and 
 those afflicted with divers diseases, were brought 
 unto him, he looked to them, and he had compas¬ 
 sion on them, and he healed them all. 
 
 This then is one safe and salutary absorbent for 
 the revenue of a Kirk-Session. The dumb and the 
 blind, and the insane of a parish, may be freely ali¬ 
 mented therewith, to the great relief of those few 
 families who have thus been specially afflicted. 
 Such a destination of the fund could excite no beg¬ 
 garly spirit in other families, which, wanting the 
 peculiar claim, would feel that they had no part 
 or interest in the peculiar compassion. There is 
 vast comfort in every walk of philanthropy, where 
 
222 
 
 a distinct and definite good is to be accomplished; 
 and whereof, at a certain given expense, we are sure 
 to reach the consummation. Now, this is a com¬ 
 fort attendant on that separate direction of the 
 poor’s money which we have now recommended— 
 but the main advantage that we should count upon, 
 is its wholesome effect on the general administra¬ 
 tion and state of pauperism. The more systemat¬ 
 ically and ostensibly that the parochial managers 
 proceeded on the distinction between special im- 
 potency and general indigence, the more, at length, 
 would the applicants on the latter plea, give way 
 to the applicants on the former. The manifest su¬ 
 periority of the first claim to the second, would go 
 at once to the hearts of the people; and mere indi¬ 
 gence would be taught, that in the moderation of 
 her demands, there was a high service of humanity 
 rendered to still more abject helplessness than her 
 own. The Sabbath offering might gradually come 
 to be regarded as a sort of consecrated treasure; set 
 apart for those whom Providence had set apart from 
 the rest of the species. Nor would indigence suf¬ 
 fer from this rejection of her claims by public cha¬ 
 rity. She would only be thrown back on the bet¬ 
 ter resources that await her in the amenities and 
 kindnesses of private life. And it is thus that a 
 great positive good might be rendered out of the 
 parochial administration, to one class of sufferers, 
 while both the delicacies of the general poor, and 
 the sympathies of that individual benevolence on 
 which all their wants might safely be devolved, 
 would be fully upholden. 
 
223 
 
 We are quite confident that such a direction of 
 the sessional means, if steadily persevered in, would 
 at length carry the acquiescence both of the popu¬ 
 lar habits and the popular approbation. And if 
 followed out, it might lead, and more especially 
 in city parishes, to a most beneficial economy. 
 There would be no harm in stimulating the liber¬ 
 ality of a congregation for the support of a parish 
 surgeon, who might be at the free command of the 
 families. There would be no harm in thus support¬ 
 ing a dispensary for good medicines, or in purchas¬ 
 ing an indefinite right of admittance to an hospital 
 for disease. We specify these objects chiefly in 
 order to demonstrate, how, without taking down 
 the apparatus of Scottish pauperism, it might still 
 be made subservient to blessings of a very high and 
 unquestionable character, and without any of that 
 injurious taint which ordinary pauperism is seen to 
 bring along with it, on the spirit and independence 
 of a population. 
 
 There are many other absorbents which might 
 be devised for the surplus of the sessional income, 
 that would be salutary as well as safe—and thus 
 all public charity might in time be diverted 
 away from the relief of mere indigence. We should 
 count, as the effect of this, on a great abatement 
 of all the sufferings of poverty, because, instead 
 of being thereby abandoned, it would only be 
 transferred to the guardianship of a far better and 
 more effective humanity. And we should have 
 pleasure in stimulating the liberality of a congre- 
 
224 
 
 gation, when turned to a purpose that did not haz¬ 
 ard the moral deterioration of the people. There 
 is something ticklish and questionable in every 
 dispensation under which a public distribution of 
 alms, is held out to the necessitous—rand the per- 
 .petual tendency of our Scottish to pass at length 
 into English pauperism, as has been abundantly 
 manifested, both in our large towns and border 
 parishes, is in itself a proof that somewhat of 
 that unsoundness may be detected in the former, 
 which has come forth so palpably upon the latter. 
 To make the practice of the one country a model 
 for the other, would be to commit back again the 
 pauperism of England to that whence it might 
 germinate anew, and so add one failure more to 
 the many experiments which have been devised 
 for its reformation. And yet the parochial charity 
 of our land need not be extirpated. It is in the 
 power of a wise and wholesome administration, to 
 impress upon it a high moral subserviency—to ton 
 it, for example, to the endowment of schools, 
 or the establishment of parish libraries, or the 
 rearing of chapels for an unprovided population; 
 who, by one and the same process, could have 
 their moral wants supplied, and be weaned from 
 all that sordid dependance on charity, by which 
 their physical wants have not been abridged, but 
 rather aggravated, both in their frequency and 
 in their soreness. 
 
225 
 
 CHAP. XIV. 
 
 ON THE LIKELIEST MEANS FOR THE ABOLITION OF 
 PAUPERISM IN ENGLAND. 
 
 It might be thought, that, as a preliminary 
 to our views of English pauperism, we should 
 again expound those principles of our nature on 
 which we mainly rest the solution of this much- 
 agitated problem; and in virtue of which, we deem 
 it not only safe, but salutary, to do away all legal 
 charity for the relief of indigence. But this is a 
 topic on which we, by this time, have amplified 
 enough in the course of our argument nor could 
 we again recur to it, without laying upon our 
 reader the burden and the annoyance of a reitera¬ 
 tion, into which we fear that our anxiety for the 
 clearest possible elucidation has already too often 
 betrayed us. 
 
 But we not only forbear a recapitulation of 
 those principles on which we rely for the eventual 
 cure of English pauperism; we shall, furthermore, 
 be studious of the utmost possible brevity in our 
 narrative of facts, when adverting to the present 
 and the actual condition of it. More particularly, 
 shall we abstain from the unnecessary multiplica¬ 
 tion of instances, in proof of such affirmations as 
 
 ” Sec* Cliap. X. p. 53—GG. 
 
 Voi.. II. 
 
226 
 
 are abundantly certain, and familiar to all who take 
 any interest in the subject. This is a question on 
 which we feel that we are addressing a conscious 
 public, who need not to be awakened as to the exis¬ 
 tence of the evil, or made more intelligent than 
 they already are, as to its leading modifications. 
 It were a vain and idle parade to come forth with 
 a copious induction of parishes, with a view to de¬ 
 monstrate the reality of any practice, or the fla- 
 grancy of any abuse, that is of undisputed noto¬ 
 riety in all parishes. There are many occasions 
 on which there is a sort of common and recognised 
 ground between the author and his readers—when 
 much may be affirmed without proof, on the one 
 side, because instantly responded to by a prior and 
 independent knowledge, upon the other. It is of 
 no use to overload with evidence, where there is 
 already a settled and experimental conviction.* 
 
 * In the preface to a very able pamphlet on the Poor Laws, by the Rev. 
 Mr. Davison, there are the following judicious remarks on the quotation of 
 facts and examples:— 
 
 “ All reasoning on the subject of the Poor Laws must be idle, which is 
 not supported by a real knowledge of the state of things in the country, as 
 it stands under these laws; and existing facts must shape the anticipated 
 experience by which any given alteration of them is to be judged of. In¬ 
 stances and particular cases therefore, commonly make a figure in the pub¬ 
 lications which treat of them. The author of these remarks has his facts 
 and examples in view, such as his opportunities of observation have afforded: 
 but he has not brought them forward to justify his notions by them. He 
 has declined doing it, as well because particular cases, unless they are strong 
 and aggravated, make little impression in the recital, and, in proportion as 
 .they are aggravated beyond the common average, though they catch ex¬ 
 ceedingly the popular understanding, they are of less real value; and also, 
 because his assumptions will either be justified by the general experience of 
 
227 
 
 This supersedes much of that detail on which it 
 had else been necessary to enter; but with this 
 
 those who may happen to read them; or, if they are not so justified, the 
 facts from which they have been drawn would he equally met and opposed 
 by the reader’s own contrary experience.” 
 
 In this work of Mr. Davison, which evinces both great taste and great 
 judgment, there is about the nearest approximation to the true system of 
 charity that we have yet met with, in any recent English writer who treats 
 specifically on the subject of the Poor Laws. In some of our subsequent 
 
 and, more especially, that part of his argument where he contends for the 
 necessity of a legal support in certain cases of helpless and hopeless indi¬ 
 gence. We do not think that he goes far enough in estimating the power 
 and the readiness of Humanity, to meet every occurring circumstance of 
 necessity; and, thinking as we do, that Benevolence is paralyzed in her 
 efforts, as well as stiipt of her essential character, when made the subject 
 of a legislative enactment, we cannot hut feel the utter erroneousness, while 
 we admire the eloquence, of the following beautiful passage. 
 
 “ The humanity, which it was designed, by the original text of the main 
 statute upon this subject, to infuse into the law of the land, is a memorial 
 of English feeling which has a right to he kept inviolate; and its just praise 
 will he better understood, when it comes to he purified from the mistake 
 which cither a careless abusive usage, or an impartial and inexperienced 
 
 is the page of mercy in a hook which has to deal much of necessity in se¬ 
 verer things; and there is a spirif of Christian kindness in it particularly 
 fitted to recommend the whole authority of law as a system framed for the 
 well-being of its subjects. I would, therefore, as soon see the best clause 
 of Magna Ciiarta crazed from the volume of our liberties, as this primary 
 authentic text of humane legislation from our statute hook. And if, in 
 the course of a remote time, the establishments of liberty and humanity, 
 which we now possess, are to leave us, and the spirit of them to he car¬ 
 ried to other lands, I trust this one record of them will survive, and that 
 charity by law will he a fragment of English history, to be preserved wker- 
 
 I-Iad there never been any charity by law in England, charity by love would 
 have both had less to do, and done her office with greater alacrity. The 
 apathy. 
 
m 
 
 reservation, that there are many facts so replete 
 with inference, or in themselves, so characteristic, 
 that, by a minute and circumstantial exhibition of 
 them, we take the most effectual method both to 
 prove and to picture forth the evils of the system, 
 and the process by which it may be rectified. 
 
 And it is not the heavy expense of it* that we 
 hold to be the main evil of English pauperism. 
 We should reckon it a cheap purchase, if, for the 
 annual six or eight millions of poor rate, we could 
 secure thereby the comfort and character of the 
 English population. But we desire the abolition 
 of legal charity, because we honestly believe, that 
 it has abridged the one, and most wofully deterio¬ 
 rated the other. Under its misplaced and officious 
 care, the poor man has ceased to care for himself, 
 and relatives have ceased to care for each other; 
 and thus the best arrangements of Nature and 
 Providence for the moral discipline of society, 
 have been most grievously frustrated. Life is no 
 longer a school, where, by the fear and foresight 
 of want, man might be chastened into sobriety— 
 or, where he might be touched into sympathy by 
 that helplessness of kinsfolk and neighbours, which 
 
 principle of humanity. Had there been no law of pauperism, the unim¬ 
 paired economy and relative virtues of the people, would, on the one hand, 
 have kept the territory of want within its proper limits—and, on the other 
 hand, would there have been a more alert and vigilant benevolence in so¬ 
 ciety, for the discharge of that function, which the legislature has so unfor¬ 
 tunately taken into their own hands. 
 
 * The whole money expended for the maintenance of the poor in Eng¬ 
 land and Wales, on the year ending 25th March, 1831, was ;£6,958,W5 2s. 
 
229 
 
 but for the thwarting interference of law, he 
 would have spontaneously provided for. The man 
 stands released from the office of being his own 
 protector, or the protector of his own household— 
 and this has rifled him of all those virtues which 
 are best fitted to guard and dignify his condition. 
 That pauperism, the object of which was to eman¬ 
 cipate him from distress, has failed in this, and only 
 emancipated him from duty. An utter reckless¬ 
 ness of habit, with the profligacy, and the mutual 
 abandonment of parents and children, to which it 
 leads, threatens a speedy dissolution to the social 
 and domestic economy of England. And instead 
 of working any kindly amalgamation between the 
 higher and lower classes of the land, the whole 
 effect of the system is to create a tremendous chasm 
 between them, across which the two parties look 
 to each other with all the fierceness and suspicion 
 of natural enemies—the former feeling, as if preyed 
 upon by a rapacity that is altogether interminable; 
 the latter feeling as if stinted of their rights by 
 men whose hands nothing but legal necessity will 
 unlock, and whose hearts are devoid of tender- 
 
 This is not the doing of Nature, nor could it 
 have so turned out, had not Nature been put into 
 a state of violence. So soon as the violence is re¬ 
 moved, Nature will return to her own processes— 
 and a parish in England will then exhibit, what 
 many of the parishes in Scotland do at this mo¬ 
 ment, a population where there is neither dissatis- 
 
faction nor unrelieved want, and yet, with little 
 of public charity. All that is required, is simply 
 to do away that artificial stress which the hand of 
 legislation lias laid upon the body politic—and a 
 healthful state of things will come of itself, barely 
 on those disturbing forces being withdrawn, where¬ 
 with the law of pauperism has deranged the con¬ 
 dition of English society. It is just as if some 
 diseased excrescence had gathered upon the human 
 frame, that stood connected with the use of some 
 palatable but pernicious liquor, to which the pa¬ 
 tient was addicted. All that the physician has 
 to do in this case, is to interdict the liquor, when 
 without further care or guardianship on his part, 
 the excrescence will subside, and from the vis medi- 
 catrix alone, that is inherent in the patient’s con¬ 
 stitution, will health be restored to him. It is 
 even so with that disease which pauperism has 
 brought on the community of England. It is a 
 disease originally formed, and still alimented by 
 the law which gives access to a compulsory pro¬ 
 vision—and precisely so soon as that access is 
 barred, there is a vis medicatrix that will then be 
 free to operate, and which, without any anxious 
 guardianship on 'the part of politicians or states¬ 
 men, will, of itself, bring round a better and hap¬ 
 pier state of the commonwealth. There might an 
 unnecessary shock be given by too sudden a change 
 of regimen. There might be an inconvenient ra¬ 
 pidity of transition, which had as well be avoided, 
 by wise and wary management. This considera- 
 
231 
 
 tion affects the question of policy as to the most 
 advisable mode of carrying the cure into effect. 
 But it does not affect the question of principle, 
 either as to the cause of the disease, or as to the 
 certainty of a good and wholesome result when 
 that cause is done away. It is very true, that by 
 a summary abolition of the law of pauperism, a 
 sore mischief may be inflicted upon society—and 
 yet it may be equally true, both that the alone 
 remedy for the present distempered state of the 
 lower orders, lies in the abolition of this law, and 
 also, that there do exist, throughout the mass of 
 English society, the ingredients or component 
 principles of such a vis medicatrix, as would great¬ 
 ly alleviate the present wretchedness, and more 
 than replace all those dispensations of legal charity 
 which would then have terminated. 
 
 And surely it cannot be questioned, that all those 
 principles of our Nature, which taken together, 
 make out the vis medicatrix, are just as firmly 
 seated, and would in fit and favourable circum¬ 
 stances, be of as unfailing operation in England, 
 as in any other country on the face of the earth. 
 There is much, no doubt, in its present system of 
 legal charity, to counteract and disguise them. 
 Yet even under this pressure, they are still to be 
 detected in manifest operation. And they only- 
 need to be delivered from that artificial weight 
 wherewith they now are overborne, in order that 
 they may break forth, and be prolific of a most 
 abundant compensation to families, when the sup¬ 
 plies of pauperism are withdrawn from them. 
 
232 
 
 Eor first, what malignant charm can there be in 
 .the air or in the geography of England, which 
 should lead us to conceive of its people, that they 
 are exempt from that most urgent principle of our 
 nature—the law of self-preservation. There is 
 certainly much in its public charity, that is fitted 
 to traverse this law. Yet still, and in the face of 
 this counteraction, manifold traces are to be found, 
 even among the labouring classes, of a prudent 
 and prospective regard to their own interests. 
 These it is the undisputed tendency of pauperism 
 to extinguish; and, therefore, any remainder of a 
 prudential habit which may yet be observable, form 
 so much the more decisive proof, that Englishmen 
 are originally and constitutionally alike unto their 
 other brethren of the species in this great character¬ 
 istic of humanity. And, accordingly, in spite of 
 their pauperism, and of its efficacy to lull them 
 into a careless improvidence, do we find that the 
 prudential virtues, even of the lower orders, are 
 enfeebled only, and not destroyed. The Saving 
 Banks, and Benefit Societies, which are to be met 
 with in almost every district of the kingdom, are 
 strong ostensible indications of a right and reflect¬ 
 ing selfishness, which, if only kept on the alert, 
 and unseduced from its own objects, by the pro¬ 
 mise and the allurement of public charity, would 
 do more for the comfort of our peasantry than all 
 the offerings of parochial and private benevolence 
 put together. There is nought that would more 
 revive or re-invigorate the impulse to accmnula- 
 
233 
 
 tion than the abolition of the law of pauperism. 
 Saving Banks would be multiplied;* and this, 
 
 * It must be admitted, however, that there is something delusive in the 
 returns made by Saving Banks, and that they may lead us to infer a 
 much greater degree of an economic habit among the people than actually 
 obtains. A very large proportion indeed of the deposits is made by house¬ 
 hold servants, and by contributors in easy circumstances. It were most desir¬ 
 able, that operatives could find their way in greater numbers to these insti¬ 
 tutions. Could they merely alibi'd to slacken their work in a season of de¬ 
 pressed wages, or to eease from working altogether, the overstocked 
 markets would he far more speedily cleared away, and the remuneration for 
 labour would again come hack to its wonted or natural level. 
 
 The operation of public charity, in lessening the deposits, must be quite 
 
234 
 
 thougli the most palpable, would not be the only 
 fruit of that sure and speedy resurrection that 
 
 England—they would have made their escape to a residence in some near 
 parishes, that were less burdened. So that the grand legal expedient of 
 England, was, in this instance, tried to the uttermost, and its shortcomings 
 had just to be made up by methods that would be far more productive, as 
 well as far less needful, were there no poor rate, and no law of charity what¬ 
 ever. Mr. Lowe, the humane and enlightened rector of this parish, succeed¬ 
 ed, by great exertion, in raising the sum of £1278 14s. 8d. from the benevo¬ 
 lent, in various parts of the country; besides which, there was the sum of 
 £1157 10s. contributed by a society that was formed, we believe, in Lon¬ 
 don, to provide for the extra distress of that period. In all there was dis¬ 
 tributed among the poor in 1810-17, the sum of £4523 3s. The parish 
 workhouse was quite filled with them. Its rooms were littered down for 
 the reception of as many as could be squeezed together. Some were em¬ 
 ployed at work upon the roads—and in the distributions that took place of 
 
235 
 
 should then take place of an economic habit among 
 the people. There would, in the privacies of do- 
 
 through it, and risen above it, who, a few years before, were in no better, 
 nay, even in worse circumstances than others, who were completely over¬ 
 whelmed by it. For example, our present overseer is actually administering 
 relief, even in the workhouse, to some once in better circumstances, but less 
 provident than himself. On this account, I have been anxious to make my 
 
236 
 
 mestic life, be other effects beyond the reach of 
 sight or of computation. A thousand shifts and 
 
 tal impression may be arrived at on this subject, from the average of a few 
 eases, taken at random, in distant parts of the country, and from neighbour¬ 
 hoods which exhibit the widest possible dissimilarity in the pursuits and 
 circumstances of the people. 
 
 My friend Mr. Hale, of Spitalfields, who is well known in parliament for 
 his vigilant and sagacious observation of tbe habits of the poor, lias frequent¬ 
 ly affirmed, of those who have once been paupers, and been restored again 
 to a state of sufficiency, in better times, that they almost never deposit in a 
 
 We are apt to be carried away by too magnificent a conception of the 
 good that lias been done through the Saving Banks, when we read of the 
 very large sums that have been deposited. In Worcester, for example, the 
 
23 * 
 
 salutary practices would come in place of the dis¬ 
 pensations of pauperism. There would soon be a 
 visible abatement in the profligacy of the land;* 
 
 lies, we should also expect a greatly more prevalent direction of labourers 
 to the Parish Saving Bank, as one of the most striking and sensible mani¬ 
 festations of the good that is to he effected by the rescinding of the law of 
 pauperism. 
 
 The parish of Ruthwell lies a very few miles from the English border, 
 and its population of 1285, consist chiefly of husbandmen and the servants 
 of husbandmen, with a few country artificers. There the inducement to 
 economy is unimpaired by poor rates, and all the demands of indigence 
 are met by an expenditure of forty-three pounds a year; a sum made up of 
 
 
238 
 
 and, if there be any truth or steadfastness in Na¬ 
 ture, there can be no question that, if legal charity 
 were put an end to, this would at length be fol- 
 
 liabits, and tlieir total dissimilarity to the habits and character of the peasan¬ 
 try in Scotland, formed an insuperable barrier in the way of all amendment. 
 There are many such habits that may be regarded as the immediate fruit of 
 external circumstances, and that would quickly and necessarily give way 
 when the circumstances were altered; and these are altogether distinct 
 from other habits that essentially depend on the moral or the religious prin¬ 
 ciples of our nature. 
 
 In the former class of habits, I should reckon all those to which we are 
 prompted at the first, and in which we are led to persevere afterwards by 
 the urgent dictates of self-preservation. It is thus tiiat, with the decline of 
 pauperism, there would be an instantaneous growth of sobriety; and we are 
 further confident of a very great abatement in that species of profligacy which 
 has deluged the parishes of England with illegitimate children. There is 
 nought which more strikes and appals the traveller who is employed in a 
 moral or philanthropic survey of our land, than not the gradual, but really 
 instant transition which takes place in regard to this habit, when be passes 
 out from the unassessed parishes of Scotland. The mischief done by the 
 allowances of pauperism, is not merely that they hold out to crime a refuge 
 from destitution, but that they, in a certain measure, shield it from disgrace. 
 A family visitation, that would otherwise be felt as an overwhelming cala¬ 
 mity by all its members, falls lightly upon their feelings; and one of the 
 greatest external securities to female virtue is demolished, when the culprit, 
 protected by law from the need of bringing a bane and a burden upon her 
 relatives, is thus protected from that which would give its keenest edge of 
 bitterness to tlieir execrations. There can be no doubt that, if you with¬ 
 draw the epidemic bounty which is thus granted to vice, you would at least 
 restrain its epidemic overgrowth, which is now so manifest throughout the 
 parishes of England—that you would enlist the selfishness of parents on the 
 side of the purity of their own offspring. The instant that it was felt to be 
 more oppressive, would it also be felt more odious: and as an early effect 
 of the proposed reformation, should we witness both a keener popular in¬ 
 dignation against the betrayer of innocence, and a more vigilant guardian¬ 
 ship among families. As it is, you have thwarted the moral and beneficent 
 designs of Nature—you have expunged the distinction that it renders to 
 virtue, because you have obliterated the shame and the stigma affixed by it 
 to vice—you have annulled the sanctions by which it guards the line of 
 demarcation between them. 
 
239 
 
 lowed up by a better succedaneum, in the improved 
 habit and management of families. 
 
 But, secondly, the law of relative atfection, in 
 
 Accordingly, in all parts of England, the shameless and abandoned profli¬ 
 gacy of the lower orders is most deplorable. It is perhaps not saying too 
 much to say, that the expense for illegitimate children forms about a tenth 
 
240 
 
 a natural state of tilings, we should imagine to be 
 just of as powerful operation in England as in any 
 other country of the world. We do not see how 
 
 children as to derive a competency from the positive allowance given for 
 them by the parish. 
 
 There is a sensitive alarm sometimes expressed lest, on the abolition of 
 legal charity, there should be no diminution of crime, while the unnatural 
 mothers, deprived of their accustomed resource, might be tempted to relieve 
 themselves by some dreadful perpetration. It might serve to quell this 
 apprehension, and to prove how Nature hath provided so well for all such 
 emergencies, as that she might safely be let alone, to consider the following 
 plain but instructive narrative, from the parish of Gratney, contiguous to 
 England, and only separated from it by a small stream. The Rev. Mr. 
 Morgan, its minister, writes me, that “ To females who bring illegitimate 
 children into the world we give nothing. They are left entirely to their 
 own resources. It is, however, a remarkable fact, that children of this de¬ 
 scription with us are more tenderly brought up, better educated, and, of 
 course, more respectable, and more useful members of society, than illegi¬ 
 timates on the other side of the Sark, who, in a great many instances, are 
 brought up solely at the expense of their parishes.” 
 
 This comparison of parishes lying together in a state of juxtaposition, 
 and differing only in regimen, proves with what fearlessness a natural eco¬ 
 nomy might be attempted; not, we admit, in reference to cases which al¬ 
 ready exist, but certainly in reference to all new cases and new applications. 
 The simple understanding that, in future, there was to be no legal allow¬ 
 ance for illegitimate children in a parish, would lay an instantaneous check 
 on the profligate habits of its people. The action of shame, and prudential 
 feeling, and fear from displeased, because now injured and oppressed rela¬ 
 tives, would be restored to its proper degree of intensity,—would be surely 
 followed up by a diminution of the crime—and as to any appalling 
 consequences that might be pictured forth on the event of crime breaking 
 through all these restraints, for this too nature has so wisely and delicately 
 hi l 11 the principles of the human constitution, that it is greatly better 
 to trust her than to thwart and interfere with her. She hath provided, in 
 the very affection of the guilty mother for her hapless child, a stronger 
 guarantee for its safety and its interest, than is provided by the expedients 
 of law. This is forcibly illustrated by the state of matters at Gratney, and 
 might help to convince our statesmen how much of the wisdom of legisla¬ 
 tion lies in letting matters alone. 
 
241 
 
 this can be denied, without mysticism. It cannot 
 well be proved; for it w'orketh in secret, and does 
 not flash on the public eye through the medium 
 of philanthropic institutions. But it may very 
 safely, we think, be presumed of this home prin¬ 
 ciple, that when once free from disturbance, it 
 will settle as deeply, and spread as diffusively 
 through the families of England, as it is found, 
 on an average, to do through the species at large. 
 It is unfortunate for the character of its people, 
 that the fruits of this universal instinct are not so 
 conspicuous as are its aberrations. To meet with 
 the former, we must explore the habitations of pri¬ 
 vate life, and become familiar with their inmates. 
 The latter are blazoned forth in the records of 
 crime, or have a place in the registrations of paro¬ 
 chial charity. The advertisements which daily 
 meet our eye, of runaway husbands, or abandoned 
 children, and those cases of aged parents who have 
 been consigned, by their own offspring, to the cheer¬ 
 less atmosphere of a poor’s house, mark not the 
 genuine developments of nature in England, but 
 those cruel deviations from it, to which its mis¬ 
 taken policy has given rise. There can be no 
 doubt, that after this policy is reversed, nature 
 will recover its supremacy. Those affections which 
 guarantee' a mutual aid in behalf of kinsfolk in 
 every country of Europe, will again flow here in 
 their wonted currency. The spectacle of venera¬ 
 ble grandsires at the fireside of our cottage fami¬ 
 lies, will become as frequent and familiar in this 
 
 Vol. II. H h 
 
242 
 
 as in other lands: And a man’s own children will 
 he to him the best pledges, that the evening of his 
 days shall be spent under a roof of kindlier protec¬ 
 tion than any prison-house of charity can afi'ord. 
 Let pauperism be done away, and it will be nobly 
 followed up by a resurrection of the domestic vir¬ 
 tues. The national crime will disappear with the 
 national temptation; and England, when delivered 
 ■therefrom, will prove herself to be as tender and 
 •true to Nature, as any other member of the great 
 human family.* 
 
 * We have not met with a testimony more universal throughout the 
 ■whole of England, than that which relates to the perfect unconcern where¬ 
 with the nearest kinsfolk abandon each other to a poor’s house. In most 
 parishes, there is a great preference on the part of paupers for a place on 
 the out-pension list, though it he only a partial maintenance which is af¬ 
 forded, to an entire support within the walls of the workhouse. I was in¬ 
 formed, however, at Bury in Lancashire, that some very old out-pensioners, 
 who had been admitted as inmates with the families of their own children, 
 often preferred the workhouse, because, on purpose to get altogether quit 
 of them, their children made them uncomfortable. This is very much of a 
 piece with the general depositions that are to be had every where on the 
 subject. We have seen whole columns of Manchester, and other provincial 
 newspapers, filled with advertisements of runaway fathers, and runaway 
 husbands, in which they are described with all the particularity that is em¬ 
 ployed for tire discovery of felons, and outlaws, and deserters from the army. 
 And yet we are not to infer from this an utter negation of all the relative 
 feelings, on the part of these desperadoes. They know that their wives and 
 children will not be permitted to starve—and in by far the greater number 
 of instances, had this been the alternative, they would have remained at 
 home. They do not leave them destitute, for they leave them in possession 
 of a right to subsistence. The affection which they have to their own kin¬ 
 dred, is still a rooted principle in their bosoms; and what might appear, at 
 the first view, an act of unnatural cruelty, is often an act of collusion and 
 good understanding between the fugitives and their families. The very pro¬ 
 secution by children, for a legal aliment in behalf of their aged parents, in¬ 
 stead of being an unnatural surrender of duty on their part, is often urged 
 
243 
 
 • And, thirdly, who can doubt, from the known 
 generosity of the English character, that nought 
 
 forward by the same filial regard that would prompt them to the defence or 
 prosecution of any other legal interest which belonged to them. So that 
 however unkindly the influence of pauperism is ou the duties and affections 
 of relationship, there is nothing exhibited in England which can lead us to 
 
 of what should else he squandered in carelessness, or low < 
 would have the wholesome direction of a virtue impressed upon it. 
 
 It is hut fair to add, that in Gloucester we met with one testim 
 care and guardianship that relatives, even in humhle life, continu 
 for each other, a still stronger in Portsmouth, and a slight one 
 Bedfordshire. Mr. Hale, who is so singularly vcrsant in the In 
 workmen, vouches for two distinct classes, with equally distinct 
 
244 
 
 but scope .and opportunity are wanting, in order 
 to evince both the force and the fruitfulness of 
 that sympathy which neighbours in humble life 
 have for each other. That this is greatly less ap¬ 
 parent in England than in other countries, is alto¬ 
 gether due to its establishments of legal charity. 
 We are not to expect so prompt and sensitive a 
 humanity among individuals in those parishes, 
 where the cares and the offices of humanity have 
 been devolved on a public administration. Nor 
 will acquaintances be much more ready to stretch 
 forth a helping hand to him who can present a 
 claim of poverty at a court of supply, than to him 
 who can present a claim of property at the bank, 
 where a treasure of his own is deposited. Yet even 
 as it is, that beautiful law of our nature, whereby 
 a busy, spontaneous, and internal operation is up- 
 
 independcnce. “ I have known,” he writes, “ very many instances, (among 
 my own workmen and others) of the children of those who have never keen 
 paupers, making conscience of supporting their parents in old age—they will 
 even submit to many hard and severe privations, (much more so than pau¬ 
 pers will submit to) to maintain their resolution and their promises, that 
 their parents never shall become paupers.” On the other hand, it often 
 happens, that even when parents are living under the same roof with their 
 children, there is no community of aid or of interest betwixt them. Mr. 
 Ranken from Bocking in Essex, writes, that “ it is very frequent for young 
 people to live under the same roof with aged parents, and leave them to he 
 wholly provided for by the parish, while they are fully employed, and at 
 good wages; although, until they have been able to provide for themselves, 
 they, in common with the whole family, have been receiving parochial as¬ 
 sistance. Such is the want of proper feeling, that the parents, as soon as 
 tire children have attained the age of manhood, in but few instances, under 
 any difficulties, think of assisting them more; nor do the children, after 
 they have been emancipated from their fathers, pay attention to the wants 
 and difficulties of their aged parents.” 
 
245 
 
 held throughout every aggregate of human beings, 
 ■is only weakened in England, by the operation of 
 the poor rate, and not destroyed. Like the law of 
 relative affection, it is not capable of being veri¬ 
 fied from the records or the registers of a general 
 and combined philanthropy—and can only be 
 witnessed to its full extent, by those who are tho¬ 
 roughly conversant with the habits of the poor, and 
 have had much of close and frequent observation 
 among the intimacies of plebeian fellowship. There 
 is not one topic on which the higher orders of 
 England have so crude and unfurnished an appre¬ 
 hension, as on the power and alertness of mutual 
 sympathy among the working classes. This, in 
 some measure, arises from its being in part stifled 
 throughout the whole of their land, because in part 
 superseded by their public and parochial institu¬ 
 tions. But still it may be abundantly recognised. 
 We have heard it more particularly affirmed, of those 
 who have no legal right in the town or parish of 
 their residence, yet who rather choose to remain, 
 than be removed to the place of their settlement. 
 These form a pretty numerous class in large 
 towns; and, among the other virtues of industry 
 and carefulness, and good management, which 
 are ascribed to them in a superior degree, have 
 we also heard of their mutual liberality as one 
 striking characteristic which belongs to them. 
 There can be no doubt, that this would break forth 
 again throughout the mass of English society, on 
 the abolition of pauperism •, and that by the re- 
 
246 
 
 yival of a great popular virtue, all the evils which 
 are now apprehended of a great consequent dis¬ 
 tress among the, people, would be. completely 
 done away.* 
 
 * I was so fortunate as to meet with a very good illustration of the 
 principle affirmed in the text, in the very region of pauperism. I first 
 learned of it at the house of Mr. Gurney, in Westham, Essex, who, in con¬ 
 junction with his sister, Mrs. Fry, is so honourably signalized by his bene¬ 
 volent attention to the comfort of prisoners. He has politely answered my 
 further inquiries on the subject, in the following words: “ In our work- 
 house we have found it needful to order deprivations, as a punishment for 
 its refractory inmates; and, amongst others, we have ordered that such 
 females should be debarred the use of tea, which they much value. It has 
 been continually so ordered, but it has always been reported as wholly nu¬ 
 gatory, as the companions of such cannot see their neighbours without it, 
 during their own enjoyment, and have always, in consequence, shared their 
 small pittance with the delinquent. I use the expression of ‘ small pit¬ 
 tance,’ because we so distribute what we look upon as a comfort, and not a 
 necessary of life. The same may, with nearly equal truth, be related in re¬ 
 spect of the men, in their allowance of meat.” 
 
 It is likely enough, however, that a spirit of hostility to the discipline of 
 the workhouse, might be as active a principle here, as sympathy with those 
 on whom the deprivation had been laid. But no man familiar with humble 
 life, can at all question the strength of that mutual sympathy which obtains 
 among the members of it; in whom it operates with all the power of a con¬ 
 stitutional feeling, and is not dependent on a slow process of culture. There 
 is no doubt, that it is in readiness for immediate sendee, on the abolition of 
 pauperism, though it may lie dormant, so long as the imagination lasts, that 
 under the provisions and the cares of a legal charity, it is wholly uncalled 
 for. It is by no means extinct. It is only in a state of imprisonment; 
 superseded, for the time, into a sort of inaction, rather than stifled into utter 
 and irrecoverable annihilation. It is not dead, but sleepetli; and the repeal 
 of the law of pauperism would effectually awaken it. The charity of nature 
 would recover her old vigilance and activity, on the removal of that arti¬ 
 ficial charity which has so long kept her in abeyance. Next, perhaps, to 
 tile pain of hunger, is the pain of witnessing its agonies in another : and 
 this, of itself, is a sure and sufficient guarantee for the dispensations of legal 
 charity being replaced by timelier and better dispensations. There is not a 
 neighbourhood where the horrors of extreme want would not be anticipated; 
 
m 
 
 But this disposition of the lower orders to be¬ 
 friend each other, were of little avail, in this ques¬ 
 tion, without the power. There must be a mate¬ 
 riel, as well as a morale, to constitute them those 
 effective almoners, who shall come in place of that 
 legalized charity which we plead the extirpation 
 of. On this point too, there is a world of incre¬ 
 dulity to be met with;* and it is difficult to find 
 
 ami with all the promptitude of any other virtue of necessity, would the 
 instinctive compassion of our nature spring up at the moment, with the oc¬ 
 casion of its exercise. We believe, that even though the present allowances 
 of pauperism were to be suddenly withdrawn, there would, to meet the in¬ 
 stant distress, he a breahing forth upon it of our compassionate feelings, 
 with somewhat of the force and recoil of elasticity; and much more are we 
 
248 : 
 
 acceptance for that arithmetic which demonstrates 
 the might and the efficacy of those humble offer¬ 
 ings, which so amply compensate, by their num¬ 
 ber, for the smallness of each individually. The 
 penny associations which have been instituted 
 for objects of Christian beneficence, afford us a 
 lesson as to the power and productiveness of littles. 
 Even the sums deposited with Saving Banks and 
 Benefit Societies point to the same conclusion. 
 But perhaps the most impressive, though melan¬ 
 choly proof that can be given of a capability in 
 humble life, greatly beyond all that is commonly 
 imagined, may be gathered from the vast sums 
 which are annually expended in those houses of 
 public entertainment, that are only frequented by 
 people of the labouring classes in society. We are 
 most thoroughly aware,, that the abolition of pau¬ 
 perism in England will never act by an instanta- 
 
 on throughout every vicinity where an aggregate of human heings is to he 
 found. Its amount is great, because made up of offerings, which, though 
 small, are manifold—of rills, winch, though cadi of them scanty, are in¬ 
 numerable, and constantly flowing. We are aware that pauperism has laid 
 a freezing arrest on this beautiful economy of nature: yet even where she 
 has wrought the greatest mischief, she has still been unable to effect a total 
 congelation. And many are the poorest districts, in the most crowded 
 cities of our land, where yet more is rendered to human suffering by the 
 internal operation of charity within themselves, than by all the liberalities 
 which are imported from abroad. We do not at present contend, however, 
 for any thing being done to call forth their subscriptions; hut we do contend 
 for nothing being done which shall deaden or reduce their sympathies. 
 These, in fact, amid.all the parade and speculation of a more ostensible phi¬ 
 lanthropy, form their best securities against the miseries of extreme indi¬ 
 gence. Their means are greatly underrated; and their feelings and virtues 
 still more ungenerously so. 
 
249 
 
 neous charm on the moral habits of her peasantry. 
 But, however slow it is that the virtues of principle 
 come forth to their full and practical establish¬ 
 ment in a land, yet this is not true of the virtues 
 of necessity; for these latter do arise promptly and 
 powerfully, to meet every new occasion that has 
 been created for their exercise. There is no legis¬ 
 lative enactment called for to compel such an at¬ 
 tendance on funerals, as to secure that all the dead 
 shall be buried; but at the expense often of much 
 time and convenience, we find this habit to be sus¬ 
 tained, as the established decency of every neigh¬ 
 bourhood. That any who die should be permitted 
 to remain without burial, would not.be felt a- a 
 more intolerable nuisance, than that any who live 
 should be permitted to starve without food. 
 There would just be as painful a revolt against 
 the one spectacle as the other; .and without the 
 artificial regulations of law, men would have 
 found their way in England, just as they have 
 done in all the other countries of the world, to the 
 sure defence of every neighbourhood against a 
 catastrophe so horrible. Were the law of pauper¬ 
 ism suspended in any parish or county of England, 
 a greater liberality, both among neighbours and 
 kinsfolk, would instantly spring up as a kind of 
 epidemic virtue there: just as we fear that a cold¬ 
 blooded indifference to the comfort even of nearest 
 relatives, might now be charged as the epidemic 
 vice of England, in reference to the other nations 
 of the world. But this is altogether a forced and 
 
250 
 
 unnatural appearance; and, were the causes of it 
 removed, it is not to be doubted that England, on 
 the strength of her people’s native generosity, 
 would nobly redeem the imputation that has been 
 cast upon her. 
 
 The fourth and last counteractive against the 
 evils that might be apprehended to ensue on the 
 abolition of pauperism, is the freer and larger sym¬ 
 pathy which would then be exercised by the ricli 
 in behalf of the poor. This we have placed last 
 in the order of enumeration, because we deem it 
 least in the order of importance. This, however, ' 
 is a comparative estimate, on the soundness of 
 which there might be the utmost diversity of opi¬ 
 nion, while there can only be one as to the blast¬ 
 ing effect of legal charity, on the warm and genial 
 kindliness of nature. The door of the heart will 
 ever remain shut against the loudest assaults of a 
 legal or litigious applicant, while to the gentlest 
 knock, from one who implores, but does not chal¬ 
 lenge, it will be sure to open. We have almost 
 everywhere in England heard the farmers stigma¬ 
 tized as the most hard-hearted of men; and never, 
 on the north of the Tweed, have we met with such 
 a charge against them. But when once our far¬ 
 mers have become the administrators of a large 
 compulsory poor rate in their parishes, then Na¬ 
 ture, true to herself, in all quarters of the globe, 
 will work the very callousness of feeling amongst 
 us, that she is said to have done amongst our 
 neighbours in the south. And yet, in spite of her 
 
251 
 
 freezing, artificial system, how manifold are the 
 liberalities of England! Even under her present 
 bondage to a perverse and unfortunate policy, 
 what an earnest does she give of those still nobler 
 liberalities that might be confidently looked for, 
 after that policy had been done away! How ex¬ 
 haustless are her devices and her doings for the 
 good of our species! and how prolific in all sorts 
 and schemes of a benevolence which, it would ap¬ 
 pear, that the poor rate has not wholly superseded. 
 There are subscriptions and philanthropic societies 
 innumerable. There is not a parish of any great 
 note or population in England without them; and 
 they prove how surely we may count on a kind and 
 copious descent of liberality, over all those places 
 from which the dispensations of pauperism shall 
 be withdrawn.* 
 
 * It were quite endless to enumerate the local benevolent associations 
 that have been formed-in the various parishes of England, and which are in 
 constant operation, such as Lying-in, and Dorcas, and Destitute Sick, and 
 Stranger’s Friend Societies, and many other institutions of the sort, which at 
 once demonstrate the inelHcacy of legal charity, and the readiness of sponta¬ 
 neous charity to suit itself to all the varieties of human wretchedness. Another 
 proof of the same two positions, is the toleration of a sort of' secret and 
 underhand begging in many parishes, and the affirmative answer, given al¬ 
 most everywhere, to the question, whether, after all, there is not much of 
 private benevolence resorted to by the poor, and actually discharged upon 
 them by the rich. So that when the inquiry is made, How is it possible 
 that we can do in Scotland without a poor rate? the obvious reply is, that 
 we do without a poor rate, just by those very expedients wherewith in 
 England they meet all that want and distress which, even with a poor rate, 
 they are not able to overtake; and which surplus of unprovided want is, in 
 all probability, as great as the whole would have been, had no poor rate 
 ever been instituted. 
 
252 
 
253 
 
254 
 
 wretchedness. There is a mighty surplus of un¬ 
 relieved want which remains to be provided for ; 
 
 volent Society;” and the money has only been got through about a twelve- 
 
 Now, from this important narrative we not only gather the fact, that 
 a subscription fixed many cases of permanent pauperism on the parish of 
 Christ Church, where the burden of it is still felt—but we may learn wliat 
 a world of delusion exists among the higher orders, in regard to the whole 
 habits and capabilities of the poor. It might lead them to suspect, that 
 after all there may be a great deal too much of machinery raised for the 
 purposes of public and proclaimed charity; and, more especially, that the 
 great national apparatus of a legalized pauperism, is, perhaps, a thing wholly 
 uncalledfor. More especially does it demonstrate how easy it is for a great 
 general management to be led astray; and that the only way of proceeding 
 with judgment and efficacy in the admimstration of relief, is through the 
 medium of small independent jurisdictions. Were Spitalfields broken 
 down into moderate parishes, we venture to affirm, that each could, on its 
 own separate resources, uphold itself in comfort and independence through 
 every season of fluctuation; and that there is no insuperable obstacle even 
 there, in the way of committing the charity of law back again to the charity 
 
 n much gratified with the testimony of one so soundly ex- 
 
255 
 
 and the charity of law has fallen so far short of her 
 undertaking, as to have left the same ample scope 
 for the charity of love, that we behold in other 
 countries where pauperism is unknown. This, if 
 any thing would, might open the eyes of our states¬ 
 men to the utter insufficiency of a legal provision; 
 and might demonstrate to their satisfaction, that 
 let pauperism stretch forth her allowances, and 
 widen her occupancy as she may, there will con¬ 
 stantly, over and above the. whole extent of her 
 operations, be as interminable an outfield as before 
 for the duties and the services of a gratuitous 
 philanthropy. The question is thus forced upon 
 us, What service has been rendered to humanity 
 by the poor rate ? It has obtained for England no 
 discharge from the calls of a benevolence, which 
 might even have had a lighter task to perform, 
 had no such economy been instituted. 
 
 But, secondly, the task would not only have 
 
 thorough a practical devotion to it—and, while not a member of the church 
 of England, that nevertheless lie goes hand in hand with the most zealous 
 of its functionaries, in working along with them at the established mechan¬ 
 ism of one of its parishes. 
 
 I shall only add, that the testimony of Mr Hale, in regard to the effects 
 of the Spitalfields subscription on the ordinary pauperism, is corroborated 
 by Mr. James Holden, relieving overseer of the parish of St. Leonard, 
 Shoreditch, who states, that “ when the relief by the subscription ceased, 
 a number of those who had been partakers of it, became paupers on the pa¬ 
 rish, who had not before applied for parochial relief,” and that “ lie believes it 
 had the effect of increasing their pauperism.” 
 
 It is also found in St. Giles, that these occasional subscriptions bring on 
 an increased pauperism, which they are never able afterwards to reduce. 
 
256 
 
 been lighter, but there would have been greater 
 ability and greater alacrity for the performance of 
 it. It is unnecessary to expatiate on a topic so 
 obvious, as that without a poor rate the means of 
 benevolence would have been less exhausted. 
 But what is of more importance, its motives would 
 have been greatly more animating. 'As it is, be¬ 
 nevolence meets with much to damp and to dis¬ 
 courage her; and, more especially, in a certain 
 hardness and unthankfulness among its objects, 
 which it is the direct tendency of the reigning 
 system to engender. That the good will of the 
 one party be kept in vigorous play, it would re¬ 
 quire to be met by the gratitude of the other—but 
 how often is this utterly put to flight among the 
 people, by the shrewd imagination, that all which 
 is done for them by the rich, is only done to les¬ 
 sen the burden of the poor rate—or, in other words, 
 that what is rendered in the shape of kindness to 
 them, is only to relieve themselves from the weight 
 of their own legal obligations. This whole busi¬ 
 ness of charity never will be put on its natural 
 foundation, till the heterogeneous ingredient of 
 right be altogether detached from it—till a distinct 
 and intelligible line of demarcation be drawn be¬ 
 tween the two virtues of justice and humanity— 
 and this is what the law of pauperism has done 
 every thing to obliterate. While that law subsists, 
 every nascent feeling of generosity on the one side, 
 is in constant danger of being stifled by most gal¬ 
 ling and ungenerous suspicions on the other—and 
 
25 ? 
 
 not till the right of the poor to relief be taken 
 away, will the humanity of the rich be in fair cir¬ 
 cumstances for the development of all its fruit, 
 and of all its graciousness. 
 
 . It is out of these various elements, then, that on 
 the abolition of pauperism, we would confidently 
 look for a sounder and happier state of the com¬ 
 monwealth. At first sight, it might appear that 
 were a legal provision swept away from the face of 
 English society, it would leave a fearful territory of 
 helpless and unrelieved misery behind it. But 
 there would first be a mighty abridgment upon 
 this territory, by the resurrection that would en¬ 
 sue of providential habits among the people: and 
 secondly, by the revival of their kindred or rela¬ 
 tive duties: and, thirdly, by the new excitement 
 that would be given to those mutual sympathies 
 which operate to a vast and unknown extent 
 throughout the mass of the community: and, 
 lastly, by the generosities of the affluent, who, 
 going forth spontaneously, with ampler means, 
 and on a field of charity now rendered more 
 manageable, by all the antecedent limitations, 
 would, at the same time, earn the reward, and be 
 upheld by the encouragements of charity, in the 
 gratitude of a people, then divested of legal jea¬ 
 lousy, and of all that bitterness wherewith the 
 imagination of a rightful claim has tainted the 
 whole of this ministration. 
 
 And it would be wrong to conceive, that ere 
 there could be any sensible approach to such a 
 
 Voi.. IT. IC k 
 
258 
 
 state of things, we must wait the tardy and labo¬ 
 rious culture of many generations. The principles 
 which guarantee a much quicker recovery of the 
 nation to this state, are not instilled, however much 
 they may be strengthened by a process of educa¬ 
 tion—but rank with the strong and uncontrollable 
 instincts of our nature. They are now, it is true, 
 in part overborne by an artificial stress—but, on its 
 simple removal, they will rapidly, and as by an 
 elastic spring, assume a tone and vigour that shall 
 give them instant efficiency. Even under the whole 
 weight of those adverse and chilling influences, 
 whereby the law of pauperism has so greatly en¬ 
 feebled the antecedent laws of Nature in the hu¬ 
 man constitution, yet are the laws of self-preser¬ 
 vation among individuals, and of sympathy among 
 relatives and neighbours, still in manifest activity. 
 They are cast down, but not destroyed—and when 
 again set at liberty from their present unnatural 
 bondage, they will replace all the dispensations 
 of pauperism, with a tenfold blessing on the com¬ 
 fort and virtue of families.* 
 
 * Mr. Davison says well, that, “ the actual progress of the harm, in 
 contaminating the hearts and liahits of our people, is, I am persuaded, very 
 far short of all that overflowing measure of it which might have been let 
 in upon us if it had not beeif powerfully resisted: and, if this persuasion he 
 well founded, there is the firmer hope of our being able to retrieve ourselves, 
 and make a successful turn, under those better energies, when they shall be 
 more left to their own action, and disengaged from the counterpoise which 
 has been hung upon them. The harm not yet produced, shows they have 
 been strong at the bottom; and it is, therefore, a most substantial encou¬ 
 ragement. The soundness of the constitution lias been tried by the malig¬ 
 nity of the poison, which has not proved mortal to it. For that a great dc- 
 
259 
 
 It might seem somewhat ridiculous to hold a 
 lengthened and laborious argument—and that, for 
 the purpose of showing that the people of Eng¬ 
 land have the same urgent appetite for the interest 
 and preservation of self with the rest of our spe¬ 
 cies ; and that withal, there may be further de¬ 
 tected in their hearts the same instinctive affection 
 for offspring and kinsfolk—the same prompt sym¬ 
 pathy with the wants and sufferings of their fellow- 
 men. But, they are the parliament of England 
 who fir3t set the example of this strange incredu¬ 
 lity. That act of Elizabeth, which has been ex¬ 
 tolled as a monument of English feeling, and 
 
 grcc of the bad influence of this system lias not yet made its way among 
 our people, is, I think, most apparent. We have examples among our 
 lower classes, of sobriety, diligeflee, good conduct, and patient contented 
 labour; many cheerful, thriving, independent working families, though 
 they have been pitched upon the very edge of the precipice which the law 
 has cut away under their feet; and every such example is in derogation of 
 
 treated. Perhaps, the sketch of our history is this: that a religious, free, 
 active, and enterprising people, have a depth and solidity of resources within 
 them, not easy to be exhausted. Even the poor laws have not exhausted 
 them. For had we not stood on some such ground of more than ordinary 
 
 strength; had our people not had a conscience, a spirit, and a staple of ho¬ 
 
 nest feeling within them, to withhold them from accepting with unchecked 
 aridity, the corrupting overtures of eleemosynary maintenance, and to 
 qualify the partial and con strained acceptance of it to which they have yield¬ 
 ed ; had they not had a sober religion continually recalling them to their 
 obvious duties; and a breed of character naturalized among them, by the 
 
 greater virtue and efficacy of many of our other constitutional laws them¬ 
 
 selves; what is there in the nature of these parochial laws, as they are now 
 applied, which could have saved us from the degeneracy and degradation of 
 having become one great national poor-house, overrun with the infection 
 of a Spanish or Neapolitan leprosy of mendicancy? 
 
 “ Tll “ evil, however, must be expected to be progressive, &c." 
 
English wisdom, is a monument of the legisla¬ 
 ture’s fears, that neither feeling nor wisdom were 
 to be found in the land. It is, in fact, the cruel¬ 
 lest reproach which the government of a country 
 ever laid upon its subjects. It is an enactment 
 founded on a distrust of the national character— 
 or, an attempt to supplement by law, an appre¬ 
 hended deficiency in the personal, and the domes¬ 
 tic, and the social virtues of Englishmen. And 
 never did an assembly of rulers make a more un¬ 
 fortunate aberration across the rightful boundaries 
 of the province which belongs to them. Never did 
 legislation more hurtfully usurp the prerogatives 
 of Nature, than when she stretched forth her 
 hand to raise a prop, by which she has pierced the 
 side of charity, and did that with an intent to fos¬ 
 ter, which has only served to destroy. 
 
 Before that we state, and attempt to justify our 
 own opinion of the best way by which a retracing 
 movement might be made, we shall shortly consi¬ 
 der the two leading expedients—one of which has 
 been partially acted on; and the other of which 
 we shall advert to, not for the purpose of urging 
 its instantaneous adoption, but to prepare the way 
 for arguing those modifications upon it, which we 
 shall venture to recommend. The first of these 
 expedients is a more strict administration of the 
 law of pauperism—the second is the abolition of 
 it. 
 
 There has, of late, been a decided impulse felt, 
 in many parts of England, towards a more strict 
 
261 
 
 administration of the law, founded botli on the 
 distress of the times, and on the unexampled 
 height to which the expense of pauperism had 
 arisen. And a very important facility has been 
 rendered to this undertaking, by the Select Yes- 
 try Act, whereby the power of the justices, in 
 summoning overseers to show cause why relief 
 should not be granted, has been greatly limited 
 or impeded—and the whole matter has been 
 placed more absolutely than before under the 
 discretion of the Parish vestry.* There are many 
 towns and parishes in England, where this act has 
 been proceeded on, and a good many more where 
 of late paid and permanent overseers have been 
 
 * The act referred to in the text, is that of 59 Geo. 3. c. 12, and is better 
 known by the name of Sturgess Bourne’s act. England is much indebted 
 to this enlightened senator, for the attention that be has bestowed on far 
 the most interesting question in her domestic, policy. He lias, perhaps, 
 done as much as human wisdom can possibly effectuate for arresting the 
 mischief of a compulsory provision in behalf of indigence. But there 
 would appear to be an inherent mischief in tile very principle of such a pro¬ 
 vision, which baffles every expedient that falls short of extirpation. In the 
 meantime, however, legislators must feel their way as they can, through 
 the prejudice and tile practical obstinacy that might still withstand tile ap¬ 
 plication of a radical cure—and so it is, that the parliamentary measure 
 which has been devised and carried by any individual, might not be a fair 
 exponent of his whole mind and principle on the subject to which it re¬ 
 lates. The greater number of those philanthropists who restricted their 
 endeavours, in the first instance, to the abolition of the Slave Trade, were, 
 at heart, and from the very outset, the determined enemies of all slavery. 
 It is natural to expect, that all palliatives and superficial treatments shall 
 be put to the proof, ere the method of amputation is resorted to—and it 
 does appear pretty evident, from a Report, drawn up with admirable judg¬ 
 ment, of the Committee of 1817 on the Poor Laws, to the House of 
 Commons, that the necessity is at length becoming obvious of a change far 
 more systematic and fundamental than any which shall ever be achieved by 
 a mere improvement in the way of administration. 
 
262 
 
 employed, who soon acquire a habit and an expe¬ 
 rience that qualify them for the business of rigid 
 investigation. The expedients which have been 
 used either to reduce the claim of the applicant, 
 or to repel him altogether, are exceedingly various 
 —and certain it is, that under the energy of a far 
 more active and watchful regimen than wont to be 
 exercised, there has been a very marvellous reduc¬ 
 tion of. expenditure in many parts of England.* 
 
 * We are not aware, whether the supplemental appendix to the Report 
 from the Select Committee on Poor Rate Returns, ordered by the House 
 of Commons to be printed 15th July, 1822, has yet been published. This 
 will exhibit.the sum expended for the relief of the poor in every parish of 
 England,,.for each of the six years which follow the 25th of March, 1815; 
 and from it, therefore, we shall gather a precise estimate of the reductions 
 that have been accomplished in those places where select vestries, or assis¬ 
 tant overseers, have been appointed. The immediate appearance of such 
 an authentic document as this, supersedes the necessity of any details that 
 may have been collected on the short and rapid survey of an individual. It 
 might, therefore, be enough to say, that very great reductions have been 
 made in St. Mary’s Within, Carlisle, Liverpool, Manchester, and the town¬ 
 ship of Pilkington in its neighbourhood, Salford, Stockport, Birmingham, 
 Worcester, Mincliinhampton, Wells, Westham in Essex, many of the 
 London parishes, and Nottingham. In general, the reduction has been 
 greatest in those towns or populous parishes, where there was the greatest 
 command of an agency for strict and careful management—and this has 
 proved available in many intances, where a select vestry has not been 
 adopted at all. 
 
 In St. Mary’s Within, Carlisle, the expenditure of the year 1819-20, was 
 £3039 19s. 6d.; and in 1821-22, was £1436 Is. lid. Its select vestry 
 was established in June, 1820. There must be a sum of from two to three 
 hundred pounds deductedfor other expenses than those of mere pauperism; 
 but this rather increases the proportion of the saving on that head of ex¬ 
 penditure. At all events, the reduction in two years was considerably be¬ 
 low the half of the cost for the poor in 1819-20. 
 
 In Manchester, the whole expenditure of the money raised, in name of 
 poor rate, was, in 1816-17, £66,525 18s. 6d. and, in 1821-22, was 
 £39,044 6s.; but, of this latter sum, more than £15,000 was for other 
 
263 
 
 In some instances, it has suddenly subsided to one 
 third of what it was before—and in far the greater 
 
 purposes than those of pauperism and should a similar deduction be made 
 from the former sum, the expenditure, for the poor alone, has been reduced 
 more than one half in Manchester, in the space of five years. 
 
 Mr. Marriot mites me, that in the township of Pilkington, of the parish 
 of Prestwich, near Manchester, “ the gross disbursements, under the poor 
 rates, were from five to six thousand pounds; they are now reduced to 
 about twelve hundred.” This is one of the most remarkable cases that we 
 have met, of a great reduction having been effected by a firm, yet mild, and 
 friendly, and, on the whole, popular administration. 
 
 In Stockport, the whole expenditure, in 1816-17, was £11,377 12s. Id. 
 and in 1821-22, it was £5,446 4s. 9d.; and the cost, for the poor alone, 
 has been nearly reduced to one third. 
 
 In Worcester, the reduction has been very great, as may he seen from 
 the following statements. Tire highest sum paid by the Worcester house 
 of industry to the outdoor, was in February 1817, when the weekly allow¬ 
 ance was £83 I Is. 4d. The lowest sum paid to the out-pdor, in Novem¬ 
 ber, 1822, per week, was £20 2s. making a reduction of one fourth, in this 
 department. And again, the amount of one week’s maintenance for the 
 poor, in May 1817, was £54 2s. 5d. and in November 1822, was 
 £12 16s. 8d.; which is as great a reduction in this second department. 
 
 Mr. James Sherrin, the assistant overseer of the In parish of St. Cuth- 
 
264 
 
 number of cases that were investigated by us, the 
 saving has been ascribed to the improved manage- 
 
 in 1818, for one whole year, was 8s. in the pound, amounting to £11,816, 
 at which our expenditure may be reckoned, or very nearly so; and that, in 
 the year 1821-22, the rate amounted to £5,818, with our expenditure 
 equal; and that the reduction is mainly due to strict and judicious manage- 
 
 The following is extracted from the last Report of the Select Vestry for 
 that parish:— 
 
 “ The Select Vestry having now finished the third year of their labours, 
 and the new system having been fairly tried, the present seems a favourable 
 occasion to point out some savings which have occurred under their manage¬ 
 ment. In the year, ending Lady-day, 1819, the year previous to the ap¬ 
 pointment of the Select Vestiy, (in April, 1819,) the payments made to the 
 
 out-door poor amounted to_£4,652 0 9 
 
 In the year ending Lady-day, 1820, being the first of the 
 
 Select Vestry, to_ 3,406 9 7 
 
 In the year ending Lady-day, 1821, being the second of the 
 
 Select Vestry, to_ 2,988 2 10 
 
 And in the year ending Lady-day, 1822, being its third year, to 2,788 8 3 
 
 Making the expenditure of 1820 less than of 1819, by_ 1,245 11 8 
 
 And that of 1821, less than it by_ 1,663 17 9 
 
 And that of 1822, less than it by_ 1,863 12 6 
 
 Making a saving, in three years of £4,773 Is. lid. or £1,591 Os. 7d. per 
 annum; and this in the department of out-door poor alone. And in tire 
 expenses of the workhouse establishment; a very great reduction has also 
 taken place; for while, in 1818-19, its expenditure was £3,201 4s. in 
 1821-22, it is only £1,534 17s. Id.” 
 
 In the parish of Broadwater, in the county of Sussex, the expenditure 
 on account of the poor, was, in 1817, £3,38ll 19s. 5d. At the end of this 
 year, a Committee was appointed to assist the parish officers, and, under 
 them, the expenditure has been so far reduced as to have amounted, in 
 1822, only to £1,641 8s. 2d.; and the rate in the pound was reduced from 
 14s. to 5s. 
 
 In the parish of St. Mary’s, Nottingham, the occasional relief for the 
 year 1819-20, amounted to £7,032 5s. lid. and its permanent, to 
 £2,242 9s. In the next year, the occasional was reduced to £4,240 12s. Id. 
 
265 
 
 ment more than to any improvement which may 
 .have taken place in the circumstances of the people. 
 
 about. It is the copy of a letter from the overseers of Walcot Parish, in 
 reply to another from the parish of Chester, requesting a statement of the 
 plan of economy they pursued, by which an actual saving was made of £4,025, 
 in the year’s expenditure, beginning March 25, 1820, and ending March 24, 
 1821. The extract is from a newspaper, and it may he right to state, that 
 
 
 Overseers (March 25th, 1S20), we began by closely adhering to the princi¬ 
 ples laid down in the Act 59 Geo. III. cap. 12. commonly called the Select 
 Vestry Act; that is, strictly to inquire and “ examine into the state and 
 condition” of all our paupers—about 925 families, besides 186 bastard chil¬ 
 dren, and 98 individuals in the poor house; and this was done by our visit¬ 
 ing them, every one at their own habitations, and inquiring into the means 
 they possessed, and their ability to contribute to their own support; also by 
 an inquiry in the neighbourhood, of those persons who were best acquainted 
 
 could support themselves without parochial assistance, and providing work 
 for all who were in any way capable, but who complained drey could not 
 get it for themselves. Though the work was unproductive (as work) to the 
 parish, it was the means of getting rid of numbers from the books. As we 
 paid but low wages, the paupers soon got employment for themselves; for 
 we made it a rule never to give relief but by work (except in cases of sick¬ 
 ness, extreme old age, and infancy); and on all new applications for relief, 
 the same system of inquiry and work is pursued, and we find numberless 
 instances of a downright refusal to do mu’ work; and if accepted, two or 
 three days is in general the longest time we have to employ them, before 
 they quit and provide for themselves: we thereby prevent the increase of 
 
266 
 
 •It was most gratifying to learn, that even after 
 the many dismissals, and reductions of allowance, 
 
 thing) for the encouragement of prostitution, vice, and wickedness of every 
 description, and laying contributions on the honest and industrious, for the 
 support of the licentious and profligate. In cases where the mother is in 
 bad circumstances, and, perhaps, the father also, and where he is absconded 
 •or is dead, we never allow more than Is. or Is. 6d. per week, and by calling 
 •on tire Magistrates to commit some mothers (who have had two or three 
 bastards) as lewd women, we have greatly reduced this head of expenditure; 
 and although in some cases an order of filiation had been made on the re¬ 
 puted father to pay the overseers 2s. 6d. per week in relief of the parish, we 
 very seldom pay the mother so large a sum, hut place her on a level with 
 
 system has not been carried into effect 
 made to it by the paupers, which was 
 
267 
 
 which had taken place, the people were, to all sense, 
 in as great comfort and sufficiency as before. This 
 
 We shall conclude this lengthened detail by the following notices of what 
 has been recently done in the parishes of Bingham and Southwell, in the 
 county of Nottingham, extracted from a pamphlet on the management of 
 their poor, by an overseer:— 
 
 “ The money collected for, and expended in aid of the poor, in the parish 
 of Bingham, in the year ending at Lady-day, 1818, was £1,200; and it had 
 been considerably more in some preceding years. This enormous expendi¬ 
 ture among a population, ascertained at the last Census to amount to 1,574 
 persons, a considerable portion of whom are employed in agricultural pur¬ 
 suits, has, hy judicious management, been lessened in the last year, 1821-22, 
 
268 
 
 is a fact pregnant with inference. Every negation 
 of a claim, and every abridgment that is made 
 
 quit it, and return to a reliance on their own endeavours, after a very short 
 stay; and they were, moreover, observed to exert themselves afterwards 
 with redoubled energy, rather than expose themselves and their families to 
 tire danger of again encountering its privations and restraints. 
 
 ' “ The amount of relief actually disbursed to the poor of Southwell was, 
 for the year 1820-21, £2,069; its population being 3,051. The amount of 
 relief disbursed in the year just ended, at Lady-day, 1822, has only been 
 £1,311. 
 
 “ In cases of bastardy, wherever the parish is actually put to expense, 
 by the parents not maintaining their illegitimate offspring, lists of the 
 father’s and mother’s names are publicly exhibited, and showing the sum 
 that each is in arrear. to the parish. On every second offence, the over¬ 
 seers apply for the committal of the mother to the house of correction; 
 and even for a first offence, if it be attended by circumstances glaringly 
 
 “ A residence within the walls of the workhouse at Southwell, is now re¬ 
 garded ns an evil by the lower orders; and they will speedily find that the 
 readiest, indeed the only way, to avoid this evil, will be for them to become 
 industrious, sober, and economical.” 
 
 Besides these, there are numerous testimonies to the effect of an ener¬ 
 getic administration all over England, Most of the select vestries width 
 have been formed, have entered upon their duties with a spirit, and been 
 rewarded with a success, that for a time has suspended the desire of all 
 further reformation. Those who have long been accustomed to a yoke, 
 will, on the removal even of a small part of its weight, feel an ease and a 
 deliverance, that might serve to reconcile them to the existing laws, and lead 
 them to look no further than to a right and vigorous administration of them. 
 Accordingly, it is not to be disguised, that, to the question, 'Whether the 
 reformation wrought by select vestries, and permanent overseers, had les¬ 
 sened their desire of a still more radical reformation, and served to reconcile 
 them to the existing laws? the reply was very frequently an affirmative one. 
 And we instance this more particularly of the following places, where, in 
 the triumphs of their recent success, and the confidence of still greater 
 achievements in future, there was a decided conviction, on the part of able 
 and intelligent men, that no change in the law of pauperism was requisite 
 Kendal; Liverpool; Bury in Lancashire; township of Filkington; Salford; 
 Birmingham; Leamington; Wells; St. Peter, Westclreap, London; and 
 Sheffield. 
 
269 
 
 on a former allowance, is, in fact, a commitment 
 of the people back again, either in whole, or in 
 
 On tlie other hand, an utter hopelessness of any permanent good under 
 the present system, or, at least a desire for its radical abolition, was expres¬ 
 sed in Darlaston, Gloucester, Bristol, Portsmouth, Mary le Bone, Clap- 
 ham, Westliam in Essex, and generally, though not universally, in the agri¬ 
 cultural parishes. 
 
 To Christopher Wilson, Esq. of Ahbothal], near Kendal, I have been 
 much indebted for the valuable facts and suggestions wherewith he lias fur¬ 
 nished me upon this subject. The expedient of a select vestry has been 
 carried into beneficial effect; even in some of the smallest country townships 
 of that extensive parish. And in reply to the apprehensions which I ex¬ 
 pressed, lest in defect of a good and vigorous agency, the measure would be 
 altogether fruitless in the agricultural districts, lie writes, that “ in liis 
 opinion the country townships will be better managed than the others; be¬ 
 cause, there the select vestry will nearly be permanently composed of the 
 same individuals, some of whom born in the township, and occupying 
 their own lands, will be intimately acquainted, even from their infancy, with 
 the character, conduct, and habits of almost all those who make application 
 to them. Whilst the probability is, that in large towns the select vestry 
 will be changed annually, and the habits 6f the applicants, in a dense po¬ 
 pulation, cannot be so well known. 
 
 “ The wisdom of the people of Scotland in rejecting all legal interference 
 towards the maintenance of their poor, cannot be sufficiently admired, when 
 we sec the misery resulting from such provisions enacted in this country. 
 May we copy your example by retracing our steps. The first step has been 
 taken by the legislature, by removing (through tiro select vestry act) the 
 interference of the magistrates.” 
 
 It is our part respectfully to wait the evolutions of time and of experience 
 upon this subject—though wc still feel strongly persuaded that by no device 
 
270 
 
 part, to the antecedent resources of nature, whether 
 these resources should lie in their own thrift and 
 industry, or in the kindness of relatives and neigh¬ 
 bours towards them. It is of no consequence to 
 the reasoning, what the instrument has been by 
 which they have been displaced from the region 
 of pauperism, and either their entire or partial 
 support has been devolved on capabilities which 
 exist elsewhere. It may have been an obstinate 
 refusal on the part of the vestry.* Or it may have 
 been a decision of theirs, founded on a strict inves¬ 
 tigation, that may have ledto the discovery of means 
 of which they had not been previously aware. Or 
 it may have been the offer of work, which the ap¬ 
 plicant disliked.t Or it may have been the threat 
 
 to come forward, we may have the guarantees for a strict and efficient ad¬ 
 ministration, yet do we much apprehend, that in reference to the whole 
 empire, there will be found, after perhaps a slight temporary reflux in the 
 amount of pauperism, as oppressive a load of it as before on the resources 
 of the country, and fully as injurious a blight along with it on the happiness 
 and virtue of families. 
 
 * It of course often happens in the higgling that takes place between a 
 pauper and the vestry, or even between a pauper and the justices, that 
 the refusal is altogether arbitrary, a determined commitment of him back 
 again to his own resources, without any clear or specific apprehension of 
 what these resources are. We have been credibly informed, that of late, 
 when young men without employment, have applied for relief to magistrates 
 of the western division of the county of Suffolk, they have refused to succour 
 them, telling them that in times like these, they must provide for themselves. 
 They have gone away in consequence, and when thus put upon their own 
 shifts, did not find it necessary to repeat the application. 
 
 f It was so, the reader will perceive, in Bingham and Southwell; and it is 
 so in many parts of England. The workhouse is often employed as a scare¬ 
 crow, by which to distance or to deter applications. Is this fair treatment 
 
271 
 
 of an exposure, that he would have been ashamed 
 of. Still the conclusion which may be drawn from 
 
 of a people? first, to instil into them tlie imagination of a right to subsis¬ 
 tence, and then to counteract this by associating terror or disgrace with the 
 prosecution of it ? Does not the very necessity of thus assimilating an 
 eleemosynary house to a Bridewell, prove that there is a fundamental error 
 in the whole system? Would it not he better, if instead of first giving a 
 wrong impulse, and then devising a force of resistance by which to neutra¬ 
 lise it, that both the one and the other were dispensed with? Or, in other 
 words, that instead of first granting a right, and then guarding against it 
 by the severities of a prison discipline, that both the grant and the guard 
 were withdrawn; or, in other words, that the legislature would disencum- 
 
a great and sudden contraction of the pauperism, 
 in those places where a strict management has been 
 entered upon, remains unaffected—and more es¬ 
 pecially, if there be the same visible aspect of suf¬ 
 ficiency as before. There was much of the former 
 pauperism wholly uncalled for. The sufficiency 
 of the natural resources had been underrated, and 
 there had been a delusion as to the need of a sup- 
 
 Nevcrtheless the Bingham experiment is a highly instructive one. It 
 proves, that if instead of counteracting tile law of poor rate by the discip¬ 
 line of a workhouse, both the law and the workhouse had been swept away, 
 at least two-thirds of the existing paupers would have found refuge in the 
 •sufficiency of their own proper resources, and only one-thud remained to 
 be provided for. We do not plead, however, for any such summary aboli¬ 
 tion as this, but only for the withdrawment of the legal right from all new 
 applicants. And if only one-third would have been behoved to he provided 
 for on the event of an immediate extinction of the poor rate, we may he 
 sure that a greatly smaller number than these will become destitute under 
 that gradual process of extinction which we recommend—fewer by all who 
 in a natural economy of things, will have the foresight and the frugality of 
 which a poor rate had bereft them—fewer by all who shall he cared for by 
 relatives, that would else have abandoned them—and, at last, so few, as that 
 individual benevolence shall be delighted to succour and sustain them. 
 
 It is right to add, that in many parts of England, workhouses are re¬ 
 garded as by far the most odious and intolerable part of the whole system— 
 and that such is their actual management both in single and incorporated 
 parishes, as to have brought down upon them, in not a few instances, the 
 reprobation of the wise and the good. But the very tendency of these es¬ 
 tablishments to corruption, is of itself an argument against them as a spe¬ 
 cific for the distempers of pauperism. 
 
 In seasons of commercial distress, the utmost benefit has accrued from 
 work held out to those who allege a want of employment. It has proved 
 a test by which both to ascertain the honesty of the application, and to get 
 rid of unworthy applicants. Subscriptions will ever be had for providing 
 stick work on emergencies like these, and much more after the country is 
 emancipated front pauperism, than at present. The offer of work, instead 
 of money, has been known to effect marvellous reductions in Liverpool, 
 Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, and many other places. 
 
273 
 
 ply from the resources of artificial pauperism. So 
 that, in some cases, the expenditure was three times 
 greater than it ought to have been—and the disco¬ 
 very of a delusion to such an extent, might well 
 lead us to suspect that, perhaps, could all the 
 channels of aid, and employment, and sympathy, 
 be traced throughout the mass of society, with all 
 those hostile influences by which public charity 
 has done so much to close or to obstruct them, 
 then it might be found, that there exists a still 
 deeper and more subtle delusion than has yet been 
 ascertained. 
 
 We will lay no disguise on the whole amount of 
 our convictions upon this subject. Under a lax 
 administration, it would appear that instances have 
 occurred of an expenditure three times greater 
 than was afterwards found to be necessary. Or, 
 in other words, the dispensers. of legal charity 
 were so far misled as to overrate, in this propor¬ 
 tion, the call which existed for it. But even un¬ 
 der a strict administration of pauperism, and when 
 there is no misleading of the dispensers at all, still 
 there is a most grievous misleading both of the 
 recipients, and of society at large. The very ex¬ 
 istence of a public charity has misled them. It 
 misleads many annual thousands from their own 
 economy, who otherwise would never have been 
 reduced to a dependence on charity at all. It 
 misleads parents and children, and remoter kin¬ 
 dred, from the exercise of their relative duties. 
 It misleads the benevolent, of all ranks, from that 
 
 Voi.. II. M in 
 
274 
 
 sympathy they , else would have felt, and that liber¬ 
 ality they' else would have exercised. On the part 
 of the dispensers, the discovery of their error has 
 occasionally been the saving of two thirds to the 
 legal charity—but the correction of that error on 
 the part both of the poor and of the public, into 
 which the very existence of a legal charity has 
 blinded them, would greatly more than cover the 
 remaining one-third. Or, in other words, the good 
 of the wholesome re-action that must ensue on the 
 abolition of pauperism, would greatly overpass all 
 the apprehended evils—and were the legal chari¬ 
 ty for indigence utterly swept away, there would 
 be less of suffering, as well as less of sin in our 
 borders. 
 
 But, it may be asked, ifj under the operation 
 of existing acts, the cost of pauperism really ad¬ 
 mits of so great an alleviation, might not the whole 
 evil of it be reduced in the same proportion ? And 
 ought we not to be satisfied with this, rather than 
 hazard a radical change of system throughout the 
 land?—and see what can be done with a good ad¬ 
 ministration of the laws that we have, ere any 
 further innovation shall be thought of? 
 
 The select vestry act has been proceeded upon 
 only in 2145 instances. There has no such vestry 
 been formed in about six-sevenths of the English 
 parishes. The number of permanent overseers, too, 
 is only 1979.* The truth is, that in the country, 
 
 » Anil it proves how slowly the formation of select vestries is making 
 
275 
 
 it is extremely difficult to find materials for the 
 formation of an efficient vestry—and in this way 
 the benefit of the act has been very much confined 
 to towns. Throughout the great majority of the 
 land, the business of English pauperism is moving 
 on in its wonted order—and there is as strong a 
 practical sense of its oppressiveness in the kingdom 
 at large, as at any former period. The agricultu¬ 
 ral interest, in particular, was never more heavily 
 burdened with it than at this moment—and were 
 the whole present poor rate of England translated 
 into quartern loaves, or estimated according to the 
 price of the necessaries of life, it would be found, 
 that in no past season of our history, has so much 
 of the effective wealth of the country been ex¬ 
 pended upon its pauperism.* 
 
 progress, that though the Act for them passed in 1819, and on the 25th of 
 March 1820, 2006 parishes had constituted select vestries, yet through tile 
 whole of the succeeding year there was only the small fractional addition of 
 139 to this number. From a possible misunderstanding of the question 
 which regarded permanent overseers, it is not clear whether their num¬ 
 ber increased or diminished during that year. Certain it is, that the for¬ 
 mation of a select vestry has been attempted without success in many 
 parishes—that in some it has been given up after it had been established 
 for a few months^-and that there is the apprehension in some more 
 of a speedy dissolution. In Darlaston and Ilkestone they are laid aside— 
 and it is found that in Bedlington the very feeling of the relief which has 
 been effected has induced a sort of unconcern. They are apt to think tliat 
 they have done enough—and, should they let down their posture of vigilance, 
 matters may soon revert to their old condition again. 
 
 * The reduction that has taken place in distinct parishes, and some of 
 the most striking instances of which we have already quoted, is generally 
 to he estimated from 1817-1818, which was the year of greatest expendi¬ 
 ture all over England, We find that, in particular cases, the cost of the 
 
276 
 
 And there is reason to fear, that even in those 
 parishes \yhere a select vestry has been most suc¬ 
 cessful, there may be a speedy recurrence to the 
 same lax and careless style of administration as 
 before. There were a vigour and a strenuousness 
 at the first which may, perhaps, subside with the 
 novelty of the undertaking. Even the very relief 
 that has been achieved, might lead to a satisfaction 
 and a repose, that would soon call back as great a 
 host of applicants as ever—for it is in the very na¬ 
 ture of pauperism, that, at all times, there is the 
 pressure of a tendency from without, which will 
 
 pauperism was brought down to a sum three times less than its maximum. 
 But while this proves how much may he done by a very strenuous adminis¬ 
 tration, it is of further importance to know how little has been done by 
 this over the whole country. Through England at large there 1ms not 
 been a decline by the fraction of an eighth part from its maximum expendi¬ 
 ture on the poor rates—that of 1817-1818, having been £7,890,148, and 
 that of 1820-21, £0,948,445. 
 
 In reference to the present state of the agricultural interest, the burden 
 of the pauperism has increased greatly beyond the proportion of the means, 
 and that too in parishes where it were possible to state the thing in such 
 terms as to impress the belief of a great reduction. Mr. Morton of Pud- 
 hill, in Gloucestershire, writes me, that “ in 1811 the poor rate in Horsley, 
 a parish in that county, was 12s. in the pound—(the nominal rent in 
 Horsley was then two-thirds of the actual or rack rent);—that in 1821 it 
 was 7s.; and in 1822 it was 6s. in the pouud. But the rack or real rent 
 of the parishes, as well as of all the neighbourhood, being reduced at least 
 one-third of what it was in 1811, and the rate in the parish-book standing 
 theisame, the 6s. in the pound paid in 1822 is on the rack or real rent, and 
 not on a nominal rent as in 1811. . The 12s. in the pound on the nominal 
 rent of 1811, was in fact only 8s. in tile pound on its real rent. So that 
 the whole amount of the reduction estimated in money is only from 8s. to 
 6s. on the real rent. But further, the price of wheat in-1811 was 14s. per 
 bushel, and in 1822 only Ss. Though the farmer, then, has only one-half 
 of the money to pay for the poor that he had to pay in 1811, he has to pay 
 moire in wheat, and that in the proportion of 14 to 10. 
 
277 
 
 instantly force admittance, so soon as there is the 
 slightest relaxation from that vigilance, wherewith 
 its approaches have been guarded. 
 
 The marvels which have been of late effected 
 by a strict administration, have suspended, in some 
 places, the desire that was at one time felt for a 
 radical change of system in the public charity of 
 England. But we do not think that this can last 
 long, and have no doubt, that after various expe¬ 
 dients have been tried and found wanting, the 
 final result will be a stronger experimental convic¬ 
 tion than ever, of something wrong in the princi¬ 
 ple as well as in the practice of the poor laws. 
 There is, we believe, a possible rigour in the exe¬ 
 cution of them, by which, if put into operation, 
 two-thirds of all the paupers now in the country, 
 might be thrown back upon their own resources, 
 and yet be landed in a state of. as great comfort 
 and sufficiency as, with their present allowances, 
 they at present enjoy. This lias been exemplified 
 in some parishes, and we do imagine, that it might 
 be exemplified throughout the vast majority of the 
 land. But then this requisite degree of rigour 
 will, in the first place, not be adopted in most pa¬ 
 rishes ; and, secondly, in those parishes where un¬ 
 der a strong temporary impulse it has been resorted 
 to, and with great immediate success, it will not 
 be persevered in. The very success will lull 
 the administration into its old apathy. The pitch 
 and the tension to which it has been- wound up, 
 
278 
 
 will relax again.* The very humanity as well as 
 indolence of managers, will gradually and insensi- 
 
 * It is not to be denied, however, that where there is a firm and consis¬ 
 tent administration, the labour of it will come, in time, to be very much re¬ 
 duced, by the very hopelessness of success on the part of unworthy claim¬ 
 ants. Lister Ellis, Esq. of Liverpool, who has conducted, for some time, 
 the affairs of its pauperism with great energy and intelligence, tells me, that 
 the whole attention which he now finds necessary, does not occupy more 
 than two hours in the day. 
 
 And it is also true, that in those rare and occasional instances, where u 
 gentleman of respectable station, and, withal, of humane, and conciliating, 
 and kind manners, undertakes the labour of reforming the pauperism of a 
 
279 
 
 bly lead them to admit of successive mitigations— 
 and nature, at length, tired out of that strenuous¬ 
 ness which was assumed at the outset, will subside 
 into her old inertness. This has been the history 
 of many a philanthropic establishment, and more 
 especially, of many a parish workhouse. They 
 set out with amazing vigour and efficiency, but 
 at length relapse into the tame and ordinary style 
 that is averaged all over England. There must 
 ever be an equilibrium in pauperism between the 
 pressure of demand from without, and the force 
 of resistance from within. We hold it possible so 
 to increase that force as to throw back the pres¬ 
 sure of at least two-thirds of the demand, which 
 has actually been yielded to. But we do not think 
 it probable, however, that such an increased force 
 of resistance will either be summoned into action 
 at the first, or upheld afterwards.- And so soon as 
 it is again slackened to what it originally was, will 
 
 This experience of Mr. Marriot’s is in perfect harmony with that of Mr. 
 Ashworth, of Turton, near Bolton, who affirms of the poor, that they are 
 very easily managed, if one treat them with civility, and with a reason for it. 
 It is very clear, that in the hands of intelligent men, and especially, of those 
 who add the influence of rank, to that of worth and talent, a great deal may 
 he done, during the time of their personal superintendence, to neutralize the 
 mischiefs of a system that is inherently and essentially vicious. It were 
 not to he wondered at, though the gentlemen now quoted, should all feel 
 inclined towards tile side of the existing laws. But it must he recollected, 
 that it was the pressure of a heavy expenditure which first aroused these 
 various neighbourhoods to a more active management; and that, in many, 
 we fear, the most of instances, this management might almost insensibly 
 slip back again into a state of laxity, till the expenditure shall again accu¬ 
 mulate, and the impulse be renewed as before. 
 
the equilibrium be again adjusted by the re-admit¬ 
 tance of as much pauperism as before. 
 
 But even though the force of resistance from 
 within, was kept up in the utmost possible inten¬ 
 sity—yet we cannot imagine a state of things more 
 injurious to the virtue and peace of the common¬ 
 wealth. Even though the discipline of a workhouse 
 should at length be perfectly assimilated to the 
 discipline of a gaol, we fear that like many other 
 of the legal scarecrows which have been devised, its 
 only reaction would be in working down the taste 
 and character of the people to its own standard. 
 In proportion as the law multiplied its severities, 
 would pauperism acquire a stouter stomach for the 
 digestion of them—and those regulations which at 
 first might deter, will, at length, be got over, be¬ 
 cause of a now fiercer, and hardier, and more re¬ 
 solute population. We have, at all times, exceed¬ 
 ingly doubted the policy of those expedients which 
 are meant to operate in terrorem —and have ever 
 thought of them as most fearfully hazardous ex¬ 
 periments on the principle and feeling of the low¬ 
 er orders. They may repel some of those who are 
 of a better and finer temperament than their 
 neighbours; but, in by far the greater number of 
 instances, will they blunt the delicacies which are 
 thus handled so rudely; and the very instrument 
 which they thought to lay hold of for driving ap¬ 
 plicants away, will vanish before their grasp. Af¬ 
 ter a temporary subsidence of pauperism from this 
 cause, there will be a reflux of it in its old force 
 
281 
 
 and abundance; and worse than the heavy expendi¬ 
 ture which it brings back, shall we behold through¬ 
 out the country a deteriorated morale, the hard- 
 favoured aspect of a more sullen and impracticable 
 population. 
 
 T his holds eminently and conspicuously true of 
 one set of expedients—those by which pauperism 
 is made as affronting as possible. Every thing has 
 been tried this way, and often with great tempo¬ 
 rary, but never we believe with permanent suc¬ 
 cess. It is indeed a most mischievous ordeal— 
 and never fails ultimately to degrade the poor, with¬ 
 out any saving to the wealthy. The badges, and 
 the publication of names, and the posting of them 
 in conspicuous places, may all work a recoil from 
 pauperism for a time, but only to come back with 
 accumulated force, and with a more sturdy and 
 unmanageable character than before.* This, in 
 
 * At Liverpool, the names of the paupers in each district arc posted in the 
 streets, near or at the places where they lived. This method has been re¬ 
 cently adopted, and Mr. Cropper, who informed me first of the prodigious 
 reduction that had taken place in the expenditure, ascribes much of it to 
 
 The following extract of a letter from Mr. Slierrin, the assistant overseer 
 at Wells, blends with information on this point, some other articles of im¬ 
 portance. We give it entire, as the plain testimony of a practical man, 
 whose narrative affords a very fair specimen of English pauperism. It is 
 a series ofanswers to the subjoined questions. 
 
 “ 1st Question. Has not the poor rate of the In Parish declined, in five 
 years, from £1800 to £900? 
 
 1st Answer. The Poor Rate has declined in five years from £1820 to 
 £978, and the expenditure has declined from £1830 to £795. There was 
 collected lastyear £183 more than was expended, which sum was turned 
 over to the present overseers. 
 
 Voi.. II. N n 
 
282 
 
 fact, is one of the many demonstrations how tick¬ 
 lish the ground is on which the law of pauperism 
 
283 
 
 hath placed the whole of English society. It, in 
 fact, may be regarded as a compound of tempta¬ 
 tions on the one hand, and of severities on the 
 other; and with the latter it has awkwardly at¬ 
 tempted to neutralize the mischief of the former. 
 The practical effect of the whole has been to form 
 two distinct classes or characters of population, 
 which stand more widely and remotely contrasted 
 in England, than they do, we believe, in any other 
 country of Europe. The one is a pure, and a no¬ 
 ble, and a high-minded class, who, of course, 
 would be revolted by the severities of pauperism. 
 The other yield to her temptations, and, by weath¬ 
 ering the brunt of her severities, their meanness 
 and corruption have only been rendered more in¬ 
 veterate. The spirit of education and of moral 
 enterprise that is now abroad in England, must 
 extend the one class. But while the law of pau¬ 
 perism continues, the other class too must increase 
 and multiply. They are the in-field gipsies of the 
 land; and they transmit their habit to their de¬ 
 scendants; and this is the reason why pauperism 
 is so apt to fix, as if by a hereditary settlement, in 
 families. There is thus a mass of corruption, that 
 never will be got rid of but with the extinction of 
 
 names of tile-publicans who harbour them; or who suffer this paper to he 
 defaced or torn down, without applying for another, or who refuse to put it 
 up in their kitchens.” 
 
 We have since heard from the neighbourhood that this is not now at¬ 
 tended to. And the overseer of Horsley, a contiguous parish, informs me, 
 “ that tlie publishing of tiie names had a great effect at first, but they soon, 
 became dead to it.” 
 
284 
 
 this boasted charity by law. Until a blow be given 
 to the root of the mischief, it will be found, in 
 the long run, that there is a noxiousness in its an¬ 
 tidotes, as well as in its bane. Its severities, in fact, 
 are alike hurtful with its temptations. It is not 
 by playing the one against the other, that any 
 substantial or abiding reformation will be gained. 
 There must be a way devised by which to cancel 
 both.* 
 
 * We liave little doubt tllat ultimately this expedient will not lessen the 
 expense of pauperism; while this serious addition will be added to its 
 other mischiefs—that of being landed in a more hard-favoured population 
 than before. 
 
 In a recent conversation with Baron de Stael, who appears to inherit 
 the talent of his mother for observing the features and the discriminations of 
 national character, we were much struck by the remark, that no where in 
 Europe did he ever witness a people where the extremes of vice and virtue, 
 of profligacy and good principle, stood out in bolder or more prominent 
 relief than in England. Such a chasm in the scale of character is certainly 
 not at all-discernible to the north of the Tweed, where the gradation is filled 
 up between the opposite extremes, and the extremes themselves not stretch¬ 
 ing far in either direction, leave a sort of decent and uniform mediocrity for 
 the general habits of our Scottish population. 
 
 This may explain the reason why such contradictory answers are given 
 by different individuals, to the question that relates to the improvement or 
 decline of character among the people. From justices of the peace we 
 should expect, and have gotten, an altogether opposite reply to that which 
 is given by clergy or Sabbath school teachers. They come into contact 
 with the two opposite species of character. At Stockport we had most 
 distinct testimonies to the fact of pauperism settling in particular families; 
 and in every place where the activities of Christian and philanthropic zeal arc 
 most abundant, may we recognise a marked separation of two classes in the 
 widest possible diversity from each other. Mr. Lowe of Darlaston writes, 
 that “ here, more than in most places, are to be seen two entirely distinct 
 classes of population, rendered so among the adults partly by the cause 
 above pointed out, but principally by the influence of the Gospel; the re¬ 
 ception or rejection of which divides my population into professors and 
 
285 
 
 Still the fact of so great a retrenchment in the 
 expenditure of certain parishes, goes far to en¬ 
 lighten the question of pauperism. If the appli¬ 
 cant for relief shall swear an inability for his own 
 maintenance, the burden of the refutation of his 
 plea lies upon the parish—and such often is the 
 difficulty of the proof, that, rather than undergo 
 it, his claim is admitted without the due investi¬ 
 gation. The severities of a stricter administration 
 bring this matter more closely to the test—and ac¬ 
 cordingly we have seen, that, as the fruit of inqui¬ 
 ry and discipline, a parish has sometimes been re¬ 
 lieved of two-thirds of its expenditure, or the 
 pauperism has shrunk into one-third of its original 
 dimensions. But, under a gratuitous system of re¬ 
 lief, the net amount of the distress would have 
 lain within still narrower limits. Much of it would 
 have been anticipated by the higher economy of 
 the people themselves—and much of it been met 
 by a higher sense of relative duty among the fami¬ 
 lies of the land. There is not a parish, where the 
 remainder of unprovided want would not have 
 found an ampler and a far kindlier asylum in the 
 charity of good will, than it now finds in the cha¬ 
 rity of law. Indigence would not have been treat¬ 
 ed as a crime—nor humanity been so strangely 
 transformed out of its proper and original charac- 
 
 profanc, with very little intermixture indeed of the devout or Pharisaical. 
 But the distinction is especially observable among the rising generation, to 
 which, if I mistake not, your inquiry especially relates, and is the efTect of 
 the introduction of general education.” 
 
ter. Each of its ministrations would have helped 
 to sweeten the whole breath of society, and to 
 cement more firmly together the materials of which 
 its fabric is composed—instead of being so con¬ 
 ducted, as to widen every year the disruption that 
 now obtains between the higher and lower classes 
 of the commonwealth. 
 
 Believing then, as we do, that no general or 
 abiding good will ever be effectuated by a stricter 
 administration of the law of pauperism, we feel 
 our decided preference to be for the gradual abo¬ 
 lition of it. We have no doubt, that greatly less 
 of poverty would be created in the absence of a 
 compulsory provision, than that which now comes 
 forward and pleads a right and an interest there¬ 
 in. And we have as little doubt, that all the un¬ 
 avoidable or genuine poverty which might then 
 be found, would be more fully, and far more grate¬ 
 fully met by spontaneous charity, than it now is 
 by a legal dispensation. We even think, though 
 we are very far from desiring it, that though a 
 present and sudden arrest were laid on all the ex¬ 
 isting allowances of pauperism, there would be 
 no instances of starvation throughout all our bor¬ 
 ders—but that, on this sudden transition to a natu¬ 
 ral s.tate of things, nature would evince the strength 
 and the promptitude of those better securities, 
 which she herself hath provided against all the ex¬ 
 tremes of human wretchedness. But we again 
 repeat, that confident as we feel in the sufficiency 
 of nature, this is not the way in which we should 
 
287 
 
 like that sufficiency to be proved—and that, how¬ 
 ever desirable the transition to her better economy 
 may be, it is not per sallum, but by successive 
 steps that the transition ought to be made. It is 
 our firm conviction, that England may thus be 
 made speedily to emerge from her present state 
 of pauperism; and that after its last vestiges have 
 disappeared, she will bear upon her surface a bet¬ 
 ter and a happier people than before. The great¬ 
 ness of this result has led many to assign a spectral 
 or visionary character to the whole argument. 
 Yet surely it is not impossible, both that a result 
 may be great, and that there may be a smooth 
 and practicable avenue which leads to it. 
 
 It is only to mitigate the apprehension of serious 
 evils which might ensue, even on a gradual aboli¬ 
 tion of pauperism, that we affirm our belief of 
 human society being so well founded on its own 
 native and essential principles, as that, without any 
 appalling calamity, it were able to stand the shock 
 of an instantaneous abolition. And we rest this 
 affirmation on an experience which has been re¬ 
 cently verified, and is still in process of verifica¬ 
 tion all over England. By the Act of the 59th of 
 Geo. III. c. 12. which was passed only in March, 
 1819, power was given to the overseers of parishes 
 to follow up each application from a native of Ire¬ 
 land or Scotland, by the removal of him to his 
 own country. This power has been very exten¬ 
 sively acted on. But the way in which it has 
 
operated, is, that the great majority of Irish who 
 had been in the habit of receiving parish allow¬ 
 ance, on perceiving that each new application 
 was followed up by a removal, simply ceased to 
 apply, and remaining where they were, betook 
 themselves forthwith to a dependence on their own 
 shifts and resources. This act empowering their 
 removal, either on their abiding, or on their pro¬ 
 posing to become paupers, was virtually, in refer¬ 
 ence to them, an instantaneous abolition of pauper¬ 
 ism. And yet, did a very small fraction of them 
 indeed consent to be removed—but the interest¬ 
 ing fact is, that, generally speaking, of the vast 
 majority who remained, and who had been sud¬ 
 denly dismissed from their wonted parish allow¬ 
 ance, there was the same aspect of comfort and 
 sufficiency among them as before. They contrived 
 to do without it, and, to all appearance, did as well. 
 They'were thrown, and that with a sudden hand, 
 upon then- own expedients—and these availed them 
 for all of which they had been bereft. We doubt 
 not, that all the four counteractives against the 
 mischief of a repealed pauperism were pressed 
 into the service on this occasion, and that these 
 discarded Irish drew more from their own industry, 
 and from the aid of relatives, and from the sym¬ 
 pathy of acquaintances, and, lastly, from the li¬ 
 beralities of the affluent, than they else would 
 have done. At all events, they have found their 
 compensation—and so most certainly would Eng- 
 
289 " 
 
 lish-born paupers too, if the same bold experi¬ 
 ment were made upon them.* 
 
 * Tills remarkable fact with regard to.Irish paupers first met us at Man¬ 
 chester, where the weekly amount of relief rendered to their families, at the 
 beginning of 1817, was 4275 13s. 6d—and through the year ending March 
 25, 1822, was only 417 10s. Id. Though under no legal obligation to aid 
 or to maintain any Irish,, yet they do from humanity still expend upon them 
 about five hundred pounds a year. At one time the number of Irish upon 
 their poor fund nearly approached to one-lialf of the whole. Very few of 
 them were relieved—and of these a great part returned, while the great 
 bulk of them remained, and are not sensibly worse off than before. 
 
 From Stockport I received, by the kindness of Mr. Marsland, who is a 
 magistrate there, the following distinct statement:—" The number of Irish 
 families chargeable to the township of Stockport, at the time of passing the 
 Select Vestry Act, (March 1819,) was 53, only 5 of which were passed 
 to Ireland; the remainder were willing to maintain themselves rather than 
 be removed.” 
 
 Mr. Hale of Spitalfields writes, that “there are many Irish paupers 
 since the last act for facilitating their removal, fallen off from parochial aid, 
 and who still remain with us. And there is to all appearance as much suffi¬ 
 ciency among them as before. In this parish, (Christ Church, Spitalfields,) 
 when the act was first passed, we sent home from five to six every week; 
 and now we do not pass home an Irishman once in two months. Before 
 the last act, our average of casual Irish paupers was from twenty to thirty 
 in a week; and now we do not relieve above two in a month—and yet we 
 have as many Irish constantly residing in the parish, and they are in more 
 comfort, because they are now more economical. The parishes of White¬ 
 chapel, St. George in the East, and All Saints, Poplar, being near to the 
 side of the Thames, have by far the greater number of Irish. Neither of 
 the above-mentioned parishes have now so many Irish who apply for relief, 
 or to be passed home, as they had when the act was first passed, but still 
 they have as many Irish residing among them.” 
 
 It should be observed, that the Irish who are passed now, are not, in 
 general, those who at one time were on the lists of regular pauperism, but 
 those who having occasion to travel back again to their own country, take 
 this method of having their expense paid. They are aware that an applica¬ 
 tion for relief will be followed by a removal—and it is the removal, and not 
 the relief, which they want. It is thus that they have learned to serve 
 themselves of the act. For instance, from the united parishes of St. 
 George and St. Giles, London, they had to remove 250 Irish families upon 
 
 Vol. II. 0 o 
 
290 
 
 Yet we recommend no such experiment. We 
 only would draw from it the benefit of an argu- 
 
 one occasion within ten days. They apply in hundreds, and especially when 
 returning home from the hay harvest. 
 
 Mr. Gurney of Westham, however, thinks that this new act has increased 
 the distress of the Irish in his particular parish, though it has certainly 
 checked their disposition for dissipation and excess. 
 
 The general testimony on this subject is very much at one with those 
 testimonies which relate to the English paupers whom a stricter adminis¬ 
 tration had thrown back upon their own resources. On this last topic we 
 omitted the instance of Worcester, from which place William Sprigg, Esg, 
 writes, “ that, as far as his observation goes, the poor ejected from parish 
 
291 
 
 mentum a fortiore in behalf of that gradual eman¬ 
 cipation from pauperism, which we hold to be so 
 
 These are given roundly, because given at the time, on a mere general 
 remembrance. The one at Leicester is distinct from the great and peculiar 
 subscription that took place there. We bring these forward merely to show 
 the universality of gratuitous expedients for relief, in England, to meet that 
 surplus distress, winch their boasted poor rate either could not, or did not 
 overtake. The sums now given are only for one year; but these efforts 
 are of frequent recurrence. It is remarkable that the largest subscription 
 of the kind at Portsea, was not connected with the great transition from 
 war to peace, but arose out of such necessities as were general till over the 
 neighbourhood. In Portsmouth, too, there has been a subscription of from 
 L.500toL.G00; and, without specifying them, they are common at Gosport, 
 Halstead, Mary le Bone, and Coggeshall, where I was told that the sub¬ 
 scriptions are highest when the poor rate is highest. 
 
 In Kendal, they have had large additional subscriptions in particular 
 years. They preferred this to an increase of the rate, because it would 
 have been hard on the poorer of those who pay rate, and it gave an oppor¬ 
 tunity of larger charity to those whose wealth exceeded the measure of their 
 leviable property. In 1800-01, there was subscribed L.732; in 1809, L.400; 
 and in 1817, L.4O0. The subscription for the Lying-in charity is L.43, and 
 for the sick poor, by a female society, L.82. The latter attend to all, whe¬ 
 ther legal residents or not, and whether on the poor rate or not. In the 
 years of extraordinary subscription for indigence, there was also a great in¬ 
 crease of poor rate, and a permanent increase of pauperism afterwards. 
 
 The information that follows is more precise, and is taken either from 
 written or printed documents which happen to be within our reach. 
 
 “ In Leicester, the greatest subscription for the poor, in one year, was in 
 the winter of 1816-17, where a subscription was made amounting to 
 L.2I30 8s. 9d. of which the sum of L.763 8s. was raised by an Association 
 of ladies, and consisted of subscriptions from ladies alone, a committee of 
 whom distributed it in articles of clothing, I believe, entirely; the remain¬ 
 ing L. 1,367 Os. 9d. was distributed in provisions, the whole to all the 
 parishes in Leicester indiscriminately.” 
 
 “ The subscriptions made for the relief of the necessitous poor in Man¬ 
 chester, during the winter of 1816-17, amounted to the sum of 
 L.6810 10s. 7d.” 
 
 “ The largest sum ever raised in the town of Stockport, by voluntary sub¬ 
 scriptions, is about L.500." 
 
 “ There was a great deal of begging around us, (at Darlaston) when times 
 
292 
 
 practicable, and which has succeeded with our¬ 
 selves in a way that has greatly outstript our fond- 
 
 were at the worst, when the improvident part of the population of the most 
 distressed parishes, were scattered over the adjoining country, to the dis. 
 tance of many miles.” 
 
 " Amount of voluntary subscriptions for the relief of the poor in the city 
 of Gloucester, the whole expended in the months of January, February, and 
 March, 1817, £600; 1820, £832; 1821, for coals, £28; 1822, for coals, 
 £24” 
 
 The following is an extract from the report of the Benevolent Society at 
 Westham, from October 1819, to October 1821:— 
 
 “ The poor of the parish, however, are so numerous that the committee 
 have to lament their inability to afford relief in very many cases of urgent 
 distress. They therefore feel compelled to press upon their benevolent 
 neighbours the great advantage which would result from a more enlarged 
 and general subscription, and. the experience of four years enables them to 
 speak with confidence of the beneficial tendency of the plan; which affords 
 an opportunity to relieve the really necessitous, at the same time that it 
 renders it more easy to detect imposition, and discourage the system of 
 begging from door to door.” 
 
 Where hath been the efficacy of a poor rate, if the call upon the benevo¬ 
 lent remains as urgent; as we find in other places where no poor rate is in 
 operation? 
 
 “ The following are the particulars of the sums raised at Liverpool, by 
 voluntary contribution, at two different periods, for the relief of the distresses 
 of the poor. They were considered, in both instances, the result of a stag¬ 
 nation of trade, which threw a number of labourers and others out of em¬ 
 ploy, and of very severe weather. 
 
 " Total Receipts, between Dec. 1816, and March 1817_£8914 4 0 
 
 Expended in Mattresses, given after being 
 first legibly inscribed, to prevent their 
 
 misappropriation-.-£229 10 0 
 
 In Potatoes and Herrings, given- 1040 11 0 
 
 Bread, do_ 1720 1 0 
 
 Between Jan. and Sept. loss by gifts, and sale 
 
 of. Soup below Cost price- 5120 4 0 
 
 Sundrie s ___ 446 0 0 
 
 -£8556 6 0 
 
 357 18 0 
 
293 
 
 est anticipations. Let every existing pauper con¬ 
 tinue to be treated as he would have been though 
 
 “ Receipts from Jan. 1820, to April, including Balance of 
 
 former contributions_ L. 1811 1 1 
 
 Expended from 21st Jan. to 28th April, 
 
 1820, in Soup, sold at reduced prices™.. L.629 5 3 
 From 22d Jan. to 21st March 1821, in do. 220 9 2 
 
 Invested in government Securities..._ 1000 0 0 
 
 - 1819 11 5 
 
 11 In this period there were 280,366 quarts sold at id. per quart.” 
 
 The following evidence, that after all which the poor rate does, it still 
 leaves much to be done, (as much, we think, as if there had been no poor 
 rate,) is taken from an account of the Worcester Institution for the Relief 
 of the Poor, in the year 1819. There may also be seen from it, how the 
 poor rate may fail of its endeavours to overtake the growing distress of a 
 country, by at length, reaching its limit. 
 
 “ At the close of the last war, the labouring poor of this country, in 
 many instances, totally deprived of their accustomed means of support, were 
 entirely dependent upon parochial relief for subsistence, whilst, in others, 
 they were cither restricted to a small portion of work in the week, or their 
 
294 
 
 the present system had been left untouched—and 
 let all that is new in the improved system, be 
 
 in several families, who were themselves strangers to the prevailing distress, 
 
 the applications being so well kept up; but what we should fear is, that the 
 same thing may be observed of any gratuitous ministration whatever. 
 
 It is a great mistake, however, to suppose that the surplus of distress, 
 over and above what the poor rate provides for in England, is only occa¬ 
 sional, and created, for short and recurring periods, by some political or 
 commercial change in the circumstances of the country. There is, in fact, a 
 
295 
 
 made to bear exclusively on the new applicants. 
 The former of course preserve their right of ap- 
 
 constant surplus, which we verily believe to he as large as the whole would 
 have been without any legal charity at all. There is a certain portion of 
 the face of English society taken up by pauperism—and, beyond its margin, 
 there is a belt, and a very broad and extended one too, that is occupied by 
 suffering still unrelieved—and this is tile ground on which private and free 
 
 ponding to that which exists within this margin; and there, too, there is 
 unrelieved suffering. But we imagine, that there is not a well-habited, or 
 a well-educated people in Europe, where the whole of this suffering put 
 together is not less in the amount, than that which occupies the outfield of, 
 wretchedness, to which the provisions of the legal charity have not ex¬ 
 tended : or, in other words, the poor rate of England has left her more to 
 do, and that, too, after abridging both her means and her inclination for the 
 doing of it. 
 
 The following we deem a very interesting survey along the margin of 
 pauperism, almost with one foot upon this margin, and another without it. 
 It is when so employed, that one finds the best materials on which to judge 
 of the real efficacy of a poor rate. The extract is taken from a pamphlet, by 
 Mr. Rutter of Shaftesbury, entitled “ A brief Sketch of the Poor, &e.” of 
 
 “ As the recital of individual cases of distress would be tedious, and does not 
 appear to be absolutely needful, we shall confine our description to the visits 
 recently paid by some inhabitants of this town, to two large houses occu¬ 
 pied by a number of poor families and individuals. The rent of both these 
 houses is paid from the parish funds, and they may he considered, in some 
 measure, as the existing poor houses. 
 
 “ In one of these houses, No. 1. Is an upstairs room, inhabited by a wo¬ 
 man eighty-four years of age, bed-ridden and almost blind, and who receives 
 four shillings and sixpence per week from the parish. The general appear¬ 
 ance of this room is wretched, and the floor and staircase are falling in. 
 No. 2. A tolerably decent room, with good floor but bad ceiling, inhabited 
 by a man and wife and one child, who receive no parish pay. No. 3. A 
 double garret, not inhabited; window out, scarcely any flooring, and that 
 little falling in; the rain comes in through the naked tiles, upon the inha¬ 
 bitants in the room below. No. 4. A small room upstairs, completely in 
 ruins, not inhabited, but a nuisance to those below. No. 5. In a little 
 better condition than most of the others, inhabited by a man and wife and 
 five children, who receive no pay from the parish. No. 6. On the ground 
 floor, a room tolerably comfortable, inhabited by a widow and two children, 
 
plication to the vestry, and their right of appeal 
 to the magistrate till death. It is with the latter 
 
 who receive no parish pay. No. 7. By far the most comfortable room in 
 the house, inhabited by a husband and wife and eight children. No. 8. A 
 miserable hole, with part of the floor falling into a common sewer, iidiabited 
 by two women and a girl, who are nearly naked, and much emaciated; they 
 have no bedding, and only one blanket to cover them; their general state 
 was excessively wretched and revolting. 
 
 ■ “ On the whole, the appearance of the inhabitants was marked by extreme 
 poverty and filth, and the place has long been notorious as a scene of great 
 wickedness. The premises were almost entirely untenantable and require 
 a thorough repair; and the yard was filthy beyond expression. 
 
 • “ The visit to the other house may be thus described. We ascended an 
 insecure staircase; to a room, which for the sake of distinction we shall call 
 No.l. Inhabited by a man and wife and daughter, and two others, who were 
 much distressed for want of food and firing in the winter, but received no 
 parish pay. We perceived three bedsteads in the same apartment, covered 
 with ragged great coats instead of blankets; the roof was open to the tiles, 
 and every part hung with cobwebs, and darkened by smoke. This descrip¬ 
 tion was pretty fully borne out by our after observation, and would be cor¬ 
 rect if applied to the other apartments, but as some shade of difference ex¬ 
 isted, we prefer giving our observations as we proceeded. No. 2. A small 
 apartment on the ground floor, about eight feet by ten, inhabited by a man 
 and wife and four children, who have only one bed in a small room adjoin¬ 
 ing. No. 3. Upstairs, ceiling open to the rafters, one miserable bedstead, 
 scarcely any bed or covering, inhabited by a widow and five young children, 
 and by a man and wife, all in one room 1 The children are almost naked, 
 never taste any animal food, and were much distressed in the winter. 
 No. 4. A miserable upstairs room, with a-partially stopped hole through 
 the wall, just opposite an ill-covered bedstead, inhabited by a man and wife 
 and child, which appeared almost starved; they receive two shillings per 
 week from the parish, and live upon one meal of potatoes per day. No. 5. A 
 small miserable smoky room, inhabited by a man and wife, the former sixty- 
 eight, and the latter eighty-three years of age; no sacking to the bedstead, 
 and potatoes once a day. No. 6. On the ground floor; is inhabited by a 
 man and wife, a son about fourteen, and a young child. The mother and 
 child appear extremely ill; the bed on which they sleep has ropes instead 
 of sacking, and the lad sleeps on the bare floor; they receive one shilling 
 a week. No. 7. Is one shade more comfortable; inhabited by a man and 
 wife and five children, two of whom have the hooping cough and no atten¬ 
 dance ; they receive no parish pay. No, 8. A small.room upstairs, with o 
 
297 
 
 alone, that we would try not the charity of law, 
 but the charity of discretion—and all our surest 
 
 clean floor; the rain comes in through the hare tiles, and there is only one 
 bed for tile mother and her grown son 1 Such are the scenes which in¬ 
 quiry and personal inspection have opened to our view. 
 
 “ It may perhaps he almost unnecessary to remark, that it is only in recent 
 times, that these buildings and their inhabitants have fallen into this ex¬ 
 treme state of decay and misery, arising from various general and local 
 causes. Amongst these may be enumerated, the want of adequate employ¬ 
 ment,—the high price of provisions,—the present law of settlement,—the 
 increased depravity both of individuals and families,— and he moral impos¬ 
 sibility of regulation by any other means than a radical change of system .” 
 
 Mr. Thomas Richardson of Bristol, the friend and intimate of the bene¬ 
 volent Reynolds, will forgive me for adverting to the very important testi¬ 
 mony upon this subject, wherewith he has kindly favoured me in a recent 
 communication. It relates to those families who are hovering around tlio 
 margin of pauperism, without having entered it. 
 
 “ It is indeed a matter of astonishment, how so many families who are 
 suffering the greatest privations, owing to the want of employment, or to 
 extreme low wages, and often from their chief support being laid aside by 
 sickness, many of whom furnish a picture of wretchedness of which no one 
 can furnish mi adequate conception, hut those who have been spectators; 
 I say, it is wonderful how such families can hear up under such burdens, and 
 can forbear from making applications to their parishes for relief. It is to 
 this spirit of independence that we are alone to attribute, that our parochial 
 rates have not grown more rapidly than they have done, amidst causes so 
 powerfully operating. Instead of its being a matter of surprise, that the poor 
 rates should have attained their present amount, it is to me much more so, 
 that pauperism should not have extended its baleful influence very far be¬ 
 yond its present enlarged bounds. I will advert to your remark respecting 
 the extent of the surplus of unrelieved poverty: I have no doubt but that 
 tliis surplus always marches ahead of whatsoever relief is afforded; and I 
 think we see this in Bristol, where, I believe, it is generally admitted that 
 the amount of the various sums, raised for the Infirmary, Dispensary, &c. 
 together with what is contributed to various public objects, and given in 
 private benevolence, exceeds the amount raised for the maintenance of the 
 pauper poor.” 
 
 So truly it has been said that the poor rate of England has not lessened 
 the misery of its people, hut only transferred it, and that, too, after having 
 gone far to exhaust the means, and to deaden the spirit of benevolence. 
 
 Vor,. II. P p 
 
298 
 
 ami strongest convictions are utterly belied, if it 
 be not found, that without the raising of one com¬ 
 pulsory sixpence in a parish, there shall be more 
 of contentment, and greatly less of unrelieved 
 want in it than before. Ere we enter on a more 
 detailed exposition of the prpcess, it will, at least, 
 be perceived, from this general outline of it, that 
 the existing pauperism of our land, instead of be¬ 
 ing forcibly put an end to, is suffered to melt 
 away by the operation of death—that no violence 
 is done to any individual who is now upon the 
 roll—and that it only remains to be seen whether 
 they who would eventually have constituted the 
 next generation of paupers, are not better served 
 and better satisfied, under another treatment that 
 , we shall venture to suggest for them. But the 
 question now resolves itself into two parts. There 
 is first the parliamentary treatment of it—and then 
 the parochial treatment of it, after that the legis¬ 
 lature has done its office. These two things are 
 perfectly distinct the one from the other. The 
 one is in contact with the law of the question, and 
 the other with the human nature of it. 
 
 There is a stubborn incredulity, which, however 
 widely it may appear to differ, is, in some respects, 
 very much at one with sanguine Utopianism. It 
 is true, that the same magnificence which capti¬ 
 vates the latter, is that which is regarded by the 
 former with derision and distrust. So that while 
 the one is easily lured to a chimerical enterprise, 
 and just because the object of it is great, it is 
 
299 
 
 this very greatness which freezes the other into 
 hopeless and impracticable apathy. Yet both agree, 
 in that they take a direct and instantaneous im¬ 
 pression from the object itself, and are alike heed¬ 
 less of the immediate means by which it may be 
 accomplished. It is thus, that the splendid vi¬ 
 sionary is precipitated from his aerial flight, be¬ 
 cause he overlooked the utter pathlessness of that 
 space, which lay between him and the impossibility 
 that he aspired after. But it is also thus, that the 
 fixed and obstinate practitioner refuses to move 
 one single footstep, because he equally overlooks 
 that continuous way, which leads through the in¬ 
 tervening distance, to some great yet practicable 
 achievement. But give him time—and the mere 
 length of a journey ought not to repel the traveller 
 from his undertaking—nor will he resign the ad¬ 
 vantage for which he looks at its further extremity, 
 till you have demonstrated that one or more of its 
 stages is utterly impassable. In other words, 
 there is a blind infidelity, as well as a blinded 
 imagination—and it is difficult to say whether the 
 cause of philanthropy has suffered more from the 
 temerity of projectors, or from the phlegmatic in¬ 
 ertness of men, who, unable to discriminate be¬ 
 tween the experimental and the visionary, are 
 alike determined to despise all and to resist all. 
 
300 
 
 CHAP. XV. 
 
 ON THE LIKELIEST PARLIAMENTARY MEANS FOR THE 
 ABOLITION OF PAUPERISM IN ENGLAND. 
 
 A gentleman who is now bestowing much of 
 his attention on the poor laws, when informed of 
 the speed and facility wherewith all its compulsory 
 pauperism had been extinguished in a certain pa¬ 
 rish, replied, that it might be easy to effect the de¬ 
 liverance of one parish, but that it was not so easy 
 to legislate for the deliverance of all England. 
 But if an easy and applicable method can be de¬ 
 vised for the parish, what is it that the legislature 
 has properly to do ? Simply to remove the legal 
 obstructions that may now stand in the way of the 
 method in question. Simply to authorise each pa¬ 
 rish that so wills to avail itself thereof. And should 
 many, or should all of them at length go forth 
 upon the enterprise, and succeed in it, then the 
 extinction of this sore evil over the country at large, 
 instead of being immediately referable to the im¬ 
 petus of that one blow, which has been struck 
 against it by the lifting up of the arm of parlia¬ 
 ment—should be referred to a cause that is far 
 more commensurate with the vastness of the 
 achievement, even to the power of those multi¬ 
 plied energies that have been set at work, through¬ 
 out the land, each of which, however, has only its 
 own separate and limited object to overtake, and 
 
301 
 
 each of which acteth independently of all the 
 rest. 
 
 However obvious this may be, yet we have often 
 thought, that the overlooking of it, is one main 
 cause of that despair and helplessness, which are 
 felt by many of our legislators, on the subject of 
 this great national distemper. There are many of 
 them who would feel no difficulty, but for certain 
 legal obstacles that stand in their way, in working 
 off this nuisance each from his own little neigh¬ 
 bourhood ; and are confident withal, that after this 
 was done, there would, over the whole space which 
 had thus been cleared away, be more of comfort 
 among the families, and a higher tone of character 
 than before. Now, this feeling is precisely that of 
 thousands besides, each of whom, if free from one 
 unfortunate restraint, could clear the mischief 
 away from his own local territory, and thus con¬ 
 tribute his own quota to the deliverance of the 
 empire. But he who has a place and an authori¬ 
 ty in the councils of the empire, takes a wide and 
 extended survey over the whole of it—and by a 
 sort of fancied ubiquity, he brings himself into 
 contact with all the struggles and difficulties of all 
 the parishes—and he somewhat feels as if the 
 weight and the labour of what is indeed a very 
 operose concern, were wholly accumulated upon 
 his own perspn—and, instead of regarding pauper¬ 
 ism as that which can only be put to death by 
 inches, and with the help of many separate 
 hands, he sees it as standing forth in single com- 
 
302 
 
 bat, a hydra of dread and direful encounter, at the 
 sight of whom every heart fails, and every arm is 
 paralyzed. 
 
 . And akin to this delusion, is the imagination 
 on the part, we believe, of many, that the only 
 way of proceeding against pauperism is by impera¬ 
 tive enactments, which behoved to be instantly, and 
 simultaneously followed up by a change of adminis¬ 
 tration all over the country. It must be at once 
 seen, that in this way of it a disturbing force 
 would be immediately brought to bear upon each 
 and all of the parishes, that all would feel aroused 
 to a strong, because a practical interest in the 
 measure—and that out of a conflict and variety 
 of sentiment thus spread over the whole land, 
 there might be formed a hostility greatly too fierce 
 and formidable for the safety of the nation. It 
 were the method for bringing into play the ele¬ 
 ments of a mighty agitation; and spreading out 
 the question on an arena wide enough, and con¬ 
 spicuous enough, for the great master demagogues 
 of the land. Those writers who live upon the dis¬ 
 contents of the people, would instantly seize upon 
 it as the fittest topic for keeping up that fermenta¬ 
 tion, in the whirl and briskness of which all their 
 prosperity lies. And so it is, that an attempt on 
 the poor laws, is dreaded by many as the sure 
 precursor of a revolution—nor is it seen what the 
 possible way is, by which this question can be 
 prosecuted with the same wisdom, and withal in 
 the same calmness, and with the same happy re- 
 
303 
 
 suits, as have oft been experienced in the treat¬ 
 ment of other questions, and that, through a long 
 era of peaceful and progressive improvement in 
 the domestic policy of England. 
 
 We should, on this account, hold it to be high¬ 
 ly advisable, that any enactment which might be 
 made on the subject of pauperism, shall not be 
 one that brings a certain force upon all of the 
 parishes, but simply one that allows a certain free¬ 
 dom to any of the parishes—not one that puts 
 forth a law, hut one that holds out a leave; and a 
 leave, too, only to be granted on such a free and 
 extended concurrence of householders in the ap¬ 
 plication for it, as to be itself a guarantee, that 
 however odious a general movement against pau¬ 
 perism may be over the country at large, yet that 
 each particular movement is, within the limits of its 
 own separate parish, abundantly popular. 
 
 The process might be illustrated by the way in 
 which the commons of England have been appro¬ 
 priated. There are general and public acts, not 
 by which parishes are required to divide and enclose 
 their commons, but by which they are empower¬ 
 ed each to petition for a local act, or a separate en¬ 
 closure bill, authorising the division of its own 
 commons. In the general acts, the principles are 
 laid down and defined, on which the local acts are 
 to be granted. The consent of the parties inter¬ 
 ested, to the bill being passed into a law, is sig¬ 
 nified by the subscription of their names to it. 
 And, though there is no fixed rule in this respect, 
 
304 
 
 yet it may be proper to state, that the consent of 
 four-fifths of the proprietors in number and value, 
 is expected by parliament. 
 
 Thus parliament has not made it imperative on pa¬ 
 rishes, to turn their commons into private property. 
 But they have struck out a path by which this tran¬ 
 sition may be effected, and left it to parishes to make 
 the movement if they will. Had so mad an impo- 
 . licy been conceivable as that of attempting to over¬ 
 bear parishes into the measure, by a positive en¬ 
 actment, there would have been the reaction of a 
 loud clamour and discontent all over the country— 
 nor would any government have braved so formida¬ 
 ble an encounter; and that, for the sake of a reform 
 principally intended for the benefit of those local 
 districts where it was carried into effect. It was 
 far wiser to break down the mass into fragments; 
 to do the business piece-meal, and to make the 
 improvement of this branch of our domestic eco¬ 
 nomy a successive process, and not a simultaneous 
 one. The thing has now been in progress for 
 years, and a great national improvement is going 
 surely and quietly forward. Parliament has done 
 its part by opening a practicable door—and it wisely 
 leaves the country to do theirs; and that, not by 
 any general movement, but by the separate move¬ 
 ments of separate parishes. And we do hear oc¬ 
 casionally of a little parochial effervescence. But 
 it is not such as to fill or to agitate the public 
 mind, or to bring into slightest hazard the tran¬ 
 quillity of the state. A parish in the depths of 
 
■305 
 
 Cornwall or Yorkshire, will be all alive, of course, 
 to the interest of its own local arrangements; but 
 it is wholly unfelt by the public at large; and it is 
 well that what might have been food and fuel for 
 the politics of a nation, has been thus fritter¬ 
 ed down into distinct portions of aliment, for the 
 politics of its thousand remote and isolated ham¬ 
 lets. The violence is dissipated and disposed 
 of, which might else have gathered into one wast¬ 
 ing volcano. The march, upon the whole, has 
 been as peaceful as it is beneficent—and a mea¬ 
 sure which, under one form, might have called 
 forth a great popular insurrection, has under another 
 been carried forward with sure and silent footsteps 
 over the kingdom. It has, for the time at least, 
 depressed the value of agricultural produce, and 
 so lessened the income of the landlord, who, per¬ 
 haps, counted on being the • chief gainer by it. 
 But it has also, for the same time, cheapened the 
 necessaries of life, and so added to the comfort of 
 the labourer, who perhaps felt himself to be the 
 chief sufferer by it. Meanwhile, it is clearing its 
 way through all the near-sighted and nugatory 
 apprehensions of the various classes—and whatever 
 be the temporary evils that are charged upon it, 
 its undoubted effect is to add to the abundance of 
 the country, and to make of it a wealthier and 
 more flourishing land. 
 
 Now, this we conceive should also be the order 
 
306 
 
 of attack upon pauperism.* It is thus that this 
 common, now a defenceless prey to the inroads of 
 vice and idleness, should he gradually reclaimed, 
 and placed within the secure limits by which all 
 property ought to be guarded. We know it to he 
 still a prevalent impression, that this were making 
 an outcast, and an unprotected orphan of human 
 misery; and though we hold this to he erroneous, yet 
 it is an impression that ought to be most tenderly 
 and respectfully dealt with. The benevolence of 
 Englishmen must be satisfied; and it says much 
 for that noble people, that burdened as they are, 
 and mighty as the deliverance would be, could the 
 
 * It might serve to reconcile us.tlie more to the process which is now 
 recommended, that it is in the very order by which previous reforms on 
 the poor Jaws liave been attempted by Parliament, and responded to by the 
 country at large. By the Select Vestry Act, or the act of 59 Geo. III. c. li 
 it is declared, “ that it shall be lawful for the inhabitants of any parish, in 
 Vestry assembled, and they are hereby empowered to establish a select ves¬ 
 try for the overseers of the poor of such parish.” And so of the Act 22 
 Geo. III. c. 83. commonly called Gilbert’s act, which does not pass into ef¬ 
 fect in any parish, till called for by two thirds in number and value of the 
 owners or occupiers according to their poor rate. Thus, under the autho¬ 
 rity of a general act previously passed, and by which leave is given to parishes 
 on the consent of a certain number of qualified owners or occupiers to 
 adopt certain arrangements, under which the affairs of the poor may be 
 forthwith administered—parishes come forward, and on presenting the con¬ 
 currence that is required, these arrangements are carried into effect. It is 
 thus that Gilbert’s Act has made a certain progress throughout England, 
 and Sturgess Bourne’s Act is still in progress. The Appendix to the lie- 
 port of July last, from the Select Committee on Poor Rate Returns, con¬ 
 tains many testimonies in its favour from the parishes that had adopted it. 
 This, of course, will extend the range of its operation still more widely ; 
 and thus it is that facts are multiplied, and experiment passes into expe- 
 
307 
 
 poor rate be done away, yet the conviction must 
 first be done away, that the poor are not to suffer 
 by it. This surely is not a feeling which ought 
 to be rudely handled; and, therefore it is, that 
 throughout the whole business of reform, there 
 should not merely be the utmost tenderness to the 
 lower orders, but the utmost tenderness to the hu¬ 
 manity of those who feel for them. 
 
 There are three distinct objects that should be 
 comprehended in the provisions of the General 
 Act, and each of which may be regarded sepa¬ 
 rately. The first relates to the act of concurrence 
 that should be required of any parish, ere that pa¬ 
 rish shall be empowered to make a radical change 
 in its management of the poor. The second re¬ 
 lates to the nature of the change. And the third, 
 to the way in which the Parliament and people of 
 England are to be satisfied, both at the outset, and 
 through all the subsequent stages of this retracing 
 movement, that its effects are so beneficial, and 
 more particularly to the poor themselves, as to be 
 altogether worthy of a humane and civilized na¬ 
 tion. 
 
 I. To grant allowance for the enclosure of a 
 parish common, parliament expects the consent of 
 four-fifths of the proprietors, in number and value. 
 To grant leave for the new-modelling of its pau¬ 
 perism, we should not object to the consent of a 
 larger proportion than this of all the parish house¬ 
 holders, who are not paupers themselves, being 
 
308 
 
 required by Parliament.* It is obvious, that the 
 larger the consent is that shall be required by the 
 
 * Gilbert’s Act requires the consent to it of two-thirds in number and 
 value of those who pay poor rate. Sturgess Bourne’s Act requires a ma¬ 
 jority of the inhabitants assembled in vestry; or, in other words, a majority 
 of those who are present, and pay the rate—it being provided by 58 G. III. 
 c. 69. “ That no person who shall have refused or neglected to pay any 
 rate for the relief of the poor, which shall be due from and shall be demand¬ 
 ed of him, shall be entitled to vote or to be present in any vestry of the 
 parish for which such rate shall have been made, until he shall have paid 
 the same.’’ 
 
 We think that a larger concurrence than this should be required, ere a 
 parish shall have leave to adopt a change of system still more radical and 
 entire than that which is allowed by the acts either of Gilbert or of Sturgess 
 Bourne. A very large proportion'indeed of all the householders who are 
 not paupers, should signify their previous consent to it—and the following 
 are my reasons for believing that even though their unanimity were held by 
 the first general act to be indispensable, still there are some parishes that 
 will be found to satisfy a condition, which wherever it can be realised, will 
 evince the utmost popularity of the measure, atleast within the place where 
 it is to be put into operation. 
 
 The two opposite interests which are felt on the subject of the Poor 
 Laws, are the first by those who pay the rate, and the second by those 
 who rcroive from it. Now, practically, these two classes do not share be¬ 
 tween them the whole population of owners or occupiers. There is, in 
 many places, a very large intermediate class, who neither give nor receive; 
 but who so far from being neutral upon this question, will, of course, have 
 a leaning towards that compulsory provision, from which most of them per¬ 
 haps look for some eventual benefit at one time or another to themselves. 
 Even apart from this expectation, their natural and generous inclination 
 will be towards the system as it is, so that in all places where this interme¬ 
 diate class is a very numerous one, a very large concurrence of householders 
 who are not paupers, may be next to impossible. 
 
 But it is to be remarked, that strictly and legally there is no exemption 
 from the rate, even for paupers themselves. .Tile law is, that the rate shall 
 be made on every inhabitant who is an occupier either of bouses or lands— 
 and so may it be carried down to the very margin of pauperism, nay, even 
 be brought within it, in either of which cases there could be no neutral or 
 intermediate class whatever. These exemptions from the rate are altoge¬ 
 ther at the discretion of those who make it, and accordingly the practice 
 
309 
 
 general act, the fewer will be the parishes who 
 can avail themselves of its provisions. It were far 
 
 varies exceedingly in different parishes, and different parts of the country. 
 From out of twenty thousand assessments in Liverpool, for example, there 
 wont to he about 13000 struck off; whereas, in Bury, in tile same county, 
 they stop the rate out of the pay of the pauper; and at Pilkington, the 
 poor rate is levied on those whom even Hie overseers relieve at the same 
 instant. In Manchester, the intermediate class forms nearly three-fourths 
 of the whole population—there being 12,000 exempted of about sixteen 
 thousand who arc liable by law. I am informed from Stockport, “ that none 
 is exempted from paying of rates, not even the paupers themselves.” The 
 overseers are there made chargeable for all the assessments, while at Sal¬ 
 ford about 1,500 may pay the full rate, and about a thousand a portion of 
 it through the landlord, a considerable number being still left, who neither 
 pay nor receive. At Birmingham, there were at one time about fifteen 
 thousand out of nineteen thousand, who did not pay; though the interme¬ 
 diate class there too is constantly diminishing. It were quite endless to 
 enumerate all the arbitrary differences that take place in various parishes 
 and townships. But certain it is, that the tendency all over the land is 
 to carry the levy downward as far as it is practicable—and we should say, 
 
more difficult to obtain the requisite number of 
 householders in a large and populous town, than 
 in a small and manageable country parish; and 
 it is therefore to be expected, that any movements 
 which shall be made under the general act, will be 
 made first in the agricultural districts of England. 
 At the outset then, the more unwieldy parishes 
 will have no interest in this regress from a legal 
 to a free system of charity, unless in so far as they 
 shall be the interested spectators of what is going 
 on,—looking intently on the whole way of those 
 adventurers who have slipt cable before them, and 
 
 Still, however, it is a matter of discretion to charge the rate either on the 
 owners or the occupiers. Indeed it is more to facilitate the levy by laying 
 it upon the one class, than to grant even the semblance of relief to the other, 
 that tills enactment is proceeded upon. On the whole, there is a far greater 
 number of the community enlisted, into the opposition against poor rate, 
 than wont to be at former periods, and not a few are the parishes, there¬ 
 fore, where a nearly universal concurrence might be obtained for a radical 
 ehangc'of system, on the part of all the householders who are not paupers 
 themselves. 
 
 Before closing this note, it may be right to advert to the very great ex¬ 
 pense of a local act, obtained for a parish under the authority and according 
 to the provisions of a previous general act It would not he necessary, for 
 the purpose of giving effect to the new legislative measures upon pauperism, 
 that a parish should be at this trouble, or incur this expense. A simple 
 certification to the justices assembled in quarter sessions, of any parish, hav¬ 
 ing approven of the provisions of the general act, and being desirous to adopt 
 them, might, from that time, entitle them to proceed upon it. It is pre¬ 
 cisely so gone about, for example, when a parish comes under the benefit 
 of Gilbert’s Act. Bylhe33Geo. III. c. 35. § 1. “ Whenever two-third parts 
 in number and value, as required by the said act, of such qualified persons 
 only as actually attended, or may hereafter actually attend at such public 
 meeting, held in pursuance of the directions of the said act, have there sig¬ 
 nified or mayliereafter there signify, their approbation of the provisions in 
 the said act contained, and their desire to adopt them, such approbation 
 and desire so signified, or to be hereafter so signified as aforesaid, have been 
 and shall be a sufficient compliance with the said act.” 
 
311 
 
 perhaps waiting their arrival at a safe and prosper¬ 
 ous landing-place, ere they shall have acquired the 
 courage to think of an imitation. It is because 
 we should like the whole process to he gone about 
 surely and experimentally, that we should like, at 
 least the first general act, to require a concurrence 
 so very large in each parish, as that the number of 
 parishes which it may actually set a-going, shall 
 he indeed very small. It were well that this act 
 was loaded, on purpose, with a condition that is 
 not easily satisfied; and thus the trials will he re¬ 
 stricted, in the first instance, to a few of the easi¬ 
 est and likeliest of the parishes. We do not want 
 the whole of England to be thrown adrift, at the 
 bidding of a yet untried hypothesis. But we want 
 England to put herself to school. We think that 
 she needs to go to school; and when looking at¬ 
 tentively to those trial parishes, she is, in fact, 
 learning the first lessons, and acquiring the sound 
 rudiments of a sound education. Those parishes 
 will be to her the alphabet, whence she may 
 venture forward to achievements that are still 
 more arduous; and at length be able to master 
 those more complex and difficult results, which 
 now lie far removed, on a distant and impracti¬ 
 cable back-ground, from the eye of her under¬ 
 standing.* 
 
 * It gave me great pleasure to receive n letter from an English clergy¬ 
 man of talent and energy, and who has paid great attention to the manage¬ 
 ment of the poor, in which the very idea that we have attempted to deve¬ 
 lop, is briefly but distinctly brought forward. “ If power,” he writes, “by 
 a general bill, was given to vostrie* to make experiments and adopt mca- 
 
312 
 
 There are many distinct advantages, in a very 
 large concurrence of householders being required 
 at the outset, ere any parish shall have liberty to 
 enter on the new system of pauperism, and a few 
 of these we shall barely announce, without expa¬ 
 tiating on them. 
 
 First, it confines the operation of the proposed 
 act to those parishes where the experiment is most 
 popular; and so removes it altogether from those 
 regions, where its very obnoxiousness to the com¬ 
 munity at large, would be a serious impedient in the 
 way of its success. And it is evident, that the 
 larger the requisite concurrence is made, the more 
 effectually will this object be secured. 
 
 But, secondly, a large concurrence in favour of 
 the new method, is our best guarantee for a reso¬ 
 lute and powerful agency to carry on the execu¬ 
 tion of it. We should not despair of a most effi¬ 
 cient vestry in any parish, for conducting aright 
 the business of its gratuitous charity, where there 
 had been nearly a unanimous consent to the abo¬ 
 lition of its legal charity. There is no fear of any 
 parish which has thus singled out, and made a 
 spectacle of itself, that it will not acquit itself well, 
 and at length demonstrate to all its neighbours, 
 that without a poor rate, and without any painful 
 
 sures suitable to themselves, some materials might be furnished for a univer¬ 
 sal principle. I know a case or two, where the whole property of a parish 
 is in the hands of one person, and that a person who saw and determined to 
 meet the growing evil; and the poor rate has been reduced to a mere no¬ 
 thing, and that instantly. There is a ease you may see of Mr. Estrourt, i" 
 the Report for Bettering the Condition of the Poor.” 
 
313 
 
 sacrifice at all, it can boast a happier and a better 
 population than any of those who are around it. 
 We prophesy a success to their undertaking that 
 will be quite marvellous, even to themselves; and 
 that they will very soon find, how nought is want¬ 
 ing but an energetic outset, to ensure the transi¬ 
 tion, both to the people’s contentment and their 
 own repose. But there is a better chance for the 
 energetic outset where there has been a very ex¬ 
 tended concurrence—a surer warrant of success, 
 where there is a wider responsibility. It is for 
 this reason, that we would not have parishes to be 
 selected for the experiment, by parliamentary com¬ 
 missioners, or any constituted body whatever. 
 We would have parishes to offer themselves; and 
 the single event of their doing so, with that full 
 complement of names and signatures which the 
 general act shall require, is, of itself, the best 
 ground on which the selection of experimental 
 parishes can be made. 
 
 And, thirdly, although the provision of a nearly 
 unanimous concurrence on the part of household¬ 
 ers, should, at the very commencement of this 
 process, restrict the trial to a very small number 
 of parishes, this does not eventually exclude the 
 great body and majority of England from the 
 proposed reformation. It only prepares the way 
 for it. The truth is, that should so few as twenty 
 parishes come forward, under the first general act, 
 and should their experiment prosper, it will do 
 more to assure the hearts and the hopes of the 
 
314 
 
 people of England than a thousand dissertations. It 
 will be like the finishing of the first lesson that par¬ 
 liament has dealt out to the country, and will pre¬ 
 pare both the teachers and the taught for a second. 
 -The next flight will be a bolder one; or, in other 
 words, a second general act may be passed, whose 
 conditions it shall be easier to satisfy, and under 
 which as many hundreds may now come forward, as 
 before there were tens of parishes. The success, in 
 fact, of the first set of parishes will both embolden 
 parliament to widen the door for succeeding pa¬ 
 rishes, which it does by lowering the terms of ad¬ 
 mittance, and it will also embolden these parishes 
 to a readier, and more confident imitation. The 
 simple expedient of reducing the extent of the con¬ 
 currence would effectually answer. If upon the 
 terms of an application from seven-eighths of the 
 householders, so few as twenty parishes did adven¬ 
 ture themselves on a yet untried project, and suc¬ 
 ceeded therein, then we may be sure, that upon 
 the terms of a similar application from four-fifths 
 of the householders, it is not too much to expect 
 that two hundred parishes will soon feel encou¬ 
 raged to follow them. It is thus that by a series 
 of general acts, as by a series of stepping-stones, 
 England may emerge out of all the difficulties of 
 her present pauperism. The very first footstep 
 that she takes is on a firm basis, and all along she 
 moves by a way that is strictly experimental. 
 Throughout every inch of her wary progress, she 
 never needs to abandon the light of observation; 
 
315 
 
 and on the whole of this interesting walk oyer her 
 provinces, and, at length, to her great cities, till 
 she reaches her own mighty metropolis in triumph, 
 is she guided from one achievement to another, 
 and by the way that she best loves, because the 
 way that is most eminently congenial, with the 
 sober and the practical character of her under¬ 
 taking. 
 
 II. In regard to the nature of the change, we 
 should leave untouched the condition and the rights 
 of all who, at the time of its being entered upon, are 
 permanent paupers. There should be no dismissal 
 of any who would not have been dismissed under 
 the old regimen. It is, of course, quite fair to 
 scrutinize their means and resources to the utter¬ 
 most ; and on any discovery of their being ade¬ 
 quate to their own support, or on any actual im¬ 
 provement that may have taken place in their cir¬ 
 cumstances, by which they are enabled to provide 
 for themselves, it is perfectly right that their names 
 should be expunged from the roll. But this, in 
 fact, is what always takes place under the present 
 system, and should, therefore, take place under 
 the new one: and ere they can be discarded, they 
 may appeal, as now, to the magistrate,—a right 
 which they should only forfeit, by the act of their 
 being ejected beyond the pale of the existing 
 pauperism. All, in short, who are actually pau¬ 
 pers in any parish, at the time of its entering upon 
 the new system, should, while paupers, have the 
 very rights and securities which they now enjoy j 
 
316 
 
 and the change of treatment, whatever it may be, 
 should apply exclusively to those who apply for 
 parochial relief, either for the first time, or apply 
 for it anew, after they have been made to do with- 
 out it for a period. In this last clause, a special 
 reference is had, not merely to those who once, per¬ 
 haps, were regular paupers, and were afterwards 
 excluded, because of their means having grown 
 better, or been better ascertained, but also to those 
 who, alternate upon the parish from summer to 
 winter, and, in general, those who, being neither 
 the inmates of the workhouse, nor regular weekly 
 pensioners on the out-door list, pass under the de¬ 
 nomination of casual poor, or occasional poor.* 
 
 * We are aware that this might expose a trial parish to considerable 
 trouble at the outset, for, in many instances, the casual poor form a very 
 great proportion of the whole population; and, in some instances, there is a 
 prodigious alternation of the pauperism from summer to winter. This might 
 be remedied by the suggestion of an English clergyman, who proposed that 
 all who had received, in any shape, from the poor rate, through the year 
 preceding the time when the parish began to act upon the new system, 
 might be treated as old paupers; and that those alone should be treated as new 
 applicants who had never, prior to that, been in contact with the poor rate. 
 This would certainly lighten, at the outset, the work of the parochial ad- 
 ministrators, while it would only retard the ultimate accomplishment of an 
 entire deliverance from the burdens of the old pauperism. For my own 
 part, X do not think that, in the first instance at least, any such extended 
 definition of the old cases is at all necessary. The trial parishes would he 
 only those which were not encumbered with any appalling difficulties at 
 the commencement of their undertaking; and ere the imitation parishes 
 come forward, the legislature would have felt its way to all those nicer ad- 
 justments that might he deemed expedient. If a parish feel so oppressed 
 either with its casual poor, or the fluctuations which they undergo from 
 summer to winter, as that it could not adventure upon them with a gratui¬ 
 tous fund, it were better that it should wait the experience of such parishes 
 
317 
 
 The first change then that we should propose 
 in the parochial system, for the management of the 
 poor, is that in reference to every new applicant, 
 the special power of justices to order relief, should 
 be altogether taken away. The parish vestry 
 would, in this case, be the ultimate and the only 
 place of application; and their decision, both as to 
 relief, and as to the amount of it, would be final. 
 There would, forthwith, cease all summoning by a 
 justice of parish overseers, to show cause why re¬ 
 lief should not be given. The thing, in fact, 
 would be confided, as it practically is throughout 
 the greater part of Scotland, to the humanity and 
 discretion of the parochial court; and the thing 
 to be ascertained in the trial parishes, is whether 
 there would not be less of unrelieved poverty, as 
 well as less of all profligacy and disorder under 
 this regimen, than under the one that is now in 
 force.* 
 
 as may have entered before it upon the new system; and we feel confident 
 that this experience will be altogether encouraging. There are a thousand 
 fears and difficulties in pauperism which vanish before the touch of personal 
 intercourse; and, more especially, when that right has ceased on which the 
 people wont to depend, and by which they wont to regulate their habits and 
 their expenses. 
 
 * The following testimonies, however sound ns to the evils which arise 
 from the interference of the justices, must be taken with allowance, in as 
 far as regards the personal worth and talent of an order of men, among 
 whom are to he found many of the most exalted and estimable characters 
 in our land. “ First, the appeal to justices is a had enactment. They are often 
 weak men—men uninformed, and knowing little or nothing of business. 
 They do not feel the burden they impose, hut, on the contrary, a love of 
 
318 
 
 The second change that we should propose re¬ 
 lates to the fund out 'of which the new applicants 
 
 popularity and other passions often induce their determinations—and even 
 when tills is not the case, it is impossible they should know a pauper’s 
 real wants. His oath is received—the onus refutandi lies on the parish, 
 who often submits to imposition rather than take the trouble and expense 
 attending the necessary proof. I know the Select Vestry Act has put the 
 power in other hands—still with an appeal to justices. This is wrong. Ts 
 it to be supposed ten or twenty respectable inhabitants in a parish all want 
 humanity? If they do, they have a character to sustain, and gross acts of 
 oppression would soon find their way to the public ear. If, then, the 
 power was solely in a select vestry, it being made imperative on the clergy, 
 and a comnetent number of resnectable inhabitants to form that vestrv. I 
 
319 
 
 shall be met. Of course, the poor rate, levied as 
 it is at present, upholds the fund out of which all 
 
 “ You ask, Do not the magistrates often refuse to listen to the plea of 
 character, alleging they have to do with the plea of distress ? Answer. Yes. 
 On one occasion I relieved a woman, who had an illegitimate child, with 
 2s. per week, when she summoned me before a magistrate, who ordered 
 her 7s. per week; and I refused to comply, and sent her into the workhouse, 
 when she discharged herself and child the next morning, and she did with 
 the allowance of 2s. a-week as before.” 
 
 We in Scotland were approaching lately to this state of things, in some 
 parts of the country, where the practice had crept in of an appeal, on the 
 part of the applicants for relief, from the Kirk-Session to the Sheriff of the 
 County. There has, however, been a recent decision against this, and the 
 appeal now lies from the Parochial Court to the Court of Session in Edin¬ 
 burgh—the analogous process to which in England, would be that of ob¬ 
 taining against the decision of the Parish Vestry, a mandamus from the 
 Court of King’s Bench. The apprehension is, that the poor might starve 
 before the court should determine—and, therefore, it is that in England a 
 nearer place of appeal is preferred to a distant. In Scotland the more re¬ 
 mote and operose method of redress has been preferred—and the experience 
 is, that the poor are never permitted to starve, and most assuredly never 
 would, though both the near and the distant places of appeal were alike 
 withdrawn from them. On this account we regret the failure of Mr. Ken¬ 
 nedy’s bill in Parliament. 
 
 It might be interesting to our English readers to perceive how it fared 
 with two parishes within a few miles from their own borders—first, when 
 our system was likened to theirs during the period of a nearer appeal by 
 the pauper to the sheriff, and afterwards when the right of appeal by its be¬ 
 ing shifted to a distant court, was made so operose as to become practically 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Morgan of Gratney writes, “ To avoid the expenses of 
 litigation, we have nowand then judged it prudent to grant a trilling week¬ 
 ly allowance. But since Lord Pitinilly’s decision in an appeal case, relative 
 to the jurisdiction of sheriffs on cases of pauperism, we have not been so 
 
320 
 
 the expenditure of the old pauperism is defrayed, 
 —an expenditure that lessens every year by the 
 
 1915, for some years past the poor on our roll have averaged about sixty, 
 andour subscriptions for their relief, for we have had no assessments, have 
 not at any time exceeded two hundred pounds or guineas annually. At 
 present they scarcely reach the half of that sum; AVe relieve the aged and 
 infirm ones, who have no funds or relatives in ability to help them.” 
 
 We likewise offer the following very instructive communication from the 
 Rev. Mr. Monilaws of Kirkpatrick-Fleming, a parish, by the last census, of 
 169G individuals. 
 
 “ The amount yearly of the funds for the poor, before the assessment was 
 resorted to, was about £30. This arose from collections. Inconsiderable 
 as these funds were, I never heard a complaint from the poor, and their 
 quarterly proportions of the above sum were received with thankfulness. 
 An assessment was first imposed in 1813, for the support of a friendless 
 young man who had lost his sight. The heritors sent him to the asy¬ 
 lum for tile blind in Edinburgh, and supported him there by a weekly al¬ 
 lowance. The amount of the assessments during the years 1813, 1811, 
 1815, was about £10 10s. per annum for the support of the above indi¬ 
 vidual ; when after that period, in consequence of his being able to maintain 
 himself by his own industry, he ceased to become a burden upon the parish! 
 In the year 1817, in consequence of the almost total want of employment, 
 among the labouring poor, the heritors saw the necessity of aiding this des- 
 
 ised, but the heritors being threatened with prosecutions before the she- 
 and actually in one case subjected to the expense of above £50, listened 
 he petitions of most of these claimants, and assessed themselves to the 
 aunt of £42 for their support also, for that half-year. 
 
operation of death on the old cases. Now we 
 hold it essential to a sound and abiding reforma¬ 
 tion of the pauperism, that no fund should ever 
 be raised in this way, for the new pauperism—that 
 the power which the church-wardens and over¬ 
 seers have of making a rate, either with or with¬ 
 out the concurrence of the inhabitants, for the 
 purpose of meeting any fresh applications, shall 
 henceforth cease—and that, if any fund be judged 
 necessary, in order to provide for new cases, it 
 shall, under a public and parochial administration, 
 be altogether a gratuitous, and in no shape a legal 
 or compulsory one. For the purpose of consti¬ 
 tuting such a fund, the minister and church-war¬ 
 dens may be empowered to have a weekly collec¬ 
 tion at the church doors; or what is now gathered 
 
 fici.il tendency indeed—for we Imve not been served with n summons to ap¬ 
 pear before the sheriff hy a poor person, for two years past ; whereas in 
 1818, 1813, and 1S20, we had many citations. Nor has a new applicant 
 appeared at any of our meetings of heritors, for eighteen months past; and 
 I sincerely hope that this system of assessments will he abolished altoge¬ 
 ther, when the poor on our present list dies off. I have only further to 
 add, that the sum arising from collections, lias never been mixed up with 
 the above assessments, hut has been managed hy tile kirk-session as for¬ 
 merly, and applied to the relief of a different set of poor, whom our kirk- 
 sessions have always been in the habit of supporting.” 
 
 We could not desire a better exemplification of the way in which paiu 
 perism advances under one system, and may he made to recede again under 
 another. Could some such voluntary fund he provided in an English parish, 
 as that to which the pauperism of Kirkpatriek-I'leming is now under the 
 process of being i .committed, we have no doubt that the pauperism of the 
 former too mig’-. at length he conducted to a similar landing-place—and 
 that, simply hy the operation of death on the old cases, and an uncontrolled 
 treatment of the new cases on the part of the vestry. 
 
8 22 
 
 in the shape of sacrament money, may be made 
 over to it; or donations may be received from in¬ 
 dividuals—in all which ways the revenue of a kirk- 
 session in Scotland is mainly upheld. The fund 
 could be still further, perhaps, reinforced in Eng¬ 
 land, by an act of parliament, empowering this 
 new destination to those charitable donations 
 which abound over the whole country, and to the 
 extent of nearly half its parishes. We do not 
 think this indispensable, though it might give a little 
 more confidence at the outset, of a prosperous 
 result. We think that many parishes might ven¬ 
 ture on their new cases without it; and we have 
 no doubt, that under a kind, and moral, and, 
 withal, an uncontrolled administration of the 
 vestry, there would, from the free-will offerings of 
 the parish alone, be found a landing-place, quite 
 broad enough for the accommodation of the new 
 pauperism, after that the old pauperism, and its 
 corresponding poor rate, should have wholly disap¬ 
 peared.* 
 
 * We hold it nearly as indispensable, that the power of raising money by 
 assessment, on the part of those who administer the parochial hind, should 
 betaken away, as the right of an appeal to magistrates on the part of those 
 who apply for relief from it. There are many parishes of England where, 
 by local acts, this right is very much abridged, and yet the pauperism is often 
 as oppressive with them as in other parishes. In those parishes of the 
 south of Scotland too, where there lies no appeal from a pauper, but to the 
 Court of Session—but where the practice of assessments has been intro¬ 
 duced, there is, generally speaking, a very rapid progress of expenditure on 
 the poor. The truth is, that tile indefinite power of raising money has 
 often as bad an effect on the dispensers, by-slackening their management, 
 
323 
 
 The third change that would be required, should 
 be in the constitution of the vestry. Now, it is a cer¬ 
 tain amount of charge or assessment for the poor rate 
 which entitles to a vote; and that, on the principle 
 of those who pay the money having a voice and 
 power in the administration of it. Perhaps it 
 would not be deviating very widely from this prin¬ 
 ciple, if, in respect of the annual sum yielded by 
 the church-door collections, or the sacrament 
 money, the ministers and church-wardens were 
 made members of this vestry; and were the 
 church-wardens of a parish only a more numerous 
 class, there would, at this point, be a very near 
 resemblance between the parochial courts of dis¬ 
 tribution and supply in England and Scotland. 
 And when the old charitable donations of a parish 
 have been transferred to the new poor’s fund, it 
 may be further right, that the legal guardians, or 
 
 as it lias on the recipients, by corrupting them into habits of depcndance. 
 This is more especially the case, where the men who practically adminis¬ 
 ter the fund, contribute very little towards the formation of it, as with the 
 kirk-session of an assessed parish in Scotland; or, as it might often happen 
 with the vestry of an English parish. We much fear that nothing will ef¬ 
 fectually stay the contagion in Scotland, but a law by which it shall be de¬ 
 clared incompetent to raise a compulsory fund in behalf of any who shall 
 apply for parochial relief after a certain specified date. This would both 
 limit all new applicants to the kirk-session, and also limit the kirk-session 
 to its own proper income—and we have the confident belief, that when 
 both parties were so limited, there would, from the more moderate expec¬ 
 tations of the one, and the more vigilant dispensations of the other, ensue 
 a far more comfortable system of relief, than coidd possibly be attained with 
 an ample command of means, and an appetency for absorbing them that 
 was equally ample. 
 
324 
 
 administrators of them, might be also members of 
 vestry. And if a constitution still more popular 
 were required, then the contributors of a specified 
 annual sum might, for each year of such a contri¬ 
 bution, be members. But we shall venture no 
 farther upon such details of regulation; though 
 we are quite sure that there are sound and obvious 
 principles upon which, under the new system, a 
 suitable constitution for parish vestries might be 
 framed. 
 
 We are aware of the demand that there is for a 
 gradual amendment of the pauperism, and that 
 the change now recommended is of such an entire 
 and revolutionary character, as might appear to be 
 at utter variance with this wise and salutary prin¬ 
 ciple in the practice of legislation. But it should 
 be remembered, that there are two ways in which 
 a process of improvement might be gradualized; 
 either by a series of successive approximations, in 
 the general law, to a state of it that shall at length 
 be perfect and unexceptionable; or by the appli¬ 
 cation, at once, of the best possible law, to a few 
 of the simple and manageable parishes, and thence, 
 the successive adoption of it by the larger and 
 more unwieldy parishes. Now, our preference is 
 for the latter way of it. Bather than experiment 
 at large with a defective principle, we hold it bet¬ 
 ter to seize, at once, on the right principle, and 
 experiment with it on a few select and favourable 
 territories, whence the light of experience may 
 break forth, and gradually spread itself over the 
 
325 
 
 land. We should far rather behold a sudden 
 change in the jurisprudence of the question, fol¬ 
 lowed up by a gradual operation among the pa¬ 
 rishes, than a creeping and timid progress in the 
 former, but at each step of which there behoved 
 to be a general movement among the latter. The 
 law which enacted the abolition of all legal aliment 
 to the mothers of illegitimate children, or in aid of 
 defective wages, would raise a far greater ferment 
 in the country, and cause a more hurtful and ha¬ 
 zardous jolt in the career of amelioration, than the 
 law which empowered the abolition of all legal 
 aliment whatever, but on conditions that would 
 ensure that safe and gentle progress, which should 
 not outrun the prejudices or the fears of any 
 neighbourhood. In one view of it, the process 
 that we recommend may be charged with a speed 
 and a suddenness. But then this speed and sud¬ 
 denness are all confined to the statute-book, where 
 we should like if there could be recognized at 
 once the true principle and philosophy of the sub¬ 
 ject. Practically, there would be no inconvenient 
 suddenness. In the inner department of legisla¬ 
 tion there would be a gigantic stride, but there 
 would not in the outer department of the king¬ 
 dom. There, the march of improvement would 
 go on most smoothly and progressively; and far 
 better were it, therefore, that instead of feeling 
 our way, through a series of successive enactments, 
 to the pure and the rational principle, we should 
 lay hold of it instanter, and then find our wav 
 
with it through a series of successive parishes, till it 
 was carried into full and practical establishment 
 over the whole empire. 
 
 III. But what is this rational principle ? Have 
 we a right to fancy it, and to go abroad with the 
 phantasy over the land? Is it not possible that 
 after all, it may be a wrong outset that we make; 
 and how are we to know, that under the operation 
 of this boasted panacea, we might not add to the 
 number, and sorely aggravate the wretchedness of 
 our suffering families? 
 
 Now, to meet these questions, we affirm of the 
 process, that it is strictly a tentative one. It is 
 not the dictatorial imposition of a method on the 
 part of one who bids an implicit acquiescence there¬ 
 in. It is the confident recommendation of a me¬ 
 thod, on the part of one who asks that it may be 
 submitted to the touchstone of experience, and who 
 is willing to submit himself to the guidance and 
 the correction of this safe schoolmaster. There is 
 all the difference in the world between rashly pre¬ 
 suming on the truth, and respectfully feeling our 
 way to it. A very few initial attempts will decide 
 the question and set it at rest. It is a question 
 between the free or gratuitous, and the compul¬ 
 sory or legal systems of charity. The latter has 
 been tried all over England and found wanting. 
 Let the former be fairly and fully tried, in a few 
 parishes of England, and abandoned if they be¬ 
 come sensibly worse, and do not become sensibly 
 better. It is our own belief, that every year will 
 
327 
 
 witness an addition to her trophies and her tri¬ 
 umphs—that she will accumulate her credentials, 
 by each footstep that she takes along the varied 
 line of her perambulations, and, at length, be wel¬ 
 comed as an angel of deliverance in all parts of 
 the kingdom. But should her career not be a 
 prosperous one, she will share the fate of her many 
 predecessors,—she will vanish, with other expe¬ 
 dients, into oblivion; and the parliament of Eng¬ 
 land can withdraw its sanction, when the people 
 of England have ceased from their demand for 
 her. 
 
 It is on this account, that to watch the progress 
 of this new system, there ought to be parliamen¬ 
 tary commissioners, not for the purpose of receiving 
 appeals on the question of relief; for this would 
 be reviving the present system in another form— 
 but for the purpose of noting and reporting how 
 it is that those parochial communities really do 
 thrive, where the parochial managers have been 
 left to their own unfettered discretion—how it now 
 fares with the families—and whether the charity of 
 law be so replaced by sobriety among the poor, and 
 sympathy among the rich, that the charity of na¬ 
 ture is more than enough to meet all those appre¬ 
 hended deficiencies which, in the distance, look so 
 big and so fearful. If they can report any abuse 
 more flagrant in the trial parishes than now oc¬ 
 curs on the average throughout the parishes of 
 England—if they can quote instances there of 
 
828 
 
 shameful neglect and cruelty, which under the pre¬ 
 sent style of administration, would not have been 
 realized—if they can speak adversely of the 
 scheme, either because of the particular evils of 
 it which it shall be in their power to. specify; or, 
 because of that darker aspect of misery, which 
 stands visibly out on those parochial families that 
 are under its operation—then let such a testimony 
 to the effects of the gratuitous system be its con¬ 
 demnation. But if instead of this, they can al¬ 
 lege, as the fruits of it, an increased contentment, 
 and cheerfulness, and good-will; a more manifest 
 kindliness of heart on the part of the higher or¬ 
 ders ; and this returned by a confidence and gra¬ 
 titude on the part of the lower orders, that had 
 been before unknown; a more frequent intercourse 
 between the various classes of society; and with¬ 
 al, such an impulse on the side of popular educa¬ 
 tion, as to be sensibly raising the mind and the ha¬ 
 bits of the peasantry; if they can further attest, 
 that never had they been called to witness the 
 spectacle of distress left to suffer for a season, ex¬ 
 cept in the cases of guilt or of idleness, when it 
 was wise that nature should be left to her own 
 correctives, and her own cures; and that even 
 then starvation was a bugbear, which, with all their 
 most diligent search after it, they had in no one 
 instance been able to embody—surely, if such 
 shall be their testimony, the voice of parliament 
 will soon be at one with the voice of the people, 
 
329 
 
 and both must unite in stamping their acceptance 
 on a system so fully tried, and so nobly vindi¬ 
 cated. 
 
 It is not wrong to demand proof for the sound¬ 
 ness or efficacy of any expedient—but surely it is 
 wrong to refuse thedemand of him, who seeks that 
 a proof shall be led. There is no error, but the 
 contrary, in the paramount value that is set upon 
 experience. But how can he be said to value ex¬ 
 perience, who obstinately shuts out the light of it? 
 And every experiment lands in experience. An 
 experiment may be just as instructive by its fail¬ 
 ure, as by its success—and if there be parishes in 
 England that are sanguine enough to encounter 
 its difficulties, or willing to brave the hazards of 
 an eventual disgrace—on what possible grounds of 
 reason, or of expediency, should the opportunity 
 Be withheld from them ? It interferes with no¬ 
 thing. It hinders nothing. Those who desire it 
 not, are not disturbed by it—and each corporation, 
 whether of parish or township, is left to the re¬ 
 pose of its own settled prejudices, till the light of 
 ocular demonstration may chance to awaken it. 
 Even the most incredulous may, at least, consent 
 to the trial. And they who hold it in uttermost 
 derision, should be the first to cheer it forward to 
 the field of exhibition, that they might hold their 
 delicious regale upon its overthrow. Meanwhile, 
 all the other devices of reform and regulation, 
 might go on as busily as before. This one does 
 not elbow out any of the former from the parishes 
 Voi.. ir. t t 
 
330 
 
 by which they are preferred. The act of Mr. 
 Gilbert has been tried. The act of Mr. Bourne 
 is in progress of trial. Other suggestions, we 
 doubt not, will be made, and, perhaps, adopted 
 for the purpose of mitigating the load of pauper¬ 
 ism ; for the purpose of arresting, and perhaps, 
 turning the footsteps of this mighty destroyer. 
 There is just one more that we should like were 
 added to the number of them. We should like a 
 radical change of principle, combined with a pro¬ 
 gressive operation—an entire revolution in the sys¬ 
 tem of management, but carried into effect in such 
 a way as should bring none of the anarchy or up¬ 
 roar of revolution along with it—a process no 
 doubt, chargeable with the stigma of being alto¬ 
 gether new, and which, therefore, should not be 
 permitted to range over the land, till it has earned 
 a credit by its actual achievements; and a pro¬ 
 cess, whose speed regulated only by its tried and 
 ascertained safety, shall give no disturbance to 
 other experimental processes, and bring no danger 
 to the commonwealth.* 
 
 And nothing, it appears to us, can be more sim¬ 
 ple, than how to suit the law of settlement to a pa¬ 
 rish which shall come under the new system. A 
 stranger acquires no right in such a parish, though 
 he should fulfil all those conditions on which a 
 
 * Should even the number of parishes that applied at the outset, he 
 deemed too great by the Commissioners, they might have the power of limit¬ 
 ing and selecting, and thus, of checking for a time, those parishes where 
 there seemed to be a smaller likelihood of success, or a less degree of hu¬ 
 manity and information among its householders. 
 
331 
 
 settlement is acquired in other parishes. He may, 
 or he may not, share with the other parishioners, 
 in the gratuitous ministrations of the vestry ; but 
 neither he nor they should have any right to re¬ 
 lief, after that the care of human want had been 
 devolved on the free sympathies of our nature. 
 It is thus, that a trial parish would not import any 
 burden by the influx of strangers from the coun¬ 
 try at large, and the fair reciprocity therefore is, 
 that the country should not be burdened by any 
 efflux from the parish. As there can be no right 
 acquired by one removing to a trial parish, neither 
 should there be any right acquired by one remov¬ 
 ing from it. And let us not, therefore, look up¬ 
 on him as an unprivileged outcast from the se¬ 
 curities of civilized life. He moves at his own 
 choice, and with his eye open to his circumstan¬ 
 ces ; and he is richer far by trusting to his own re¬ 
 sources, and by knowing that he has nothing else 
 to trust to, than he, who, along with the rights, 
 has also the temptations of pauperism. Such a 
 man will find his way; and it, on the whole, will be 
 a way of greater sufficiency and comfort than any 
 which law provides for the nurslings of her arti¬ 
 ficial charity. The emigrants from a trial parish 
 into any other part of England, will exemplify the 
 general habit of those who have acquired no set¬ 
 tlement in the place of their residence, yet choose 
 not to leave it—a habit, it has oft been remarked, 
 of greater industry and virtue than is averaged 
 in the mass of the population. 
 
CHAP. XVI. 
 
 ON THE LIKELIEST PAROCHIAL MEANS FOR THE 
 ABOLITION OF PAUPERISM IN ENGLAND. 
 
 The first obstacle in the way of entering upon a 
 process for the extirpation of pauperism in any 
 parish, is, that the difficulty of it will be greatly 
 overrated. The present and the palpable thing is 
 a large annual sum that needs to be levied for the 
 support of the existing generation of paupers— 
 beside the very ponderous establishment that has 
 been raised, and which continues to be required, 
 for their accommodation. It is quite obvious what 
 an unwieldy concern it would be, were the assess¬ 
 ment forthwith to cease, and provision to be made 
 on the instant for all those actual poor, from whom 
 their accustomed supplies had thus suddenly been 
 withdrawn. There is scarcely a body of parochial 
 managers in England, that would not shrink from 
 such an undertaking—and without reflecting for a 
 time on the real difference that there is between 
 this undertaking, and the one which we have sug¬ 
 gested—they look .upon both with the same kind 
 of fearfulness, . and almost with nearly equal de¬ 
 grees of it. They measure the weight and labour 
 of the enterprise, by the weight of the present 
 pauperism that is now before their eyes; though, 
 in fact, there is not one fraction of it, with which 
 
333 
 
 the new system has necessarily any thing to do. 
 The pauperism that has been already formed, so 
 long as any part of it exists, may be upheld just as 
 it wont; and as it gradually melts away by death, 
 the levies will gradually decline, till both the poor 
 rate, and the poor who have been admitted upon 
 it, shall have altogether ceased to be. Meanwhile, 
 it is only with new applicants for relief that the 
 new system has any task to perform—not with 
 the full-grown pauperism of the present genera¬ 
 tion, but with the embryo pauperism of the next. 
 There are many parishes, and more especially if 
 you rank all who have been casual poor with 
 the old cases, where the fresh applications do not 
 come in at the rate of one every month, and in 
 the treatment of which, therefore, you can calmly 
 and leisurely prosecute every right expedient for 
 the right disposal of them. There can be no over¬ 
 whelming labour at the outset of such an under¬ 
 taking. With the management that provides for 
 the existing pauperism, there is much business to 
 attend to. But with the management that is set 
 up to meet and to anticipate the eventual pauper¬ 
 ism, the business comes on gradually. At first, 
 there is none. It does not begin but with the first 
 applicant who offers himself—and he finds you at 
 perfect leisure to attend to him—to take up his 
 case, and most thoroughly to investigate it—to 
 calculate his means and his facilities—to make 
 inquiry after his relatives—to ascertain what work 
 might be provided for him—to arrange perhaps 
 
334 
 
 some method with a neighbour, as cordially dis¬ 
 posed against pauperism as you, for taking him 
 into employment, and making his industry availa¬ 
 ble still to his maintenance—to shift away his 
 application by some temporary aid from the purse 
 of unseen charity—in a word, to ply every expe¬ 
 dient for disposing of him better, than by admit¬ 
 ting him upon the roll of your new pauperism, 
 under that new economy which it is now your 
 earnest concern to administer well. After the 
 first has been disposed of, a second comes at a 
 longer or shorter interval, and he finds you still 
 better prepared for him than before; more skilled 
 in the treatment of such applications; more intel¬ 
 ligent about the resources of humble life; more 
 able to acquit yourselves prudently and even po¬ 
 pularly, by every new act of intercourse with the 
 poor; more rich in experience and knowledge; 
 and withal, more dexterous in the talent, not of 
 so shifting the request away from you, as that your 
 petitioner shall starve, but of so shifting it away 
 from you as that he shall be in better condition 
 than if he had been made a pensioner of yours. 
 Let this be persevered in for a little—and if one 
 regular pauper was admitted upon the list every 
 month under the old regimen, one will not be ad¬ 
 mitted every half-year under the new regimen. 
 The thing which now looks so formidable in the 
 distance, will, on the actual encounter with it, 
 dwindle into a very moderate and manageable af¬ 
 fair. Both the facility and the success will very 
 
335 
 
 much astonish yourselves—and by the time that 
 the pauperism on the poor rate has all died away, 
 you will find it replaced by a pauperism both so 
 mild in the character, and so moderate in the 
 amount of it, that out of free-will offerings, and 
 of these alone, all its expenses will be cheerfully 
 borne. 
 
 And there is a very important difference be¬ 
 tween the old and the new administration, the 
 practical operation of which you are not able to 
 appreciate now, but in which you will soon expe¬ 
 rience that there is really all the might and mar¬ 
 vellous efficacy of a charm. What is now demand¬ 
 ed as a right, will then be preferred as a request. 
 It is just the difference between the claiming of a 
 thing, and the asking of a thing. Now, the use 
 which you ought to make of this difference is not 
 to bid any one parochial applicant sternly away 
 from you, because now you have the power; but 
 to give courteous entertainment to them all. When 
 a fellow-man comes into your presence, and tells 
 you of want or of disease in his family, you are 
 not to “ hide yourself from your own flesh.” It 
 will always be your part, and more especially at 
 the moment of transition to a system of charity 
 which is yet untried, patiently to listen to every 
 case, and calmly to investigate, and mildly to ad¬ 
 vise, and to mix up the utmost civility and tem¬ 
 per with your wise and firm prosecution of the 
 matter which has been submitted to you. Now it 
 is when so employed, that you will come to feel, 
 
336 
 
 and that very speedily too, the breath of another 
 spirit altogether in your intercourse and dealings 
 with the poor, than that by which they wont to be 
 formerly animated. At present there is a jealousy 
 between the two classes, upholden by a sense of 
 right upon the one side, and by a dread of rapacity 
 upon the other. But very soon under the new re¬ 
 gimen, will the one party come down from their 
 insolence, and the other party from that distant 
 and defensive attitude which they now think it so 
 necessary to maintain. This single change in the 
 law will act, and that instantaneously, with all the 
 power of an emollient between them—the poor 
 ceasing to distrust the rich, and the rich forthwith 
 ceasing to be afraid of the poor. It will give a 
 wholly different complexion to the proceedings of 
 the parish vestry—who now left to their own dis¬ 
 cretion, will use it discreetly; and who, in pro¬ 
 portion as they feel relieved from compulsion, will 
 resign themselves the more to the influence of 
 kindness. They will soon discover, that a harsh 
 and imperious manner to the poor, is not at all ne¬ 
 cessary for their own protection. It will be quite 
 enough for their security, that they investigate, 
 that they advise, that they suggest expedients, 
 that they offer their friendly interposition with 
 relatives, who might aid, or with neighbours who 
 might employ them—that, on the discovery of a 
 vicious or expensive habit, they address them in a 
 tone of remonstrance which is at once meek, and 
 moral, and affectionate. It is not known how soon 
 
331 
 
 the poor would be moulded and transformed into 
 another habit, under the power of a treatment like 
 this; and how, when once the imagination of a 
 right was done away, the old ministration of cha¬ 
 rity, as if delivered of the wormwood that law had 
 infused, would instantly take on its native tem¬ 
 perament of love and liberty. The rich would 
 have a comfort in being kind, when what they did 
 was recognized as kindness. The poor would have 
 a pleasure in being grateful, when they saw, in the 
 attentions of the wealthy, the spontaneous homage 
 of that sympathy, or that reverence which is due 
 to our common nature. There would no longer 
 be a jaundiced medium between them. The 
 hearts of the affluent would not revolt, as they now 
 do, from that misery which, instead of calling for 
 pity, loudly challenges redress. And the plebeian 
 mind would not fester, as it does now, with untrue 
 and ungenerous imaginations of the upper classes 
 of society. With such an improvement in the ma¬ 
 terials of the parochial community, would it be¬ 
 come greatly more manageable than before; and 
 the body of management, the vestry, the parochial 
 court of influential men, to whom the public cha¬ 
 rity, now rendered wholly gratuitous, had been 
 committed, would soon find such an adequacy in 
 the better and previous resources that either their 
 own strict investigation had disclosed, or their own 
 active influence had created, as to demonstrate 
 that public charity, in this best form of it, could 
 Vor.. it. u u 
 
either be most easily upheld, or eyen was very 
 much uncalled for. 
 
 And it should be adverted to here, that agree¬ 
 ably to the scheme which we have ventured to re¬ 
 commend, no parish at the first can embark on this 
 retracing process from legal to gratuitous charity, 
 without a very large concurrence of householders 
 in its favour; and that this, of itself, is the gua¬ 
 rantee for an outset which shall be altogether safe 
 and prosperous, and, at least, for several years 
 being passed over without any oppressive weight 
 of applications. For whence are these applica¬ 
 tions to come? Not from the old paupers, on 
 whose condition or on whose rights no change, by 
 the supposition, has been made—not surely in 
 very great number, from the families of those 
 who, by their concurrence in the new system, have 
 expressed a hostility against pauperism, which is 
 the best security for such sentiments and habits as 
 will keep them permanently above it—and there¬ 
 fore, only from that small body of dissentients who 
 were, not paupers at the time of the new system 
 being adopted, or from the descendants of the old 
 generation of paupers. The applications which 
 do come from these quarters will come very gra¬ 
 dually: and there will be ample leisure for discri¬ 
 minating between the real or the deserving want, 
 and that which is either pretended, or is the fruit 
 of vicious indulgence; and it will be found a work 
 of perfect lightness and facility, to devolve most 
 
339 
 
 of those cases which ought to be attended to, 
 on other resources than those of public charity. 
 So that the remainder, which must be taken on the 
 parochial fund, will be met and upheld at an ex¬ 
 pense that is indefinitely small, or, at least, that 
 bears no comparison with the poor rate, which, by 
 this time, shall have nearly disappeared. And, as 
 this old burden melts away, the new resources will 
 be every year becoming more productive. With 
 the morale of private benevolence, now more 
 free and energetic than before, its materiel will be 
 also more abundant. There will be more both of 
 power and willingness among the rich. There 
 will be less both of need and of expectancy among 
 the poor. The vestry, in fact, might very easily 
 so manage, as at length to find, that even their 
 office, as the administrators of the parochial fund, 
 shall be well nigh superseded; and that in regard, 
 at least, to the affairs of parochial indigence, the 
 whole economy of a parish can be well and pros¬ 
 perously conducted, not only without any legal 
 charity, but without even the semblance of it, in 
 any public charity at all. 
 
 But another fear is, that however sufficient the 
 means may turn out under the proposed system, 
 the management will be so very laborious, as to 
 leave no room for hoping, that it can long be per¬ 
 severed in. Now this too is a bugbear—and if 
 possible, a still more airy and unsubstantial one 
 than the former. The only strenuous manage¬ 
 ment that is at all required, will be at the outset, 
 
340 
 
 where each care ought to be fearlessly met, and 
 sifted to the uttermost; and every right expedient 
 bethought of and tried, that, if possible, it may 
 be shifted aside from the parochial fund, and de¬ 
 volved in a better way on the thrift and labour of 
 the applicant himself) on the duty of his relatives, 
 or on the charities of private benevolence. Let 
 this method be acted upon but for a month or 
 two—and here is the way in which it operates. 
 When the people come to perceive, that this is the 
 way in which their applications are met, they sim- 
 ply, in by far the greater number of instances, 
 cease to apply. They who are conscious of means 
 which they know that it is in the power of a care¬ 
 ful scrutiny to detect, will forbear to offer them¬ 
 selves. They who are idly disposed, will shrink 
 from the hazard of having their plea refuted by 
 some employment being put into their hands, 
 which they would rather decline. Some who have 
 kind relatives or neighbours, will rather continue 
 to draw from them in secret, than subject their 
 private matters to the inquisition of a vestry. 
 There are many securities against the vestry being 
 overwhelmed with applications. Some they will 
 have—and each of them it is their part to follow 
 up, by the most elaborate process of examinations 
 and expedients. But they may rest assured, that 
 in proportion to the labour bestowed on each one, 
 will be the smallness of the number of them. Their 
 business will at length be very much confined to 
 the relief of such unquestionable and genuine dis- 
 
341 
 
 tress, as they shall find it a delight to succour and 
 sustain—and often a matter of perfect ease to find 
 enough of benevolence for taking it off their hands. 
 It is thus, that from an outset of strenuousness, 
 they will, at length, be conducted to a state of per¬ 
 manent repose. This style of administration acts 
 by a preventive influence upon the people. Its 
 genuine effect is, to keep each man in his own 
 place—and many whom the old system would have 
 seduced to the door of the parish vestry, will 
 “ study to be quiet, and to do their own business, 
 and to work with their own hands, rather than be 
 burdensome.” Many who would have brought aged 
 relatives there, will learn to show piety at home, 
 and to “ requite their parents.” Many who would 
 have thrown their children upon a poor rate, will in 
 the absence of this ruinous temptation, “ provide 
 for their own, and specially for those of their own 
 house.” That fermentation of hopes, and appe¬ 
 tites, and busy expedients which might be witnes¬ 
 sed now in every parish of England, where so many 
 families have been thrown agog by the very exis¬ 
 tence of a legal provision, will speedily subside, 
 when such a provision ceases to be administered; 
 and with the greater speed, that the vestry are more 
 dexterous and diligent with their investigations. 
 The people will, at length, settle down into a ha¬ 
 bit of most manageable quiescence—and the ves¬ 
 try, after having marvelled at the end of the first 
 year, because, after strict inquiry, they have had 
 so little to expend, will still more marvel at the end 
 
of their second year, because of the very few in¬ 
 quiries which they shall be called upon to make. 
 
 Now no investigation, however rigid, or how¬ 
 ever persevered in, under the present system, will 
 ever conduct the population to this state. It may 
 repress, for a time, the appetite for public relief, but 
 will not extinguish it. If the right shall remain with 
 the people, they will be on the watch to recover it— 
 and on the first moment of relaxation by the ves¬ 
 try, there will be a set in of the pauperism as be¬ 
 fore. And besides, a vestry liable as they now 
 are to the control and interference of magistrates, 
 will often prefer a compromise with an applicant, 
 though they know him to be unworthy of relief, 
 to the labour, which is often impracticable, of 
 proving this to the satisfaction of others. The 
 right may be looked upon as the principle that gives 
 all its elasticity to pauperism, which by an exter¬ 
 nal force may be compressed within narrower li¬ 
 mits, but which, on the removal of that force, 
 will suddenly expand again to its former dimen¬ 
 sions. Let the elasticity be taken away, and the 
 compressing force will not be long necessary. All 
 that is ungracious in charity will at length be done 
 away. When freed from constraint, it will assume 
 its natural character; and under its reign, we shall 
 shortly behold a better served and a better satisfied 
 population.* 
 
 * There is one way in which, even under the present system, an exem¬ 
 plification might be afforded of some of those principles which have been 
 
343 
 
 Having now fully considered the fears which 
 might restrain many parishes at the first from the 
 
 adverted to in the text. Let an upright and benevolent magistrate, aware 
 of the mischiefs of pauperism, and anxious to reduce them, assume all that 
 care and superintendence which we have supposed, in the vestry of a trial 
 
 lievehitn, from the load ofunworthyand unnecessaryapplieations—insomuch, 
 that the hours spent hy him in this business, at length, were twenty times 
 fewer than they had been at the outset. 
 
 Now, this will do so long as the township of Pilkington has the rare ad¬ 
 vantage of a magistrate in its neighbourhood, who has the ultimate power 
 of decision in the cases of its pauperism, and who uses that power intelli¬ 
 gently and popularly. But suppose this advantage to he removed. The 
 right of legal relief remains—and an indefinite fund is leviable for the pur- 
 
344 
 
 adoption of the new system, let me advert to the 
 mistakes and mismanagements which might be in¬ 
 curred in the prosecution of it. 
 
 First, then, if the experiment shall prosper, it 
 will not be because of the great supplies which 
 are raised, but because of the great care which has 
 been observed in the administration of them. We 
 should not hold it to be a happy conclusion of the 
 enterprise, if the vestry, under the new system, 
 enabled by the liberality either of the collection 
 at church, or of private donations, were to expend 
 as much in the relief of indigence, as it did under 
 the old. This is not the way in which we should 
 like compensation to be made for the loss of the 
 poor rate. A far better equivalent would be, in 
 the improvement that had taken place on the in¬ 
 dustry, and sobriety, and self-respect, and virtu¬ 
 ous habits of the population. Let there be as pro¬ 
 fuse an expenditure as before, and there will be no- 
 
 There may be detected, in this little narrative from Piikington, the ope¬ 
 ration of a principle which never, under the present economy, can have its 
 fair or full development in England—and that is, the effect of a kind and 
 patient attention on the part of the higher orders, in conciliating the affec¬ 
 tions of those who are beneath them. The poor rate creates a heavy de¬ 
 duction from this benign and beneficial influence; and, therefore, what good 
 may be anticipated from it in a trial parish, when even now we see it ex¬ 
 emplified. We should imagine that tins must often have fallen in with the 
 experience of those gentlemen, who have taken an active part in the busi¬ 
 ness of select vestries. We are persuaded, that many of them will have 
 found tile poor much easier to deal with than they at first apprehended; and 
 that their observation will agree with that of Mr. Walker in Bury, Lanca¬ 
 shire, who takes a principal share in the now stricter management that is 
 there set up, and has met with less grumbling than was anticipated. 
 
345 
 
 thing to foster these habits, in the new cnauge that 
 has taken place, from the system of a poor rate, to 
 the system of free-will offerings. Now, if this be 
 not adverted to, there might be a grievous error 
 at the very commencement of the undertaking. 
 The truth is, that even though there should be 
 moderate supplies, yet for the first months there 
 may be a rapidly accumulating surplus in the' 
 hands of the vestry, from the very gradual onset 
 of the new applications. Hence a temptation to 
 liberal allowances, which might afterwards land 
 them in an embarrassment—for even on the prin¬ 
 ciples of a friendly society, they ought to husband 
 well their capital at the first, that they may be pre¬ 
 pared for the full weight of those cases, which 
 shall not for several years have attained their maxi¬ 
 mum. But independently of this, the charity that 
 is administered by the new vestry is public charity, 
 and this ought always to be held out as the worst, 
 and, therefore, as the last resort of human suffer¬ 
 ing. The whole management should be conducted 
 upon this principle as its basis. To have one’s 
 name enrolled in the lists of a parochial almonry, 
 should be regarded as a humiliation, from which 
 there ought to be felt an anxiety that the humblest 
 and poorest of the community should, if possible, 
 be protected. Let this principle be acted upon in 
 the spirit of truth and friendship, by the upper 
 classes of a parish, and it will soon be caught, and 
 spread itself, as if by sympathy, among the lower 
 classes. Ere an applicant shall become a pensioner 
 
 VOL. II. X X 
 
346 
 
 on the parochial fund, every right expedient of 
 prevention ought to be tried, and it is, in fact, 
 the successful prosecution of these expedients 
 wherein the great moral and economical good of 
 the new administration lies. 
 
 But, secondly, though the private liberality of 
 the rich in a parish to its poor, ranks as one of 
 those expedients, and is much to be preferred over 
 that open and visible distribution, that is so fitted 
 both to corrupt and to degrade the objects of 
 it—yet may the rich also be, to a certain degree, 
 the instruments of the very same mischief, that we 
 have now charged on an incautious public admi¬ 
 nistration. They ought never to forget, that the 
 best economic gift which can possibly be rendered 
 to the lower orders, is a habit of self-respect and 
 self-dependence—and for this purpose, they ought 
 not to disdain a free and frequent intercourse with 
 them. This of itself will go far to elevate the 
 mind and the manners of our peasantry; and it is 
 a very great mistake, that the visit of rank or af¬ 
 fluence to a poor man’s cottage, is not welcomed, 
 unless it he followed up by some beggarly ministra¬ 
 tion. Wherever a case of obvious and ascertained 
 distress meets the philanthropist on his walk, it is 
 his part to approve that his benevolence is real, by 
 “willingness to distribute,”by “readiness to com¬ 
 municate.” But he should recollect, that there are 
 also other topics than those of mere almsgiving, 
 upon which he might most pertinently and most 
 profitably hold fellowship with his humbler breth- 
 
347 
 
 ren of the species; and shortly earn the confidence 
 and regard of all his neighbourhood. The educa¬ 
 tion of their families; the good order of their 
 houses; the little schemes of economy and man¬ 
 agement in which he requests their co-operation; 
 the parish bank, for which he has to solicit then- 
 agency and their contributions; the counsel, the 
 service, the little presents of courtesy, by which he 
 does not sink but signalize them; the cheap and 
 simple attentions by which the cottage children 
 can be made happy, and their parents grateful; 
 those thousand nameless graces and benignities, by 
 which the accomplished female can light up a mo¬ 
 ral gladness, in the hamlet which she has selected 
 as the theatre both of many duties, and of many 
 friendships—there is a way of prosecuting all these 
 without alimenting the rapacity or the sordidness 
 of our labouring classes—a way that is best learned 
 in the school of experience; and after, perhaps, 
 the many blunders which have been committed, 
 and the many mortifying disappointments which 
 have been sustained, by the young practitioner in 
 the art of well-doing. It is not by money alone that 
 he is to manifest his kindness. There are innu¬ 
 merable other ways, and better ways of doing it— 
 and in the prosecution of which he might, in truth, 
 refine and heighten that delicacy which he else 
 would overbear. Let there be but good-will in 
 his heart; and this, amid all his forbearance in 
 giving, nay, amid all his refusals, when he appre¬ 
 hends a cunning or a corruption in the object of 
 
348 
 
 them—this will, at length, shine forth upon the peo¬ 
 ple, in the lustre of its own moral evidence; and 
 will give for him an ascendancy, that might be con¬ 
 vertible to the fine result of their permanent ame¬ 
 lioration. Such a man will nobly clear his way, 
 through all those initial suspicions or calumnies, 
 that for a time may obstruct his best aspirings af¬ 
 ter usefulness. If he have failed in those petty 
 and oft-repeated, while heedless liberalities, by 
 which many an indolent sentimentalist scatters 
 poison on every side of him—the season of his 
 vindication will come round, when the endowment 
 of a village school, or some costly yet unquestion¬ 
 able benevolence calls for his princely offering— 
 and from the vantage ground of his now accredited 
 worth, he can deal with efficacy among the peo¬ 
 ple, his remonstrances both against the vice and 
 idleness which impoverish, and against the beg¬ 
 gary which degrades them. All that good, by the 
 exhibition of which he might corrupt others, he 
 doeth by stealth, or in secret—but the main good 
 that he doeth, and by which he most emphatically 
 acquits himself as the benefactor of the poor, is 
 by working out this lesson in the midst of them, 
 that their own resources are the best securities 
 against want, and that they themselves might in¬ 
 deed be their own best benefactors. 
 
 'There are many of England’s most enlightened 
 clergymen, who, each at the head of his own 
 vestry, in the absence of poor-rate, that sore pes¬ 
 tilence in the work of all reformation, could, after 
 
349 
 
 having seized the true principle for the manage¬ 
 ment of the poor, speedily send a newpulse through¬ 
 out the community over which he presides, and 
 spread an aspect of moral healthfulness over the 
 face of his parish. With this as the distinct ob¬ 
 ject of their management, of which no secret ought 
 to be made, that they were, as far as in them lay, 
 to commit every applicant back again, upon his 
 own expedients, and first to ascertain what his own 
 industry, and the relative duties and sympathies 
 by which he was surrounded could do for him, 
 ere they would admit him as a pensioner of theirs 
 —with this as their object, firmly yet feelingly 
 prosecuted, they will at length be gratified to find 
 how marvellously little is left for them to do. If 
 benevolence to our kind, be the real animating 
 spirit of a parochial court, then let it be as care¬ 
 ful, and resolute, and moral as it may, nothing will 
 withstand it. The opposition which it may excite, 
 at the first,.by its wholesome severities, will at 
 length hide its head as if ashamed. All the right 
 sense and feeling of the parish will speak for it 
 and be upon its side. Even the popular mind 
 will be at length gained over—and then every 
 thing is gained. The families of the poor them¬ 
 selves will at length feel an atmosphere of good¬ 
 will around them which, under the reign of legal 
 charity, they never once felt; and they will acknow¬ 
 ledge themselves to be now the happier objects of 
 an attention, and a kindness, and a directing wis¬ 
 dom on the part of their superiors, under which 
 
350 
 
 they breathe a new moral existence. They will 
 at length make common cause with their vestry— 
 and Whenever their innumerable sympathies are 
 unlocked by the abolition of that system which has 
 congealed them, it will be found, that apart even 
 from the now increased aid and succour of the 
 opulent, there is throughout the plebeian mass such 
 a busy circulation of mutual help and liberality 
 from house to house, as to leave the ministrations 
 of the parochial charity very much uncalled for. 
 
 A more unfettered vestry, acting as it ought, 
 in the spirit of a moral and ecclesiastical court, 
 will, by the discouragements which it lays on pro¬ 
 fligacy, protect itself from the inroads of that 
 which, in fact, is the main feeder of our existing 
 pauperism. They will then have the power of do¬ 
 ing so in their own hands; and they need be under 
 ho apprehension, lest by the putting of it forth, 
 they should prove the occasion of such crimes, or 
 such Consequences as are shocking to humanity. 
 They will, in fact, make no violent departure from 
 such principles as are already recognized. In re¬ 
 fusing the application of the mother of an illegiti¬ 
 mate child, they will have the sanction even of 
 English precedents. When they rest a denial on 
 the idleness or drunkenness of the applicant, the 
 trial vestry will just do what the select vestry are 
 already warranted to do by act of parliament, 
 which empowers them to have respect unto his 
 character, as well as to his circumstances. Even 
 when they forbear to act on the event of a run- 
 
351 
 
 away parent, and that, because, as a body, respon¬ 
 sible for the virtue of the parish, they are fearful 
 of the slightest countenance to a habit, by which 
 the ties of natural relationship have so woefully 
 been broken,—even this seeming cruelty to one 
 family, will turn out a blessing and a kindness to 
 many families. Nature will re-assert her suprem¬ 
 acy, after that temptation is withdrawn by which 
 her feelings and her principles had been enfeebled. 
 Let it be the invariable practice of the vestry never 
 to interpose for the purpose of repairing the con¬ 
 sequences of crime. The habit will be found as 
 safe as it is salutary. Many will be restrained 
 from evil, and a whole century may roll over a 
 parish thus purely and rigorously conducted, with¬ 
 out one guilty mother being tempted to an act of 
 unnatural violence,—without one deserted family 
 being left 'by its neighbourhood to starve. . . 
 
 It is because of the mighty retrenchments which 
 may thus be effected, that we hold it quite safe for 
 a trial parish to meet, upon its now voluntary fund, 
 both the casual poor, and those who alternate from 
 summer to winter. At least there are many pa¬ 
 rishes, that might well hazard the treatment of both 
 these on the footing of new cases, instead of con¬ 
 signing them, along with the regular paupers, to 
 the compulsory fund. We should like it, in fact, 
 on account of the proof which it would afford of 
 the very great force of education that lay in cir¬ 
 cumstances, and of the speed wherewith a change 
 of habit followed in the train of a change of cir- 
 
352 
 
 cumstances. In regard to the casual poor, their 
 trivial and temporary applications to the parish 
 are, many of them, founded upon some slight de¬ 
 rangement that has taken place in their personal 
 or domestic history—the illness of a few days of 
 the father—or the confinement of the mother on 
 childbed—or some short suspension of employ¬ 
 ment from the weather, or the cessation of de¬ 
 mand for a week or two. Now, surely, to treat 
 them as if they were incapable of foresight so very 
 brief, is not treating them like rational creatures. 
 It is most desirable that they should be trained to 
 anticipation; and, by contesting these little de¬ 
 mands with them, I should like to teach them this 
 first and earliest lesson of it,—and so, cany them 
 forward in this line of prudential habits, till even 
 summer be made to provide for the deficiences of 
 winter. The parish hank and parish vestry might 
 thus he made to act to each other’s hands; and 
 the reason why I do recommend an encounter 
 with the casual poor, and that, upon the voluntary 
 income alone, is because I count on the most strik¬ 
 ing and immediate success with this part of the 
 experiment, confident, as I am, of the very great 
 facility wherewith a people may be made to suit 
 their new habits to their new circumstances. It 
 gives a hardier outset to the vestry, but with firm¬ 
 ness and good management, the difficulty will be 
 got over, and the greater will be the triumph.* 
 
 .* We are quite aware that many parishes have been accustomed to deal 
 so largely in casual relief, that unless all who have been the objects of it 
 
353 
 
 The truth is, that under a good management, 
 though with very slender means, the first difficulty 
 
 shall continue under the operation of the old system, they would not ad¬ 
 venture, with such a weight of demand and of pressure, upon the new ones. 
 This might be made a matter of discretionary adjustment at the outset; or 
 if they waited the event of the trial in smaller and more manageable pa¬ 
 rishes, they might then feel encouraged, and on the solid ground of expe¬ 
 rience, to make the attempt in this completer form. 
 
 What we anticipate of many of the trial parishes is, that their success 
 will, in a very few months, so far outshoot their first expectations, as not 
 only to warrant their fullest confidence of the final result being prosper¬ 
 ous, but as will lead them to hasten that result by the application of vo¬ 
 luntary means, even to tile whole of the old and regular pauperism; and 
 so bring about an immediate extinction of the poor rates. There might he 
 a rashness in this, and it is altogether unnecessary for ultimate success; 
 seeing that by the operation of death on the old cases, the poor-rate must 
 surely, though more slowly he done away. Still however the eclat of such 
 an achievement may beget an impatience for it; and such is our faith in 
 the energies of the new system, that we hold them, in most instances, fully 
 
 The following is a specimen of what might he done, in the way even of a 
 sudden reformation, and may serve to illustrate how likely and how prac¬ 
 ticable is that smoother and more gradual reformation which we have ven¬ 
 tured to recommend. The population of White Waltham is 795. Its ex¬ 
 penditure for the relief of the poor, in 1820-21, was *180. But tills, of 
 course, includes the cost of the in-door paupers also. 
 
 “A simple Statement of the Manner of Believing the Poor of While Waltham, 
 
 Berlcs. By J. Sawyer, Esa. 
 
 “ The conduct of the gentlemen and farmers of the parish of White Wal¬ 
 tham, in the county of Berks, in attempting to abate the evils arising from 
 an injudicious administration of the poor laws having lately been much the 
 subject of conversation in the neighbourhood, and of course, as might he 
 expected, approved of by some, and censured by others, it is thought ad¬ 
 visable that a simple statement should be made, to enable their neighbours 
 to form a correct judgment of their proceedings. The heavy pressure of 
 the poor laws, in this period of agricultural distress, is severely felt: no one 
 denies this plain fact, while the benefit to the poor themselves, by the ex¬ 
 tent of relief lately given, is very much doubted; greater misery it is sup- 
 
 Vol. If. Y y 
 
which shall meet the vestry will be a very different 
 one from that which is now apprehended. It will 
 
 posed being produced from the destruction of their provident cures and fore, 
 thought, than the relief afforded from the poor rates counterbalances. 
 
 “ Another point of view offers itself very strongly to the reflecting mind; 
 whether sufficient, or at least equal relief, would not be given from motives 
 
3 55 
 
 not be how to find the adequate supplies, but how 
 to dispose of the unappropriated and accumulating 
 
 tifying the tone of confidence wherewith some of our predictions are uttered, 
 to state it as our feeling that we speak experimentally. The parish of St. 
 John’s in Glasgow, we now deem, by certain criteria which have recently 
 come to our knowledge, to be the lowest in the scale of natural wealth of 
 any in the city; and from its population, which consists of more than 8,000 
 individuals, is of more unwieldy management than are nine-tenths of the 
 parishes of England. The process which we have recommended there, for 
 trial, in the first instance, by tile smaller and more manageable parishes in 
 that country, we might well pronounce upon with some degree of sanguine 
 
356 
 
 surplus. Instead of a pressure on the voluntary 
 fund, which it cannot hold out against, there will, 
 
 get rid of an excess. We honestly think, that had it gone to aogment the 
 allowances of our ordinary pauperism, this would have keen a deleterious 
 application oi it. And, accordingly, we devised that veiy use for it which 
 we now recommend to the trial parishes of England. We were enabled to 
 vest £500 out of the produce of our collections, with the city corporation, 
 for the perpetual endowment by salary of a parochial school: and we take 
 this opportunity of repeating our grateful acknowledgments to the magis¬ 
 trates of Glasgow, for their concurrence in a destination, which at once 
 proves, that the economy even of a city parish may be conducted without a 
 compulsory pauperism, and also provides, in the education of the lower 
 classes, an additional security against that low and crouching spirit of pau¬ 
 perism, wherewith a contagion from the south was beginning to taint our 
 Scottish population. 
 
 It will be interesting to mark the future state of this parish. Should our 
 successor in office, or the city rulers, overthrow tile present arrangement, 
 and bring the people of St. John’s again into contact with the Town Hos¬ 
 pital, there will then be a speedy re-ascent of its pauperism up to the ave¬ 
 rage of that of Glasgow. The phenomenon will be quite analogous to that 
 of a parish in England, whose pauperism has been repressed, for a season, 
 by the energies of a strict administration, hut which, on the moment of 
 
 the law remains, and the legal or compulsory provision remains, and the na¬ 
 tural appetency of men for as much of this provision as it can seize upon 
 remains. But should the existing arrangement continue to he protected 
 and upheld both by the parochial and the general authorities of the place, 
 then this is the outline of the history of its future pauperism. At present 
 the whole yearly expenditure is a little above £300, whereof £250 is the pro¬ 
 duce of the old system, and less than £80 has been created, under the new, in 
 the space of three years and a half. This sum will decline, for still the old 
 pauperism is dying much faster away than the new is growing; so that, with 
 the very moderate collection of £200 a-year in the church, and the still 
 more moderate collection of £100 a-year in the chapel, the whole pauperism 
 of St. John’s can he nearly met now, and may, under the ordinary sessional 
 management of Scotland, be equally well met for ever. And there is no fa¬ 
 tiguing strenuousness of management called for now, on the part of the 
 agents, for our people (and every other will manifest the same thing under 
 the same circumstances) cease to disturb us by their applications, when we 
 cease to have disturbed them by those lying promises of sufficiency which 
 
357 
 
 from year to year, be a progressive enlargement 
 of it. The vestry will not be put upon their devices 
 to recruit their exhausted treasury. They will be 
 put upon their devices to find out a safe and salutary 
 absorbent for its overplus. In these circumstances, 
 the clergyman who is aware of the mischiefs of 
 public charity, might be tempted to lay an arrest 
 on the liberality of his parishioners and hearers. 
 But better far would it be, that he kept this li¬ 
 berality agoing, nay stimulated it the more, and 
 then impressed such a direction on the produce of 
 it as went not to corrupt the people, but to elevate 
 and to moralize them. He might do them harm 
 by a large public distribution for the relief of in¬ 
 digence, whether the means of it were provided 
 by a poor-rate or free-will offerings. But there is 
 no harm in thus meeting certain of the helpless 
 and involuntary sufferings of our nature. There is 
 none in so signalizing the dumb, and the blind, and 
 
 pauperism holds out, but can never realize. Our experience will just be 
 the experience of a trial parish in England, which, after having been con¬ 
 ducted to a habit of quiescence, will never again break forth from it, pro¬ 
 vided that the legal provision, after which ail are now agog, is conclusively 
 withdrawn. 
 
 We shall only add, further, on this subject, that we also speak experi¬ 
 mentally, when we promise to a trial parish of England a greatly more 
 satisfied population under the new system than under the old. This has 
 clearly been our experience, as may be arithmetically proved by the move¬ 
 ments and changes of residence that take place among the paupers of- 
 Glasgow. The truth is, that the poor of all the parishes in the city are yet 
 interchangeable; and we suffer by it. There has been an efflux of fifteen 
 of our paupers to other parishes. There has been an influx from them of 
 twenty-eight to the parish of St. John’s. Here is a balance of thirteen 
 against our funds, and in favour of the popularity of our management. 
 
358 
 
 the lunatic of a parish.* There is none, but quite 
 the contrary, in bestowing of this spare and super- 
 
 If the expense of the parish lunatics, in the county asylum, be defrayed 
 from the county rate, it might continue to be so under the new system. If 
 it be. defrayed by a separate charge on the poor rate of the parish, then the 
 new cases of it which occur may be taken upon the voluntary fund. At^ all 
 events, after the old pauperism is extinguished, that part of the assessment 
 which is still kept up for other purposes, should instantly change its name; 
 and it should then be felt; as the proud distinction of a parish, that it had 
 no poor rate—that it was subject to no other parochial assessment than that 
 of a county and constable rate. 
 
 For a fuller exhibition of our ideas on Hie right disposal of the surplus of 
 a parochial fund, see Chap. xiii. of this work; and a fuller statement than 
 what we have now given of the Glasgow pauperism, is to be met with in 
 Chap. xi. and xii. and in a Speech delivered upon the subject before the 
 General Assembly, in May, 1822. 
 
 Since the earlier of these sheets passed through tire press, we have been 
 favoured with a sight of the Supplementary Appendix to the Report from 
 the Select Committee on Poor Kate Returns, ordered to be printed loth 
 July, 1822. It gives the sums expended for the relief of the poor in each 
 of the parishes of England for six years, beginning with 1815-1816. It 
 should be remarked, that these sums fall greatly short of the sums raised in 
 the name of poor rate—and that, not merely because county and constable 
 rates, and other expenses, not connected with the poor, are deducted, but 
 because there are further deducted sums paid for purposes connected 
 with the poor, but not for the direct and personal relief of the poor; such 
 as, expenses at law, removals, salaries, the erection and repairing of work- 
 houses, and several other expenses. 
 
 It is thus that the sums exhibited in this document are considerably be¬ 
 neath, not merely the sums raised in the name of poor rate, but also the 
 sums which express the whole cost or expenditure on the poor. 
 
 At Stockport in 1817, the sum put down in the Appendix for the relief 
 of its poor, is £7126 17s. In the annual statement of Stockport, for that 
 year, flie.Whole disbursements come to £17,367 12s. Id. from which even, 
 after'deducting old debts paid, tlie returns from the fathers of illegitimate 
 children, and from other towns for their poor, along with county and con¬ 
 stable rates, and other expenses not connected with the poor, there remains 
 a sum Considerably above that Stated in the Appendix. 
 
359 
 
 fluous revenue in the erection or the support of 
 Village schools, and so adding still to your securi- 
 
 Forthe reader’s information, we subjoin a few particulars taken from 
 this very important document. 
 
 The following are the names of a few parishes, with their expenditure, 
 
360 
 
 ties, against pauperism, by widening, through edu¬ 
 cation, the moral distance between the habits of 
 
 . The following are a few.of the more remarkable instances of a decreased 
 expenditure. 
 
 Expenditure in Expenditure in 
 
 Thatcham, (Berks)-£3742 7 
 
 Englefield_ 596 19 
 
 East Hendred- 1263 3 
 
 Cheadle Bulkeley (Cheshire)- 1096 0 
 
 St. Ertli, (Cornwall)- 1047 9 
 
 Melbourne, (Derby)- 1727 11 
 
 Stanton and Newall_ 1133 14 
 
 Cullompton (Devon)_ 2075 8 
 
 Bourton (Dorset)- 2273 13 
 
 £1552 9 
 200 16 
 616 6 
 458 7 
 2686 18 
 471 6 
 811 4 
 418 16 
 836 2 
 477 1 
 
 We find on again looking over the documents in our possession, that we 
 have erroneously stated, in a preceding note, the expenditure of Stockport; 
 though the fact is undoubted of a very great reduction within the four last 
 years. The permanent poor of St. Mary’s, Nottingham, which arc there 
 referred to, are out-poor only. 
 
 We have recently obtained replies to the subjoined queries, from the 
 Rev. Mr. Bickerstetli of Acton, in Suffolk, which we offer to our readers, 
 as a pretty fair specimen of the state and effects of English pauperism in 
 the smaller country parishes. 
 
 1st, Would not you find a great obstacle in the way of your usefulness 
 to be removed, could the wants of the poor be provided for by the charity 
 of good-will, rather than by the charity of law? 
 
 “ Doubtless: could these wants be provided for as certainly: the legal 
 relief is usually both demanded and given in a manner very injurious to all 
 parties, and which cannot but create serious obstacles in the way of ministe¬ 
 rial usefulness.” 
 
 2d, Are not the inmates of your workhouse very wretched ? 
 
 “ Truly so: and, in some respects, avowedly and designedly on the part 
 of those by whom it should be regulated, that the inmates may be the fewer; 
 and yet this receptacle is crowded to excess.” 
 
 3d, And, do you find this part of your system very injurious to the mo¬ 
 rals of your parish, and particularly of the young? 
 
 “ Where not only the old and infirm, but young persons of both sex¬ 
 es, and these generally orphans, and of the worst class, are brought to¬ 
 gether under one roof, the effect must be in the highest degree dangerous to 
 
361 
 
 the people, and a condition so degrading. And 
 there is something more to be taken to account 
 
 the morals; and, in fact, nothing but the callousness induced hy habit, would 
 render the place tolerable to one of better dispositions.” 
 
 ilh, Is there not very little of control or confinement in your work- 
 
 “ Control and confinement are, at present, terms unknown in our 
 workhouse: and this is one aggravating cause of the evils connected with 
 it. Some years ago, at my desire, a governor was appointed, and the 
 place was put under better management: but the additional expense of that 
 appointment, in connection with the depressed times, was made the plea for 
 
362 
 
 than the eventual good of such a destination. It 
 lends a most important facility to your present 
 
 10M, But do you not find that Christianity, on the one hand, and 
 pauperism on the other, have had the effect of forming your people into two 
 distinct classes, extremely opposite to each other in diameter and spirit ? 
 
 “ I should hesitate in distributing the public into two distinct classes as 
 formed by Christianity and pauperism: the latter being only one out of 
 many causes, which produce a habit and character in contradiction to the 
 farmer: while those under the influence of Christianity become more and 
 more averse to apply for legal relief; others, apparently not under that best 
 influence, from inferior motives, refuse to apply for a relief, which, to be 
 obtained, must be extorted by clamorous importunity: and others again, of 
 
363 
 
 administration. It enables you to meet every 
 applicant for relief, with an argument that will 
 moderate the tone of his demand, and perhaps 
 shame him altogether away from it. You can 
 then tell him, that, by his forbearance, he leaves 
 you in better condition for the relief of families 
 still more helpless than his own; that he in fact 
 will be a virtual contributor to the good of hu¬ 
 manity, and to the interest of the rising genera¬ 
 tion, simply by shifting for himself, and leaving 
 your fund entire and untouched for higher chari¬ 
 ties; that he ought, on this ground, to make com¬ 
 mon cause with you; and that he renders a most 
 important co-operation, when he ceases to be 
 burdensome, and ministers with his own hands 
 to his own necessities. Such an argument tells 
 with prodigious effect in many parishes of Scot¬ 
 land—and it will tell in England too, as soon as. 
 it is relieved from that artificial system, by which 
 the worth and capability of the popular mind are 
 now overborne. There will at length be a kindred 
 spirit, between the aristocracy of a parish and its 
 common people. Public charity will fall into 
 desuetude. Instead of a now apprehended defi¬ 
 ciency in the voluntary fund, there will be a now 
 unlooked for surplus. The point will not merely be 
 carried but overcarried—and the best auxiliaries 
 on the side of this great reformation, will be found 
 in that very class of families, out of which pauper¬ 
 ism now draws its ravening myriads. 
 
 But we forbear the prosecution of these details, 
 
and shall but slightly allude to the benefits of a 
 management, which elsewhere has been fully ex¬ 
 plained by us, as bearing an important part in all 
 those measures which anight be set agoing through 
 a parish, for the extinction of its pauperism. We 
 refer to the subdivision of a parish, and the assig¬ 
 nation of a given district to each member of the 
 vestry, who may charge himself with all its pau¬ 
 perism, and be the medium through which the 
 applications from its people are conveyed to the 
 parochial court. It will be found an effectual 
 management for crowded towns—and is even not 
 inapplicable to country parishes. That member 
 of the vestry does his business best, not who trans¬ 
 mits the greatest number of applications from his 
 local territory, but who intercepts the greatest 
 number; and who intercepts them not by his stern 
 and haughty negative, but by his patient inquiry, 
 and his friendly argument, and his kind offers of 
 work, or of interest in behalf of the family, and 
 his affectionate persuasion with the husband who 
 is profligate, or the children who are hard and un¬ 
 natural to their parents, and withal his firm dis¬ 
 countenance both to the artifices of low imposture 
 and to the effrontery of vice. He will be aston¬ 
 ished to find, in a few months, that all the fancied 
 difficulties of his task have vanished into nothing; 
 that the people, when thus frankly and naturally 
 dealt with, forthwith betake themselves to the re¬ 
 sources of Nature, and find them to be enough; 
 that after perhaps a little storm of trials and con- 
 
365 
 
 tests, which outlive not one short and fleeting sea¬ 
 son, there is a calm, and a calm not again to be 
 disturbed, because that angry spirit to which law 
 ministered its provocatives is now hushed for ever. 
 His work ceases, because now the vis medicatrix 
 works for him, with all that primitive liberty and 
 vigour which belongs to her. His office becomes 
 at length a sinecure, and should he choose to lay 
 it down, he may retire with the character of having 
 best done the duties of a vestry man, because he 
 gave the vestry nothing to do. 
 
 END OF VOLUME SECOND. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. XVII. 
 
 On the Wages of Labour,__ 17 
 
 CHAP. XVIII. 
 
 On the Effect of a Poor-Rate, when applied in aid of 
 Defective Wages,™—™..._ 63 
 
 CHAP. XIX. 
 
 On Savings Banks,- ]08 
 
 CHAP. XX. 
 
 On the Combinations of Workmen for the purpose of 
 raising Wages,_ ... _ 143 
 
 CHAP. XXI. 
 
 The same Subject Continued,_ 223 
 
 CHAP. XXII. 
 
 On certain prevalent Errors and Misconceptions, which 
 are fostered by Economic Theories, and which are 
 fitted to mislead the Legislature, in regard to Labour 
 and the Labouring Classes,.. gyg 
 
 CHAP. XXIII. 
 
 On the Effect which the High Price of Labour in a 
 Country has upon its foreign Trade,__343 
 
 CHAP. XXIV. 
 
 On Mechanic Schools, and on Political Economy as a 
 Branch of Popular Education,._™.___3yg 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Nearly three years have now elapsed since the pub¬ 
 lication of the Second Volume of this Work, during 
 which time, circumstances have occurred, that 
 have induced its Author somewhat to change the 
 plan of the concluding Volume, and that have 
 had the effect, furthermore, to retard, and he fears 
 also, to enfeeble the execution of it. What he 
 more particularly alludes to, is the recent history 
 of those popular combinations, which have taken 
 place all over the country, for a rise of wages. 
 The truth is, that he had scarcely begun to inves¬ 
 tigate the connection between a poor-rate, and the 
 price of labour, when the latter of these two ele-. 
 ments, although in a different connection, became 
 the subject of a most interesting practical treat¬ 
 ment by Parliament on the one hand, and by the 
 population on the other. He has long regarded 
 it as one of the most mischievous effects of the 
 English pauperism, that it depresses the wages of 
 labour, and that, beneath the rate of its own com¬ 
 pensations; and, of course, as oue of the chief 
 blessings to society that would follow in the train 
 
of its abolition, that we should forthwith behold a 
 better paid, as well as a better principled class of 
 workmen than before. He has ever been on the 
 side of a more liberal remuneration for industry. 
 But when the people took this cause into their 
 own hands, and proceeded to enforce it in their 
 own peculiar way, he could not but regret, that a 
 cause so worthy of the highest efforts, both of 
 philanthropy and patriotism, should have been dis¬ 
 honoured by the outrage and the violence where¬ 
 with it was associated. He has not, therefore, 
 stepped out of his course, in order to treat of com¬ 
 binations. The subject has been thrown across 
 his path, and he must have turned aside if he had 
 shunned the encounter with it. The workmen of 
 England, have aggravated, by their own miscon¬ 
 duct, the prejudices of the more affluent orders 
 against the cause of their advancement in society. 
 And it might serve to appease these prejudices of 
 the wealthy, as well as to tranquillize the feelings, 
 and to elevate the habits of the poor, if, instead of 
 that way of turbulence which they have tried and 
 found so ineffectual, they could be made to under¬ 
 stand that more excellent way, upon which, with¬ 
 out noise, or uproar, or rebellion, they might raise 
 the comfort and the sufficiency of their own con¬ 
 dition, and at length attain to a permanently 
 higher status in the commonwealth. 
 
 In his management of this question, the Author 
 feels that he has laid himself open to two charges, 
 which form nearly the opposite extremes of each 
 
other. The first is, that he has most unnecessarily 
 expanded that part of his demonstration, which 
 rests on the most obvious, and generally admitted 
 principles of political economy; and thus subjected 
 all his intelligent readers to the annoyance of a 
 most wearisome reiteration, and that, too, with 
 nothing better than the merest truisms of the 
 science. All which he can plead in mitigation, is, 
 that on every argument which stands related either 
 to the virtue or comfort of the people at large, he 
 would fain address himself to the popular under¬ 
 standing. He believes, that by a very direct and 
 intelligible process, even our merest peasantry 
 might be conducted from such notions as are the 
 most elementary, to such lessons, as if practically 
 observed by them, would both elevate and secure 
 their economic condition in society. Any truth 
 which is pregnant with such important application 
 as this, cannot be too clearly expounded, or too 
 closely approximated to the capacities of the yet 
 uninitiated and unlearned. And should he be so 
 fortunate as to gain the assent of the plebeian 
 community, to those positions in which their wel¬ 
 fare is mainly concerned, he will most gladly forego 
 the sympathy of those philosophers, who can only 
 breathe with delight among those heights of a 
 loftier speculation, where the very obscurity in 
 which they have enwrapt themselves, has served 
 the two-fold purpose of mystifying their doctrine, 
 and of magnifying their fame. 
 
 But the second charge that we apprehend is far 
 
viii 
 
 more serious. It is not enough that the lower 
 classes should be instructed in the way of their 
 economic amelioration. There is a certain preva¬ 
 lent imagination among the higher classes, that 
 the cheapness of British labour lies at the very 
 foundation of our country’s prosperity and strength. 
 Now, in advocating the cause of a higher remun¬ 
 eration for industry, we have to combat this ima¬ 
 gination. We have to turn from the plebeians to 
 the patricians of our commonwealth; and in so 
 doing, it will be said that we have made a transi¬ 
 tion from such puerilities as no student of political 
 science needs to be told of, to such paradoxes as 
 no student of political science can possibly admit. 
 This applies more especially to all that we have 
 said of the nearly instant resuscitation of capital; 
 and of the limits, whether natural or artificial, to 
 the extension of foreign trade. We regret not to 
 have delivered ourselves more fully upon these two 
 subjects, and particularly on the latter of them. 
 Independently altogether of the truth or falsehood 
 of our principles, it will be said, and with good 
 reason, that if they be in any way fitted to startle 
 or to perplex by their novelty, they should not be 
 offered to the first notice of readers in a subsidiary 
 capacity, or be employed to aid the solution of a 
 great practical question, while themselves so ques¬ 
 tionable. We are sensible, that a separate and 
 general treatise would, at their first introduction 
 to the view of the public, have been a better place 
 for them. 
 
ix 
 
 In adopting our present course, we have been 
 obliged to relinquish the consideration of those 
 institutions, or public charities, which are related 
 either to crime or to disease; such as prisons and 
 penitentiaries, along with asylums, infirmaries, and 
 various other receptacles for that involuntary suf¬ 
 fering, which is apart from general indigence. 
 We are the more reconciled, however, to this 
 omission, that in a former volume of this work,* 
 we have stated that great principle which applies 
 to the latter institutions, and which we could only 
 have expounded at greater length, had we resumed 
 the subject. In regard to the former institutions, 
 we have to remark, that the whole system both of 
 ecclesiastical and of economic polity which we have 
 ventured to recommend, has a direct bearing upon 
 crime, in so far as regards the prevention of it; 
 and that, without depreciating the worth of that 
 philanthropy which has selected for its object the 
 right management of prisons, we hold this to be of 
 very inferior moment to the right management of 
 parishes. We deem it of more importance that the 
 one subject shall be perfected, than that the other 
 shall be entered upon; and that the present vo¬ 
 lume is more in harmony with the two former, be¬ 
 cause, instead of being an appendix on the right 
 treatment of the outcast few, it is a continued 
 pleading in behalf of those methods which the 
 Author conceives to be most effectual for enlight- 
 
ening the minds, and elevating the general condi¬ 
 tion, of the multitude. 
 
 There is one benefit that has resulted from this 
 delay in the publication of the third volume. 
 During the Author’s suspension of his argument, 
 experience, a far better schoolmaster than he, has 
 been at work, and giving a few more of its lessons, 
 to which he defers, as greatly more valuable than 
 any reasonings of his own. The condition of that 
 experimental parish which he left in Glasgow up¬ 
 wards of two years ago, is, in regard to its pauper¬ 
 ism, far more flourishing than ever. It is well that 
 he ceased to have the conduct of that experiment, 
 and that it passed into other hands. The truth is, 
 that by every month of his continuance in that 
 city, the delusion was becoming more inveterate; 
 that while the prosperity of the operation could 
 not be denied, still it was a prosperity which hung 
 altogether upon the exertions and the influence of 
 the individual who had introduced it. That spell, 
 he trusts, is now conclusively broken ; and most 
 glad he is to understand, that the now proclaimed 
 experience of his successor. in office, has spread 
 a more just and . more, extensive conviction 
 upon this subject, than he could have achieved 
 himself, by the labours of a whole incumbency.* 
 On this subject.we again challenge the whole 
 host of sceptics or of enemies to the scheme, 
 
 * We are glad to leam that Mr. M‘Favlan is on the eve of publishing 
 the results of his experience, while minister of St. John's Parish, Glasgow. 
 
if they can substantiate one instance of jugglery in 
 the practical administration of it. Its success has 
 not been the result either of any collision, or of 
 any extraordinary combination of circumstances, 
 that could with difficulty be realized in other pa¬ 
 rishes. It is a scheme which seeks for itself no 
 more than toleration; and depends for its prosper¬ 
 ous result, not on that strenuous management 
 among the office-bearers of a parish, which is rare, 
 but on a natural operation among the families of a 
 parish, which is universal,—an operation depend¬ 
 ing upon certain laws which are co-extensive with 
 the species, and stable as the constitution of hu¬ 
 manity. 
 
 And here he must advert to the failure of that 
 attempt, which was recently made in Parliament 
 for the extension of this scheme to the country at 
 large. Mr. Kennedy, its author, evinced himself 
 to have an enlightened acquaintance with the pa¬ 
 rochial management of the question ; a manage¬ 
 ment, truly, in which all the natural and essential 
 principles of the problem are involved. The pro¬ 
 cess defined by his bill, is the very process by which 
 a parish can be most safely and surely conducted 
 back again from a compulsory to a gratuitous sys¬ 
 tem of pauperism. Yet it met with a general, and, 
 for the time, an effective opposition in Scotland, 
 —an opposition which might have been altogether 
 saved, had the proposal been not for an impera¬ 
 tive, but for a permissive law. The distinction 
 between these (wo methods has been unfolded at 
 
some length, in a former chapter of this work, on 
 the parliamentary treatment of the question of 
 pauperism. There could have been no such array 
 of resistance called forth by the enactment of a 
 leave to any parishes that would, as by the enact¬ 
 ment of a law, binding on all parishes, whether 
 they would or would not. To force an innova¬ 
 tion upon the land, is a very different measure 
 from making that innovation free to all those dis¬ 
 tricts of the land where a sufficient concurrence 
 shall be obtained in its favour, and where a vo¬ 
 luntary application shall be made for it on the 
 part of the local and existing authorities. In the 
 one way, there must be the reaction of a simulta¬ 
 neous and wide-spread hostility. In the other 
 way, there is no provocative offered to the adverse 
 feeling of the many, by a mere offer of liberty to 
 the few who are not adverse. Had even only two 
 or three of the border parishes of Scotland entered 
 the retracing process under the shelter of a per¬ 
 missive law, this were a sufficient germ for the 
 spread and final prevalence of the gratuitous sys¬ 
 tem of charity throughout all our borders. The 
 success of a few outset parishes would at length 
 ensure the imitation of all the rest. The process 
 would be strictly a tentative one. That change 
 which, if compulsory and instantaneous, would be 
 felt and dreaded all over the land, like the violence 
 of any sweeping whirlwind, would, under such a 
 permissive operation, go quietly forward from pa¬ 
 rish to parish, by a series of firm, because by a se- 
 
xiii 
 
 ries of experimental stepping-stones. The old 
 Scottish system, for it is utterly wrong to call it a 
 new system, would recover place and confidence, 
 just as it demonstrated its own efficacy in those 
 parishes that had resumed it, under an act guarded 
 and modified in the only way which could make 
 such an act at all tolerable. At every step of its 
 progress, we are persuaded that it would stand 
 more erect than before, in the pride and confidence 
 of its vindicated honours; while all the brightness 
 which it gathered on its path, would be, not from 
 the meteoric light of theory, but the light of a 
 sound, and sure, and sober experience. And it is 
 not till, in the blaze of this experimental light, the 
 truth had become so manifest as to overpower the 
 convictions of all; not perhaps then, till after the 
 lapse of one or two generations, should we expect 
 those greater cities of our land to adopt in the 
 permissive, that which they had rejected in the 
 imperative form, or to open their gates for that 
 system as a friend, the appearance of which, in the 
 guise of an invader, had so promptly and so power¬ 
 fully alarmed them. 
 
 It is thus that the soundest cause might sustain 
 a temporary mischief, from circumstances for which 
 it is not in any way responsible. And here we 
 might advert to that discredit and derision which 
 were incurred, in consequence of a glaring inaccu¬ 
 racy in the editing or printing of a former number 
 of the Edinburgh Review. The Author of this 
 volume contributed the whole of the first article in 
 
xiv 
 
 the 58th number of that work, on the causes and 
 cure of pauperism, and the first half of the very 
 short article which concludes that number. Its 
 remaining half was appended to it, but not by 
 him, nor was he at all aware of it till after the 
 publication. It is in this appended part that there 
 occurs a most provoking misstatement of the num¬ 
 ber of paupers in England, by which it is esti¬ 
 mated at ten times greater an amount than it ought 
 to be. This might have passed for a typographi¬ 
 cal error, had it only occurred once, as the state¬ 
 ment was first made in figures, and could have 
 been easily accounted for by the omission of a 
 cypher. But then, in the next paragraph, it is 
 again blazoned forth, not in figures, but in ordi¬ 
 nary language; and proved most annoying to the 
 Author at the time, from the grotesque character 
 which it was fitted to stamp on the whole specula¬ 
 tion wherewith it was associated. He did no more, 
 however, than intimate the error to the celebrated 
 editor of the journal, and publish a correction of it 
 in one of the Glasgow newspapers.* It has since 
 been commented upon with great severity in many 
 pamphlets, and many periodicals. The slip is so 
 
 • Tlie insertion appeared in tlie Glasgow Herald of Friday, Hay 1st, 
 1818, under the head or title of “ Edinburgh Heview;” and the following 
 is that part of the insertion which relates to the error in question:— 
 “ Another extravagant error has been admitted into pages 500 ami 501, on 
 the same subject; where, for 9.1- paupers in each 10 of the population, it 
 should have been printed 9} in each 100; and for nine tenths, it should 
 hnve been nine hundredth parts." 
 
very monstrous a one, that it might appear ridicu- 
 Jous to make it the subject of any grave explana¬ 
 tion. But, of all men, it is most incumbent on the 
 advocate of a controverted or obnoxious principle, 
 to observe the most scrupulous accuracy in the 
 facts and details of his argument; for his smallest 
 inadvertency might furnish a triumph to the adver¬ 
 saries of a good cause, or give a colour to their 
 most wicked and malignant imputations. 
 
tiie 
 
 CHRISTIAN AND CIVIC ECONOMY 
 
 LARGE TOWNS. 
 
 CHAP. XVII. 
 
 ON THE WAGES OF LABOUlt. 
 
 The difficulties of removing suchja great national 
 evil as pauperism, are of two classes, which are 
 wholly distinct the one from the other; and it 
 would clear away much of its darkness and per¬ 
 plexity from the question, were these difficulties 
 kept by the inquirer as separate in thought, as 
 they are separate in reality. The first difficulties 
 are those which are presented by the economic 
 condition of the lower orders. They are such dif¬ 
 ficulties as have their seat among the circumstances 
 and necessities of the people. It is the imagina¬ 
 tion of many, that to do away a legal provision for 
 indigence, would be to abandon a large population 
 to a destitution and distress that were most revolt¬ 
 ing to humanity ; and in as far as this imagination 
 Voi. in. c 
 
18 
 
 is true, it offers a most formidable difficulty, and 
 one, indeed, which should foreclose the question 
 altogether. The population ought not to be so 
 abandoned; and if, in virtue of the abolition of 
 pauperism, they shall become worse either in com¬ 
 fort or character than before, then this abolition 
 ceases to be desirable. We happen to think, that 
 no such consequences would ensue, and that, on 
 the supplies of public charity being withdrawn, 
 there would not only be much less of actual want 
 in the country, but that this want would be sure 
 to find relief, and in a way greatly more consistent 
 both with the comfort and virtue of families. In 
 other words, we happen to,think, that the first dif¬ 
 ficulties have no real or substantive existence 
 whatever—that if any portion of the British terri¬ 
 tory were submitted, in a right way, to the trial,* 
 they would, one and all of them, vanish before the 
 touch of experience—and therefore, that, by a se¬ 
 ries of distinct and successive operations on each 
 of the portions, the whole of our land might at 
 length be made to emerge from this sore evil. In 
 as far as the needs and habits of the population are 
 concerned, we hold the problem to be manage¬ 
 able, and most easily manageable; and, such being 
 our conviction, we have long deemed it a worthy 
 object of our most strenuous endeavours to prove 
 
 * For the method of conducting such a trial, in any parish, see the ICtli 
 chapter—and for the method of obtaining pel-mission for the trial, sec the 
 loth chapter of this work. 
 
19 
 
 it so by argument, or, what is still better, to evince 
 it so by actual exhibition. 
 
 But, one cannot be long engaged in the prose* 
 cution of such a task, without coming into contact 
 with other difficulties which are wholly distinct 
 from the former, and which may be termed the 
 factitious, or political difficulties of the question. 
 Even though there should be, as we believe, no 
 essential or natural difficulties at all, yet the diffi¬ 
 culties of this second class are enough, in them¬ 
 selves, to retard the progress of light and of sound 
 doctrine upon the subject, and far more to retard 
 the accomplishment of any sound practical refor¬ 
 mation. It is a very possible thing, both that cer¬ 
 tain views should be just and well-founded; and 
 yet that those whose co-operation is indispensable 
 to give effect to these views, should be very long 
 of giving their consent to them. One might feel 
 no difficulty in ridding any specified district of its 
 pauperism, after that he has been permitted to 
 take his own way, and pursue his own measures, 
 with its families—while, at the same time, he may 
 feel the uttermost difficulty in gaining the permis¬ 
 sion. They who have the constitutional right, 
 either to arrest his proceedings, or to allow of 
 them, must first be satisfied; and whether from 
 honest conviction, or from the tenacity of a wed¬ 
 ded adherence to old and existing methods, they 
 may stand in the way of all innovation. Ere he 
 come into contact with the human nature of the 
 question among the poor themselves, he may have 
 
far greater obstacles against him in the law of the 
 question, and in the obstinate prejudice or wilful¬ 
 ness of those men with whom the right is vested 
 of adjudging or administering for the poor. We 
 should like the reader’s clear apprehension, of the 
 utter difference and dissimilarity which there is 
 between these two sets of difficulties. The place 
 of encounter with the one is in the parish, and 
 among the applicants for relief from the parish. 
 The place of encounter with the other may be 
 in the vestry, where men have assembled to 
 act upon the law; or in the quarter sessions, 
 ^ where men have assembled to pronounce upon, 
 and to enforce the law; or, finally, within the 
 walls of Parliament, where the proposal is sub¬ 
 mitted to repeal or to rectify the law. It may 
 be true, that there is a system of utmost faci¬ 
 lity, which, if adopted, shall be of omnipo¬ 
 tent effect to expel pauperism from a parish, and 
 with less of want and wretchedness among its 
 families than before; and also true, that there 
 shall be a weary struggle with the incredulity and 
 perverse misconceptions of influential men, ere 
 the system shall be suffered to have a trial. It 
 might so be, that there is a method, which, after 
 that it is established, shall be found of easy and 
 effective operation amongst the poor, but which, 
 before that it is established, shall have to encoun¬ 
 ter many years of formidable resistance amongst 
 the present guides and governors of the poor. 
 And this is enough to make the problem of Pan- 
 
21 
 
 perism a difficult problem. But still it is of im¬ 
 portance precisely to see where the difficulty lies 
 —and not to confound the natural difficulties 
 which are inherent in the subject of management, 
 with the political difficulties by which the way of 
 the philanthropist is beset, when he comes into 
 collision with the prejudices or partialities of those 
 who at present have the right or the power of ma¬ 
 nagement. 
 
 At the same time, it ought to be remembered, 
 that if the natural difficulties of the problem be 
 indeed so very light and conquerable, its political 
 difficulties must, of necessity, subside, and at 
 length vanish altogether. It is the imagination, 
 in fact, of the greatness of its essential difficul¬ 
 ties, that mainly gives rise to the opposition of 
 our influential men, or to what is still more hope¬ 
 less than their active opposition, the listlessness 
 and apathy of their despair. Could we succeed 
 in proving, that there is really nothing in the con¬ 
 dition of the lower orders which presents an in¬ 
 superable barrier to the abolition of pauperism, 
 the barrier of prejudice and dislike, on the part 
 of the higher orders, to any radical change, must 
 finally give way. Truth may be withstood long, 
 but it cannot be withstood eternally. The provi¬ 
 sions of Law will at length be made to accord 
 with the principles of Nature; and whatever shall 
 be found by experience, in the human nature of 
 the question, to be most wholesome for the peo¬ 
 ple, the law of the question must, in time, be 
 
moulded into a conformity therewith. The voice 
 of wisdom will ascend from the Parish to the Par¬ 
 liament ; and the light which is struck out among 
 the details and verifications of but an humble 
 district in the land, will ultimately force all those 
 inveteracies that now barricade the hall of Le¬ 
 gislation. 
 
 Let me now give one or two specimens of the 
 way in which both sound opinion, and sound po¬ 
 licy, may be baffled, and, for a time, arrested; 
 and that, in virtue of certain impediments, to 
 which even the most enlightened views on the 
 question of Pauperism stand peculiarly exposed. 
 
 There is first, then, an incredulity which is sure 
 to be immediately lighted up, on the mention of 
 so great an achievement, as the deliverance of a 
 whole empire from its legal and compulsory Pau¬ 
 perism. The very hopelessness of a result so 
 mighty and marvellous, induces a heedlessness of 
 every explanation that can be offered regarding it. 
 The thing looks so utterly impracticable, as to 
 carry, in the mere announcement of it, its own 
 refutation. The apparent romance and unlikeli¬ 
 hood of the whole speculation, beget a certain 
 arch incredulity on the part of the hearer ; and 
 this is the most unfortunate posture that can well 
 be imagined, for the entertainment of any de¬ 
 monstration in its favour. And there is really so 
 much of empiricism in the world—the public ear 
 has been so repeatedly assailed by the crudity, 
 and the nostrum, and the splendid imagination, 
 
23 
 
 of successive adventurers—so manifold have been 
 the promising theories which have passed, one 
 after another, before the view of British society, 
 and then passed away into utter abortiveness, that 
 truly we cannot wonder, if the general infidelity 
 be now so strong, as to have settled down into 
 the attitude, not merely of determined unbelief, 
 but of downright listlessness. This is the kind 
 of outset that we have to encounter, at the very 
 opening of our proposals on the subject of Pau¬ 
 perism; and the more surely, because of the 
 magnitude of that change after which we aspire. 
 It is this magnitude which stamps an aspect of 
 extravagance and wildness on the whole specula¬ 
 tion ; insomuch, that the only treatment that is 
 held meet for it, by many, is a rejection as sum¬ 
 mary and contemptuous as if it were one of the 
 visions of Utopia. 
 
 Now, to meet this impression, and to overcome 
 the incredulity which is founded upon it, it can 
 be urged, that though suddenly a very great 
 achievement may be impracticable, yet that gra¬ 
 dually it may not be so—that a way may be de¬ 
 vised of breaking it into distinct and successive 
 steps, each of which is most easily practicable— 
 that though the proposed transition is far too gi¬ 
 gantic to be accomplished at once, yet that 
 piece-meal, and by inches, the whole of it may 
 be described in time, with no other than every¬ 
 day instruments, and no other help than that of 
 ordinary men—that though the mischief cannot 
 
24 
 
 be exterminated by a blow, it may by a process: 
 And so, the whole of our demand is not for a 
 sublime power that shall inflict the one, but for 
 a sober-minded patience, that shall wait the re¬ 
 sult of the other. This is the very nature of our 
 proposal for the extinction of pauperism. We 
 have no mystic charm to propose, that shall work 
 an instant extermination. We would go over the 
 ground, not by flights, but by footsteps—inso¬ 
 much, that the deliverance of a single parish is 
 not completed but by the disappearance of its 
 whole existing generation of paupers; and the 
 deliverance of the whole empire is not completed, 
 but by this separate operation being repeated upon 
 each, till it has overtaken all the parishes. We 
 are not aware of one impracticable link or step¬ 
 ping-stone in the whole of that consecutive series, 
 by which, at length, the evil, in its last vestiges, 
 may be utterly swept away; and what we should 
 like to press into this service, is not the enthusiasm 
 that will impel to a lofty and magnificent daring 
 after some enterprise which is great, but the assi¬ 
 duity that will work its way through a course or 
 succession of littles, and, without any straining or 
 impetuosity whatever, will wait for the termination 
 of it. 
 
 But no sooner do we get rid of one antipathy, 
 than we are instantly met by another. The very 
 men who have no credit for what is great, may 
 have no value for what is gradual. When, to get 
 the better of their incredulity about the efficacy 
 
of our process, we tell them how slow it is, then 
 we have just as hard an encounter as before with 
 their indifference. There is the substitution of 
 one mental prejudice or perversity for another; 
 and in making our escape from the first, we run 
 into a conflict with the second. In the first in¬ 
 stance, there is the same unbelief in the possibi¬ 
 lity of all pauperism being done away, as they 
 would have in a magical performance; and in the 
 second instance, whatever is to be done in the 
 way of reformation, has no charm for them, unless 
 it can be done with a rapidity that would be al¬ 
 together magical. We do not see how it is pos¬ 
 sible to suit the taste of such people with any 
 acceptable speculation on the subject of pau¬ 
 perism—sceptical as they are of any relief being 
 practicable, and, at the same time, impatient as 
 they are for that relief being immediate. We 
 cannot devise for them a scheme that shall at 
 once be moderate enough in its aim to suit the 
 narrowness of their apprehensions, and at the 
 same time speedy enough in its operation to suit 
 the extravagance of their wishes. When they 
 hear the promise of a total deliverance, they spurn 
 it away from them as romantic. When the ro¬ 
 mance is mitigated, by the proposal that the de¬ 
 liverance shall be very gradual, they spurn it 
 away from them as tardy. It is not more beyond 
 the limits of human strength to do what is great 
 in a great time, than to do what is small in a 
 small time; but they will not allow these elements 
 
26 
 
 to be properly sorted together. They first quar¬ 
 rel with the greatness of the achievement, as the 
 thing which makes it to be hopeless; and then 
 they quarrel with the greatness of the time which 
 is required for doing it, as the thing which makes 
 it to be worthless. After all, these are the more 
 egregiously romantic, who would have nothing to 
 be done, unless it can be brought about with the 
 quickness of legerdemain; and theirs is the imagi¬ 
 nation which, of all others, outruns the soberness 
 both of arithmetic and experience. It is not un¬ 
 common that the same individual should feel dis¬ 
 trust in the possibility of some given accomplish¬ 
 ment, because of a greatness that threw over it an 
 air of the marvellous, and, at the same time, an 
 utter disregard for the accomplishment at all, un¬ 
 less it could be done with a velocity which would 
 indeed make it marvellous. This incredulity on 
 the one hand, and impatience on the other, are 
 frequently attributes of the same mind, although 
 as frequently, perhaps, each is realized separately 
 on two distinct classes; and it is between those 
 who are hopeless, and those who are precipitate, 
 that it is so difficult to extricate a nation from the 
 evils of a wrong domestic economy. 
 
 And yet, if a method be proposed,' by which 
 relief from a great existing pressure might be 
 made to commence immediately, although it can¬ 
 not be completed immediately, this surely should 
 be held as not altogether unworthy of regard. 
 Though not wholly lightened in a year of some 
 
grievous burden, yet if a process can be devised 
 by which it shall be made lighter next year than 
 it is at present, and gradually lighter each suc¬ 
 cessive year, until it has melted finally away, this 
 surely ought not to be treated with indifference, 
 because of the many impetuous spirits, who will 
 be satisfied with nothing short of a deliverance 
 that shall both be total and immediate. The man 
 who is heavily in debt, will be thankful of deliver¬ 
 ance, even though it should be only by successive 
 instalments. And it is thus, that we would have 
 the cure and the clearing away of pauperism to 
 proceed. The relief commences immediately, 
 but it must proceed by instalments. There may 
 be the lapse of a whole generation ere it is con¬ 
 summated. We do not propose to lift the en¬ 
 chanter’s wand, for the purpose of an instant dis¬ 
 sipation. The evil must be dissipated gradually. 
 We do think that great things may be done, but 
 we demand time for the doing of them. We do 
 not ask that any gigantic strength should be put 
 forth, but only that a sober and very practicable 
 business should be persevered in. 
 
 There are various methods, and these gradual 
 ones too, by which it is proposed to attack this 
 hydra of pauperism, and, if possible, by inches 
 to destroy it. For the full exposition of our own 
 method, we must refer to former chapters of this 
 work ; and we now enter on the consideration of 
 another method which still engrosses a good deal 
 the attention of our public and parliamentary 
 
28 
 
 men. It is to be observed, that indigence may 
 arise from two sources—either from inability for 
 work, or from the inadequacy of its wages. The 
 original pauperism of England, it is said, was re¬ 
 stricted to those who were poor from impotency; 
 and it is regarded by many as an abuse or corrup¬ 
 tion of it, that it should ever have been extended 
 to able-bodied labourers, in order to make up for 
 any deficiency in their wages. Now, the great 
 aim at present is, to repress pauperism within its 
 original limits, by putting an end altogether to 
 this latter application of the poor’s fund,—thus 
 separating between the distress which age and im¬ 
 potency bring upon the labouring classes, and the 
 distress which is occasionally brought upon them 
 by the fluctuations in the price of labour. There 
 are some who would be satisfied with the lopping 
 oft* of this last excrescence from the system of 
 poor-laws in England; while others contemplate 
 the possibility, and admit the desirableness of an 
 ulterior reformation. We think that there is a 
 gradual process for the extermination of the system 
 in both its branches, which is alike applicable, and 
 from the very outset of it, to each of them. Yet 
 this does not supersede the importance of discus¬ 
 sing, separately and at some length, the effects of a 
 poor rate when applied in aid of defective wages. 
 We feel, however, that this will require a few 
 preliminary explanations.* 
 
 are quite sensible that several of the principles advanced in the 
 f our discussions, are abundantly obvious to all who are in any way 
 
 ’ We 
 
29 
 
 The first thing to be attended to, is the way in 
 which the price of any article brought to market 
 is affected by the variations of its supply on the 
 one hand, and of the demand for it on the other. 
 The holders of sugar, for example, after having re¬ 
 served what they need for their own use, bring the 
 whole surplus to market, where they dispose of it 
 in return for those other things which they do need. 
 It must be quite obvious, that if there be more of 
 this sugar exposed than there is a demand for, the 
 great force of the competition will be among the 
 sellers, to get it off their hands. Each will try to 
 outstrip the others, by holding out a greater in¬ 
 ducement for purchasers to buy from him—and 
 this he can only do by holding it out to them on 
 cheaper terms. It is thus that each tries to under¬ 
 sell the rest—or, in other words, the great supply 
 of any article of exchange is always sure to bring 
 down the price of it. 
 
 On the other hand, let the same article have 
 been sparingly brought into the market, insomuch 
 that, among the buyers, there is a demand for it to 
 a greater extent than it is to be had. The force 
 
 conversant with the first elements of political science. It may be thought, 
 that, on this account, they should he immediately assumed as the basis of 
 an ulterior argument; but that it is an idle detention of the reader to argue 
 over again to him those positions or doctrines wherewith he is fully satisfied 
 already. But we can never help the feeling, that on this subject we are 
 addressing practical, as well as studious and speculative men; and that, 
 though at the hazard of other-satiating the latter by a redundant explicit¬ 
 ness, we can scarcely err against the former cither by an excess of simpli¬ 
 city or of copiousness. 
 
30 
 
 of the competition now changes place. It is among 
 the purchasers, instead of the sellers. Each will 
 try to outstrip his neighbours, by holding out a 
 larger inducement to the holders of a commodity 
 now rare, and, therefore, in more urgent request, 
 than usual. This he can only do by offering a 
 greater price for it. It is thus that each tries to 
 overbid the other—or, in other words, the small 
 supply of any article of exchange is always sure to 
 bring up the price of it. 
 
 The price, then, of a commodity, falls with the 
 increase of the supply, and rises with the diminu¬ 
 tion of it; a law of political economy, which is 
 expressed still more shortly thus—that the price 
 of every article of commerce is inversely in pro¬ 
 portion to its supply. 
 
 But it is conceivable, that there might be no 
 variation whatever in the supply—that, from one 
 week to another, the same quantity of sugar, or 
 corn, or any other commodity, may be brought to 
 market, and yet, for all this, may there be a great 
 weekly variation in the price of them. The truth 
 
 is, that not only may the holders of an article have 
 not always the same quantity on hand for sale, but 
 the buyers may not always have the same need of 
 
 it. There may be a fluctuation in the demand for 
 an article, as well as in the supply of it; and it is 
 quite evident that the price just rises and falls with 
 the demand, instead of rising and falling inversely 
 to it. Hence the more extended aphorism in po¬ 
 litical economy, that the price of any commodity 
 
is directly in proportion to the demand, and in¬ 
 versely in proportion to the supply—a doctrine 
 that is somewhat more loosely and generally ex¬ 
 pressed, by saying, that the price of an article de¬ 
 pends on the proportion which the demand and 
 the supply bear to each other. 
 
 There is nought in the interposition of money to 
 affect this process. Its office is merely to facili¬ 
 tate the exchange of commodities. But the pro¬ 
 portion of their quantities in the exchange is just 
 the same, when made to pass through such an in¬ 
 termedium, as when brought closely and directly 
 into barter. The venders of so much corn may, 
 with the price of it, buy so much sugar. It is not 
 convenient to bring both these articles, or perhaps 
 either of them, in bulk and body, to the scene of 
 the negotiation; and so the money that is received 
 for the one is given for the other. This, however, 
 does not affect the proportion between the number 
 of quarters of the one commodity, which, in the 
 then state of the market, is held as equivalent to 
 the number of hundred-weights of the other com¬ 
 modity. This depends on the two elements of 
 demand and supply alone; and is the same as if 
 the expedient of money for carrying into effect the 
 contracts of merchandise, had never been devised. 
 
 The mere intervention, then, of money, will not 
 perplex the reader out of a right estimation upon 
 this subject. He has only to remember, that 
 either by adding to the supply of any article, or 
 lessening the demand for it, the price of it is dimi- 
 
32 
 
 nished; and that either by lessening the supply, 
 or adding to the demand, the price of it is in¬ 
 creased. 
 
 Now there are certain articles, that, in this re¬ 
 spect, are far more tremulous than others, or that 
 more readily vibrate in price, and with a much 
 wider range too of fluctuation. All are aware of 
 the fluctuations of the corn market; and how, in 
 consequence, the heart, and often the frenzy, of 
 deep and desperate adventure, are associated with 
 the temptations and the losses of such a trade. 
 The truth is, that, generally speaking, the neces¬ 
 saries of life are far more powerfully affected in the 
 price of them by a variation in their quantity, than 
 are the luxuries of life. Let the crop of grain 
 be deficient by one-third in its usual amount, or 
 rather, let the supply of grain in the market, whe¬ 
 ther from the home produce or by importation, be 
 curtailed to the same extent,—and this will create 
 a much greater addition than of one-third to the 
 price of it. It is not an unlikely prediction, that 
 its cost would be more than doubled by the short¬ 
 coming of one-third or one-fourth in the supply. 
 Not so with an article of luxury, and more espe¬ 
 cially if something else can be purchased for it in 
 the way of substitution. For example, let such be 
 the failure of West India produce, on any particu¬ 
 lar year, that rum is deficient by one-third from its 
 usual supply. There will be a consequent rise in 
 the price of it, but nothing at all like the rise which 
 ain equal deficiency would create in the price of 
 grain. 
 
33 
 
 Such is the fact; and there can be no difficulty 
 in apprehending the cause of it. Men can more 
 easily suffer the deprivation or the diminution of a 
 luxury; and when its price offers to rise extrava¬ 
 gantly, they can limit their demand for it. I can 
 commute the use of rum, for the use of another 
 and a cheaper substitute; or, failing this, I can re¬ 
 strain my consumption, or abandon it altogether. 
 Its scarcity will enhance its cost on the one hand; 
 but this, on the other hand, can be met or coun¬ 
 teracted, to any extent, by a slackening of the de¬ 
 mand. The point of equilibrium between the sel¬ 
 lers and the buyers of rum will be shifted; and its 
 price will become higher than before, but not so 
 high as it would have been, had rum been an indis¬ 
 pensable of human comfort, and therefore given all 
 the more of urgency to the applications of pur¬ 
 chasers. This is not the case with rum; but it 
 is so with grain. The mass of our families could 
 not, without distress or great inconvenience, limit 
 their use of it to two-thirds of their wonted con¬ 
 sumption. Each will press forward to obtain a 
 larger share of the general stock than his neigh¬ 
 bour; and it is just this earnest competition among 
 the buyers, that raises the price of necessaries 
 greatly beyond the proportion by which the supply 
 of them is deficient. Men can live without lux¬ 
 uries; and will be content to put up with a smaller 
 allowance of them for a season, rather than pay 
 that price to which they would be elevated by a 
 demand as intense as all must have for the neces- 
 
34 
 
 saries of existence. Men cannot live without ne¬ 
 cessaries, and will not be so content to put up with 
 a reduced allowance of them, as they would of the 
 mere comforts or expensive gratifications of luxury. 
 It is thus that the same proportional lack in each 
 class of commodities gives rise to such a difference 
 of effect in augmenting the price of each of them; 
 and it is just the more earnest demand, in the one 
 case than in the other, that explains the difference. 
 
 A failure in the general supply of esculents to 
 the extent of one-half, would more than quadruple 
 the price of the first necessaries of life, and would 
 fall with very aggravated pressure on the lower or¬ 
 ders. A failure to the same extent in all the vine¬ 
 yards of the world, would most assuredly not raise 
 the price of wine to any thing near this proportion. 
 Rather than pay four times the wonted price for 
 Burgundy, there would be a general descent, on 
 the part of its consumers in high life, to claret, or 
 from that to port, or from that to the home¬ 
 made wines of our own country, or from that 
 to its spirituous, or from that to its fermented 
 liquors. And the facility of thus substituting 
 one indulgence for another, is not the only re¬ 
 fuge against an enormous charge upon these ar¬ 
 ticles. There is also the facility of limiting the 
 amount of the indulgence, or of withdrawing from 
 it altogether—a refuge that is not so open to the 
 population under a famine of the first necessaries 
 of existence. There is much of shifting and of 
 ..substitution certainly among families, when such a 
 
35 
 
 calamity visits them—as from animal to vegetable 
 food, from flour to meal, from meal to potatoes. 
 But, on the supposition of a general short-coming- 
 in the yearly produce of the land, the price of each 
 of these articles rises successively with the run of' 
 purchasers towards them. On the one hand, the 
 eagerness of demand after all the varieties of food, 
 will enhance the price of all, and greatly beyond 
 the proportion of the deficiency in the supply of 
 them; and, on the other hand, this enhanced price 
 is necessary so to restrain the consumption of the 
 families, as to make the deficient stock of provi¬ 
 sions stand out till the coming of the next harvest. 
 It is thus, by the way, that a population survive so 
 well those years of famine, when the prices, per¬ 
 haps, are tripled. This does not argue, as is ob¬ 
 vious from the explanations which we have now 
 given, that they must therefore be three times worse 
 fed than usual. The food of the country may only, 
 for aught we know, have been lessened by a fourth 
 part of its usual supply; or, in other words, the 
 families may, at an average, be served with three- 
 fourths of their usual subsistence, at the very time 
 that the cost of it is three times greater than usual. 
 And to make out this larger payment, they have 
 just for a year to retrench in other articles—alto¬ 
 gether, it is likely, to give up the use of comforts, 
 and to limit themselves more largely in the second, 
 than they can possibly do in the first necessaries of 
 life—to forego, perilaps, many of the little season¬ 
 ings wherewith they wont to impart a relish to their 
 coarse and humble fare, to husband more strictlv 
 
their fuel, and be satisfied for a while with vest¬ 
 ments more threadbare, and even more tattered, 
 than what, in better times, they would choose to 
 appear in. It is thus that, even although the first 
 necessaries of life should be tripled in price for a 
 season, and although the pecuniary income of the 
 labouring classes should not at all be increased, yet 
 they are found to weather the hardships of such a 
 visitation. The food is still served out to them at 
 a much larger proportion than the cost of it would, 
 in the first instance, appear to indicate. And, in 
 the second instance, they are enabled to purchase 
 at this cost; because, and more especially, if they 
 be a well-habitted and a well-conditioned peasantry, 
 with a pretty high standard of enjoyment in ordinary 
 years, they have the more that they can save and 
 retrench upon in a year of severe scarcity. They 
 can disengage much of that revenue which before 
 went to the purchase of dress, and of various lux¬ 
 uries that might, for a season, be dispensed with 
 —and so have the more to expend on the materi¬ 
 als of subsistence. It is this which explains how 
 roughly a population can bear to be handled, both 
 by adverse seasons, and by the vicissitudes of trade 
 —and how, after all, there is a stability about a 
 people’s means which will keep its ground against 
 many shocks, and amidst many fluctuations. It is 
 a mystery and a marvel to many an observer, how 
 the seemingly frail and precarious interest of the 
 labouring classes should, after all, have the stamina 
 of such endurance, as to weather the most fearful 
 reverses both of commerce and of the seasons; and 
 
37 
 
 that, somehow or other, you find, after an interval 
 of gloomy suffering and still gloomier fears, that 
 the families do emerge again into the sanle state of 
 sufficiency as before. We know not a fitter study 
 for the philanthropist, than the workings of that 
 mechanism by which a process so gratifying is 
 caused, or in which he will find greater reason to 
 admire the exquisite skill of those various adapta¬ 
 tions, that must be referred to the providence of 
 Him who framed society, and suited so wisely to 
 each other the elements whereof it is composed. 
 
 There is nought which appears more variable 
 than the operation of those elements by which the 
 annual supply of the national subsistence is regu¬ 
 lated. How unlike in character is one season to 
 another; and between the extremes of dryness and 
 moisture, how exceedingly different may be the 
 amount of that produce on which the sustenance 
 of man essentially depends! Even after that the 
 promise of abundance is well nigh realized, the 
 hurricane of a single day passing over the yet un¬ 
 cut but ripened corn, or the rain of a few weeks, 
 to drench and macerate the sheaves that lie piled 
 together on the harvest-field, were enough to de¬ 
 stroy the food of millions. We are aware of a com¬ 
 pensation, in the varieties of soil and exposure, so 
 that the weather which is adverse to one part of 
 the country might be favourable to another; be¬ 
 sides, that the mischief of a desolating tempest in 
 autumn must only be partial, from the harvest of 
 the plains and uplands falling upon different months. 
 
38 
 
 Still, with all these balancing causes, the produce 
 of different years is very far from being equalized; 
 and its fluctuations would come charged with still 
 more of distress and destitution to families, were 
 there not a counterpoise to the laws of Nature, in 
 what may be termed the laws of Political Eco¬ 
 nomy. 
 
 The price of human food does not immediately 
 depend on the quantity of it that is produced, but 
 on the quantity of it that is brought to market; 
 and it is well, that in every year of scarcity, there 
 should be instant causes put into operation for in¬ 
 creasing the latter quantity to the uttermost, so as 
 to repair, as much as possible, the deficiencies 
 of the former. It is well, that even a small 
 short-coming in the crop should be so surely fol¬ 
 lowed by a great advance of prices; for this has 
 instantly the effect of putting the families of the 
 land upon that shortness of allowance, which shall 
 cause the supply, limited as it is, to serve through¬ 
 out the year. But, besides the wholesome re¬ 
 straint which is thus imposed on the general con¬ 
 sumption of families, there is encouragement 
 given, by this dearness, to abridge the consump¬ 
 tion upon farms, and, by certain shifts in their 
 management, to make out the greatest possible 
 surplus, for the object of sale, and of supply to 
 the population at large. With a high price, the 
 farmer feels it a more urgent interest, to carry as 
 much of his produce to market as he can; and, 
 for this purpose, he will retrench to the uttermost 
 
39 
 
 at home. And he has much in his power. More 
 particularly, he can and does retrench consider¬ 
 ably upon the feed of his cattle ; and, in as far as 
 this wont to consist of potatoes or grain, there 
 must an important addition be gained in this way 
 to the supplies of the market. One must often 
 have been struck with the comparative cheapness 
 of animal food, in a year of scarcity. This is 
 because of the greater slaughter of cattle which 
 takes place in such a year, to save the heavy ex¬ 
 pense of maintaining them; and which, besides 
 affording a direct accession to the sustenance of 
 man, lightens still more the farm consumption, 
 and disengages for sale a still greater amount of 
 the necessaries of life. We do not say, but that 
 the farm suffers a derangement by this change of 
 regimen, from which it might take years to reco¬ 
 ver fully. But the evil becomes more tolerable 
 by being spread. The horrors of extreme scar¬ 
 city are prevented. The adversity is weathered, 
 at its furthest point. The country emerges from 
 the visitation, and without, in all probability, the 
 starvation of one individual; and all, because from 
 the operation of the causes that we have now 
 explained, the supply of the market is made to 
 oscillate within smaller limits than the crop—in¬ 
 somuch, that, though the latter should be defi¬ 
 cient by one-third of the whole, the former might 
 not be deficient by one-fifth or one-sixth of what 
 is yielded usually. 
 
 This effect is greatly increased, by the suspend- 
 
40 
 
 ing of distillation in years of scarcity. And after 
 all* should the supplies be yet very short, and 
 the prices therefore far more than proportionally 
 high, this will naturally, and of itself bring on 
 the importation of grain from foreign parts. If 
 such be the variety of weather and soil, even 
 within the limits of a country, as in some mea¬ 
 sure to balance the scarcity which is experienced 
 in one set of farms, by the comparative abun¬ 
 dance of another set, this will apply with much 
 greater force to a whole continent, or to the world 
 at large. If a small deficiency in the home sup¬ 
 ply of grain induce a higher price than with other 
 articles of commerce, this is just a provision for a 
 securer and readier filling up of the deficiency, 
 by a movement from Abroad—a thing of far 
 greater importance with the necessaries, than with 
 the mere comforts or luxuries of life. That law 
 of wider and more tremulous oscillation in the 
 price of corn, which we have attempted to ex¬ 
 pound, is in itself a security for a more equal dis¬ 
 tribution of it over the globe by man, in those 
 seasons when Nature has been partial—so as to 
 diffuse the more certainly, and the more immedi¬ 
 ately, through the earth, that which has been 
 dropped upon it unequally from heaven. It is 
 well, that greater efficacy should thus be given 
 to that corrective force, by which the yearly sup¬ 
 plies of food are spread over the world with 
 greater uniformity than they at first descend upon 
 it; and, however much it may be thought to ag- 
 
41 
 
 gravate a people’s hardships, that a slight failure 
 in their home supply should create such a rise 
 in the cost of necessaries, yet certainly it makes 
 the impulse all the more powerful, by which 
 corn flows in, from lands of plenty, to a land of 
 famine. But what we have long esteemed the 
 most beautiful part of this operation, is the in¬ 
 stant advantage which a large importation from 
 abroad gives to our export manufacturers at home. 
 There is a limit in the rate of exchange to the 
 exportation of articles from any country; but up 
 to this limit, there is a class of labourers employed 
 in the preparation of these articles. Now, the 
 effect of an augmented importation upon the 
 exchange is such as to enlarge this limit—so that 
 our export traders can then sell with a larger 
 profit, and carry out a greater amount of goods 
 than before, and thus enlist a more numerous 
 population in the service of preparing them. An 
 increased importation always gives an impulse to 
 exportation, so as to make employment spring up 
 in one quarter, at the very time that it disappears 
 in another. Or rather, at the very time when the 
 demand for a particular commodity is slackened at 
 home, it is stimulated abroad. We have already 
 adverted to the way in which families shift their 
 expenditure in a year of scarcity, diverting a far 
 greater proportion of it than usual, to the first 
 necessaries of life, and withdrawing it proportion¬ 
 ally from the comforts, and even second necessa¬ 
 ries of life. Cloth may be regarded as one of the 
 
 Vol. III. F 
 
42 
 
 second necessaries; and it were woful indeed, if, 
 on the precise year when food was dearest, the 
 numerous workmen engaged in this branch of in¬ 
 dustry should find that employment was scarcest. 
 But in very proportion as they are abandoned by 
 customers at home, do they find a compensation 
 in the more quickened demand of customers from 
 abroad. It is in these various ways, that a country 
 is found to survive so well its hardest and heaviest 
 visitations; and even under a triple price for the 
 first articles of subsistence, it has been known to 
 emerge into prosperity again, without an authen¬ 
 tic instance of starvation throughout all its fami¬ 
 lies. 
 
 The better to illustrate the principles of our 
 immediate argument, we may here state a case 
 which looks at first to be an anomaly, and yet is 
 capable of being resolved in a way that is quite 
 consistent with the view which we have laboured 
 to impress. Our general doctrine is, that the 
 price of a commodity oscillates with the quantity 
 of it which is brought to market; but that the 
 oscillations are much larger with a necessary, than 
 with a luxury of life. Now, there is an apparent 
 exception to this, in the case of the more rare and 
 valuable spiceries. There is a well-known prac¬ 
 tice among the monopolists of these, which ob¬ 
 tained so far back as centuries ago, when, to en¬ 
 hance their price, they destroyed a large propor¬ 
 tion of their cargoes, at every time that there 
 was danger of an overplus being brought to mar- 
 
43 
 
 ket. And they found their account in this. Or, 
 in other words, an article that is more entitled to 
 the denomination of a luxury, than the one we 
 have already specified,—certainly far more a lux¬ 
 ury than rum, as confined, in the use of it, to a 
 very peculiar class, the affluent in society,—may 
 bear a greater resemblance to corn, than to rum, 
 in the magnitude of those oscillations which the 
 price of it undergoes. Take, for example, the 
 three commodities of grain, and sugar, and nut¬ 
 meg. Let the supply of each fail, by one-third 
 of its wonted quantity. With such a deficiency, 
 the price of grain may be doubled, or perhaps 
 trebled; the sugar will rise in price, too, but not 
 to any thing like the extent of the former; while 
 the nutmeg, which is certainly more of a luxury 
 than sugar, in as far as it is of rarer indulgence, 
 and restricted, in the use of it, to a far more se¬ 
 lect class of society, which in this respect, there¬ 
 fore, stands at a wider distance from the grain 
 than the sugar does, will come much nearer to it, 
 in respect of the oscillation that its price under¬ 
 goes. It too may double or treble its price, on 
 suffering the deficiency of a third part in its 
 supply. 
 
 Now, the account of the matter is simply this. 
 Sugar, though a luxury, is yet used in such quan¬ 
 tity, that it forms a very heavy article of family 
 expenditure. The offer to double its price, on 
 the same deficiency that would double the price 
 of grain, behoved instantly to be met by a se- 
 
44 
 
 vere retrenchment and economy, on the part of 
 the great majority of its consumers. With grain, 
 it is an object to economise; but, from being a 
 necessary, it is not easy to do so beyond a certain 
 extent. So that there is in that article, an intense 
 demand, and, consequently, a high price. With 
 sugar, it is also an object to economise; and, 
 from being a luxury, it is possible to do so to any 
 extent. Hence a slackening of the demand with 
 it, which will keep down its price more than in 
 the case of grain. With nutmeg, which is the 
 veriest of all luxuries, it is still more possible to 
 economise, than even with sugar; but then it is 
 no object. There is not sixpence a year con¬ 
 sumed of it for each family in Great Britain; 
 and perhaps not one family that spends more 
 than a guinea on this article alone. Let the price 
 then be doubled or trebled; this will have no 
 perceptible effect on the demand ; and the price 
 will far rather be paid, than that the wonted in¬ 
 dulgence should in any degree be foregone. The 
 aged gentlewoman, to whose taste the nutmeg fla¬ 
 vour is an improvement upon the tea, will not be 
 driven from her dear aromatic, by such a doubling 
 or trebling of its price, as might incur to her 
 the additional expense of perhaps a halfpenny in 
 the month. The same holds true of cloves, and 
 cinnamon, and Cayenne pepper, and all the pre¬ 
 cious spiceries of the East; and it is thus, that 
 while, in the general, the price of necessaries 
 differs so widely from that of luxuries, in regard 
 
45 
 
 to the extent of oscillation, there is a remarkable 
 approximation in this matter, between the very 
 commonest of these necessaries, and the very rar¬ 
 est of these luxuries. 
 
 Wages form the price of labour; and this price, 
 like that of every other commodity, is determined 
 by the proportion which obtains between the sup¬ 
 ply of it in the market, and the effective demand 
 for it. Should the supply be diminished, or the 
 demand increase, the price rises. Should the sup¬ 
 ply be increased, or the demand slacken, the price 
 falls. But there are certain commodities that un¬ 
 dergo a much greater fluctuation of price than 
 others, though there should only be the same 
 change with each of them in this proportion be¬ 
 tween the demand and the supply. Take, for ex¬ 
 ample, the two articles of wheat and rum. A. go¬ 
 vernment contract for wheat, to the extent of one- 
 twentieth part of its whole stock in the country, 
 would increase its price far more than a similar 
 contract for a twentieth part of all the rum. One 
 bad harvest that caused a deficiency in the crop to 
 the same extent, would raise the price of this grain 
 in a much higher proportion, than the spirit would 
 be raised by a deficiency of the same magnitude 
 from a bad season in the West Indies. The cause 
 of this difference is very obvious; yet, from its ap¬ 
 plication to our present subject, it must be still a 
 little expatiated on. 
 
 Wheat is a necessary of life. Rum is not. I 
 can want spirits. I cannot want bread. Neither 
 
46 
 
 can I so conveniently reduce my consumption of 
 the latter article as of the former. And I will, 
 therefore, pay a greater price to overcome the 
 greater inconvenience. This holds particularly 
 true of the great mass of families in a population. 
 Bread is the staple article of their subsistence; 
 and, generally speaking, one can less bear a re¬ 
 trenchment upon his usual allowance of food, than 
 a retrenchment upon his usual indulgence in a lux¬ 
 ury. Should the price of rum offer to rise beyond 
 a certain amount, I can abstain from the purchase 
 of it: I can shift my demand to another kind of 
 spirits, or I can give up the use of them altogether. 
 In reference to grain, I have no such control over 
 my determinations. I can neither want it alto¬ 
 gether, nor can I, without considerable suffering, 
 make any great abatement in my demand for it. 
 With a luxury of life, the sellers are more depend¬ 
 ent on the taste and whim of the purchasers. With 
 a necessary of life, the sellers have the purchasers 
 in their power. It is thus that a rise in the price 
 of spirits, consequent on a deficient supply, might 
 so far limit the consumption, as to prevent it from 
 rising extravagantly. But when grain is deficient 
 in quantity, each has a far more urgent demand 
 for his wonted supply of that article, and will make 
 greater sacrifices to obtain it. There is a far more 
 intense competition in the one case than in the 
 other—insomuch, that a very small deficiency in 
 the harvest will produce a greater rise of price on 
 the one article, than a similar deficiency in the im- 
 
47 
 
 ports will produce upon the other article. It is 
 thus that grain, in respect of price, is among the 
 most tremulous of all the commodities which are 
 brought into a market—as sensitive, and as subject 
 to variations, as is the fitful weather; and not 
 only has it a greater range of fluctuation, but vi¬ 
 brates in its price with far greater facility and fre¬ 
 quency than the other commodities of trade. A 
 deficiency of one tenth in the crop, will raise the 
 price greatly more than one tenth. A deficiency 
 of one third will produce the alarm, and even 
 much of the actual suffering, of a famine. 
 
 Now, labour might be considered in the light 
 of a marketable commodity—the supply of which 
 is measured by the number of labourers—and the 
 price of which is regulated, as in other instances, 
 by the proportion between this supply, and the 
 demand. This price partakes, with that of the 
 necessaries of life, in being liable to great fluctu¬ 
 ation ; and on the same principle, too, but in a 
 sort of reverse direction. It is the urgent need 
 of subsistence which so raises articles of the first 
 necessity, even upon a very slight short-coming 
 from their usual quantity in the market. And it 
 is the .same urgent need of subsistence which so 
 lowers the price of labour; and that, upon a very 
 slight overplus in the number of labourers. What, 
 in fact, looking to one side of the negotiation, 
 may be called the demand of the capitalists 
 for labour,—when looking to the other side of 
 it, may be called the demand of the labourers 
 
48 
 
 for employment; and, in this latter demand, there 
 maybe all the importunity and vehemence of a 
 demand for. the necessaries of life. Employ, 
 ment, in fact, is the vehicle on which these ne¬ 
 cessaries are brought to their door; and should 
 there be more hands than are wanted, rather than 
 be thrown out of the competition altogether, 
 there will be a general cheapening of their labour, 
 and so that the fall in its price shall go greatly 
 beyond the excess in the number of labourers. 
 Men must have subsistence; and if employment 
 be the essential stepping-stone to this, men must 
 have employment;—and thus it is that capitalists 
 have the same control over workmen, when there 
 is an excess in their number, which the holders 
 of the necessaries of life have over their custom¬ 
 ers, when there is a deficiency in the crop. And 
 so, the price of labour too is a most tremulously 
 variable element, and has as wide a range of fluc¬ 
 tuation as the price of corn. A very small excess 
 in the number of labourers will create a much 
 greater proportional reduction in their wages. 
 Should twenty thousand weavers of muslin be 
 adequate, on a fair recompense for their work, to 
 meet the natural demand that there is in that 
 branch of manufacture, an additional thousand 
 of these unemployed, and going about with their 
 solicitations and offers among the master-manufac¬ 
 turers, would bring a fearful distress and defi¬ 
 ciency on the circumstances of the whole body. 
 The wages would fall by much more than a twen- 
 
49 
 
 tieth part of what they were originally; and thus, 
 by a very trifling excess in the number of work¬ 
 men, might a very sore and widely felt depression 
 be brought upon the comfort and sufficiency of 
 the lower orders.* 
 
 * The author had occasion to advert to this principle some years ago, 
 at a time of great commercial distress in Glasgow, and when measures 
 were under deliberation, for the relief of those numerous workmen who 
 were then suffering under an unexampled depression of their wages. The 
 following extract is from a small written exposition, which, to serve a 
 temporary purpose, he made of this topic, and for which, it may he proper 
 to add, that he obtained admission in the GGth Number of the Edinburgh 
 
 “ It ought to he kept in mind, that there are particular lines of employ¬ 
 ment, where a given excess of workmen is sure to create a much greater 
 proportional reduction in the rate of their wages. Should twenty thou¬ 
 sand labourers, in a given branch of industry, so meet the demand for 
 their services, as to afford to each of them a fair remuneration, then 
 an additional thousand coming into competition with those who are al- 
 
50 
 
 Now, however melancholy this contemplation 
 might be in the first instance, yet, by dwelling 
 
 by five hundred and twenty-five pounds a day to them all, taken collec¬ 
 tively. In other words, a certain redundancy of men might entail a cala¬ 
 mity upon their profession, which, when measured arithmetically, will he 
 found to exceed, by upwards of five times the whole expense, either of 
 maintaining them in idleness, or of giving them full and adequate wages 
 at another employment. 
 
 “ The above statement, we are persuaded, will recommend itself to the 
 experience of all practical men;—nor do we think it difficult to apprehend 
 the rationale of it. Men must have a subsistence for themselves and their 
 families; and if this is only to he had through the medium of employment, 
 men must have employment. If they cannot earn thereby a plentiful sub¬ 
 sistence, they will rather put up with a scanty subsistence than have none 
 at all. And thus it is that .1 surplus thousand of labourers may cheapen 
 work, by a fraction greatly larger than the excess of their own number, over 
 the former number of labourers;—and thus, from the necessity of a few, 
 may there emanate an adverse influence which will spread itself over the 
 many—and, with a very slight importation of more hands into a branch of 
 industry already sufficiently occupied, may there be imported an evil so 
 weighty, as to overbear for a time the whole profession, and to call forth 
 from all the members of it, a general outcry of apprehension and distress. 
 
 “ This view of the subject, if it contain in it matter of regret, that a cause 
 so trivial should operate a mischief so extensive, contains in it also matter 
 of consolation. As we have already travelled from the cause to the effect, 
 we have only to travel back again from the effect to the cause; and if the 
 cause be trivial, it may be remedied by a trivial exertion. The actual mag¬ 
 nitude of any present or existing distress amongst a body of workmen, will 
 not alarm us into a fear of its perpetuity, if we are right in tracing it to a 
 cause so remediable, as to a small fractional excess in the number of these 
 workmen. Should the addition of a thousand men on a branch of industry, 
 which affords sufficient maintenance to twenty thousand, have the effect of 
 reducing their maintenance by one-fourth, then, when a case of such griev¬ 
 ous reduction actually occurs, it is fair to infer, that the transference or re¬ 
 moval of a single twentieth part of these labourers, would operate as a 
 restorative to the comfort and circumstances of them all. And, when one 
 thinks of the many natural securities which there are for bringing about an 
 adjustment of those partial and temporary differences that obtain between 
 the demand for labour and the number of labourers, he may both admit the 
 severity of an existing pressure, and be foremost in every sound and prnc- 
 
51 
 
 upon it a little further, we shall be led to discover 
 certain outlets and reparations, that might cause 
 us to look more hopefully than ever on the future 
 destinies of our species. One thing is clear, that 
 if so small a fractional excess in the supply of la¬ 
 bour, over its demand, is enough to account for a 
 very great deficiency in its remuneration, then, 
 after all, it may lie within the compass of a small 
 fractional relief to bring back the remuneration to 
 its proper level, and so restore the desirable equili¬ 
 brium between the wages of a workman and the 
 wants of his family. It is comfortable to know,' 
 that the misery of an overwrought trade is capable 
 of being retrieved on such easy terms—and that 
 could either the present small excess of labourers 
 be otherwise disposed of, or their future annual 
 supply be somewhat and slightly restored, then 
 might well-paid, and well-conditioned industry, 
 that most cheerful of all spectacles, again be rea¬ 
 lized. Could any expedient be devised by which 
 the number of labourers might be more equalized 
 to the need that there is for them, then, instead 
 of the manufacturers having so oppressive a con¬ 
 trol over the workmen, workmen might in some 
 degree have a control over manufacturers. We 
 should certainly regard it as a far more healthful 
 state of the community, if our workmen, instead of 
 
 ticable measure for its alleviation, without reading in it the symptoms of any 
 great national catastrophe, or losing his confidence in the stability of his 
 country's w ealth and greatness.” 
 
52 
 
 having to seek employment, were to be sought af¬ 
 ter; and that masters had to go in quest of service, 
 rather than that labourers had to go a-begging for 
 it. It is most piteous to see a population lying 
 prostrate and overwhelmed under the weight of 
 their own numbers; nor are we aware of a finer 
 object, both for the wisdom and benevolence of 
 patriotism, than to devise a method by which 
 the lower orders might be rescued from this state 
 of apparent helplessness. This would be done, if 
 they were only relieved from the pressure of that 
 competition by which they now elbow out, or beat 
 down each other; but nothing more certain, than 
 that not till the number of workmen bears a less 
 proportion to the need which there is for them, 
 will they be able to treat more independently with 
 their employers, or make a stand against all such 
 terms of remuneration, as would degrade their fa¬ 
 milies beneath the par of human comfort. 
 
 That a very small excess of workmen over the 
 need which there is for them, will create much 
 more than a proportional depression in their wages, 
 is just as true, as that a very small deficiency in 
 the supply of the corn-market will create much 
 more than a proportional rise in the price of that 
 commodity. Both are true, and on the same prin¬ 
 ciple too. It is, in either case, a very sore mis¬ 
 chief, traceable to a very slight cause; and which, 
 therefore, perhaps, may admit of being cured by 
 the application of a very slight corrective. It ap¬ 
 pears, by M‘Pherson’s Annals of Commerce, that 
 
53 
 
 the average importation of corn, during a great 
 many years, exclusive of the two remarkable sea¬ 
 sons of scarcity in 1800 and 1801, did not amount 
 to more than eleven days consumption annually; 
 and that even the greatest importation ever known, 
 did not amount to one-tenth of the consumption 
 of the island. These might appear but fractional 
 remedies, which could be easily dispensed with; 
 and so, the good of importation might come to be 
 under-rated. But minute as these annual supplies 
 may appear in themselves, they are momentous in. 
 their consequences; and lower the price of corn in 
 the market, far more than they add to the stock of 
 it. And, it is even so, of the relation which sub¬ 
 sists between the number of people in a country, 
 and the degree of comfort which they enjoy. A 
 very small excess in the number, will operate a very 
 great reduction upon the comfort. But just as 
 a slight importation will restore the price of neces¬ 
 saries to their fair and natural level, so may either 
 a slight exportation of our people, such as to dis¬ 
 pose of their small excess, or a slight change of 
 habits, such as to prevent their small excess, have 
 the effect of raising the lower orders to that con¬ 
 dition, in which every generous friend of humanity 
 would rejoice to behold them. 
 
 It does not follow then, because there is a very 
 great depression in the circumstances of a people, 
 that, great as it is, it may not be removed either by 
 a very slight exportation, or by a very slight pre¬ 
 vention, so as somewhat to diminish the number of 
 
54 
 
 them. These two expedients of relief are so dis¬ 
 tinct, that the one, it is imagined by many, might 
 entirely supersede the other. That emigration, 
 by which the excess of our population might be 
 disposed of, should, in their apprehension, do away 
 the practical importance of those checks by which 
 the excess might have been prevented. There is, 
 at all events, a certain relation between these two 
 expedients, which, as well as each of the expe¬ 
 dients themselves, is worthy of consideration. 
 
 We cannot enter upon this argument without 
 adverting, in the first instance, to the celebrated 
 theory of Mr. Malthus, on the subject of popula¬ 
 tion. And one thing at least is manifest, that the 
 very comprehension of his views, has retarded the 
 practical application of them to any question of 
 political or domestic economy. He writes in re¬ 
 ference to the species, and the world; and the 
 mind of his reader, by being constantly directed to 
 the population of the whole globe, and to the re¬ 
 lative capacities for their subsistence, that are 
 diffused over the surface of it, can make escape 
 from his conclusions by roaming in imagination 
 over the vast regions that are yet unpeopled, and 
 the wilds that, however rich in nature’s luxuriance, 
 have been yet untrodden by human footsteps. 
 The speculation is admitted by many to be true, 
 who, nevertheless, would lie upon their oars till 
 the last acre on the face of the earth w'as brought 
 to its highest possible cultivation. The reply to 
 an alleged excess of population in Britain, is, that 
 
55 
 
 New Holland offers a space equal to twenty Bri- 
 tains, which has been yet unentered upon; and 
 that till this space be fully occupied, there is only 
 one expedient which we have to do with, even that 
 of emigration—that, meanwhile, the other expe¬ 
 dient, or a preventive check upon the increase of 
 population, is wholly uncalled for, that it may lie 
 in reserve for that futurity which is still at an in¬ 
 definite distance from us—and that when agricul¬ 
 ture shall have done its uttermost upon all lands, 
 it will be fully soon enough to think of keeping 
 the human species within that maximum of human' 
 subsistence which shall then have been arrived 
 at. 
 
 But after all, it does not necessarily follow, that 
 the pressure of the world’s population upon the 
 world’s food, will remain unfelt, till the latter has 
 attained its maximum. It is quite enough for this 
 effect, that the tendency to an increase of popula¬ 
 tion is greater than the tendency to an increase of 
 food. When a moving body comes into contact 
 with one that is stationary, it exerts upon it the 
 force of a certain pressure—which may represent 
 that of an increasing population upon means of 
 subsistence now stationary, because now aug¬ 
 mented to the uttermost. But when the moving 
 body, instead of coming into contact with one that 
 is stationary, overtakes one that is moving in the 
 same direction with itself, but with less velocity— 
 still there is a pressure, no doubt less than the 
 former one, yet proportional to the difference be- 
 
56 
 
 tween the velocities, and which may represent the 
 actual pressure, wherewith every population will 
 bear upon their means of subsistence, should they 
 but tend to increase faster than their means. It 
 all depends on the proportion which there is be¬ 
 tween the tendencies to an increase of population 
 and an increase of food; and hence, it is a possi¬ 
 ble thing, even now, for the population of the 
 world to press too hard upon its means of subsis¬ 
 tence—and therefore, a desirable thing at this 
 moment, as well as centuries afterwards, that every 
 moral and salutary check were laid on the multi¬ 
 plication of our species. It is quite an imaginary 
 comfort to the suffering families of England, that 
 there are tracts in New Holland, capable of main¬ 
 taining a tenfold population to that of the British 
 empire. They cannot transport themselves there 
 in an instant. They cannot raise at once the 
 means, either for their own emigration, or for the 
 cultivation of this unbroken territory—and if not 
 at once, then it must take a time ere this consum¬ 
 mation is gained; and it is simply enough, for the 
 upholding of a continuous pressure, that during 
 that time, there is a greater force of progress in 
 the world’s population than in (,he world’s food. 
 Could we, by the lifting up of a magical wand, 
 cause a ripened harvest to arise and cover the whole 
 of earth’s improvable surface, then every preven¬ 
 tive check on the number of mankind, may, for the 
 present at least, be suspended. But if, in point 
 of fact, our species have to toil their way to this 
 
51 
 
 accomplishment for many successive generations, 
 then, by reason of the intervening obstacles, a 
 pressure may be felt, and without the operation of 
 a preventive check, the great human family may 
 all along be in the misery of a straitened condi¬ 
 tion. The existence of such a country as New 
 Holland may lighten this misery, but no more do 
 it away than a similar tract of land in the moon or 
 any of the planets, to which emigration is impos¬ 
 sible. There may not be such a barrier, as shall 
 intercept all emigration, and utterly close every 
 outlet for our redundant people, but at least such 
 a barrier as would impede the full tide of emigra¬ 
 tion requisite for our complete and total deliver¬ 
 ance. Thousands of years may elapse ere all the 
 facilities shall be opened, and the requisite capital 
 shall so overflow, as to occupy the whole of that 
 domain which has been yet unentered on. It is 
 a gradual process, carried forward by the emigra¬ 
 tions of each successive year; and, during the 
 whole period, it may hold true, that many shall be 
 in circumstances of distress, while few shall be in 
 circumstances to emigrate. This is the real con¬ 
 dition of every country that is sending forth 
 its families, from time to time, to colonize distant 
 territories. There are light and adventurous spi¬ 
 rits that will move on every impulse ; but nothing, 
 save actual and felt distress, will exile from their 
 homes any considerable number of whole families. 
 Those who do move, have the means to emigrate; 
 and others who have not, remain in straitness and 
 voi.. ur. h 
 
58 
 
 suffering where they are. Even the aid of gov¬ 
 ernment cannot]go beyond a certain limit; and, 
 after it has done its uttermost, still there may be a 
 distressed, because a redundant population. These 
 successive ejections of the people, are like the 
 successive escape-3 of steam by a safety-valve, 
 which relieve the pressure that is within, but still 
 it remains a pressure that is in equilibrium with 
 the weight which is incumbent over it. Now, it 
 is not desirable that there should be so strong an 
 elastic pressure from within, as that the people 
 shall be straitened and in durance, up to the point 
 of being tempted to emigrate. A country is in a 
 state of violence when at all comparable to a ves¬ 
 sel, that is always on the eve of bursting, unless 
 relieved by a constant efflux, or by successive dis¬ 
 charges. To mitigate this violence is at all times 
 desirable; and it were surely a better and a blan¬ 
 der community at home, if, instead of the people 
 being urged on to the very margin of the country’s 
 capabilities to maintain them, they had rather 
 ease, and amplitude, and sufficiency in their own 
 native land, and were kept a good way within the 
 point of emigration. 
 
 It says much for the soundness of the principles 
 of Mr. Malthus, that they always become more 
 evident the narrower the field is on which they 
 are exemplified; and, consequently, the nearer 
 the inspection is to which they are submitted. 
 When he affirms, in reference to the whole spe¬ 
 cies, that there is an evil in premature marriages. 
 
59 
 
 for that the population of the world are thereby 
 caused to press inconveniently on the food of the 
 world, one finds a refuge from his conclusions, in 
 the imagination of many fertile but yet unculti¬ 
 vated tracts, that might yield the greatest possible 
 scope to the outlet of families for centuries to 
 come. Or, when he affirms the same thing, in 
 reference to a kingdom, even apart from emigra¬ 
 tion, there is still a refuge from his conclusions, in 
 the yet unreclaimed wastes, and yet imperfect 
 agriculture, of the land in which we dwell. But. 
 one needs not his philosophy to feel the whole 
 force of his principle within the limits of a family, 
 where the premature marriage of a son, who had 
 rashly, and previously to any right establishment 
 of himself in the world, entered upon this engage¬ 
 ment, would be deplored by all the members of it 
 as a most calamitous visitation; and that, too, 
 both on account of the present expense, and also 
 the eventual expense of a rising progeny. It 
 would be no consolation, in these circumstances, 
 to be told of the millions of acres, both at home 
 and abroad, that could yet be turned to the suste¬ 
 nance of millions of human beings. This will 
 pass for a reply to the speculations of Mr. Malthus, 
 when the question relates to the population of the 
 globe, or to the population of our empire : but it 
 will not be sustained as a dissuasive of any weight 
 against the alarm that is felt, lest the improvident 
 marriage of a son, who had no tenement of his 
 own, should bring on the inconvenience of an 
 
60 
 
 over-peopled household. The danger and the 
 imprudence are here distinctly apprehended; and 
 no objection that can be alleged against his Theory 
 of Population, when proposed in its abstract and 
 universal form, can surely overbear those lessons 
 of practical and experimental wisdom, that have 
 been familiarly recognized as such by men of 
 plain, yet substantial understanding, long before 
 his theory was ever heard of. * 
 
 In like manner would we plead for an exemp¬ 
 tion from the obloquy that attaches to this Theory, 
 when, instead of speculating and providing for 
 the whole world, we concentrate our views on a 
 single parish, and recal our scattered imagination 
 from other continents and other climes, to that 
 
 * Mr. Maltlius, in liis chapter on the checks to population in the islands 
 of the South Sea, says well of Otaheite, that “ The difficulty here is reduced 
 to so narrow a compass, is so clear, precise, and forcible, that we cannot 
 escape from it. It cannot be answered in the usual vague and inconsider¬ 
 ate manner, by talking of emigration and further cultivation. In tile pre¬ 
 sent instance, we cannot but acknowledge that the one is impossible, and 
 the other glaringly inadequate. The fullest conviction must stare us in the 
 face, that the people on this groupe of islands could not continue to double 
 their numbers every twenty-five years; and before we proceed to inquire 
 into the state of society on them, we must be perfectly certain, that unless 
 a perpetual miracle render the women barren, we shall be able to trace 
 some very powerful checks to population in the habits of the people.” 
 
 It is the narrowness of the compass which causes the operation of Mr. 
 Maltlius’ principle to be so distinctly seen within the limits of a household, 
 and also within the limits of a parish, if any harrier to emigration has been 
 thrown around it. Now the poor laws have thrown an artificial harrier ot 
 this sort around an English parish; so that tile miseries of a redundant 
 population may there he most distinctly exemplified, and without escape 
 from them, cither in emigration, or in the further cultivation of distant parts 
 
61 
 
 which lies directly and familiarly before us, among 
 the population of our own little vicinity. And 
 the truth is, that the poor laws of England tend 
 to isolate each of its parishes from the rest of the 
 world; and so, to bring it more clearly and defi¬ 
 nitely before us, as a separate object of contem¬ 
 plation. More particularly, do they throw a bar¬ 
 rier around each, which, though not altogether 
 insuperable, has yet been of great efficacy in hem¬ 
 ming each population within its own boundaries, 
 and closing up the outlets to emigration. It is in. 
 this way that the most encouraging offers of a set¬ 
 tlement in distant lands, are often resisted by the 
 English peasantry. They are aware of a certain 
 right by the law of pauperism, upon their own 
 native soil; and this they are not willing to fore¬ 
 go. They feel that they have a property at home, 
 which they would relinquish by the measure; and 
 that reasoning, therefore, which blinds the eye of 
 the reader against the truth of the general specu¬ 
 lation, is not applicable in present circumstances 
 to the case that is before us. And the poor laws 
 not only check the egress of the redundant popu¬ 
 lation to our distant colonies; they go a certain 
 way to impede and to lessen the free interchange 
 of people from one parish to another, both by be¬ 
 getting in each a jealousy of new settlers, and 
 augmenting the natural preference for home by 
 the superadded tie, that there they have their pro¬ 
 per and their rightful inheritance; the benefit of 
 which can be got far more directly and conve- 
 
62 
 
 niently when on the spot, than when they remove 
 themselves to a distant part of the country. But 
 even when so removed, they still hold on their 
 own parish; and, like non-resident proprietors, 
 can have their rent transmitted to them; and 
 may, in fact, be as burdensome as if they still 
 resided within its limits. It is thus that the ves¬ 
 try, whence the dispensations of pauperism proceed, 
 may be regarded as a kind of adhesive nucleus, 
 around which the people of each parish accumu¬ 
 late and settle, and so present us with as distinct 
 an exemplification of the theory of Mr. Malthus, 
 as if each were in itself a little world; the affairs 
 and difficulties of which, may, at the same time, 
 be considered without his theory being in our 
 heads at all. It is not in the least necessary to 
 blend with the argument any wide or general 
 speculation. We happen to regard Mr. Malthus’ 
 Theory of Population as quite incontrovertible. 
 Yet we do not link with it our reprobation of 
 English pauperism, any more than we would link 
 with it our reprobation of a precipitate marriage 
 in a destitute and unprepared family. Let his 
 theory be execrated as it may, let it even be out¬ 
 argued by its adversaries, this will not overthrow 
 any of those maxims of domestic prudence, that 
 might be learned at the mouth of every ordinary 
 housewife; and, neither, will it overthrow any 
 demonstration of those evils in pauperism, which, 
 with or without a philosophical treatise, are quite 
 obvious to the home-bred sagacity of country 
 squires and parish overseers. 
 
63 
 
 CHAP. XVIII. 
 
 ON THE EFFECT OF A POOR RATE, WHEN APPLIED IN 
 AID OF DEFECTIVE WAGES. 
 
 Let us therefore withdraw our regards from the 
 extended speculations of Mr. Malthus, and confine 
 them to the state and regimen of one parish—ad¬ 
 dressing ourselves to the current experience of 
 plain and practical men, who both painfully feel, 
 and clearly understand the mischiefs of their pre¬ 
 sent economy; yet, whose understandings would 
 only be mystified by the demonstrations of a poli¬ 
 tical arithmetic, which took in a wider scope than 
 that of their own humble community. In every 
 such parish, there is a certain quantity of work to 
 be done, and a certain number of labourers would 
 suffice for the doing of it. Some of them may be 
 imported from abroad; and, on the other hand, 
 some of the native workmen may have gone be¬ 
 yond their own parochial limits in quest of em¬ 
 ployment. Still, with or without these movements, 
 there is a certain number in the parish of able or 
 available labourers, who, if barely adequate to the 
 labour that is required, will be hired upon a fair 
 remuneration; but who, if they exceed, will be 
 glad to accept of an inferior remuneration, rather 
 than want employment altogether. It is this com¬ 
 petition which brings down the wages of labour; 
 
64 
 
 and, on the principle that is already unfolded, a 
 very small excess in the number of labourers may 
 give rise to a very large reduction in the price of 
 labour. It is in vain to say that this excess will 
 naturally discharge itself upon other places. So it 
 would, in a natural state of things. So it always 
 does in those parishes of Scotland where a compul¬ 
 sory provision is unknown. But in England, 
 where the practice is now established, of minister¬ 
 ing from the poor rate, not merely to the indigence 
 of age, and sickness, and impotency, but to the in¬ 
 digence of able-bodied, though ill-paid industry, 
 this excess is not so easily disposed of. There is 
 a principle of adherence in the system, which de¬ 
 tains and fastens it upon every parish where once 
 this excess has been formed; and we hold it very 
 instructive, to look at the various expedients by 
 which it has been met, and at the uniform failure 
 which has attended them. 
 
 The distress of inferior wages, is, in the first in¬ 
 stance, felt by the fathers of large families; and, 
 accordingly, they are the first who have been bene¬ 
 fited by the extension of the legal charity of Eng¬ 
 land beyond those cases, for which it has been al¬ 
 leged, by the defenders of the system as estab¬ 
 lished by the act of Elizabeth, that it was strictly 
 and originally intended. Certain it is, that if there 
 really was any such limitation designed in the pri¬ 
 mary construction of the statute, it is now very 
 generally disregarded, and there is nought more 
 common, particularly in the southern counties, 
 
65 
 
 than a composition of wages and poor rate, both 
 of which are made to entc-r into the maintenance 
 of an able-bodied labourer.. There are two ques¬ 
 tions generally asked of the applicant for parish re¬ 
 lief, and which may be regarded as furnishing the 
 data that fix the parish allowance: “ What do 
 you earn?” and “ What is the number of the fami¬ 
 ly that you have to maintain ?” and, if the wages 
 be held inadequate to the family, the deficiency, in 
 most instances, is held to be as firm a ground of 
 application, as the utter helplessness of impotency. 
 or disease. The defect in wages is eked out by a 
 weekly allowance from the poor rate; and he, who 
 in other circumstances would have been left as an 
 independent workman upon his own resources, be¬ 
 comes, under this system, a dependent upon legal 
 charity.* 
 
 * I have had the honour of receiving communications Ujion this subject, 
 from the justly celebrated Thomas Clarkson. The following is his informa¬ 
 tion of two methods, according to which they proceed in certain villages of 
 the county of Suffolk, with regard to the allowance for parents of large fnini- 
 
 “ In some villages they allow handsome and proper wages per week, say 
 nine shillings to every man employed. Now, nine shillings will do very 
 well, as far as a man, wife, and two children go; but will not he enough 
 where the children are from three to six, or more. All, therefore, which 
 the large families may want beyond the nine shillings, they pay out of the 
 poor’s rates. This is not unjust, because they give to every man a fair and 
 equitable wage, according to the times; that is, as much as he can earn. 
 The family man wants undoubtedly more than tile single man, hut still he 
 cannot earn more; and, very often, not so much. All, then, have fair 
 wages; and if there are wants beyond wiiat the weekly wages will provide, 
 they belong to the parish in common. Tile tailor, the shoemaker, &c. is 
 equally hound with the farmer to contribute to (lie wants of the parish; and 
 what reason have they to complain, when the farmer, after paying his men 
 
 Vot. HI. 
 
66 
 
 This then is the first application of poor-rate to 
 wages which claims our regard. Before that sin¬ 
 gle and able-bodied men can have the benefit of 
 this poor-rate, the parents of families must have 
 been visited by its allowances; and that, just in pro¬ 
 portion to the number of their offspring. It is a 
 premium on population, and must serve to perpe¬ 
 tuate the cause of that mischief which it is designed 
 to alleviate. There is a general feeling, all over 
 England, of something wrong in this composition 
 of wages with the parish allowance; and, along 
 with it, a sort of anxiety, in some places, to vindi¬ 
 cate their management from the imputation of a 
 practice that is felt to be discreditable; so that 
 when the question is put, whether it be the habit 
 
 fair wages lor their work, pays also his share towards their extraordinary 
 
 “ In Playford, again, we do differently. We do not pay all our men 
 alike. We pay nine shillings per week, as far as a man, wife, and two chil¬ 
 dren ; hut we pay all the family, or rather large family-men, hy the piece, 
 so as to make them earn ten, eleven, and twelve shillings per week. We 
 differ again in another respect, for we pay all the surplus beyond nine shil¬ 
 lings entirely out of our own pockets. We never go to the poor rates for 
 this surplus, in order, if possible, to promote a spirit of independence among 
 our labourers. Where the surplus is paid out of the poor rates, every la¬ 
 bourer knows it; that is, he knows that he gets nine shillings from the far¬ 
 mer, and two or three from the parish: but in Playford, the labourer, when 
 he takes Ins money home at the end of tile week, has the pleasure of re¬ 
 flecting, that all the money is of his own earning, unmixed with any parish 
 gift. This is so, except in a few cases; for, where a man has a wile, and 
 seven or eight children, it would he hard upon a farmer to pay him twenty 
 shillings per week, when the labourer could only earn ten or twelve. In 
 such extraordinary eases as these, there is a regular allowance for such pau¬ 
 per, beyond his wages, out of the parish funds, to do justice both to the 
 man and to the master.” 
 
67 
 
 of the place to supplement defective wages out of 
 the poor-rate, a very frequent reply is, that it is 
 never done by them; and that nothing is ever 
 given in consideration of a low wage, but only in 
 consideration of a large family. This way of shift¬ 
 ing it from one ground to another, though practi¬ 
 cally it makes no difference as to the effect of the 
 regimen, yet is very instructive as to the rationale 
 of its operation. Though Malthus had never writ¬ 
 ten, there could not be a more complete exposi¬ 
 tion than is given by the answers of unlettered and 
 unsophisticated men, of the bearing that English 
 pauperism has upon population. We do not need to 
 embarrass this contemplation with any argument re¬ 
 specting the soundness or unsoundness of his theory. 
 Here we have parents paid out of a legal and com¬ 
 pulsory fund, because of the largeness of their fa¬ 
 milies ; and we may safely appeal to the common 
 sense and sagacity of the most unspeculative minds, 
 whether this must not add to the number of mar¬ 
 riages in a parish—whether it does not slacken all 
 those prudential restraints, that else would have 
 operated as a check upon their frequency—whether 
 the hesitation and delay, that, in a natural state of 
 things, are associated with this step, are not in a 
 great measure overborne by the prospect thus held 
 out, of a defence and a guarantee against the 
 worst consequences of many a rash and misguided 
 adventure. Must not marriages become earlier, 
 and, therefore, more productive under such a sys- 
 fem, than they otherwise would be? Or, in other 
 
68 
 
 words, is not this remedy for the low wages, in¬ 
 duced by an excess of people, the likeliest instru¬ 
 ment that could be devised, not only for keeping 
 lip the excess, but for causing it to press still more 
 on the already urged and overburdened resources 
 of this small parochial community? This mode of 
 curing the disease is the most effectual for uphold¬ 
 ing it; and that, in constantly increasing vigour 
 and virulency from one generation to another. 
 And when one adverts to the principle that has 
 already often been appealed to, that a very small 
 excess of labourers is enough to account for a very 
 great deficiency in the price of labour, it just as¬ 
 certains and aggravates the conclusion the more, 
 seeing, by how very slight an addition to the fre¬ 
 quency of marriages, the mischief in question might 
 be effectuated.* 
 
 * From the abstract of the returns sent to the Committee on Labourers’ 
 Wages, and ordered by tile House of Commons to be printed on the 10th 
 of May, 1825, it would appear that the practice of malting an allowance to 
 able-bodied labourers, according to the number of their families, obtains 
 very extensively in the southern and midland counties. To the question, 
 “ Do any labourers in your district employed by the farmers, receive either 
 the whole or any part of the wages of their labour out of the poor rates?" 
 there seems to be a great majority of affirmative answers from many of the 
 counties. The same holds true of the answers to the second question : 
 “ Is it usual, in your district, for married labourers having children, to re¬ 
 ceive assistance from the parish rate?” And to the third question: “ If 
 so, does such allowance begin when they have one child or more?” the an¬ 
 swers are exceedingly various. In many cases they give to able-bodied 
 labourers without children. Some parishes commence the allowance from 
 the poor rate with one child; others when the family has attained the num¬ 
 ber of two, three, or four children. There is frequently a rule upon which 
 they proceed, of calculating so much a head for eaeli individual of the family, 
 ami if the earning do not amount to tiie computed sum, making up the (lit- 
 
69 
 
 One needs only to be versant in the familiar de¬ 
 tails of parish management in England, in order to 
 be convinced of the real practical effect that their 
 pauperism has on the frequency of marriages. In 
 some cases, the allowance is not given till the fa¬ 
 mily have reached the extent of two or three chil¬ 
 dren. But, in other cases, when the proper wages 
 have been still further depressed, and the habit ob¬ 
 tains of compounding with them a still larger in¬ 
 gredient of poor-rate, the distinction between pen¬ 
 sioned and unpensioned labourers takes place at. 
 an earlier stage in the .progress. Sometimes the 
 formal parish allowance begins immediately with 
 the event of matrimony. Insomuch, that single 
 men, on being refused the parochial aid for eking 
 out their miserable wages, have threatened to 
 marry—have put their threat into execution, and 
 been instantly preferred, in consequence, to a 
 place in the vestry roll, among those who have 
 qualified in like manner. When marriage is thus 
 made the qualification for an allowance from the 
 poor-rate, one does not see how the poor-rate can 
 escape the charge of being a bounty upon marriage. 
 And, accordingly, this evil is so much felt and de¬ 
 precated, that, in certain places, they have re¬ 
 solved to abolish the distinction between the al¬ 
 lowances to single and married men; and actually 
 pay all alike, though at a great additional expense 
 
70 
 
 in the meantime—and this, to arrest and lighten, 
 if possible, that coming tide of population where¬ 
 with they fear to be overwhelmed.* 
 
 * The following ate the questions and replies of a correspondence with 
 Mr. Smoothy, a farmer in the parish of Halsted in Essex:— 
 
 “ Has not the shame of pauperism very much abated of late ? Yes. 
 
 “ Do not young men sometimes marry with the direct object of getting 
 parish relief? It has been threatened, and I believe acted upon. 
 
 “ Have they not threatened to marry that they may get an additional 
 allowance? Yes. 
 
 “ To employ idle Iiands, are you not often obliged to give useless work ? 
 And is not this parish-work very apt to introduce them into idleness and 
 dissipation? We have expendedlarge sums in useless labour, and the men 
 became idle and dissipated. 
 
 “ Does not a married man get six shillings a-week for working on the 
 road? Yes. 
 
 “ And is not this often made up to eight, nine, or ten shillings, when 
 there are children? Yes. 
 
 “ Have you not had occasion to send twenty, thirty, or forty men, round 
 with a paper for employment? Yes. 
 
 “ When you fail, do you not give four shillings a-week to a single man 
 whom you keep idle? We do not now give so much; two shillings, or 
 two shillings and sixpence. 
 
 “ Have you not expended a great deal of money uselessly in finding la¬ 
 bour? Yes; large sums. 
 
 “ And do not all expedients often fail, and then you have to maintain 
 them idle? Yes. 
 
 « Are not many of them idling about, and standing in the streets all the 
 day long? Yes. 
 
 “ Would not many of them he glad to get work at any wages? Y’es, in 
 
 “ Is there not a strong feeling of the helplessness and diificulty of your 
 state of pauperism ? Yes. 
 
 “ Do not tile farmers often refuse to have the work of these men, even 
 though they might have it for nothing? Yes, in some instances. 
 
 “ Do not the people often marry in very early life ? Yes, quite hoys. 
 
 “ And do they not count on the additional allowance for a wife and chil¬ 
 dren? I believe they do. 
 
 “ Is it not difficult to arrive at the truth in the examination of the cir- 
 
But we are not to suppose, that by this com¬ 
 promise between the payers of charity and the 
 payers of labour, all the able-bodied of a parish 
 are admitted to employment. There is a limit 
 to the work of a parish; but while this economy 
 lasts, there can be no limit to the number of 
 its workmen, who, of course, after various ex¬ 
 pedients and ingenuities have been practised, for 
 the purpose of intercepting them with something 
 to do, at length overflow into a state of total idle¬ 
 ness. One of these expedients is to send round 
 the men who have not fallen into employment in 
 the regular and customary way, to send them 
 round among the farmers, with the lure of get¬ 
 ting their work on very cheap terms, as the parish 
 will pay the difference between their low wages, 
 and the sum that might be deemed necessary for 
 their entire maintenance. It is no doubt an ad¬ 
 vantage to the farmer to have his work done cheaply 
 —but where is the advantage, if he have no work 
 
 euinstances of the applicants? Yes, very difficult. Pauperism is now no 
 shame, and every nrtifice is practised to get on the parish.” 
 
 This correspondence took place in the latter end of 1822. A few months 
 afterwards he added, “ We have, some months past, billetted tile surplus 
 hands to different farmers and tradesmen, according to their occupations, 
 and pay them from the rate, yet in some instances they are refused. 
 
 “ We billet about sixty in the week, and the numbers are increasing. 
 
 “ We have about eight labourers to an hundred acres, (it seems five la¬ 
 bourers arc reckoned a sufficient complement for an hundred acres,) so that 
 I may safely say, we have a surplus of more than one-third, could the farmer 
 find the menns of paying his live men to an hundred acres of land.” 
 
n 
 
 for them to do ? Every one departmen t may be al¬ 
 ready filled and supersaturated with labour. For 
 the accommodation of idle hands, threshing ma¬ 
 chines may be put down, and a ruder and clum¬ 
 sier agriculture may have been perpetuated, and 
 all ingenious devices by which the human mind 
 could contrive to abridge labour, may have been 
 prescribed, and just that human muscles may be 
 kept in as full requisition as possible. Yet all is 
 ineffectual; and many a weary circuit often have 
 these roundsmen to make, knocking at every door 
 for admittance, yet everywhere refused—till at 
 length, after all their attempts are exhausted, they 
 devolve the whole burden of their existence on the 
 parish, and gather into a band of supernumeraries.* 
 
 * The following impressive statements on this subject ar 
 of Mr. Clarkson;—“ I verily believe that every farmer wi 
 
73 
 
 And, exceedingly various have been the devices 
 for their employment. Sometimes they have been 
 congregated into work-houses, where they are 
 provided with any employment that can be got 
 for them by the parish overseers. At other times 
 they have been farmed out to a speculator, who 
 has turned the work-house into a factory, and 
 possesses himself of their services at a rate exceed¬ 
 ingly beneath the market price of labour. At 
 other times, they may be seen in a kind of dis¬ 
 orderly band, labouring either upon parish roads, 
 or in sand and gravel pits. The value of what 
 they render in this way for their subsistence, is in 
 general very insignificant. The truth is, that an 
 increasing population can no more be supplied in¬ 
 definitely with profitable work, than they can be 
 supplied indefinitely with money or with food. 
 It is more for a moral effect, than for the worth of 
 
 have, however, not one at this moment (July, 1823); for the dry, windy 
 weather, which we have had almost incessantly for the last seven weeks, 
 has been the finest season for hoeing wheat, and other crops, almost ever 
 known; and hoeing is a process indispensable in Suffolk. But I under¬ 
 stand that five or six are likely to become supernumerary in a few days; 
 and this number will increase, and be out of regular employ, more or less, 
 till Harvest; and that even then, some of them will not have work ; but 
 that, after October or November, we shall have from eight to thirteen out 
 of employ till Spring again. This will bring a great burthen on the Parish, 
 and be a great calamity to the poor supernumerary; because, not having 
 half the wages of the regular man, be will not have enough to support 
 himself with any comfort; and this will probably lead to idleness and 
 
 It is to be observed, that Playford, of which Mr. Clarkson writes, is a 
 very small Parish, of only 261 inhabitants, by the census of 1821. 
 
 Voi.. III. K 
 
74 
 
 their labour, that these various modes of industry 
 are laid upon them. Better give them something 
 to do, than that they should be wholly idle. 
 Though even this object is not always accom¬ 
 plished, and in many of the agricultural parishes, 
 they may be seen lounging out a kind of lazza- 
 roni life, upon a weekly pittance from the vestry, 
 in the fields or on the highways. 
 
 There is one very sore evil in this system. It 
 has distempered altogether the relationship between 
 a master and his servants. The latter feel less 
 obligation to the former for being taken into his 
 employment, seeing that they have a refuge in 
 poor-rates, from the destitution which in other 
 countries attaches to a state of idleness. They 
 are not so careful in seeking work for themselves, 
 as the law has rendered them in some measure in¬ 
 dependent of it. It becomes more, in fact, the in¬ 
 terest of the house and land occupiers in the par¬ 
 ish that they shall have employment, than their 
 own interest; and they, exempted in this way from 
 the care of themselves, and from all those sobrieties 
 and virtues which are thereby called into exercise, 
 become reckless, and like to a difficult or unman¬ 
 ageable charge in the hand of guardians. The 
 consequences are most mischievous, and more par¬ 
 ticularly in the bitterness and discomfort which 
 have been introduced into all the departments of 
 service. In like manner, as the anxiety of the 
 lower orders to get employment is lessened under 
 this system, so their anxiety to keep the employ- 
 
15 
 
 ment is lessened also; and, in this way, the master 
 loses a most important hold on their fidelity and 
 good conduct. They care little though they should 
 be dismissed; and this has often the effect of mak- 
 . ing them idle and insolent. They know, that even 
 though it should come to the worst, they must be 
 maintained; and one may well conceive all the 
 harassments and heart-burnings of such a loose and 
 ill-sorted alliance, between a master that has no 
 authority, and servants that are under no depen¬ 
 dence—the one in a state of constant irritation, or 
 fearfulness—the other in a state of hardy defiance,' 
 and, in fact, inverting the relationship altogether, 
 by the virtual subjection in which their employer 
 is held by them. 
 
 For under this perverse and most unlucky ar¬ 
 rangement of things, the master has little or no 
 choice of servants, and no benefit from any com¬ 
 petition of theirs for employment. It has the 
 effect, in a certain manner, of limiting the market 
 for labour, within the narrow boundaries of each 
 distinct and isolated parish. In the present state 
 of the agricultural districts, over-peopled as they 
 are even to compression, a master cannot go for 
 labourers into another parish, without as many 
 being thrown totally idle at home, as he has im¬ 
 ported from abroad, and whose total maintenance, 
 therefore, must be devolved on that poor-rate to 
 which he himself is a contributor. This is felt by 
 himself in common with all the other payers, so 
 that often there is a sort of tacit obligation on the 
 
76 . 
 
 part of farmers, to employ none but the hinds, or 
 labourers, whose settlement and right of relief lie 
 in the parish. This is well understood by the other 
 party. They know that their masters have no 
 other resource than to keep them in their service; 
 and the utter carelessness of habit, which this must 
 engender amongst them, may be easily imagined. 
 Nature has established a mutual interest between 
 man and man; and when left to herself, she mak- 
 eth the checks, and the mutual influences that are 
 dependent thereupon, most beautifully subservient 
 to the well-being of all. But this injudicious po¬ 
 licy of man has broken it up, and has now brought 
 the society of England into a state of most fearful 
 disorganization. 
 
 After all, the employment which is given for 
 the purpose of mitigating the rate, is little better 
 than idleness in disguise. In the case of roundsmen, 
 the whole remuneration is made up, partly of wages 
 from the master, and partly of an allowance from 
 the parish; and there is nothing more common, 
 than when they have wrought to a certain amount, 
 or for so many hours in the day, to take the rest of 
 the day very much to themselves—and though still 
 under the semblance of doing something at an al¬ 
 lotted task, literally to do nothing. It is a fami¬ 
 liar saying amongst them, that “ Our master has 
 now got all that time in the day from us which he 
 has paid for—what the parish pays for is our own!” 
 and this proportion, even though fairly and accu¬ 
 rately struck, leaves a sad vacancy in their hands, 
 
77 
 
 which is often filled up with positive mischief. At 
 all events, it wholly corrupts and relaxes them as 
 labourers. They lose the tone and habit of good 
 workmen. Under this artificial economy, the in¬ 
 terest and the industry of the labourer stand dis¬ 
 sociated the one from the other; and that whole¬ 
 some discipline of penalties and rewards, which 
 nature hath instituted, is put an end to. They be¬ 
 come ill-conditioned, both morally and economi¬ 
 cally; and the fabric of our ancient commonwealth 
 becomes unsound at its basis, as the olden charac¬ 
 ter disappears, of a hearty, hard-working, well- 
 paid, and withal well-habited peasantry. 
 
 There is one very melancholy process connected 
 with this system, and that must transmit and ac¬ 
 cumulate this deterioration from one age to 
 another. As the young generation of numerous 
 and premature families rises up in a parish, and the 
 boys are veering towards manhood, they of course 
 swell and aggravate still more the already overdone 
 competition for employment. Now, it is regarded 
 as a higher place in labour to be admitted among 
 the regular servants of a farmer, than among the 
 roundsmen. The former are on the whole better 
 paid; and the latter look to any vacancy there, as 
 a sort of preferment, to which those of full-grown 
 manhood, and who have perhaps served months 
 and years in the capacity of roundsmen, have a 
 better claim than mere striplings who have come 
 out for the first time in quest of employment. 
 So that very generally, in many of the parishes, 
 
78 
 
 the vacancies among the regular farm servants are 
 filled by roundsmen, and the consequent vacancies 
 among the roundsmen filled by the raw and un¬ 
 practised youths from the general population. In 
 other words, their first outset as labourers, is with 
 those who have got into the idle and profligate 
 habits to which their situation peculiarly exposes 
 them—a circumstance most ruinous to their own 
 future habit and character as workmen, and most 
 directly fitted to perpetuate and augment the tide of 
 corruption, as it bears downward from the present 
 generation to the next. It is further a most griev¬ 
 ous necessity in their state, that they should be 
 forced to commence their life as paupers, that 
 they should be familiarized, from a tender age, to 
 the allowances of the parish vestry, that all generous 
 and aspiring independence should be smothered 
 when in embryo within them, and a new race should 
 arise so fostered and prepared as to outstrip their 
 predecessors in the rapacity, and the meanness, and 
 all the sordid or degrading habits of pauperism.* 
 
 It comes to the same result, whether they are 
 sent about as roundsmen, or are wholly paid and 
 employed by the parish as supernumeraries. In 
 the latter case, they may give their labour either 
 
 • In the Parliamentary Abstract, above referred to, the fourth ques¬ 
 tion Is, “ Is it usual for the Overseers of the poor, to send to the farmers 
 labourers who cannot find work—to he paid partly by the employer, and 
 partly out of the poor-rates?” And, from the affirmative answers which 
 are returned by the parishes of the midland and southern counties, it would 
 appear, that this practice is a very general one. 
 
79 
 
 in a work-house or out of doors. But both from 
 the difficulty of supplying work, and from the lax 
 superintendence into which the whole system is 
 so apt to degenerate, it may be regarded as a vast 
 nursery both of idleness and vice all over Eng¬ 
 land. We do not hesitate to charge on the pau¬ 
 perism of England the vast majority of its crimes 
 —detaining by its promises, within the borders of 
 every parish, a greater number of families than it 
 can well and comfortably provide for—luring, as it 
 were, more into existence than it can meet with 
 the right and requisite supplies—and, after having 
 conducted them onward to manhood, leaving them 
 in a state of unsated appetency, and withal in lei¬ 
 sure for the exercise of their ingenuities, by which 
 to devise its gratification. We cannot conceive a 
 state of the commonwealth more fermentative of 
 crime, from the thousand unnoticed and unnotice- 
 able pilferments, that, we fear, are in daily and 
 very extended operation among the labouring 
 classes, to the higher feats of villany, the midnight 
 enterprise, the rapine, sealed, if necessary, with 
 blood, the house assault, the highway depredation.* 
 
 * It is obviously a thing of some delicacy, to publish the representa¬ 
 tions which may he given of the state of morality in a neighbourhood—and 
 more especially, when furnished by one who is residing within its limits. 
 But we fear, that the following account, given by Mr. Clarkson, of the 
 decay of all right independence among the lower classes, will serve for a 
 great many of the neighbourhoods in England. 
 
 “ The spirit of independence is not entirely, but nearly gone. It is not, 
 I believe, to be found in nine out of ten among the poor. Here and there 
 an old-fashioned labourer remains, who would suffer much, rather than ask 
 
Simply, if labour were better paid, it would not 
 be so. Were there room and occupancy for all the 
 
 for relief. I have two of this description, out of fourteen labourers; but I 
 doubt if there are other three of the same sort, in the three other farms 
 of the parish. Among the persons born of late years, from the age of ten 
 to thirty, all hang upon the parish for support No one of these blushes 
 to ask for relief, but, on the other hand, they demand it unhlushingly as a 
 right Poor-rates, as you know, were first established for the aged, sick, 
 lame, blind, and impotent. No fault could reasonably he found with this 
 part of the law; but afterwards, in the same reign, the Parishes were made 
 to find woijc for the unemployed, however robust, active, and healthy. 
 Here the great evil began; for poor people, after this, would not take the 
 trouble of going to other places to look for work. Why should they travel 
 about for a precarious subsistence, when there was an obligation to main¬ 
 tain them at home ? Since this time, the poor have been making, slowly 
 and by degrees, new demands and encroachments; and the Magistrates, 
 having been generally men of humanity, and not having foreseen the con¬ 
 sequences which have taken place, have generously yielded to them, till 
 their concessions from time to time have grown into customs, and been 
 falsely interpreted into laws. When a poor woman, for example, has been 
 delivered of a child, the husband generally goes to the Overseer, and ap¬ 
 plies for relief for his wife. Some Overseers, timid or compassionate, 
 acquiesce: others refuse. But it has now passed into a custom, that every 
 lying-in woman should be relieved with her third or fourth child. Let us 
 see what happens next. A young family rises up. The father of this fa¬ 
 mily sometimes hears of a place for his son or his daughter, with some 
 farmer of a neighbouring, or other parish. He then applies to the Over¬ 
 seer to fit out his child with clothes. Such applications have passed also 
 into a custom; and it has become a custom to accede to them, on the 
 principle, that they who look out for service for their children, ought to 
 be encouraged, and that, if the child keeps his service for one year, lie be¬ 
 longs to another parish. I have been frequently at Vestry Meetings, when 
 such applications have been made for clothing. I have told the father,— 
 
 ‘ The children are yours, and it is your duty to provide for them, or you 
 ought not to have married.’ The answer has always been, ‘ The children 
 belong to you (the Parish); I cannot get for them what they want; you 
 therefore must.’ No one can heat it into their heads, that the children 
 belong to them, not to the parish. I have been quite disgusted with 
 their conversation at such meetings. I have often been inclined to think, 
 that they have no natural affection for their children, and I have told them 
 
81 
 
 demand after employment, and did that employ, 
 ment meet with a comfortable subsistence in return 
 
 bo. Certain it is, that they do not consider themselves to be under any 
 obligation to bring up their children, at their own expense, beyond a cer¬ 
 tain age. They will tell you at once, ‘ I have brought up the boy so far. 
 I wish to get rid of him. (What an expression this!) He belongs to 
 
82 
 
 for it, we should forthwith see a more orderly, and 
 tranquil, and safe population. It bears the ex¬ 
 pression of a kindness to the people, that, when 
 all the regular departments of service are tilled, 
 and there is still left an overplus of hands, there 
 should lie a legal obligation on each parish to har¬ 
 bour, either as roundsmen or as supernumeraries, 
 
 always the case. Some Overseers have been so timid, as to have made 
 the best terms they could with the pauper. Others have taken him be¬ 
 fore a Magistrate, hut this seldom happens; and he has been confined a 
 few days in prison for his abuse. Other overseers, being strong men, and 
 also men of great courage, have turned him by main force, or kicked him, 
 out of their premises. These violent scenes have occurred every now and 
 then, during the six years I have been in Playford. The supernumeraries 
 
83 
 
 the men who have not been so fortunate as to find 
 the better occupation. It is not known how wo- 
 ful the amount of depression is, which a very few 
 of these might bring upon the wages of agricultu¬ 
 ral labour. If there be any truth in the principle 
 that we have already attempted to expound, a 
 small fractional excess of workmen thus detained, 
 and under the guise of humanity too, are enough 
 to bring a sad discomfort and deficiency on the 
 circumstances of the whole body. In the higgling 
 for wages between the farmer and his servants, 
 what a mighty advantage is given to the former, 
 by the simple circumstance of their being a few 
 outcasts from regular work, that would be glad of 
 the very place which any of his present workmen 
 may be threatening to leave, or refusing to accept 
 of on his terms. On the other hand, had there 
 been no supernumeraries and no roundsmen, or still 
 more, a very few less in the parish than its farmers 
 and capitalists have use for, what a mighty turning 
 of the scale would this produce in favour of the 
 other party. A very small difference, indeed, in 
 the number of the people, would suffice to create 
 this most important difference of relationship be¬ 
 tween them and their masters—whether they 
 should seek for masters, or masters should seek 
 for them. There is a tremulous balance here, 
 that will be decided by a very slight difference 
 either in the one or the other of these ways; and 
 surely there is no enlightened or liberal friend of 
 his species, who would not rejoice to see it decided 
 
84 
 
 in favour of the population. In this view of the 
 matter, we may see at once the cruelty of a poor- 
 rate : how, in the first instance, by the encourage¬ 
 ment which it gives to precipitate marriage, it 
 multiplies the people beyond the rate at which 
 they would otherwise have multiplied—how, in 
 the second instance, by holding out to all of them 
 a right and a property in their native parish, it de¬ 
 tains the people, and closes up, as it were, those 
 outlets of emigration by which relief might have 
 been obtained from the competition of a most hurt¬ 
 ful excess—how, in the third instance, it provides 
 for this surplus of labourers, but on terms which 
 lie at the arbitration of the upper classes in society 
 —how, in the fourth instance, it gives to the mas¬ 
 ters a mighty advantage over their regular labour¬ 
 ers, and enables them to bring the general wages 
 of husbandry indefinitely near to the parish allow¬ 
 ance for roundsmen and supernumeraries*—thus, 
 
 * The following are notes of a communication from Mr. Maitland, an in¬ 
 telligent Scotch farmer in the neighbourhood of Sherborne, Dorsetshire, and 
 on the estate of Earl Digby:— 
 
 “ As to tile difference between England and Scotland, in respect that the 
 labourers of the former solicited employment from him in dozens, whereas 
 in Scotland he had to hunt after them? The fact is well known by every 
 Scotsman resident here, and strongly marks the great demand for laboar in 
 that part of the kingdom. It also has, in my opinion, a powerful tendency 
 to destroy still farther that spirit of independence, the want of which is al¬ 
 ready so visible among English labourers." 
 
 “ As to the inferior scale of work that is rendered by paupers, so as to 
 make it more profitable that there should be a full wage to regularly paid 
 labourers? It is particularly remarked by every Scotsman resident here, 
 how difficult it is to make the labourers do their duty, when regularly cm- 
 
85 
 
 in fact, under the guise of kindness to the stragglers 
 of the community, operating a most injurious re¬ 
 
 ployed, not only by tbo day, but even when piece-work is given them; aris¬ 
 ing from tlieir total want of honour and gratitude. It need not then sur¬ 
 prise, that work performed by paupers, should cost a great deal more. I 
 believe it may fairly he set down at one-half.” 
 
 “ As to the effects of poor-rates in augmenting the population? An 
 English labourer having no property, nor prospect of acquiring any—and 
 being accustomed from infancy in believing the parish is hound to provide 
 for his family—marries early in life; of course has a prospect of a numerous 
 offspring. It also makes marriages more numerous, and entered into without 
 prudence or forethought.” 
 
 “ The comparative comfort of English and Scots labourers? The com¬ 
 parison here is altogether in favour of Scotland. The English labourer, 
 trusting to the parish, lays nothing up for a had day—his week’s wages are 
 always spent at the week’s end. This produces improvidence in all his 
 affairs; and having no cow, norevena garden, he accounts beer his sum- 
 mum barnim. This he takes at the public house by himself, to the great 
 misery of his family; and knows nothing of those social enjoyments, so 
 esteemed by the Scottish peasant. The effects of this must be obvious 
 upon the morals too—it blunts every parental and filial affection. Children 
 see their parents go to the parish with the utmost indifference, and without 
 even an effort to prevent it; and fathers, with_equal indifference, send their 
 wives and families the same road.” 
 
 Mr. Clarkson has stated some additional samples of the inconvenience to 
 which an over-peopled parish is exposed. 
 
 “ We used to employ our supernumeraries in raising gravel for the roads, 
 and in repaiiing the roads also. Since that time we erected a machine for 
 dressing flax, and we bought, and we even grew flax; and we dressed it, and 
 sold it when dressed. But the price for the article was so low during our 
 trial of it, that the concern was in all respects a losing one. We were 
 
86 
 
 duction on the state and comfort of the whole 
 body—grinding down the lower orders to the very 
 point of starvation, and with a malignity not the 
 less provoking, that it works by a system, on the 
 face of which there are constantly playing the 
 smiles of mercy, and in the support of which, the 
 sweetest poesy hath been heard to pour forth her 
 dulcet strains into the ear of weeping sentimental¬ 
 ism. 
 
 We do not need any thing half so ponderous as 
 a theory of population for the whole species, to be 
 assured, that at this moment there are more people 
 than can be maintained with comfort in our agri¬ 
 cultural parishes. The thing is plainly felt all 
 over England; and this is a feeling which cannot 
 be overborne by any argument, either for or against 
 a theory. The doubt which attaches to a specu¬ 
 lation, ought not to overshadow a distinct expe¬ 
 rience that forces itself rather on the observation 
 of our senses than the conviction of our understand¬ 
 ing. And,' along with the palpable exhibition of 
 an over-peopled parish, there is the equally pal- 
 
 “ The poor laws most undoubtedly prevent the benefit of a competition 
 for labourers. I could get more skilful, and better men, and better labourers, 
 than I have at present, but I cannot take them: because, if I were to take 
 them, I must pay them, and I should be obliged, besides, to help to main¬ 
 tain those whom I discarded, while they were doing nothing for me. We 
 must maintain those who belong to us, whether we want them or not—whe¬ 
 ther they are good or bad, industrious or idle, sober or drunken. We have 
 therefore no competition, except at too great an expense, beyond our own 
 
87 
 
 pable habit both of most abandoned licentiousness, 
 and most improvident marriages. The number 
 of illegitimate children alone, superinduces such 
 an excess upon the other population, as is quite 
 adequate to a great and general reduction in the 
 price of labour. And surely there is nought, 
 either in the reasoning for, or in the ridicule 
 against, the philosophy of Mr. Malthus, that can 
 affect a matter of such plain and popular un¬ 
 derstanding, as the undoubted connection which 
 there is between too early marriages and too large 
 families; a thing that is true of a single house¬ 
 hold, and true of such a number of households as 
 makes out a parish—beyond which any argument 
 of ours does not require us to extend our contem¬ 
 plation. There may be ways of evading to be a 
 Malthusian in reference to the world, but not in 
 reference to a parish, where the people adhere, by 
 the law of settlement, with a force and a tenacity 
 as great as if drawn together and detained by the 
 law of gravitation. The poor-rate, in fact, has 
 isolated, in a great measure, each of the parishes 
 in England, and turned it into a little world of its 
 own, where we might see in model such an exem¬ 
 plification of the truth, as recommends itself even 
 to the unlettered eye. And the question before 
 us is not a right economy for the globe. It is not 
 even at present a right economy for the whole 
 empire; for this will at length be arrived at by 
 committing to each parish the management of its 
 
88 
 
 own affairs, and that management is all which we 
 are now called upon to attend to. * 
 
 * The latest parliamentary document which 1ms been published on the 
 subject of pauperism, is the Report from the Select Committee on Poor 
 Rate Returns, ordered by tile House of Commons to be printed on tbe 
 20th of May, 1825. It appears from this Report, that “ tile expenditure 
 upon the poor in 1823-4 fell short of the amount in 1822-3, by £3S,712 
 only,” or by less than an hundred and fiftieth part of the whole annual ex¬ 
 it is unnecessary here to repeat our observations in the 260th, and some 
 following pages of the second volume of this work. We there affirm the 
 possibility of a very great reduction in tbe expenditure, by certain expedi¬ 
 ents, which have the interest of novelty, and of a yet untried experiment to 
 recommend them, even though tbe expedients should be altogether super¬ 
 ficial, and in no way reach to the principle of this great moral and political 
 disease. Such an expedient is that of the select vestry act; and it is strik¬ 
 ing to remark, that though but recently adopted by many parishes, and still 
 
 tbe evil should have taken place. We predict, that tbe strenuousness of 
 management in these parishes, where tbe abridgment has taken place, which 
 is so natural at the outset of every new undertaking, and to which the tem¬ 
 porary diminution of expense upon the whole is owing, will shortly relax, 
 when the disease will again manifest its native virulence, and demonstrate, 
 that nothing-short of a blow at the root can permanently extenuate it, and 
 far less ever effect its extermination. 
 
 To this Report are subjoined a few interesting notices, from parishes in 
 the various counties of England; and from which it will appear that the 
 mischief is making sure progress, although our present bright season of 
 public and political prosperity lias, for a time, diverted the attention of men 
 from the subject. It only waits the next of these periodical reverses, to 
 which every trading nation is exposed, when it will again assume its wonted 
 prominency, as an evil of the first magnitude. The people of England arc 
 not, perhaps, to he argued out of their system by any power of reasoning; 
 but they will at length he driven out of it, by the pressure of strong and felt 
 necessity. 
 
 The composition of wages with poor rate, and its demoralizing effects, 
 are well stated in the following extracts:— 
 
 “ Dolby Farm, in the Count!, of Leicester —The custom which has pro- 
 
89 
 
 It were a very crude legislation for giving effect 
 to the speculation of Mr. Maltluis, to define the 
 
 vailed lately, of allowing labourers their wages according to their families, 
 whether they work or not, tends to encourage idleness and insubordination, 
 and is very hurtful and expensive to parishes.” 
 
 “ Dolby Magna, in the same Count;/.— The method of paying for work 
 from the poor’s rate, is very oppressive to the small occupiers of land; it 
 is a had custom, and much practised here. For instance, a good labourer, 
 perhaps with four or five children, is allowed from eight pence to one shil¬ 
 ling per diem, for his work, and goes to the overseer for an additional re¬ 
 muneration according to his family; the small occupiers get none of the 
 work, hut must pay towards the support of his family; indeed, it is now very 
 customary for labourers to idle away their time, and earn no more than the 
 eight pence or one shilling. This is spoiling many n good husbandman, and 
 requires amendment” 
 
 “ Laughton, in Lincolnshire.— Foot rates in this county are generally low, 
 except in considerable parishes, where the parishioners disagree, and conse¬ 
 quent mismanagement arises. Those parishes that employ, or rather place 
 their poor on the roads to do nothing, and allow them to waste their time 
 in idleness or pilfering, and suffer them to begin their work and give over 
 when they please, have plenty of destitute poor, as they frequently prefer 
 going to the roads at nine shillings per week, to regular labour with the 
 farmers, at twelve sinkings per week. It is the exorbitant power given 
 to Magistrates, and their folly and erroneous conduct, that have in a great 
 degree created an evil which it is now difficult to mitigate.” 
 
 “ Barton Fendish, in JVorfolk.—' The poor’s rates gradually increase, from 
 
90 
 
 earliest age at which people should marry. There 
 is no doubt that, by postponing the average period 
 of marriage, there behoved to be a relief from 
 the increase of population; and it is not known 
 
 some future period, to that more complete and conclusive operation, 
 which, in our fifteenth Chapter of this work, we have ventured to re¬ 
 commend. 
 
 “ tt'ashinghy, in Huntingdon _Tile less Magistrates interfere with par¬ 
 
 ishes, the better the poor will be provided for. Let select vestries be 
 appointed, and a fine imposed on those who arc too indolent to attend 
 them. Hie heads of a parish will always be the best judges of who arc 
 deserving of relief, from tile character they bear. Head-money, as it is 
 called, is only an encouragement of the early marriages of the most pro¬ 
 fligate ;—the more children, the more head-money. We know the fact, 
 that men, when they have been asked, how they could think of marrying, 
 
91 
 
 by how few months, or by how very few years of a 
 later average, the whole amount of necessary re¬ 
 lief would be gained. But, for the purpose of 
 securing an average, it is not indispensable that 
 each individual case should be rigidly fixed down 
 to it. There might be a sure average, and, at 
 the same time, the utmost freedom and variety of 
 individual cases. 
 
 To enact any age for marriages, would be just 
 attempting to neutralize one blunder in legislation 
 by another. It were striving to bring about a 
 right result by a compensation of errors; when it 
 were surely better if both were expunged, and 
 there remained no error to be compensated. The 
 law of pauperism has given undue encouragement 
 to matrimony: and it has been proposed, by a law 
 of matrimony, to repress the encouragement. It 
 is the excess of legislation which has done the 
 mischief; and the best method of doing it away, 
 is simply to lop off the excess, and not to coun¬ 
 teract one foolish law by another. The tree that 
 would have grown in an upright direction might 
 rise obliquely, because of an artificial pressure on 
 one side of it, though it is possible to correct 
 this by an equal pressure on the other side: still 
 it would have been preferable that it had grown 
 free and unencumbered, without any pressure on 
 either side, and that nature had been simply left 
 to its own way. It is just so in the matter before 
 us. We have only to commit back again to the 
 wisdom of nature, that which ought never to have 
 
92 
 
 been meddled with by the wisdom of man. She 
 balances the matter aright between the proneness 
 to marriage, and the prudence that delays it; 
 and the desirable result is brought about, not by 
 the enactment of a new law, but by the cancel- 
 ment of an old one. The abolition of the law of 
 pauperism would translate the people into other 
 circumstances, and in these circumstances they 
 should be left to act freely. 
 
 There can be no doubt, that the abolition of the 
 law of pauperism would bring on a somewhat later 
 average of matrimony among the people. Should 
 this abolition ever take place, and the consequent 
 period of marriage become the subject of political 
 arithmetic, there can be no doubt that its tables 
 will exhibit a more advanced age, on the whole, 
 at which females marry under the new system, than 
 under the present one. This might safely be pre¬ 
 dicated on the general experience of human na¬ 
 ture, although it is further satisfactory, to have 
 had the connection so distinctly exhibited in the 
 parishes of England, between the encouragements 
 of pauperism, and the utter rashness and improvi¬ 
 dence of marriages among the peasantry. Should 
 these encouragements be done away, there would 
 be rash and imprudent marriages as before, but 
 not so many. There would, even without the law 
 of pauperism, be a premature entry upon this al¬ 
 liance, but not so premature upon the whole. 
 The evident tendency of a legal provision, is both 
 to speed and to multiply marriages; and were this 
 
93 
 
 provision done away, they would be neither so 
 early nor so frequent as they are now. Many still 
 would be the outbreakings of irregularity and folly; 
 but, if at all diminished, there would necessarily 
 be a certain shift for the better in the average of 
 matrimony; and it were in the face of all arithme¬ 
 tic, it were losing sight of the principles and the 
 property of numbers altogether, to deny that this 
 must tell on the births of a parish and its popula¬ 
 tion. We do not say, that profligacy would be 
 exterminated with the law of pauperism; but it- 
 would be checked, and, we venture to affirm, that 
 were the supplies of pauperism withdrawn from all 
 future illegitimates, there would be an instantane¬ 
 ous diminution of their number. In all these 
 ways, the market for labour would be less crowded 
 than it is now; and labourers would stand on a 
 higher vantage-ground in the negotiation between 
 them and their employers. There would be some 
 fewer workmen than before, and this is enough to 
 cause much higher wages. This is a most impor¬ 
 tant compensation that awaits the lower classes of 
 England, after that the dispensations of pauperism 
 have been withdrawn from them. 
 
 In one part of his work, on the Nature and 
 Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Dr. Adam Smith 
 speaks lightly of political arithmetic. But he can 
 only mean to reflect on the inaccuracy wherewith 
 its data are often guessed at, and presumed upon, 
 and not on the substantial importance of the data 
 themselves. The average date of marriage, in 
 
94 
 
 the various countries of the world, may not have 
 been precisely ascertained, in any one instance. 
 But still there is such a date, certain, though not 
 ascertained; and, furthermore, having a certain in¬ 
 fluence upon the population, in regard to the in¬ 
 crease or diminution of their number. Whatever 
 postpones the date, must retard the increase; and, 
 let the obscurity be what it may, which rests upon 
 the numerical statements that have been exhibited 
 upon this subject, the connection is indisputable 
 between the prudence that would delay marriage, 
 and the relief that would thereby be given to an 
 overpeopled land. This were true, in the particu¬ 
 lar of each household, and just as true in the gene¬ 
 ral of that aggregate of households which make up 
 a population. And we ought not to lose sight of 
 those elements which are known to have force and 
 substantive being in our land, though numerically 
 they are unknown to us. We cannot specify the 
 accurate proportion which obtains between the 
 money expended by the lower orders on dissipa¬ 
 tion, and that expended in pauperism. But there 
 is no doubt that the former bears a very great pro¬ 
 portion to the latter, and, perhaps, overpasses it. 
 So that, even in the absence of all detail, it is a 
 most legitimate conclusion, that though pauperism 
 were abolished, there might still remain through¬ 
 out the mass a capability for the subsistence of all 
 their families; and, that if an adequate impulse 
 were given first to the sobrieties, and then to the 
 sympathies of our population, there might still 
 
95 
 
 exist such a sufficiency among all, as would, of it¬ 
 self, prove an effectual guarantee against the starva¬ 
 tion of any. It is obviously the direct tendency of 
 such an abolition, to stimulate both their sobrieties 
 and their sympathies; and it is further a comfort 
 to know, from the general fact of the sums ex¬ 
 pended by the working classes on intemperance 
 alone, that, after all, and apart from public charity, 
 the materiel of an entire subsistence passes into 
 their hands, and that nought but the morale is 
 wanting, which, by the kindness and the economy 
 that pauperism now supersedes, might impress a 
 right distribution upon it. 
 
 But we are quite aware of the incredulity where¬ 
 with all argument and affirmation are met, when 
 proposed in terms so very general; and it is this 
 which makes us the more solicitous for a tentative 
 process in so many individual parishes. We have 
 elsewhere sufficiently explained by what steps 
 such a process might be obtained for the remedy of 
 pauperism at large ; and it would be found equally 
 applicable to that more special abuse of it, which 
 we have now attempted to expose. A few trial 
 parishes, rightly conducted, would soon set the dis¬ 
 cussion at rest. Every thing would be gained by 
 the success of the experiment; and no widely 
 spread mischief could ensue from the failure of it. 
 All who were actually roundsmen, and supernu¬ 
 meraries in a parish at the commencement of the 
 retracing process, might, like all who were then 
 actually paupers, continue to be treated as old 
 
96 
 
 cases—so that the only innovation would be in 
 the treatment of the new applicants. And it should 
 never be out of view, that these applicants must 
 come on very gradually; and that there are many 
 small manageable parishes, where the whole in¬ 
 convenience would not amount to more perhaps 
 than three or four, each having to wait a few 
 months ere some regular vacancy in labour should 
 occur for their accommodation. And meanwhile, 
 it were well, that they had no right to any other 
 accommodation—that they felt it to be their own 
 business, to look out for work to themselves—that 
 they should be kept on the alert, and on the in¬ 
 quiry for any openings which might occur—and 
 in a word, that the whole matter regarding the 
 employment of the rising youth in a parish, should 
 simply be devolved on their respective families. 
 This would instantly bring into play all the busy 
 interests and activities of self; and under their 
 wholesome operation, there is not a doubt that 
 families would weather all the apprehended evils 
 of this transition, and be at length landed in a 
 state of greater comfort and sufficiency than be¬ 
 fore. Were each man left to the consequences of 
 his own imprudence, there is a moral necessity for 
 it, that the imprudence would at least be abridged; 
 and if only some few marriages were suspended, 
 and some few criminalities refrained from, it is 
 arithmetically sure, that in a very few years the 
 market for labour would be less loaded with this 
 commodity, and the market price of labour would 
 
91 
 
 yield a greater sufficiency to the families of work¬ 
 men than before. And this is a benefit that 
 would be extended more and more, in proportion 
 to the wisdom and the virtue of our peasantry, 
 who might thus become the agents of their own 
 amelioration; and, through the medium of their 
 own intelligence and worth, be raised to a place 
 of greater security and comfort than they now 
 occupy. 
 
 There are many ways in which the transition 
 to a natural state could be smoothed and facilitated 
 in country parishes. Instances might be named, 
 of a single gentleman taking up all the super¬ 
 numeraries of a parish, and giving them employ¬ 
 ment for months; and if ever such an effort can 
 be looked for, it is at the outset of a retracing 
 process, in the success of which so many of the 
 landlords and other parishioners must feel an in¬ 
 terest. Nay, if they so willed it, it is quite possi¬ 
 ble, at such a crisis as this, to abolish at once the 
 whole system of composition between wages and 
 poor-rate, in the case of able-bodied labourers, 
 by simply translating their whole existing allow¬ 
 ance into wages, and relieving the farmer by a 
 diminution of his levy to as great an amount, as is 
 the addition which he has made under this arrange¬ 
 ment to the pay of his servants. In this way, 
 every vestige even of the old pauperism, might be 
 swept away instanter from the class of able-bodied 
 labourers—a thing of incalculable advantage in 
 warding off that corrupt influence by which the 
 
 Voi.. III. N 
 
98 
 
 people of many parishes in England have become 
 almost en masse reconciled and assimilated to a 
 state of pauperism. And if the existing super¬ 
 numeraries could, in many instances, be so easily 
 absorbed and provided for; one cannot doubt that 
 new cases, coming on as they would very gradually, 
 might, for a time, be as easily disposed of. Mean¬ 
 while the right is abolished. Employment might 
 be asked, but it could no longer be demanded. 
 It would not now, be in such certain and unfailing 
 reserve for the superfluous members of a family, 
 as to supersede the necessity of their own shifts 
 and their own expedients. In such circumstances 
 as these, the precipitate marriage of one of their 
 boys, and still more the seduction of a daughter, 
 would be far more felt than it is now as a family 
 visitation ; and thus a higher tone of virtue would 
 spring up among them, almost as soon as the 
 necessity which compels it. It is not yet known 
 how very soon the state of the population would 
 accommodate itself to this new state of things, or 
 how soon labourers would attain to independent 
 and well-earned comfort, and that simply because 
 there would be fewer labourers. 
 
 Emigration to our colonies is worthy of the ut¬ 
 most support from Government, if connected with 
 a process for the abolition of pauperism. But 
 should the system of pauperism continue, it will 
 operate no sensible relief to England. It has been 
 likened to a safety-valve—but it is a valve, the very 
 lifting and opening of which implies the elasticity 
 
99 
 
 within of a state of compression and violence; 
 and up to this state it will remain, notwithstand¬ 
 ing the successive escapes of a redundant popula¬ 
 tion. The creative process will always maintain a 
 balance with the relieving process; and a people 
 must be in distress, when the difficulties of home 
 are so nearly in equilibrium with its charms, as to 
 place them on the eve of desire and deliberation 
 to renounce it for ever. And besides, the poor 
 laws act in an opposite direction to the offers and 
 the encouragements of emigration; though, if con¬ 
 nected with any plan for the abolition of them, we 
 cannot conceive a better way both of smoothing 
 the transition, and of keeping the country in a 
 clear and healthful state after the transition has 
 been effected. It would, at all events, afford a 
 ready answer to the complaints and difficulties of 
 able-bodied men, who alleged a want of employ¬ 
 ment ; if a parish were enabled, by the facilities 
 that government held out, to aid, upon easy terms, 
 the emigration of them. It were a test by which 
 to ascertain the truth of their complaints; and we 
 believe that, when the proposal of emigration was 
 made, it would be declined in by far the greater 
 number of instances. The parish would at least 
 stand acquitted; and it would afterwards be seen, 
 that a very small fraction of the labourers of a 
 parish stood in need after all of the resource of 
 emigration. On this account, it would not be very 
 expensive to government, though it held out very 
 great advantages to emigration; and il would 
 
100 
 
 shield every parish from the charge of inhumanity, 
 were it enabled to suggest this expedient to its 
 unemployed labourers. 
 
 But it is to the reaction at home, that we look 
 for our best securities against any shock or disas¬ 
 ter that might be apprehended to our families from 
 the overthrow of pauperism. When charity is al¬ 
 together detached from the remuneration of la¬ 
 bour, this of itself will keep off a very wide and 
 wasting contamination from the spirit of our pea¬ 
 santry, and they will again recover the honest 
 pride of independence. Still more would this 
 feeling grow in strength and sensibility, were they 
 trained to the habit of small but constant accumu¬ 
 lation. It is at this crisis, that a parish saving- 
 bank. might achieve a wondrous transformation on 
 the state of the people, by begetting a sense of 
 property among labourers. A very few philan¬ 
 thropists could set it on foot. By a very few easy 
 devices, at the outset of the retracing process, 
 there could, in many places, be afforded as much 
 employment and as liberal wages to all, as might 
 enable them to deposit. Once that the turning 
 point has been made from being a pauper to being 
 a possessor, a new ambition is felt, and a new 
 object comes to be intensely prosecuted. This is 
 a better expedient for postponing the date of mar¬ 
 riage than any act of parliament. The days were 
 in Scotland, when it was customary, during the 
 virtuous attachment of years, for the parties to fill 
 up the interval with those frugalities and labours 
 
101 
 
 by which they made a provision for their future 
 household; and there is no doubt, that a saving- 
 bank is fitted to inspire with a similar purpose 
 those who repair to it. If it did so with a few only, 
 still the average period of matrimony is somewhat 
 shifted for the better; the tide of population is 
 somewhat arrested; the excess in a few years is 
 somewhat reduced from what it would otherwise 
 have been; and the market price of labour is ele¬ 
 vated in greater proportion. These are the sure 
 steps which lead from a growing virtue among the 
 people, to a still more rapidly growing prosperity 
 in their economic condition ; and by which a pro¬ 
 cess that guides to sufficiency and comfort each 
 individual family who embark upon it, carries in it 
 a further and a wider blessing to the general mass of 
 the population. 
 
 We have already said, that nothing was easier 
 than to suit the law of settlement to that state of 
 things, which would take place in a parish, when 
 the law of pauperism was done away. To acquire 
 a right of settlement in the parish itself were alto¬ 
 gether useless, when by it there is nothing to ac¬ 
 quire. After that any given subject of right or of 
 distribution has vanished, the laws which relate to 
 it, cease to be of any significancy. And thus it is, 
 that the mutual law of settlement between parishes 
 is virtually abrogated, by the very act which re¬ 
 leases either the one or the other from the legal 
 obligation of maintaining its own poor. After 
 that the poor at home have been devolved on the 
 
102 
 
 free charities of nature, in any given parish, it is 
 never to be imagined that the poor from abroad, 
 and who may have chosen to reside in that parish, 
 should have any other resource provided for them 
 there. And it is thus, that while two trial parishes 
 may freely exchange their people with each other, 
 neither would feel any addition to its legal burden 
 in consequence of this, because neither would lie 
 under any legal obligation. 
 
 The case is different, where one of the parishes 
 only has emerged from the old system, and the 
 other still remains under it. There may still be a 
 free reciprocal transit of families between them ; 
 but it were not fair, if, while the families of the 
 latter acquire no right by passing within the con¬ 
 fines of the former, those of the former should ac¬ 
 quire any right by passing within the confines of 
 the latter. The emancipated parish comes under 
 no burden by the influx of people from other par¬ 
 ishes ; and, conversely, it is right that these par¬ 
 ishes should not be exposed to any burden by the 
 efflux of people from that parish, which shall have 
 now exchanged the compulsory for the gratuitous 
 system of charity. This does away every apprehen¬ 
 sion, lest the rest of England should suffer from those 
 portions of it which are delivered of the poor-rate: 
 And, we have elsewhere argued abundantly for 
 our persuasion, that the emigrants from a trial 
 parish, though without any right on the parish 
 which they have left, and without any possibility 
 of acquiring a right on the parish into which they 
 
103 
 
 have entered, will be generally found of a higher 
 and better condition than the population by whom 
 they are surrounded. 
 
 But while it is indispensable, that the parishes 
 still under bondage of pauperism shall sustain no 
 injury from the reformed parishes, there is a way, 
 in which, without a certain modification in the law 
 of settlements, the workmen of a reformed parish 
 might sustain injury from the others. The mixing 
 of poor-rate with wages, has depressed the allow¬ 
 ance that is given in the name of wages, through¬ 
 out all those parishes of England where this prac¬ 
 tice is in force; and should the practice be abol¬ 
 ished in any parish, this allowance would forthwith 
 be raised. It is not impossible, that while in one 
 parish a workman earns eight shillings a week in 
 the shape of wages, and receives four in the shape 
 of poor-rate, the workmen of a contiguous parish, 
 where the poor-rate has been done away, might 
 earn the whole twelve shillings in wages alone. 
 The difficulty, in this case, would be to protect 
 the labourers of a reformed parish from the com¬ 
 petition of those exotic labourers who might 
 come in to reside amongst them, although they 
 belonged, by settlement, to other parishes—men 
 who might endeavour to compound the high wage 
 of the one with the vestry allowance of the other, 
 and might succeed for a time in the pocketing of 
 both. Meanwhile, there might be an under-bid¬ 
 ding of the native, by the imported workmen; 
 and although, if England were wholly emancipated 
 
104 
 
 from poor-rate, wages might sustain a high level 
 all over the country, which would not be trodden 
 down by the freest movements of its people from 
 one part to another; yet so long as the emancipa¬ 
 tion is only partial, there will be, at least, a ten¬ 
 dency to the sinking of wages down to the low 
 rate of the assessed parishes. 
 
 Perhaps the most effectual security against this 
 evil, would be a law, by which every man capable 
 of working, should forfeit all right of relief from 
 his own parish, so long as he resided in any of the 
 trial parishes. This would give, at least, a theo¬ 
 retical consistency to the whole arrangement; be¬ 
 sides being a defence against the apprehended 
 mischief, in all those cases where the mischief 
 would have followed. We do not think, however, 
 that practically it could ever be felt to any great 
 extent. In those parishes, where the retracing 
 process had been entered upon in the spirit of a 
 pure and patriotic reformation, there would be a 
 strong preference for the employment of their own 
 people. And what is more to the purpose, we do 
 not find that the prevalence of this abuse in one 
 part of England, has compelled the adoption of it 
 in another part of England. The northern coun¬ 
 ties are comparatively exempted from the evils 
 that lie in the composition of a poor-rate with 
 wages; and though exposed to competition both 
 from the labourers of the south, and what, perhaps, 
 is still more formidable, to the competition of 
 Scotch and Irish labourers, they still maintain that 
 
105 
 
 high rate of wages, which .enables them to .ward 
 off, in a great measure, the stigma of pauperism, 
 from the healthy and able-bodied of their popula¬ 
 tion. 
 
 But, after all, we should hold it quite a safe 
 measure, to abolish, instanler, the application of 
 poor-rate to the relief of all able-bodied labourers. 
 We have no doubt, that there would be an imme¬ 
 diate compensation in the rise of wages ;* and, at 
 all events, that the change of circumstances, how¬ 
 ever sudden, would be followed by no distress, 
 ■either of great intensity, or of great duration. Our 
 preference is for gradual changes; but still our 
 confidence is, that when the change is from a 
 wrong to a right system, even though accomplished 
 at once by the fiat of authority, the country will 
 always right itself surprisingly soon, and without 
 any great suffering ensuing from the transition. 
 On this same subject, we have the experience of a 
 change, per saltum, in the condition of all the Irish 
 paupers resident in England, the great majority of 
 
 * The following extract is from the report of Wr. Vivian’s examination 
 before the Select Committee on the l'oor-Lmvs in 1817. His Parish was 
 Bushev in Hertfordshire. 
 
 “ Is it not, then, the practice in your parish, to advance regularly, 
 weekly, a sum in addition to tile wages earned by your labourers? Never: 
 and to that I ascribe, almost as much ns any thing, a diminution of tbo 
 rates.—If a man lias six young children, no one of which can maintain 
 himself, yon do not give any permanent relief beyond his wages? Never: 
 occasional presents, and that very seldom.—How did yon prevail on tile 
 parish to put an end to that practice ? By strong persuasion, and by de¬ 
 siring them to try tiic experiment: and it answered. They immediateiv got 
 into task-work, and got twenty-five shillings a week." 
 
 Vo:.. III. O 
 
106 
 
 whom chose to remain, and without any sensible 
 inconvenience, and certainly without one authen¬ 
 tic case of starvation occurring in consequence.* 
 The speed and the facility wherewith the popula¬ 
 tion accommodate themselves to some new condi¬ 
 tion, into which they are suddenly transported by 
 some great and unlooked-for change in the cir¬ 
 cumstances of a country, are never more strikingly 
 exemplified, than in the changes which take place 
 in the direction of national industry, on passing 
 from a war to a peace, or from a peace to a war 
 establishment. Still we are unfriendly to all vio¬ 
 lence, even on the career of undoubted ameliora¬ 
 tion. And we only give this instance to prove, 
 that legislators may, without danger, proceed with 
 bolder footsteps than they are generally inclined 
 to do, in the path of economic improvement. 
 
 And certain it is, that however impotent the re¬ 
 lief may be which emigration could afford to a 
 country, the system of whose pauperism still con¬ 
 tinued to give full license and encouragement 
 for the increase of population, yet, as connected 
 with a scheme for the abolition of pauperism, it 
 might be of most useful auxiliary influence, for 
 smoothing the transition in parishes, from a com¬ 
 pulsory to a gratuitous system of charity. Emi¬ 
 gration could afford no adequate relief to the 
 miseries of an over-peopled land, where a legal 
 provision for the destitute still continued to uphold 
 
107 
 
 the recklessness of families. But emigration were 
 an admirable expedient, both for tranquillizing the 
 fears of the public lest labourers should starve, 
 and also for meeting the complaints and applica¬ 
 tions of these labourers, when they alleged a want 
 of employment. Apart from a process which 
 pointed to the extinction of pauperism, it is alto¬ 
 gether a superficial remedy for the disorders of an 
 excessive population. But when attached to such 
 a process, it might speed and facilitate the whole 
 operation; and it is only when so attached, that, a 
 scheme of emigration will repay, by its blessings 
 to the country, the expense which it might bring 
 upon Government. 
 
108 
 
 CHAP. XIX. 
 
 ON SAVINGS banks. 
 
 Without the co-operation of their own virtuous 
 endeavours, there seems no possible way of doing 
 godd to the labouring classes, of of helping them 
 upwards from a lower to a mdre secure and ele¬ 
 vated place in the commonwealth. But we can 
 see a very patent way to it, in such habits and 
 such resources as, generally speaking, are within 
 their reach. It is for them, and for them only, to 
 regulate the supply of labourers. In the com¬ 
 mand which belongs to them of this mighty ele¬ 
 ment, the price of labour may be regarded as the 
 product of their collective voice, which pitches 
 either high or low, in proportion to the amount of 
 worth and intelligence and sobriety that are dif¬ 
 fused throughout the population. Could we only 
 imagine a nation of regular and well-habited 
 families, where the folly of premature marriages, 
 and the vice of illicit associations, were alike un¬ 
 known—there would then be no inconvenient ex¬ 
 cess of labourers; no fall of wages beneath the 
 par of human comfort, or at least, no fall that 
 would not almost be instantly repaired by the reac¬ 
 tion it would have on the principle and prudence 
 of an enlightened peasantry. Now, though such 
 a nation is not to be born in a day, yet in a single 
 
109 
 
 day might we at least begin the work of approxi¬ 
 mating thereunto. ' Every additional school for 
 popular education brings us nearer to it. Every 
 new deposit in a savings bank helps us on to it. 
 Tire removal of the whole system of pauperism, 
 were the removal of a sore obstruction in its way; 
 an obstruction which, if suffered to remain, will, 
 we honestly believe, seal the peasantry of our 
 land to irrecoverable degradation. So sure do 
 we esteem the operation of these principles, that 
 wr should look for the visible result of them in a 
 very few years, in any parish, where the retracing 
 process had been entered upon. It is this which 
 makes us so desirous of the experiment in Eng¬ 
 land. The comparison between two parishes on 
 the old and new system, -would flash more convic¬ 
 tion on the public understanding than a thousand 
 arguments. 
 
 The frugality of a workman might at length, 
 through means of a savings bank, land him in a 
 small capital; and there is one effect of a capital 
 in the hands of the labouring classes, which must 
 be quite obvious. It were a barrier between them 
 and that urgent immediate necessity, which gives 
 such advantage to their employers in the question 
 of wages. A man on the brink of starvation has no 
 command in this negotiation. He will gladly ac¬ 
 cept of such terms as are offered, rather than per¬ 
 ish of hunger; and it is thus, by their improvi¬ 
 dence and their reckless expenditure in prosperous 
 times, that on the evil day they lie so much at the 
 
110 
 
 mercy and dictation of their superiors. Tiie pos¬ 
 session of a capital, and that not a very great one, 
 by each individual labourer, or rather by each of 
 a considerable number of labourers, would reverse 
 the character of the negotiation entirely. They 
 could stand out against miserable wages. They 
 could afford to be idle; and while so, the stock of 
 that commodity which they work, and wherewith 
 the market is for the present glutted, would soon 
 melt away; and the price of their labour be 
 speedily restored to its fair and comfortable level. 
 It were most delightful to see the lower orders, by 
 dint of foresight and economy in good times, thus 
 enabled to weather the depression of bad times, 
 nay inconceivably to shorten the period of it, by 
 simply living on their accumulated means, and ab¬ 
 staining to work for a wretched remuneration. 
 Or if they should continue to work, they would, at 
 least, not need to overwork. It is this, which so 
 lengthens out at present the season of ill-paid la¬ 
 bour. The low wages stimulate to a greater amount 
 of industry, that a subsistence, if possible, might be 
 forced from it to their starving families. The use 
 of a capital in savings banks would be to prevent 
 this. Men would not, while they had a resource 
 in the earnings of past years, put themselves to an 
 unnatural violence, in order that the current earn¬ 
 ings might meet their current necessities.* At all 
 
 
 ; be conceived a more cruel dilemma for the poor opera- 
 
Ill 
 
 events, the overstocked market would sooner be 
 cleared of its surplus, and, with a brisker demand, 
 there would quickly come round a better remu¬ 
 neration. And such a state of things would not 
 only serve to reduce the inequalities in the condi¬ 
 tion of labourers; but, on the whole, it would 
 somewhat elevate their condition, and that perma¬ 
 nently. If in possession of means that raised 
 them above the urgencies of immediate want, they 
 could treat more independently with their employ¬ 
 ers. They would not as now, be so much the 
 parties that sought; but more at least than now, 
 they would be the parties that were sought after. 
 The whole platform of humble life would take a 
 higher level than at present; and we repeat that, 
 to every man who felt aright, it were a satisfaction 
 and a triumph, then to recognize a hale and well- 
 conditioned peasantry. 
 
 We are aware of a jealousy here; and how much 
 it is that capitalists have suffered by unlooked-for 
 conspiracies on the part of the workmen. We 
 are also aware of the sums that have been sub¬ 
 scribed by the latter, for the express purpose of 
 
 overwork himself, and, by that miserable effort, should only strengthen the 
 barrier that lies in the way of his final deliverance; that for tile relief of the 
 present urgencies of nature, he should be compelled to put forth more than 
 the strength of nature, and yet find, as the direct result of his exertion, a 
 lengthening out of the period of his distress; that the necessity should thus 
 he laid upon him of what may be called a self-destroying process,—accumu¬ 
 lating as he does, with his own hand, the materials of his own wretchedness, 
 and so annoying and overwhelming the earth with the multitude of his com¬ 
 modities, that she looks upon his offerings as an offence, rather than an oh- 
 
112 
 
 maintaining all the members of the conspiracy in 
 idleness, and so of holding out, .till masters should 
 surrender to their terms. It is on these considera¬ 
 tions that an apprehension has been felt, in certain 
 quarters, lest savings banks should arm the mecha¬ 
 nics and workmen of our land with a dangerous 
 power, and place at the mercy of their caprice the 
 interest of all the other orders in society. This, at 
 least, is a concession of the efficacy of these in¬ 
 stitutions for all the purposes on account of which 
 we would argue in their favour; and they who fear 
 lest provident -banks should make the lower orders 
 too rich, must at all events allow, that, with care 
 and conduct on their part, there is a capability 
 amongst them for becoming rich enough to be 
 wholly independent of the supplies of pauperism. 
 While we have no doubt that the power of becom¬ 
 ing rich enough is in their own hands, we cannot 
 sympathize with the feelings of those who fear lest 
 they should be too rich. We should like to see 
 them invested with a certain power of dictation as 
 to their own wages. We should like to see them 
 taking full advantage of all that they have fairly 
 earned, in the negotiation with their employers. 
 We should like to see a great stable independent 
 property in the hands of the labouring classes, and 
 their interest elevated to one of the high co-ordi¬ 
 nate interests of the state. It were well, we 
 think, if, by dint of education and virtue, they 
 at length secured a more generous remuneration 
 for labour, so as that wages should bear a much 
 
113 
 
 higher proportion than they do now to the rent of 
 land, and the profit of stock, which form the other 
 two ingredients in the value of a commodity. In 
 this competition between capitalists and workmen, 
 we profess ourselves to be on the side of the latter, 
 and would rejoice in every advantage which their 
 own industry and their own sobriety had won for 
 them. Rather than that, at the basis of society, 
 we should have a heartless, profligate, and mis- 
 thriven crew, on the brink of starvation, and 
 crouching under all the humiliations of pauperism, 
 we should vastly prefer an erect, and sturdy, and 
 withal well-paid and well-principled peasantry, even 
 though they should be occasionally able to strike 
 their tools, and to incommode their superiors by 
 bringing industry to a stand. We have no doubt, 
 at the same time, that the fear is altogether an ex¬ 
 travagant one—that the two classes would soon 
 come to a right adjustment—and that, in particu¬ 
 lar, the employers of labour would find it a far 
 more comfortable management, when they had to 
 do with a set of prosperous and respectable work¬ 
 men, than when they have to do with the fiery and 
 unreasonable spirits that so abound among a dissi¬ 
 pated, ill-taught, and ill-conditioned population. 
 In the strength of the principle of population, na¬ 
 ture has provided a sufficient security against the 
 prudential restraint upon marriages being carried 
 too far; and we may, therefore, always be sure of 
 an adequate supply of labourers for all the essen¬ 
 tial or important business of the land. But, 
 
 Voi,. III. I> 
 
114 
 
 through the law of pauperism, the restraint is not 
 carried far enough, and now we are oppressed, in 
 consequence, by a redundancy of numbers. By 
 abolishing this law, we simply leave the adjust¬ 
 ment of the balance to nature. Legislators vacil¬ 
 late, and are uncertain about the alternative of the 
 people being either too rich or too poor. But nature, 
 if unmeddled with by their interference, will so man¬ 
 age between the animal instincts on the one hand, 
 and the urgencies of self-preservation, or the higher- 
 principles of the mind, upon the other, as that they 
 shall neither be richer nor poorer than they ought 
 to be. 
 
 This prejudice, however, against savings banks, 
 and this alarm for the independence of the lower 
 orders, are very much confined to capitalists of 
 narrow views and narrow circumstances. There 
 is a delightful experience upon this subject, that 
 is multiplying and becoming more manifest every 
 day, and which goes to prove how much the inte¬ 
 rest of the employer and that of the workman is 
 at one. It is, that the expense of a well-paid la¬ 
 bourer is in general more than made up by the 
 superior worth and quality of his service. The 
 farmer, in those parishes where there is a compo¬ 
 sition of poor-rate with wages, does not find his 
 account in this system. The labour is cheaper, 
 but far less valuable in proportion—the work that 
 is underpaid, being done in a way so much more 
 slovenly, as to annihilate any advantage that might 
 otherwise have accrued to the master. It is an 
 
115 
 
 advantage grasped at by men of limited means, 
 and who find a saving in their immediate outlay to 
 be of some consequence to them. But in the large 
 and liberal scale, either of a great manufactory, or 
 of any agricultural operation in which a sufficient 
 capital is embarked, it is found that, with well- 
 paid and well-principled workmen, the prosperity 
 both of masters and servants is most effectually 
 consulted. There is something triumphant and 
 cheering in the perspective that is opened up by 
 such a contemplation; and we cannot but admire 
 that wisdom of nature’s mechanism, in virtue of 
 which, if law would only recal its blunders, and 
 philanthropy go forth in the work of indefinitely 
 enlightening and moralising the lower orders, we 
 should behold, in their extended sufficiency and 
 comfort, nought to impair, but rather every thing 
 to improve, the condition of all the other classes in 
 society. 
 
 it holds out a seeming advantage to the lower 
 orders, that when the wages of their labour fall 
 short of their necessary subsistence, they should 
 have the difference made good to them from a fund 
 that is chiefly provided by the higher orders of the 
 community. It is the boast of equitable law, that 
 it both ordains rights for the poor man, and pro¬ 
 tects him as effectually from ail encroachments 
 upon them, as it would the possessors of highest 
 rank or opulence in the land. He has the right of 
 freedom, and the right of personal security, and 
 the right of property in his wages, and in all that 
 
116 
 
 he accumulates from these wages: and when, ad¬ 
 ditionally to these, there is enacted for him the 
 right of levying from the other classes, that sum by 
 which his wages are deficient from the mainten¬ 
 ance of himself and of his family, it hath the appear¬ 
 ance of rendering him a more securely, and a more 
 abundantly privileged individual than he was be¬ 
 fore. But the last privilege is wholly neutralized, 
 should it be made palpable; and that, by a very 
 obvious political economy, that the law which en¬ 
 acts it, creates the very deficiency which it pro¬ 
 fesses to provide for; that the right of parish relief 
 just makes so much the less valuable to him the 
 right of property, even by abridging this property 
 at least to the full extent of its own allowances; 
 that though it should only operate to increase the 
 number of workmen by a very little, this is enough 
 of itself to reduce the wages very much; and that 
 therefore it would have been better for him, if law 
 had ceased one step sooner from that series of en¬ 
 actments which has been made in his favour. It 
 is quite undeniable, from the state of every parish 
 in England, that marriages are greatly more pre¬ 
 cipitate, and that licentiousness is greatly more 
 unrestrained, by the way in which the law of pau¬ 
 perism hath palliated the consequences both of 
 vice and of imprudence, and that practically and 
 really, in agricultural districts, a very great op¬ 
 pression is felt from the redundancy of labourers. 
 And the consequent deficiency in their wages is 
 made up at the judgment of the upper classes in 
 
society, whose tendency of course will be to rate 
 the allowance as low as possible. It is thus that 
 their state is subjected to the arbitration of others, 
 when, under a better economy of things, it might 
 have virtually been at their own arbitration. 
 
 It marks most strikingly the evil that ensues, 
 when the wisdom of man offers to mend or to 
 meddle with the wisdom of nature, that not alone 
 have the rich suffered in their patrimony, but the 
 poor have become more helpless and dependent, 
 because of the violence that has been done to the 
 original feelings of property, by the aggressions 
 thereupon of an artificial legislation. A people 
 under the imagination that law must provide for 
 them, will spread and multiply beyond the possi¬ 
 bility of them being upheld in comfort at all. A 
 people under a law that undertakes no more than 
 simply to protect them in their earnings, have a 
 patent way for raising a perpetual barrier against 
 that indigence, which law hath vainly endeavoured, 
 by its direct and formal provisions, to avert from 
 our borders. 
 
 The man who leans on the fancied sufficiency of 
 the poor laws, to meet his necessities when the 
 day of necessity cometh, has no inducement to 
 economise. He spends as fast as he gains; and on 
 an adverse fluctuation in the price of labour, he 
 has nothing for it but to submit to the terms of his 
 employer. It is true, that when the remuneration 
 is very glaringly beneath the par of human subsis¬ 
 tence, there is a certain allowance eked out to him 
 
118 
 
 from the legal charity of his parish; but in those 
 seasons of dreary vicissitude, when hundreds be¬ 
 side himself are thrown out of profitable work, we 
 may be sure that this allowance will form but a 
 meagre subsistence to himself and his family. The 
 peculiar hardship of such a condition, is, that in 
 order to enlarge the now straitened comforts of his 
 household, there is the utmost temptation to over¬ 
 working; and what is done by him, is done by 
 thousands more in the country beside himself—or, 
 in other words, the excessive supply of the market 
 with the commodities of their particular manufac¬ 
 ture, continues to be kept up and be extended, at 
 the very time when it is most desirable that the 
 overplus under which it labours should be wholly 
 cleared away. In these circumstances, it is quite 
 obvious, that the evil of an overstocked market, 
 with the consequent depression of wages, must be 
 sorely aggravated by the reckless improvidence of 
 labourers; who, without economy, are always from 
 hand to mouth, and must therefore put forth a 
 busier hand, at the time when it is most desirable 
 for them that the production were lessened, in¬ 
 stead of being augmented. It is thus, that in as 
 far as a poor-rate adds to the improvidence of 
 workmen, and in as far as it adds to the number 
 of them, (and it most directly and intelligibly min¬ 
 isters to both these effects,) in so far does it aggra¬ 
 vate the helplessness of their condition, on those 
 melancholy occasions, when the manufacturer, op¬ 
 pressed and overpowered with the solicitation of 
 
119 
 
 labourers for employment, can, in fact, hold them 
 in subjection to his own terms, and possess himself, 
 for the lowest possible recompense, of the time, 
 and strength, and services of a prostrate popula¬ 
 tion. 
 
 This process may be most beautifully reversed 
 under another system of tilings that would stimu¬ 
 late the economy of the lower orders; or, in other 
 words, under a system where, instead of leaning on 
 the fancied sufficiency of a legal provision, each 
 knew that he had nought but himself to lean upon. 
 Just conceive his little savings to be accumulated 
 into a stock that could at length uphold him for 
 months, even though the daily income was to be 
 arrested for the whole of that period. Let this, 
 we shall not say, be the universal, but let it ap¬ 
 proximate, in some degree, to the general habit 
 and condition of labourers—and then we cannot 
 fail to perceive that they will stand on a secure 
 and lofty vantage ground, whence it is that they 
 will be able, not only to weather, but also to con¬ 
 trol the fluctuations of the market. More parti¬ 
 cularly, in any season of mercantile distress, when, 
 because of the heavy accumulation of goods, 
 prices had fallen, and manufacturers were sure to 
 lose by bringing for a time any more of them to 
 market, how precisely accommodated to such a state 
 of things, is the simple capacity of labourers to up¬ 
 hold themselves for a season, without that helpless 
 dependence on the daily wage, which is felt by 
 those who, in virtue of their own reckless impro- 
 
120 
 
 yidence, are ever standing upon the very brink of 
 their resources. A set of workmen who must 
 either work or starve, is a sad incumbrance in a 
 situation like this; and it must be at once obvious 
 how, in their hands, the calamity that weighs 
 them down must be woefully aggravated and pro¬ 
 longed. A set of workmen again, who in the suf¬ 
 ficiency of their own accumulated means, can 
 afford to work less at a time of scanty remuneration, 
 or could even go to play for a season, and refuse 
 to touch one farthing of so miserable a hire; or 
 (which is the likeliest direction for them to take 
 in these circumstances) who could keep them¬ 
 selves a-going with other, though less lucrative 
 work, that perhaps might never have been per¬ 
 formed, but for the cheapness at which they are 
 willing to undertake it—let such workmen, in one 
 or other of these ways, simply withdraw from their 
 own particular manufacture the labour which they 
 wont to bestow upon it; and, with the production 
 so lessened, while the consumption proceeds at its 
 ordinary, or perhaps at a much faster rate, because 
 of the existing low price of the article, the now 
 overladen market must be speedily relieved, and 
 the price of the commodity will again rise to its 
 wonted level. The simple ability of the workman 
 to maintain himself for so many weeks without his 
 accustomed wages, is that which brings up these 
 wages in a far shorter period, than they otherwise 
 would to their customary level. A fair recom¬ 
 pense for labour, speedily accrues, as before, to the 
 
121 
 
 labourer, whose past economy in fact, is the instru¬ 
 ment of his present relief, and whose future econ¬ 
 omy, in like manner, will effectually shield him 
 from all those coming adversities to which a fitful 
 and fluctuating commerce is exposed. 
 
 But the growth of capital among the low r er 
 orders, would not only secure for them this occa¬ 
 sional relief. It would be the instrument of a 
 general and permanent elevation. They would 
 not only be saved by it from those periodical de¬ 
 scents to which they are else so liable; they would 
 not only throw a passage for themselves across 
 those abysses, through which they would other¬ 
 wise have had to flounder their hazardous and un¬ 
 certain way; but they could raise the whole plat¬ 
 form of their condition, and lift up its average, as 
 well as smooth or equalise its fluctuations. At 
 any time let manufacturers have to treat with 
 workmen who are not just dependent upon them 
 for the subsistence of to-morrow, but who for 
 weeks or months to come, could live upon the 
 fruits of their past industry and good conduct; 
 and they will meet a far greater difficulty and re¬ 
 sistance in bringing them to their own terms. 
 The workmen will be able to treat independently 
 with their employers. They are not obliged, in 
 such a state of things, to acquiesce in the low wage 
 that they would gladly submit to in other circum¬ 
 stances ; and it will take a higher wage than be¬ 
 fore to satisfy them. This they can attain to 
 without a poor-rate; but with a poor-rate they 
 
 Voi.. TIT. Q 
 
122 
 
 never will. It is through the medium of ther own 
 virtuous economy that the only patent and effec¬ 
 tual way lies, for elevating the lower orders, and 
 that permanently, in the scale. The law of pau¬ 
 perism has all along, with her lying promises, acted 
 as a cheat to lure them from the only road to their 
 own stable independence and comfort. It has now 
 placed them, all over England, on the brink of a 
 most fearful emergency. The wages of agricul¬ 
 tural labour have lamentably fallen beneath the 
 par of human subsistence; and, throughout the 
 great mass of the peasantry, there is a very gen¬ 
 eral recourse to such little scantlings or supple¬ 
 ments as are reluctantly doled out to them in the 
 shape of beggarly ministration from the parish 
 vestry ; and all this to men, who but for this ac¬ 
 cursed law, might, in the pure capacity of honest 
 and hard-working labourers, have, instead of being 
 arbitrated upon, been themselves the arbitrators of 
 their own state. 
 
 There is no institution then, more adapted to 
 the condition of a parish, at that juncture when it 
 enters upon the retracing process, which I have 
 elsewdiere explained, than a savings bank. It is 
 then that every endeavour should be made for rear¬ 
 ing the people into a habit, utterly the opposite of 
 that by which they are now depressed and degraded. 
 The influential men of any little vicinity, could do 
 much by their countenance and liberality on such 
 an occasion. They could, at least, afford to give 
 each new applicant for work as much more in the 
 
123 
 
 shape of wages, as they would then withhold from 
 him in the shape of poor-rate. The nominal price 
 of labour would rise by this difference; and with 
 such a prospect before them, as an ultimate deliv¬ 
 erance from the burden of the poor-rate altogether, 
 some might add a little more to the wage, with a 
 special view to the training of the young in the 
 practice of accumulation. And certainly the 
 motive to deposit would not as now be neutralised 
 by the existence of a right to relief, which the new 
 economy of things supposes to be done away. And 
 when once they exchanged the feeling of paupers 
 for the feeling of proprietors, the breath of another 
 spirit would animate the people; and that princi¬ 
 ple, to which Dr. Adam Smith so often refers, the 
 instant effort of every man to better his own con¬ 
 dition, would have its free and full operation 
 among them. When the general aim is to make 
 the most of that right which every man possesses 
 to parochial relief) from this must ensue a slothful, 
 and beggarly, and worthless population, who will 
 be kept in as low a condition as masters and over¬ 
 seers can reduce them to. When the general aim 
 is to make the most of that right which every man 
 has to his own earnings, from this must ensue a 
 population the reverse of the former in all their 
 characteristics, and who, by every new accession 
 made to the capital of the working classes, will 
 attain to higher wages than before. The best ser¬ 
 vice which can be rendered to the lower orders, is 
 to take away the former right altogether, and to 
 
124 
 
 turn to its utmost possible account the latter right; 
 which, in truth, is the only one that can at all avail 
 them. On the moment that they could afford to 
 live for a given period without labour, from that 
 moment the value of their services would rise in the 
 labour market.* They would never need to overwork 
 for the sake of an immediate subsistence; nor, of 
 course, to overdo the supply of any article of con¬ 
 sumption. The proportion between the supply 
 
 * We are quite aware, that it is not by the operation of hut a few savings 
 hanks, and a consequent capital in tile hands of fractionally a very small 
 number of our people, that a higher rate of wages will become general in 
 the country. To work this effect, there must he a corresponding generality 
 in the cause. There will not he this general elevation in the status of labour 
 ers, till there be a general habit of accumulation amongst them; and how¬ 
 ever much the individuals who do accumulate may benefit themselves, they 
 must hear a certain proportion to tire whole mass of the community, ere 
 they cun work a sensible advancement upon the whole in the circumstances 
 of tire lower orders. Suppose a district of the land, where the peasantry 
 had, by economy and good management, attained a measure of indepen¬ 
 dence; yet, if surrounded by other over-peopled districts, teeming with 
 reckless and improvident families, this were enough to keep down the re¬ 
 muneration of labour, even in that place where labourers had universally 
 become little capitalists. It is thus that the neighbourhood of Ireland will 
 retard tire progress of the lower orders in Britain, towards a permanently 
 higher state of comfort and sufficiency than they now enjoy. And the only 
 way of neutralizing the competition from that quarter, is just by carrying to 
 them too the beneficent influences of education, and training the people to 
 that style and habit of enjoyment which will at length bring later marriages, 
 and a less oppressive weight of population along with it. We are abun¬ 
 dantly sensible that the enlargement, which we now contemplate as await¬ 
 ing our operative classes, must be the slow result of a moral improvement 
 among themselves, which we fear will come on very gradually. But certain 
 it is, that, tardy as this way may he of a people’s amelioration, it is the only 
 way; and, at all events, there is nothing in the tumult and stir of those 
 
 that in the least degree is fitted to hasten it. 
 
V25 
 
 and the demand, would be generally in favour of’ 
 the workmen; and wages would be made perma¬ 
 nently to stand in a higher relation, both to rent 
 and profits, than they ever can maintain in the 
 hands of a reckless and improvident peasantry.* 
 
 * The disciples of Ricardo, who have adopted all his forimike on the sub¬ 
 ject of rent, profit, and wages, and of the relation which these three elements 
 bear to each other, while directly led to perceive how it is that wages may 
 increase at the expense of profit, may not acquiesce so readily in the posi¬ 
 tion, that wages may increase without uny diminution of profit, and solely 
 at the expense of rent. Now it should be observed, in the reasonings of 
 tins economist, that when he speaks of profit, and of it alone, falling by an 
 increase of wages, he keeps out of view, for the time at least, that process 
 which lie himself describes so well, and by which it is that inferior soils are, 
 
 the truth is, that, connected with this movement, there is not the mutual 
 
 ; “ obliges a country to have rect 
 fie it to raise its supply of food?” 
 (Ricardo’s Political Economy, 
 
 on, there was a better land which 
 :nt all to the wages of that labour, 
 : applied to it. The reason why 
 
126 
 
 The whole philosophy of a subject may be ex¬ 
 emplified within a narrow space. In its practical 
 
 enjoyment together, among the people, having been lower than was suffi¬ 
 cient to keep them stationary in point of numbers. They were willing, 
 for tlie sake of earlier marriages than they would otherwise have formed, 
 to surrender part of this ease or enjoyment; and thus they married so early 
 as to increase the population, and hence to make it necessary that “ land 
 of an inferior degree of fertility should he taken into cultivation.” (Ki- 
 
 Now, if, previous to the overflow of people upon this inferior soil, there 
 had been such an influence, from education, and other moral or exalting 
 causes, upon the lower ranks, as kept them from descending to a lower 
 style or standard of enjoyment, this of itself would have restrained the po- 
 
127 
 
 effects, pauperism is co-extensive with our empire: 
 In its principles, and in the whole rationale of its 
 
 after any great curtailii 
 
 which, fro 
 
 
128 
 
 operation, it may be effectually studied even on the 
 limited field of a small parochial community. It 
 then lies before us in more manageable compass; 
 and we even think, that one might in this way ac¬ 
 quire a truer discernment of the process—-just as a 
 process of mechanism is better understood by our 
 regard being directed to the model, than to the 
 ponderous and unwieldy engine itself. It is on 
 this account that we prize so much the following 
 little narrative by the overseer of Long Burton, in 
 Dorsetshire; a parish with a population of only 
 three hundred and twenty-seven, and therefore 
 peculiarly adapted for the distinct exhibition of 
 any influence which its parochial economy might 
 have on the state of its inhabitants. 
 
 The overseer had three able-bodied men out of 
 
 bourers, will be the property of the owners of land, and the receivers of 
 tithes und taxes.” The mercantile classes of society have it in their 
 power to retard, if not to prevent, this fall in the circumstances of their 
 order. They collectively can uphold a higher profit, by means of a more 
 profuse expenditure, and a higher style of living in their families—by turn¬ 
 ing a larger share of their gains to the object of immediate enjoyment, 
 and a less share of them to the growth and extension of a capital, which, 
 just in proportion to its magnitude, will diminish the profits of future years. 
 The individual merchant may take to himself so liberal a share now of 
 this world’s enjoyments, as to trench on his enjoyments afterwards; but 
 certain it is, that if, hy a change in the average habits of the whole mer¬ 
 cantile body, there was to be a more liberal expenditure among them, this, 
 instead of wasting, would perpetuate to them the means of liberal expen¬ 
 diture in all time coming. It would keep the capital lower than it now is, 
 and the profit higher; and thus it is, that by the collective will of capi¬ 
 talists, ns well ns by that of the peasantry, a limitation might be raised to 
 tlie rent of the landlord—and all the three classes might share more equally 
 in the produce of the country. 
 
• 129 
 
 employment, and whom it fell upon him to dispose 
 of. The farmers all saturated with workmen, 
 could not take them in; and rather than send them 
 to work upon the roads, he applied to a master 
 mason in the neighbourhood, who engaged to take 
 their services at the low rate of six shillings in the 
 week—the parish to make up the deficiency to the 
 three men, so as that they should, on the whole, 
 have fifteen-pence a-week for eacli member of their 
 families. The mason had previously in his em¬ 
 ployment, from seven to ten men, at the weekly 
 wage of eight or nine shillings each. But no 
 sooner did he take in these three supernumeraries 
 from the parish at six shillings, than he began to 
 treat anew with his old workmen, and threatened 
 to discharge them if they would not consent to a 
 lower wage. This of course would have thrown 
 them all upon the parish, for the difference be¬ 
 tween their reduced and their present wages; 
 upon perceiving which, the overseer instantly drew 
 back his three men from the mason, and at length 
 contrived to dispose of them otherwise.* Upon 
 
 :ct of oletter re 
 
 ed from the o’ 
 
 * The followin 
 Poole:— 
 
 “ Tl,e facts acting the three men nt Pong Burton, were as follows: 
 we had three able men out of employ, and rather than send them on the 
 roads to work, we engaged with Mr. Perratt, the mason, for them at six 
 shillings per week each. Mr. Perratt was at that time giving his men (from 
 seven to ten men) eight or nine shillings each. Mr. Perratt then saw he 
 could get men at a lower rate, and informed some of his old hands that he 
 should discharge and lower the wages; therefore, in consequence those 
 men (or many of them) would, at their discharge, become veryburthensome 
 lrr - R 
 
130 
 
 this the wages of the journeymen masons reverted 
 to what they were before. 
 
 Now this exemplifies the state of many agricul¬ 
 tural parishes in England. There is a reserve of 
 supernumeraries constantly on the eve of pouring 
 forth over all the departments of regular labour, 
 and on the instant of their doing so, forcing one 
 and all of the regular workmen within the margin 
 of pauperism. It is instructive to observe how 
 very few supernumeraries will suffice to produce 
 this effect; and by how very small an excess in the 
 number of labourers, a very great and grievous 
 reduction takes place in the wages of labour. It 
 is not even necessary for this purpose, that there 
 should be an actual breaking forth of supernumer¬ 
 aries on the already crowded departments of regu¬ 
 lar industry. It is enough that they are at all 
 times in readiness to break forth. The conscious¬ 
 ness of a few idle hands in every neighbourhood, 
 gives an advantage to the master, and an inferi¬ 
 ority to the servants, in all their negotiations with 
 each other. It has the effect of bringing wages 
 as far down as possible; so low as to the very 
 confines of beggary, and in many instances so low 
 as in fact to beggar the great mass of the popu- 
 
 to the parish of Long Burton. We immediately saw our error, of letting 
 him have men at a low rate, (for recollect, it was one or two shillings lower 
 than the farmers were giving at that time,) and took the men back on the 
 roads at certain prices, so as to make their earnings fifteen pence per head, 
 for their families; which, with Mr. Perratt’s six shillings per week, we were 
 obliged to make up from the parish to fifteen pence per head, per week.” 
 
131 
 
 lation. So wretched a remuneration as that of 
 eight or nine shillings a week to masons, and that 
 even previous to the irruption of supernumeraries 
 upon them, was still the effect of the existence of 
 supernumeraries. It is this in fact which has so 
 reduced the wages of agricultural labour over a 
 great part of England ; and virtually placed the 
 question of a workman’s recompense at the disposal, 
 and under the arbitration of parish overseers. 
 
 It will be seen how beautifully this process 
 would be reversed under a system where a parish 
 bank came in place of the parish vestry, and when 
 the people, instead of a claim upon the one, had, 
 what is far better, a capital in the other. Had 
 these masons been free of the presence of all su¬ 
 pernumeraries, and, moreover, had they been in 
 possession of a fund which could have subsisted 
 them, even but a few weeks, they would have stood 
 to their employers in a much firmer and more inde¬ 
 pendent attitude; and the miserable pittance of 
 nine shillings a week would not have satisfied 
 them. It is a mere evasion of the argument to 
 say, that the master could have reduced them to 
 his own terms, by hiring in labourers from a dis¬ 
 tance. This is just saying, that ere a capital in the 
 hand of labourers work its full effect upon their 
 condition, it must be generally, and not partially 
 diffused among them. There can be no doubt, 
 that the vicinity of a population with inferior 
 habits, that the vicinity of Ireland, for example, 
 must retard the march of our working classes, to a 
 
132 
 
 greater sufficiency, and a higher status in the com¬ 
 monwealth. But this does not impair, it rather 
 enhances the conclusion, that the high road to their 
 advancement is the accumulation of such a capital 
 as might enable them to weather all the adverse 
 fluctuations of trade, and as might enable them, 
 throughout every season, to treat more indepen¬ 
 dently with their employers, than labourers can do, 
 who, without resources, are constantly, to use a 
 familiar phrase, from hand to mouth, or on the very 
 brink of starvation. The establishment of so much 
 as one savings bank is at least the beginning of 
 such a progress, although it will require the estab¬ 
 lishment and the successful operation of many, 
 ere a sensible effect can be wrought by them on 
 the general economic condition of our peasantry. 
 This, however, is the unfailing way of it; and in 
 proportion to the length that it is carried, will be 
 its effect in raising the price of labour. 
 
 We hold the following narrative, which relates 
 to the distresses experienced some years ago in 
 the town of Leicester and its neighbourhood, to be 
 very rich in the principles of this question. It 
 was given and authenticated by one of the most 
 respectable citizens in the place. 
 
 The great employment of the population in that 
 quarter is the manufacture of stockings; which 
 manufacture, in the year 1S17, was in a state of 
 very great depression. It was at this period that 
 Mr. Cort was applied to by the township of Smea- 
 ton Westorby, in the parish of Kibworth, Beau- 
 
133 
 
 champ, for work to some of their people. He 
 succeeded in finding admittance for them to the 
 service of a hosier in the town of Leicester, who 
 agreed to pay each of them five shillings a-week; 
 and the township to which they belonged, were 
 very thankful to make up the deficiency in their 
 wages, according to the state and number of their 
 families. Mr. Cort was, in a few days afterwards, 
 called upon by a man whom he knew to have been 
 a regular servant in the establishment of this ho¬ 
 sier, and who complained that, immediately after 
 the importation of the mechanics from the coun¬ 
 try, he and others had been dismissed from their 
 employment. On remonstrating with their mas¬ 
 ter, and asking him how they were to live, he 
 replied that it was not his affair; an answer which, 
 however harshly it may sound in those countries 
 where pauperism is unknown, may signify no 
 more, in many parts of England, than simply a 
 committal of discarded workmen to their legal 
 right on the charity of the parish. Certain it is, 
 that the excess of workmen beyond the work in 
 demand, created a very melancholy reduction in 
 the wages of the whole; insomuch that, according 
 to the estimate of our very intelligent informer, in 
 the parish alone of St. Margaret’s in Leicester, 
 the wages of the stocking trade sustained a decline 
 at the rate of at least ,§£20,000 in the year. At the 
 time of greatest depression, the sum earned by an 
 able-bodiedmechanic was five shillings andsixpence 
 in the week; to which there was added an allow- 
 
134 
 
 ance from the parish, according to the circum¬ 
 stances of his family. In the case of a man, wife, 
 and two children, it was made up to nine shillings 
 in the week. This allowance system,* as it is 
 
 • There is on able and judicious pamphlet published sometime ago, by 
 the Reverend Mr. Brereton, of Little Ma6singham, in Norfolk, entitled, 
 “ Observations on the Administration of the Poor Laws in Agricultural 
 Districts.” It contains a striking exposition of the evils of wliat is termed 
 the “ allowance systemor that system under which defective wages are 
 supplemented out of tho poor-rate. The following is an extract from this 
 interesting little work:— 
 
 “ The system of allowances thrusts its ruthless hand into the hearts of 
 the people, and violates the ties of nature. Natural affection between 
 parent and child is the comer stone of social happiness. In Scotland, it is 
 said, that the children and relations of persons who are in danger of falling 
 upon the parish, generally use their utmost endeavours to prevent such a 
 disgrace to the family. This was the case in England till the year 1793. 
 Now it has become necessary to make laws to compel parents to maintain 
 their children, and children to maintain their indigent parents. Such en¬ 
 actments are a lamentable proof that the natural affection of the poor 1ms 
 fallen to a low ebb. There were two cases in this 6mall parish, in which 
 the children, though in good business, had neglected their aged parents, 
 merely because the parish had been accustomed to find them bread. The 
 anxiety of a father to proride for his children would stimulate his industry, 
 sweeten his toil, and endear those children to bis heart But if the law 
 will decree that the father and the mother cannot, or need not provide for 
 their offspring, then may you expect that natural affection will cool, and 
 lust usurp the dominion of virtuous love over the hearts of the people. If 
 children are taught that from the day of their birth they have been sustained 
 by nn allowance from the parish—that as soon as they are able to work 
 they are called upon to do so, not to assist their parents, but to relieve the 
 parish charge—if as soon, or even before they attain the age of discretion, 
 they are released hya decree of the magistrates from parental authority, and 
 it becomes the interest of parent and child to separate all mutual connexion 
 and concern, of' course one must not expect filial affection or honour to 
 parents. Who can read without pain, and even indignation, articles like tho 
 following, blazoned through our villages and cottages, with the signatures of 
 
135 
 
 termed iu some parts of the country, was perse¬ 
 vered in for a considerable time, but was soon found 
 
 « • Every child, is. 9d.' * Every hoy, 3s.’ 
 
 “ ‘ All the earnings of nny part to be considered as part of the allow- 
 
 “ When boys of 13, 11, or 15 years of age, begin to earn more than their 
 allowance, the allowance of the parent is diminished by that excess; and to 
 avoid that diminution, parents turn their children adrift upon the world, 
 just at the time when they most need advice and protection, and when their 
 industry should avail to their parents’ comfort. I have seen father, and 
 mother, and daughter, pensioners of the parish, preserving their separate 
 allowance, separate purse, and separate cupboard, and quarrelling with each 
 other who shall provide the fire. It would he tedious to multiply illustra¬ 
 tions here; but when puerile and unnecessary regulations violate the tics of 
 blood, and the duties of religion, who can regard without detestation such 
 an unrestricted system of pauperism ? The rebuke of Jesus to those scribes 
 und priests who, by their own by-laws, perverted the law of nature, and of 
 nature’s God, is very pointed: ‘Ye say, if a man shall say to his father or 
 mother, it is Corban, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, he 
 shall be free, and ye suffer him to do no more for his father and his mother, 
 making the word of God of none effect through your traditions, and many 
 such like things do ye.' ” 
 
 “ Honour and chastity in every rank, und especially among the poor, are 
 intimately connected with natural affection. On this point, however, I will 
 not enter into details, which could be only painful. It is sufficiently noto¬ 
 rious, that promiscuous intercourse is become common from early age—that 
 marriage is seldom contracted with honour, and that illegitimacy has greatly 
 increased since the introduction of this system, and the existing laws of 
 
 “ I requested the governor of a neighbouring hundred house to furnish me 
 with the number of children horn within a certain period, distinguishing the 
 legitimate from the illegitimate. The account was, 77 children born -.—23 
 legitimate—al illegitimate. 
 
 “ There is a woman belonging to this parish who has had four illegitimate 
 children, and is now pregnant with a fifth. During the last year her chil¬ 
 dren have been supported almost entirely by the parish, partly through the 
 running away of the fathers, and partly through the negligence of the former 
 and the present overseers, who have either lost the orders, or neglected to 
 enforce them. The woman has, I believe, received more than the allow¬ 
 ance of a widow in similar circumstances, and thus not only is profligacy 
 
136 
 
 to aggravate the mischief which it was designed 
 to alleviate. It obviously detains a much greater 
 number at the work of the depressed manufacture, 
 than would otherwise have adhered to it; and 
 thereby has the effect of perpetuating and even 
 augmenting the glut of its commodities in the 
 market. It was thus found, that just in proportion 
 as the parish extended its allowances, the manu¬ 
 facturers reduced their wages; for which wages, 
 however, it was still an object, in the midst of 
 their scanty means, that all the hands of the family 
 should be pressed into the employment, and be 
 exerted to the uttermost. In this style of man¬ 
 agement matters grew unavoidably worse, till the 
 glut became quite oppressive, and was felt to be 
 alike burdensome to the manufacturer and the 
 operative. They tried, therefore, a new expe¬ 
 dient ; and, instead of making good the defect of 
 wages by means of parochial aid, they resolved on 
 a subscription for the purpose of detaching a large 
 proportion of men from the employ altogether, 
 whether by maintaining them in a state of total 
 idleness, or by employing them at some agricultu¬ 
 ral work, for a very inferior wage, or even for 
 nothing at all. In a single month, this way of it 
 operated like a charm. The glut was soon cleared 
 away, when the production of the article was thus 
 
 shielded from punishment, but a bounty is afforded it. If the law of bas¬ 
 tardy should continue in its present shape, a few simple regulations would 
 correct many abuses attending it.” 
 
137 
 
 limited; and just in virtue of a certain number 
 being kept off from their own professional business 
 of working stockings, there was speedily restored 
 to that neighbourhood the cheering spectacle of 
 well-paid industry, and a well-fed population. 
 
 The whole sum by which this restoration was 
 achieved, amounted to nine thousand pounds; and 
 this did not exceed twelve shillings for each indi¬ 
 vidual engaged in the stocking manufacture in the 
 town and environs of Leicester. Had there been 
 a deposit then to this extent from each in a sav¬ 
 ings bank, they had the means of accomplishing a 
 deliverance for their whole body, by supporting in 
 idleness, or at other work, a certain part of them. 
 But this is not the way in which, after that a habit 
 of accumulation has been established among la¬ 
 bourers, the product of that accumulation will be 
 applied. For the purpose of working a good effect, 
 it is not necessary that there should be any such 
 combined or corporate movement; or any resource 
 whatever to the plans and expedients of com¬ 
 mittee-ship. The thing works far best when it 
 works naturally. The same effect is arrived at 
 just by each individual being upon his own ac¬ 
 cumulation ; and when a glut comes round, he 
 will spontaneously work less when a miserable re¬ 
 numeration is going, than if he were depending 
 for his daily subsistence on his daily labour. An 
 overstocked market is either prevented or more 
 speedily relieved, simply by so many of the work¬ 
 men ceasing to work, or by a great many working 
 Vol. III. s 
 
138 
 
 moderately. It is thus, that a savings bank is the 
 happiest of all expedients for filling up the gaps, 
 and equalising the deficiencies, and shortening 
 those dreary intervals of ill-paid work, which now 
 occur so frequently to the great degradation and 
 distress of every manufacturing population. 
 
 The subscription of nine thousand pounds at 
 Leicester, just did for the population there, what, 
 by the system of savings banks, any population 
 might do for themselves. It would not of course 
 take two or three thousand people off from their 
 work, and keep them idle or otherwise employed 
 for a month or two. But it would exempt all 
 from the pressure of that immediate necessity 
 which now urges them to work to excess. The 
 effect in clearing away the glut would just be the 
 same; and the people would owe to themselves a 
 benefit that, in this instance, was conferred upon 
 them by others. They would soon recover the 
 level of their old and natural prices; nay, perma¬ 
 nently raise this level, so as to obtain a permanently 
 higher status in the commonwealth. 
 
 We conclude this chapter by the following ex¬ 
 tract from that article in the Edinburgh Review, 
 which we have already alluded to. 
 
 “There is another and a far more excellent 
 way—not to be attained, certainly, but by a change 
 of habit among the workmen themselves—yet such 
 a change as may be greatly promoted by those 
 whose condition or character gives them influence 
 in society. We have always been of opinion, that 
 
139 
 
 the main use of a savings bank was, not to elevate 
 labourers into the class of capitalists, but to equal¬ 
 ize and improve their condition as labourers. We 
 should like them to have each a small capital, not 
 wherewith to become manufacturers, but where¬ 
 with to control manufacturers. It is in this way 
 (and we can see no other) that they will be en¬ 
 abled to weather all the fluctuations to which trade 
 is liable. It is the cruel necessity of overworking 
 which feeds the mischief of superabundant stock, 
 and which renders so very large a transference of 
 hands necessary ere the market can be relieved of 
 the load under which it groans and languishes. 
 Now, this is a necessity that can only be felt by 
 men on the brink of starvation, who live from hand 
 to mouth, and have scarcely more than a day’s 
 earnings for the subsistence of the day. Let these 
 men only be enabled, on the produce of former 
 accumulations, to live through a season of depres¬ 
 sion while they work moderately, or, if any of them 
 should so choose it, while they do not work at all, 
 —and they would not only lighten such a period 
 of its wretchedness, but they would inconceivably 
 shorten its duration. The overplus of manufac¬ 
 tured goods, which is the cause of miserable wages, 
 would soon clear away under that restriction of 
 work which would naturally follow on the part of 
 men who did not choose, because they did not 
 need, to work for miserable wages. What is now 
 a protracted season of suffering and discontent to 
 the lower orders, would, in these circumstances, 
 
140 
 
 become to them a short but brilliant career of holi¬ 
 day enjoyment. The report of a heavy downfiil 
 of wages, instead of sounding like a knell of de¬ 
 spair in their ears, would be their signal for rising 
 up to play. We have heard, that there does not 
 exist in our empire a more intellectual and accom¬ 
 plished order of workmen than the weavers of 
 Paisley. It was their habit, we understand, to 
 abandon their looms throughout the half or nearly 
 the whole of each Saturday, and to spend this time 
 in gardening, or in the enjoyment of a country 
 walk. It is true, that such time might sometimes 
 be viciously spent; but still we should rejoice in 
 such a degree of sufficiency among our operatives, 
 as that they could afford a lawful day of every 
 week for their amusement, and still more, that 
 they could afford whole months of relaxed and 
 diminished industry, when industry was underpaid. 
 This is the dignified posture which they might 
 attain; but only after the return of better times, 
 and through the medium of their own sober and de¬ 
 termined economy. Every shilling laid up in store, 
 and kept in reserve for the evil day, would 
 strengthen the barrier against such a visitation of 
 distress and difficulty as that from which we are 
 yet scarcely emerging. The very habits too, 
 which helped them to accumulate in the season of 
 well-paid work, would form our best guarantee 
 against the vicious or immoral abuse pf this ac¬ 
 cumulation, in the season either of entire or com- 
 parative inactivity. We would expect an increase 
 
141 
 
 of reading, and the growth of literary cultivation, 
 and the steady advancement of virtuous and re¬ 
 ligious habits,—and, altogether, a greater weight 
 of character and influence among the labouring 
 classes, as the permanent results of such a system. 
 Instead of being the victims of every adverse 
 movement in trade, they would become its most 
 effective regulators. 
 
 “ This is the eminence that the labourers of our 
 nation are fully capable both of reaching and of 
 maintaining. But it is neither the Poor-rate of 
 England, nor the law of Parochial Aid in Scotland, 
 that will help them on to it. These have only de¬ 
 ceived them away from the path which leads to 
 independence; and amid all the complaints which 
 have been raised against the system of a compul¬ 
 sory provision for the poor, nothing is more cer¬ 
 tain than that our poor, because underpaid opera¬ 
 tives, are the principal sufferers by it. Every 
 other class in society has its compensation. It is 
 paid back again to the manufacturer in the shape 
 of a reduction in the wages of his workmen, and 
 to the landholder by a reduction in the price of all 
 manufactured articles. It is only the operative 
 himself, who appears to be pensioned by it, that is 
 really impoverished. It has deadened all those in¬ 
 citements to accumulation which would have raised 
 him and his fellow-labourers to a footing of perma¬ 
 nent security in the state—And, not till their eyes 
 have been opened to the whole mischief and cruelty 
 of this delusion—not till they see where it is that 
 
142 
 
 their most powerful and malignant enemy is lying in 
 ambush—not till they have learned that, under 
 the guise of charity, there has been an influence 
 at work for many years, which has arrested the 
 march of the lower orders to the elevation that 
 naturally and rightfully belongs to them, and till 
 they come to understand that it is by their own 
 exertion and self-denial alone that they can win 
 their way to it—not, in short, till the popular cry 
 is for the abolition, rather than the extension of 
 pauperism, will our labouring classes have attained 
 their full share of comfort and importance in the 
 commonwealth.” 
 
143 
 
 CHAP. XX. 
 
 ON THE COMBINATIONS OF WORKMEN FOR THE 
 PURPOSE OF RAISING WAGES. 
 
 We fear that the cause of savings banks may have 
 sustained a temporary discredit from the recent 
 conduct of workmen all over the country. The 
 apprehension is, that, by a large united capital 
 amongst them, they might get the upper hand of 
 their employers altogether; that, in possession of 
 means which could enable them to be idle, they 
 may exercise a power most capriciously and most 
 inconveniently for the other classes of society; 
 that they may lay manufacturers under bondage 
 by their impregnable combinations; and, striking 
 work at the most critical and unexpected junc¬ 
 tures, they may subject the whole economy of 
 human life to jolts and sudden derangements which 
 might be enough for its overthrow. These fears, 
 enhanced though they have been of late by the 
 outrages of workmen in various parts of the coun¬ 
 try, would speedily be dissipated, we believe, un¬ 
 der the light of growing experience. The repeal 
 of the combination laws has not even yet been 
 adequately tried. The effervescence which has 
 followed on that repeal, is the natural, and, we 
 believe,'the temporary effect of the anterior state 
 of things. There was nothing more likely than 
 
144 
 
 that the people, when put in possession of a power 
 which they felt to be altogether new, would take 
 a delight in the exercise of it, and break forth into 
 misplaced and most extravagant manifestations. 
 But if the conduct of the one party have been ex¬ 
 travagant, the alarm of the other party we con¬ 
 ceive to have been equally extravagant. We trust 
 that the alarm may have in part been dissipated, 
 ere Government shall be induced to legislate any 
 further upon the subject; or to trench, by any of 
 its acts, on the great principle of every man being- 
 entitled to make the most of his own labour, and 
 also of acting in concert with his fellows for the 
 production of a general benefit, as great as they 
 can possibly make out to the whole body of la¬ 
 bourers. 
 
 The repeal of the combination laws in Eng¬ 
 land has been attended with consequences which 
 strongly remind us of the consequences that en¬ 
 sued, after the Revolution, from the repeal of the 
 game laws in France. The whole population, 
 thrown agog by their new privilege, poured forth 
 upon the country, and, variously accoutred, made 
 war, in grotesque and unpractised style, upon the 
 fowls of the air and the beasts of the field. In a 
 few months, however, the extravagance subsided, 
 and the people returned to their old quiescent 
 habits and natural occupations. We feel assured 
 that, in like manner, this delirium of a newly 
 awakened faculty among our British workmen will 
 speedily pass away. They will at length become 
 
145 
 
 wise and temperate in the use of it. Neither 
 party, in fact, well understand how to proceed in 
 the unwonted relation wherein they now stand to 
 each other. There is indefinite demand upon the 
 one side; upon the other there are distrust, and 
 a most sensitive dread of encroachment. They 
 have not yet completed their trial of strength; 
 and just because, in ignorance of each others’ 
 powers, there are yet the effort, and the excita¬ 
 tion, and the busy rivalship, of a still undeter¬ 
 mined conflict. If Parliament would but suffer 
 the great principle upon which its repeal has been 
 founded to have full and unfettered swing in the 
 country, we have no doubt, that, after a very 
 few vibrations, the matter would at length settle 
 down into a right and a comfortable adjustment 
 for all parties. The experience of the evil that 
 results to themselves from an overdone ambition, 
 would far more effectually chasten and repress the 
 obstinacy or the daring of workmen, than all the 
 terrors of the statute-book ; and a harmony would 
 soon be established in a natural way between those 
 parties whom the law's of the state had only set at 
 variance. 
 
 The whole of this subject seems resolvable into 
 three great divisions. First, for the question, 
 “ What were the right enactment in regard to 
 combinations, on the pure and abstract principles 
 of law ?” Second, the inquiry whether, under 
 such an enactment, all the practical mischief that 
 is apprehended from combinations, would not be 
 Voi„ hi. t 
 
146 
 
 sufficiently provided against without further law, 
 and just by the action and reaction of certain 
 natural influences, that operate throughout soci¬ 
 ety, and among the parties themselves. Third, 
 the consideration of the fears and the prejudices of 
 men upon this subject, which are grounded upon 
 Economic Theories. 
 
 I. The great principle of law upon this, and 
 upon every other subject, is, that it should qua¬ 
 drate as much as it can possibly be made to do, 
 with obvious morality. It is most desirable, that 
 whatever the legislature shall ordain to be a crime, 
 and liable to punishment, should be felt as a crime 
 by man’s natural conscience. In every case when 
 there is a want of sympathy between the enact¬ 
 ments of the statute-book, and the dictates of 
 natural virtue, there is an expenditure and loss of 
 strength incurred by the government of a coun¬ 
 try, when it either ordains such enactments, or 
 carries them into effect. It is sure to lose ground 
 thereby, in public or popular estimation;—and 
 when the arbitrary regulations of a state are thus 
 made to thwart and run counter to the indepen¬ 
 dent feelings and judgments of men, this is cer¬ 
 tain to infuse an element of weakness into the 
 body politic. The heart-burnings of him who 
 suffers the penalty, meet with powerful reinforce¬ 
 ment, in the sympathy of all his fellows. He 
 feels himself to be a martyr or a hero, and not a 
 criminal; and, if treated as a criminal, this only 
 puts a generous imlignancy into his heart, in 
 
147 
 
 which he is supported by a kindred sentiment 
 among all the free and noble spirits of the land. 
 It is thus that the stability of government, and 
 with it the cause of public order and tranquillity, 
 is put to hazard by every law which squares not 
 with the jurisprudence of Nature—and that some 
 strong case of expediency would need to be made 
 out, ere that should be held a crime in the eye of 
 the law, which is not a crime in the eye of Nature 
 also. 
 
 Oil the other hand, let law be on the side of 
 clear and unquestionable morality—let that which 
 it reckons with as a delinquency, be regarded as a 
 delinquency by every unsophisticated conscience 
 —let the offence against which its penalties are 
 directed, be felt as an offence against the natural 
 dictates of humanity and rectitude—let its voice 
 of rebuke or of threatening, be at one with the 
 voice of the heart, insomuch that all the denun¬ 
 ciations of the statute-book are echoed to by the 
 universal sense of justice in society; and every 
 act of such a legislation will inconceivably 
 strengthen the authority from which it emanates. 
 Even though a very numerous class of the com¬ 
 munity should be thwarted by it in some favourite 
 but iniquitous design, any discontent of theirs 
 would be overborne by the general and concur¬ 
 rent feeling of the whole community besides. 
 Nothing could withstand the force of law, if thus 
 aided by the force of public opinion; and any 
 government whose deeds are responded to by this 
 
148 
 
 natural sense of equity among men, may surely 
 count on such support and sympathy through the 
 land, as shall make its authority to be quite irre¬ 
 sistible. 
 
 Now, we fear that there have been times when 
 both these principles were traversed by Govern¬ 
 ment, in its management of combinations. For, 
 first, there seems nothing criminal in the act of a 
 man ceasing to work at the expiry of his engage¬ 
 ment, because not satisfied with his present wage, 
 and desirous of a higher; or in the act of men 
 confederated and doing jointly, or together, the 
 same thing. On the contrary, it seems altogether 
 fair, that each should make as much as he can of 
 his own labour; and that just as dealers of the 
 same description meet and hold consultations for 
 the purpose of enhancing the price of their com¬ 
 modity, so it should be equally competent for 
 workmen to deliberate, and fix on any common, 
 if it be not a criminal agreement, and that to en¬ 
 hance, if they can, the price of their own services. 
 There really is nothing morally wrong in all this; 
 and however a man may be treated on account of 
 it as a delinquent by the law, he certainly is not 
 regarded as a delinquent in the eye of natural 
 conscience. It was because of this discrepancy 
 between nature and the law, that we held it a good 
 thing, when, by the repeal act, it was expunged 
 from the statute book—and we hope that no sub¬ 
 sequent act will again restore it. It is true, that 
 while the whole statute law against combinations 
 
149 
 
 has been abrogated, they, by the last act of parlia¬ 
 ment, have again been made liable as before to 
 prosecution and punishment under the common 
 law.* Yet we fondly trust, that even the applica¬ 
 tion of common law to the practice in question, 
 will fall into desuetude, as a thing not suited to 
 the spirit of the age-j—an expiring relict of the 
 
 * By the net of 5th George IV. cap. 95, all the enactments against com¬ 
 binations, of which a long enumeration is given, are repealed; and they who 
 enter into combinations, are declared to be not “ subject or liable to any 
 indictment or prosecution for conspiracy, or to any other criminal informa¬ 
 tion or punishment whatever, under the common or the statute law. 
 
 By the act of Gth George IV. cap. 129, this last act is repealed; but 
 there is enacted over again its repeal of all the old statutory enactments 
 ugainst combination. So that the statute law continues to be abrogated, as 
 
150 
 
 barbarity of other times. And accordingly, in al¬ 
 most all the prosecutions which have taken place 
 ever since the repeal act was modified, and in part 
 done away, it is not the simple deed of combina¬ 
 tion which is proceeded against, but certain ob¬ 
 vious and undoubted criminalities which are 
 charged upon the promoters or the agents of com¬ 
 bination. 
 
 But, secondly, while Government on the one 
 hand, by its penalties against the simple act of 
 combination, put forth a rigour far beyond the na¬ 
 tural dimensions of this alleged enormity, they, on 
 
 “ Do you mean to say, that it was your opinion that a rise should not 
 take place, or was that the opinion of the men? It was my own opinion, 
 at least in our own manufactory. 
 
 “ In selling your goods, do you decide for yourselves what price you will 
 sell them at? Of course. 
 
 “ You would not think it right for any other person to interfere and say 
 this price is unreasonable, and you must sell them at a lower rate? It is 
 often done in trade; people are often ready to say we ought to sell them 
 lower. 
 
 “ Do you, in point of fact, admit tile interference of any persons to regu¬ 
 late your prices ? Certainly nob 
 
 “ Do you consider that it would be fair to allow you to regulate the sale 
 of your own wares, and to prohibit the men from selling their own labour 
 ns they may think proper? By no means, we do not wish any tiling of the 
 kind; nor would I allege the shadow of any tiling that should seem to say 
 
 The question which succeeds tile last quoted, with its answer, marks 
 out most specifically the only grievance of which masters have a right 
 to complain, and the only legitimate object which Government should aim 
 to secure:— 
 
 “ Then what is it you wish to suggest to tile Committee for them to do 
 in the present case? That if the men in my employ do not choose to work 
 at the wages I can afford to give them, I may be at liberty to obtain other 
 men from the neighbourhood about me.” 
 
151 
 
 the other hand, have not been declared and rigor¬ 
 ous enough against those real enormities, which 
 are often attendant on combinations. If, in the 
 one way, they have greatly outrun the sympathies 
 of the country—in the other way, they, for a time, 
 perhaps, as greatly fell short of them. A mere 
 combination among those who are unwilling- to 
 work, is not in the eye of morality a crime. But 
 the members of a combination proceed to a very 
 great and undeniable crime, when they put forth 
 a hand, or even utter dark and terrifying threats 
 of violence to those who are willing to work. This 
 is the point against which the whole force of legis¬ 
 lation ought to be directed; and though the public 
 cannot go along with those severities of imprison¬ 
 ment and exile, which law has inflicted for the 
 naked offence of combination, yet they will go 
 most readily along with far greater severities than 
 have ever yet been inflicted for the outrage done 
 to those who refuse to enter them.* 
 
 • If, on the one hand, it evince how much the public feeling is with 
 labourers in all their fair attempts to better their condition, when it is ad¬ 
 mitted, as in an instance already quoted, even by their masters; so, on the 
 other hand, it evinces how much the public feeling is against labourers in 
 the outrages of which they have been guilty, when workmen themselves 
 betray a strong anxiety, either to disguise or to disclaim them. In this 
 view, we hold the following extracts from the minutes of evidence to he 
 
 The first is from the examination of John Swift, a journeyman weaver at 
 Newsome, near Huddersfield. 
 
 “ They would have been dismissed from the union?—Yes; I do not know 
 of any case where a person has been dismissed, but they have invariably 
 
152 
 
 This then is the point at which the legislature 
 should put forth all their rigour—even to protect 
 
 *' And forfeited the money they had paid?—Yes, forfeited the threepence 
 they had put in. 
 
 “ That may have gone on for a considerable time ?—Certainly. 
 
 “ They have forfeited all the contribution they have made ?—Yes; there 
 have been two or three cases in .5,000 men. 
 
 “ Have they continued to work in the same place ?—Yes, with the same 
 
 “ You mean now to state, that no arrangements have been made to pre- 
 vent their continuing to work at those lower wages, for the same men and 
 at the same prices? Yes, I do. 
 
 “ You never heard of any case of the kind? No. 
 
 “ Are you sure no instance has occurred within your knowledge, where 
 a man has been willing to work at a lower rate of wages than the union had 
 fixed, and where he had been prevented? I am sure there has not one. 
 
 “ Have you ever heard of any brickbats having been thrown through the 
 windows of the workshops when the men had struck? I have. 
 
 “ In what cases? In one case, in Mr. William Norton’s strike. I went 
 over myself when I heard it, and said, ‘ I will give ten guineas to any man 
 who will bring me word who threw that brickbat through the window, 
 whether it was a union man,or not;’ and nothing could be found hut a 
 drunken man of one of the master manufacturers; and they said, this man, 
 
158 
 
 “ Do you conceive it right and pro 
 any individual coming from a distal 
 wages that he may think fit?—No, 
 right of interfering. 
 
 “ You think tiiat Mr. Guthrie, or i 
 feet liberty to employ any man he p: 
 you have in his colliery?—Yes, he 1 
 
 Vol. III. 
 
154 
 
 those who have abandoned it. In consistency 
 with their own great and glorious principle of 
 
 “ Has he ever done that ?—No, he pays them all alike; hut supposing he 
 employs a man for three shillings a day, and gives us four shillings, we have 
 nothing to say against that.” 
 
 The next is from the examination of Philip Hardy, a shipwright:— 
 
 “ Have you known any instances where men have been threatened by 
 the union for working since the strike ?—Never one. 
 
 “ Are you sure of that?—I never heard of an instance of it. 
 
 “ Are there any at work now in Mr. Young’s yard?—Yes, there are several. 
 
 1(1 Do they belong to the union?—Some do, some do not.” 
 
 The next is from the examination of John Gast, a shipwright:— 
 
 “ Then do you mean to state, that the withdrawing from the different 
 yards has been the act of the men themsdves, independently of any com- 
 i ntlo th the union ?—If the Committee will leave the word union 
 out of the question, because the union is a general term. 
 
 “ Either with the members of the committee, or with the general meet¬ 
 ing of the union?—I mean to say, that every man’s act, at least the acts of 
 the shipwrights in the River Thames, as respects the union, has been spon¬ 
 taneous. 
 
 “ Are there no cases in which the men, after having returned to their 
 work, or when working under any given circumstances in any yards, have 
 been called to an account for it by the committee?—I really know of none, 
 I am not in possession of any case at all where they have been at work, 
 and called to any account at all, further than their own application, direct 
 or indirect, ns to the nature of the case, and that has been always left to 
 themselves. Whenever they come to the committee upon any business, the 
 committee have invariably said, ‘ Why do you trouble us ? we have nothing 
 at all to do with it, settle the matter with yourselves; we want to know 
 nothing of your business; whatever there has been, you and your employers 
 are at full liberty to settle it.’ ” 
 
 It is interesting to remark how much the avowed sentiments of the strike- 
 work shipwrights on the Thames are at one with the sentiments of natural 
 equity on this point. They at least disclaim all right of interference with 
 the freedom of individual workmen. It is not essential to our argument, 
 that they are honest in this disavowal. They indicate, at all events, a con¬ 
 sciousness of such interference being wrong; and our Government might 
 proceed, with all safety, to legislate more rigorously than they have ever yet 
 
155 
 
 freedom, they should guard to the uttermost the 
 freedom of those who are willing, from the ty- 
 
156 
 
 ranny and violence of those who are not willing 
 to work. It was in the spirit of kindness to the 
 working classes, that the act for the repeal of 
 the combination laws was passed; and it would 
 appear, as if in the exuberance of this spirit, that 
 an unwonted gentleness and forbearance had been 
 made to run through all the provisions of it. The 
 punishment, whether for forcing, by violence, their 
 fellow-workmen to combinations along with them 
 —or for forcing, by violence, their masters into a 
 
 hava no power whatever over us; they were appointed to draw up a state- 
 ment of prices, and submit them to the general body for inspection.” 
 
 This was met by n series of resolutions on the part of the shipbuilders, 
 who manifest an equally just discernment of the natural equities, as is mani¬ 
 fest in the following extract 
 
 “ That disclaiming therefore entirely all intention or wish to exercise any 
 oppressive power over the workman, or to prevent his obtaining, by equita¬ 
 ble means, the fair and just remuneration to which his labour is entitled, but 
 anxious alone for the restoration of freedom of individual opinion, and of the 
 open competition of labour consequent thereon, the shipbuilders present at 
 tills meeting pledge themselves, individually and collectively, to use their 
 best exertions for the suppression of the union referred to, if, after a decided 
 appeal to the people, they shall refuse to rescind from their regulations and 
 bye-laws all articles whatever claiming or asserting the right of interference 
 in the internal regulation of any dock-yard, or controlling the privilege of 
 freedom of individual action among the workmen.” 
 
 When workmen, on the one hand, disclaim all right of interference with 
 the individual freedom of any of tlieir fellows, and masters, on the other, 
 profess their acquiescence in every equitable effort on the part of servants to 
 better their condition, the legislature may with all safety proceed to embody 
 these principles in such enactments as might both proclaim and guard the 
 observation of them; and, while leaving those who will to combine in any 
 way that is not directly criminal, it might, in full confidence of tiie nation's 
 sympathy, strengthen as far as it may he found necessary, all those sanc¬ 
 tions and expedients of law by which those who do not will, shall be se¬ 
 cured from the outrages of the associated workmen. 
 
157 
 
 compliance with their own prescriptions, is a great 
 deal too small. By a prosecution under this act, 
 no violence to person or property, no destruction 
 of machinery, tools, goods, wares, or work, is liable 
 to any greater penalty than that of two months 
 imprisonment and hard labour. It is true, that by 
 the subsequent clauses, the penalty is extended to 
 three months imprisonment and hard labour. And 
 it is also true, that all these offences are liable to 
 prosecution and punishment under the severer 
 laws that were previously in operation. But it 
 may help to account in part for the recent popular 
 ebullitions, that the repeal act held out a more 
 mild and merciful aspect than the law ever held 
 out before, to the very offences which itself was 
 calculated to provoke. It was to this act that 
 workmen naturally looked, and by which they 
 measured the hardships and the criminalities of all 
 the violence which they might use to enforce their 
 combinations.* To them, in the first instance, 
 
 * The following is an example of workmen having been deluded into an 
 offence, by the milder treatment which it obtained under the llepeal Act, 
 than it ought to obtain even on the principles of natural equity. 
 
 understood from the magistrates there is nothing in the Act which would 
 punish a man for leaving his work unfinished. 
 
 “ Are you not aware that that was provided for by an Act of the year 
 preceding?—The magistrates in Dublin do not appear to he aware of that. 
 
 “ Are you aware whether any prosecution has taken place against men 
 for leaving their work unfinished?—No, I am not. 
 
 “ Do you conceive, from any conversation you have had with the magis¬ 
 trates, that they are not aware of the existence of any such law ?—I con¬ 
 ceive so; I may have misunderstood them. 
 
158 
 
 then, it may be said to have offered a temptation 
 to such violence; nor are we to wonder, if anterior 
 to their experience of those heavier penalties, 
 which this act did not bring into view, they heed- 
 lessly broke forth into outrages that were alike 
 hurtful to the interest of their employers, and to 
 the interest of their fellow-worlunen. 
 
 It would help to clear and to facilitate the de¬ 
 termination of this whole problem, were it extri¬ 
 cated from that confusion of sentiment, in virtue 
 of which, the right and the wrong of combinations 
 have been blended together into one object of con- 
 
 “ Are you aware that by the Act of last session persons entering into com¬ 
 binations, by threats or otherwise inducing men to quit their work, come un¬ 
 der the regulations, are punishable by two months imprisonment only?— 
 Yes, 1 am; but tile punishment is not one that the men attend to much, 
 because they can bo supported during that time, from the friends of their 
 body, in prison; and in the next place, from the difficulty of proving any 
 thing like threat, especially by two witnesses. 
 
 “ Have you observed the 6th section of the Act in which are these words: 
 
 ‘ Provided always, that nothing herein contained shall alter or affect any law 
 now in force for the prosecution and punishment of the said several offences 
 which offences, in the oth and 6th sections, are denominated to he threats 
 or intimidation to force another to leave work, or to prevent any man from 
 going to work, from damnifying and spoiling the property, or injuring the 
 person of any one whatever?—I was not aware of the effects of such 
 
 We ure further convinced, that the Act in question was fitted to do what 
 it actually did in the present instance, to delude men into the imagination, 
 that by leaving their work unfinished, they were not liable to punishment. 
 There is even too lenient a penalty for those who tempt to the commission 
 of the crime, while the penalty to be laid on the criminal himself is not ad¬ 
 verted to. And it was most natural for him to think lightly of that enor¬ 
 mity, when so light a punishment was awarded to the instigators of it. In 
 the proportion that the actual deviates from the natural juiisprudcnce, in 
 that proportion is it fitted to do mischief in society.” 
 
159 
 
 templation. The public indignation has been very 
 much fostered against the cause of natural liberty 
 in workmen, by the shameful outrages of which 
 associated workmen have been guilty in many 
 parts of the land. It is thus that we are hurried 
 into a desire for the abridgement of that liberty, by 
 barring with legal penalties the very act of com¬ 
 bination. Whereas, in fact, it is by the perfecting 
 and extending of natural liberty, that all the mis¬ 
 chiefs of combination are most effectually neutral¬ 
 ised. But legislators themselves participate in 
 this confusion, and forget, that after they have re¬ 
 solved to leave untouched the freedom of those 
 who are not willing to work, there lies with them 
 the remaining duty of shielding to the uttermost 
 the freedom of those who are willing. In such a 
 career of legislation, they do not need to relin¬ 
 quish for a moment that fine aspect of liberality 
 which characterised the outset of it. They do 
 not need to recal any part of that boon which they 
 granted to the labouring classes; but only to add 
 to the boon of protection from the alleged tyranny 
 of their masters, the further boon of protection 
 from the far more severe and substantial tyranny 
 which, if not restrained, they would exercise on 
 each other. In the prosecution of this walk, they 
 will find, how much it is that sound morality and 
 sound legislation harmonize. There is nought, 
 either in the joint or separate resolutions of work¬ 
 men, not to work for their masters under certain 
 wages, that should be enacted against; for in such 
 
160 
 
 resolutions there is truly nothing wrong. But 
 there is a most glaring moral evil in the threats, or 
 the annoyances, or the assaults that have been com¬ 
 mitted by them against their fellows; and, to put 
 these down, the whole strength and wisdom of Go¬ 
 vernment should be called into operation.* 
 
 • These outrages vary in their atroeiousness, from the annoyance or 
 threat, to deeds of most fearful enormity. The following are but a few spe¬ 
 cimens out of the many. 
 
 From the examination of Mr. John Buddie:— 
 
 “ In point of fact, have you from the fitters, or any other persons, any 
 knowledge that threats or intimidations have been used by sailors or others 
 
161 
 
 It is of vital importance that any future effort 
 of legislation should be well directed; not against 
 
162 
 
 the principle of workmen being at full liberty to 
 act both individually and conjointly in opposition 
 
 worked on piece work, which is one of the things the body have a great ob¬ 
 jection to, and he was assaulted and murdered. 
 
 “ Has any person been taken up and punished for that murder?—I under- 
 
 “ At what period was that ?—In October last. Daly, a sawyer, who sup¬ 
 ported himself and his family at some distance from Dublin, by sawing coffin 
 hoards, was attacked and murdered, because it was conceived that the supply 
 of this timber, sawed out of Dublin, interfered with the business of the 
 sawyers. 
 
 “ How was it known by whom he was murdered?—From his having had 
 threatening letters, and there being no hostility to him hut on that account, 
 and that having been before expressed. 
 
 “ Was he a quiet peaceable man ?—So I understood. 
 
 “ Have the police been able to apprehend the persons murdering him ?—I 
 do not know. 
 
 “ Was this murder accompanied with robbery of the person ?—No; since 
 those two murders there has been a great accession of numbers to the 
 body, and the knowledge that those murders had been committed has an¬ 
 swered the purpose of personal injury. 
 
 “ There has been no individual injured by attacks of that kind since Oc¬ 
 tober last?—Oh! yes, a great many; I only meant to say, that it had an¬ 
 swered the purpose to a certain degree. 
 
 “ It has saved them the necessity of taking away more lives?—Yes; 
 there have been a great many assaulted; one man of the name of Toole 
 was assaulted a short time ago, I believe not more than six weeks ago.” 
 
 From the examination of Mr. Michael Farrell, chief constable of police in 
 Dublin:— 
 
 “ Have they latterly increased ?—The outrages have not been so nume¬ 
 rous, but they increased very much lately, since in or about June last; there 
 was not an outrage from in or about March until some time in the middle 
 of June. 
 
 “ Can you state to the Committee the number of outrages which have 
 been committed since that period, up to the period of your quitting Dub¬ 
 lin ?—Of beating people in the streets I suppose between sixty and seventy 
 
 Describe the nature of these offences.—Any man who differs from what 
 is called the Body, they watch him in a retired street, and cither six or seven 
 
163 
 
 to their masters, in every such way as is not crimi¬ 
 nal for a rise of wages, but against the practice of 
 
 are selected for the purpose of beating him. I have brought one of the 
 weapons with me with which they beat him,— [the witness produced a piece 
 of wood of the length of about two feet, and very thick at one end, presenting 
 three crfgcs,]—it is only their anxiety that preserves him, that saves his life, 
 
 house, on which some carpenters were sitting; we had information that 
 they were to beat a man, and sent to sec to frustrate it; it is only by the 
 
164 
 
 workmen putting forth the slightest violence, or 
 committing the smallest outrage in their opposition 
 
 was evidence in tliat; but the others were for threats, when they came to a 
 naan's window and threatened his workmen. 
 
 “ In this case in which the man was actually beaten, how came it that the 
 offenders were only punished under the late Act?—Against one of them 
 there was direct proof of assault, he was sent for trial, and the others were 
 for using threatening language. 
 
 “ In the eases where beating has taken place, have you ever obtained evi¬ 
 dence of the persons by whom it was committed ?—Yes, and there have 
 been three convictions; one man got eighteen months imprisonment, and 
 another man got six; and what is very extraordinary, tlm very night after 
 these men were sentenced they beat one man at the Military-gate in Wat- 
 ling-street, and the very next night they beat another man, in the same em¬ 
 ployment, at the corner of the Circular-road in Clanbrassil-street, and broke 
 his limbs, and mangled him in such a way, that surgeon M'Namara said, 
 
165 
 
 to each other. The thing to be desired, is, that 
 any new act shall not contravene the expres- 
 
 “ How do you get information of that?—By persons we employ to go 
 amongst them. 
 
 “ Do you think tiiose acts of violence are determined on by the commit¬ 
 tee of trades, or by individuals?—I think some persons among them give 
 the hard word to strike, and then they select the man ; they are levied; u 
 nrnof of that took nlace six weeks aero. There was u man of the namn of 
 
166 
 
 sion of the repeal act, which was altogether 
 framed in the spirit of an honest friendship to the 
 
 setting a value on men’s labour; they were displeased with him fortius, 
 and they watched au opportunity when he went to see a mail of the name 
 of Hendrick, who was beaten the night before; he went to give money and 
 relief to him, and just as he came out of the door where Hendrick lived, he 
 was knocked down himself; and from what I can hear, in about half a 
 minute lie was so mangled that he died in the hospital in three days after¬ 
 wards. 
 
 “ Do you recollect the case of the gas works?—Yes; there was a man of 
 the name of Craven convicted for that. 
 
 “ What sentence was passed upon him ?—Eighteen months imprisou- 
 
 “ Do you recollect an attack on u person of the name of Keiinan, of Wine 
 Tavern-street, a tanner?—Yes, ill his own tail-yard, in the morning, at be¬ 
 
 tween eight and nine o’clock. 
 
 “ By whom was that made?—It is not known; they were supposed to 
 be tanners, for he bad differed with the body, and taken in strange hands. 
 
 —There did; and there was a man committed to Newgate, tried before the 
 •ecorder, and sentenced to nine months imprisonment. 
 
 “ Who was the man; was he a tanner?—He was an old man, who had 
 been a tanner; and it appeared he waited an opportunity and entered into a 
 lonversation, and that those men who appeared to have been hired, watched 
 in opportunity and struck the man he spoke to. 
 
 Hired hy whom?—It is supposed by the journeymen of the trade. 
 
167 
 
 labouring classes of society. Its design was to pro¬ 
 tect them from what, in the fervour of their indig- 
 
 “ To what trade did that man belong?—He had been a tanner; lie was 
 
 “ Are you aware that there is a difference between the tenners and the 
 curriers?—Yes, between the master tanners, and the journeymen cur- 
 
 “ Was it by a member of the masters or the journeymen, that this man 
 was beaten ?—He supposed that he was beaten at the instigation of the 
 
 “ It was a tanner that set him ?—It was an old tanner that set him. 
 
 “ Have you known any instances of any trade in Dublin refusing to con¬ 
 cur with the police to discover any person suspected to have committed 
 acts of violence?—They invariably plead ignorance of knowing of any act; 
 they always deny it.” 
 
 “ You have stated, that on several occasions you have had information of 
 an intended beating, from some persons who were present, and knew of 
 the circumstance ?—Y’es; they were not present when the resolution took 
 
168 
 
 nation, they have often denominated the tyranny 
 of their employers. The truth is, that they re- 
 
 “ Arc you certain no combination existed among your men previously to 
 the repeal of the combination laws?—I believe not. 
 
 “ You bad no reason to suspect it?—None at all. 
 
 “ Do you suppose the repeal of the laws tempted the men to form them. 
 
 “ Did they so form themselves into an association shortly after the repeal 
 of those laws was known ?—I cannot say how long after; but they have got 
 a very large fund: they paid three halfpence a-wcek; they have got a fund 
 which keeps them now for six weeks. 
 
 “ When did they begin to form that fund?—I cannot say. 
 
 “ Do they keep those matters secret from you?—Yes. 
 
 “ Are there other manufacturers of the same description near you?—Not 
 
 “ Have the workmen in those other manufactories also struck?— 
 Some of them have, but none since they turned out with us, because, 
 as we did not submit to them, they have gone on at other places: if we 
 had submitted, they would have turned out in the other two manufac¬ 
 tories. 
 
 “ What reason have you to believe that?—That is what the people in 
 the union say; we have got part 0/ our own family turned in again, and 
 they call them black ones. 
 
169 
 
 quire a still further protection; and that is, full 
 protection from a still more odious and oppressive 
 
 they abused him very mucli: he was knocked down, and so kicked, that 
 he was carried into a room, in a state of insensibility. He iiad the per¬ 
 sons taken before a magistrate, where they were ordered to pay all the ex¬ 
 penses, and to allow him 2s. per day till the surgeon reported him fit for 
 
 From the examination of Mr. Chadwick. 
 
 “ Have yon any facts to state upon which that opinion of him or yourself 
 is founded?—I could account for the reasons by which he was actuated; 
 he stood between the men and myself, and, of course, wished to command 
 the approbation and confidence of both parties as much as possible; and, 
 therefore, he was well aware that in giving to ine the names of parties, or 
 in standing by me in prosecuting the parties for threats, he was exposing 
 himself. I should have little hesitation in saying he was exposing his life 
 
 “ Is it not usual that, where prosecution has taken place in case of com¬ 
 bination, the persons prosecuting have been set against?—Yes, they are 
 marked objects. In fact, he assured me, if he took the steps I wished him 
 to do, he must quit the neighbourhood. 
 
 
170 
 
 tyranny which is apt to spring up among them¬ 
 selves. We can confidently appeal to the expe- 
 
 Berwick union men hearing that, walked out on the road to meet them, 
 and met the men coming in a cart; they said, “You have come from 
 Dunleary?” “Yes.” “You are going to join the smacks?” “Yes.” 
 “ You had better go hack, one man has been murdered, we would advise 
 you as friends^to go back, and here is money to pay your expenses.” 
 The men were frightened, and fortunately a ship’s commander forseeing 
 this, sent men out with a constable, who undeceived them and brought 
 
 
171 
 
 rience of many workmen, whether they ever felt 
 so grievously thwarted and overborne out of their 
 
 terror over the minds of the men that they dare not rebel. Many have en¬ 
 gaged themselves to go and work on work left by these men, and not a 
 single ship-wright dare come; they would do it at the peril of their lives. 
 
 “Do you get without difficulty workmen who do not belong to the un¬ 
 ion ?_We cannot get any. We have eight or nine at work, some of whom 
 
 have been obliged to apply to a magistrate. We for protection endeavoured 
 
172 
 
 own free choice, as by the terrors of their own 
 association, whose secret and mysterious power 
 
 was fired at twice, as there were two holes through the tack of his 
 
 “ By whom ?—Although it was done in the midst of a considerable 
 number of people, such was the co-operation, or effect of the intimidation 
 existing, that we could not obtain evidence who the person or persons were 
 who did it. The case of Graham was tried, and John Kean was found 
 guilty of having shot Graham with ten pellets of the largest species of 
 shot: eight of these are at present in his body. He is paralyzed in his 
 lower extremities, and there is no chance of his recovering; that is the opi¬ 
 nion of the medical gentlemen. 
 
 “ Why did the prosecution take place before the man was out of danger? 
 —Because he was likely to survive for a considerable time; and such is 
 the state of intimidation and actual violence at present existing in Glas¬ 
 gow, that it was necessary to bring forward the trial, lest material evidence 
 should he lost. It was necessary to keep the principal witnesses on the 
 trial in safety; and a subscription is presently going on with a view to re¬ 
 moval to some other place of a witness named Bell, who seized Kean, and 
 was the main instrument of his apprehension and conviction. 
 
 “ Have you any reason to suppose the man had been employed by other 
 people to commit the act?—I have no reason to doubt that he was em¬ 
 ployed by others, viz. the secret committee, and that he was to receive 
 money for doing it; and I state this upon the man’s own authority, being a 
 confession voluntarily given since his conviction of the crime. The import 
 of his confession is, that he, along with several others employed, were to 
 assassinate Graham and some others. Four or five of the masters were 
 particularly pointed out. The assassins were to receive, I think, the stun 
 of £100, and if successful were to get more. 
 
 “ You are possessed of this confession in writing?—I am possessed of the 
 confession, and will produce it. 
 
 “ Was all this since Mr. Hume’s Act?—All the cases which I have lat¬ 
 terly detailed have taken place within these few months. 
 
 “ Are there other acts?—There are a variety of other assaults and acts of 
 intimidation, of which I am prepared to give the particulars, if required. 
 
 “What has been the effect of these acts of intimidation?—I think the 
 effect of the acts of intimidation, taken generally, 1ms been to bind together, 
 and to create and give effect to the existing co-operation among these com¬ 
 binations. I think that without intimidation they would individually and 
 collectively more speedily fall to pieces, because it is through the medium 
 
173 
 
 wielded a far more despotic sway over their ima¬ 
 ginations, than ever did the old law in the pleni- 
 
 of intimidation that they, in a great measure, collect or obtain the funds 
 which they distribute in furtherance of their purposes. 
 
 “ Have there been acts of assembling round manufactories to prevent 
 
174 
 
 tude of all its enforcements. We venture to affirm, 
 that the dread of ruin to their families, and of in¬ 
 jury to their persons, has been far more frequently 
 inspired by this new despotism, within these few 
 months, than has been done by the statutes against 
 combinations among all the working classes put to¬ 
 gether for a whole century.* An act for the fur- 
 
 racnt from his pocket, and while he was lying on the ground, they said they 
 would save his life, provided he instantly went back to Hamilton, and told 
 the whole of his comrades to do the same; they desired him to tell his com¬ 
 rades, if they did not go back likewise that they would be done for; the 
 consequence was, he did tell Ills comrades that very day or the next, and they 
 all refused to work, being afraid of their lives. Tiiey would have commenced 
 on the Tuesday had not the foresaid assault taken place; but in consequence 
 of it, and what happened to Bishop, they all refused to work, and continued 
 the whole of that week without working. Mr. M'Donald, the sheriff-dc- 
 
175 
 
 ther protection of workmen from this regimen of 
 terror, so far from even the most distant approach 
 
 leave tile country; we have all settled that he, and other Englishmen who 
 come over to interfere with our trade, shall he roasted on a gridiron; those 
 threats to women of course have a very powerful influence.” 
 
 From the examination of Mr. J. Fletcher. 
 
 “ Has Husband, or any other of the men formerly employed in your yard, 
 directly or indirectly intimated to you any feeling of a wish to return, if it 
 were not for a dread of this union ?—They have said so over and over again, 
 that they should he very glad indeed. They have told me collectively and 
 
176 
 
 to a re-enactment of the Combination Laws, would, 
 in fact, be tantamount to a grant of additional 
 
 Oak Institution, and it has keen intimated to me that if I do not leave your 
 employ I shall he expelled from that alms-house.” I pressed him exceed¬ 
 ingly to tell me by whom this intimation had been given, hut I could not 
 succeed. I have been told by many other men that they have joined the 
 union because they wore treated as so degraded a caste by their fellows, 
 that their lives were rendered wretched and miserable; that they were 
 literally so far compelled by that description of influence which men in that 
 station of life can hardly he expected to he proof against. 
 
 “ Three or four of the men who were so employed on the Ruth, told me 
 that a meeting had been called, in consequence of its being conceived by 
 the general body of the people that they ought to have demanded an in¬ 
 crease of price upon this ship, they having taken it upon the usual price of 
 the yard; l pointed out to them what an outrage it was upon their inde¬ 
 pendence, that they should not he considered capable of making an agree¬ 
 ment for themselves. I asked them how they could allow an interference 
 of other persons unconnected with them; they told me they regretted it 
 exceedingly, but that it was impossible for them to control the views of the 
 
178 
 
 would be substantially felt as such by the body at 
 large. It were to be regretted, if Government, af¬ 
 ter having done so well by the repeal of these 
 laws, should forfeit any portion of the popularity 
 and real strength which it has thereby acquired; 
 and, therefore, it is especially desirable, that any 
 subsequent measure which might be necessary, 
 should wear the appearance, as well as possess the 
 reality of being a measure for still further defend¬ 
 ing the liberties and the interest of workmen. 
 
 By the repeal of the Combination Lav's, full liber¬ 
 ty has been granted, that workmen shall either sing¬ 
 ly, or in a body, cease to work till they obtain such 
 superior remuneration as they may choose to fancy 
 or to fix upon. But the liberty is imperfect, if 
 any one, or more of these workmen, be not in full 
 security, when they please to work for any inferior 
 remuneration. The man who is willing to accept 
 of a lower wage than his fellows, is the man who 
 can least of them all afford to be idle. It is lie who 
 is most goaded by his own necessities, and those of 
 his family, to an exertion for their subsistence; 
 and he, therefore, is the individual, to whom the 
 restraints of an association enforced as they often 
 are by the persecution and violence of its agents, 
 
 “ Has any thing of that him! taken place with those men that are at work 
 in your yard?—Yes. 
 
 “In wlmt way?—They have been called as bad as assassins; they have 
 been accused by the people that have left, * You are as bad ns assassins, to 
 go to work to take the bread out of our mouths when wc are remaining cut 
 of work for your good.’ ” 
 
179 
 
 are in fact the most gallingly and oppressively 
 cruel. The members of a combination of work¬ 
 men hold out their cause to be that of the poor 
 against the rich, whom they would represent as 
 the tyrants and oppressors of society. They re¬ 
 flect not on the tyranny which they are exercising 
 all the while on those who are still poorer, and in 
 a state of more pitiable helplessness than them¬ 
 selves—on the individuals of their own body, who 
 are most immersed in debt, or whose children are 
 farthest sunk in destitution, and who most gladly 
 would labour in their behalf for the current wages, 
 were it not for the rigours and the menaces of this 
 worse than revolutionary despotism. The great¬ 
 est mischief which has ensued from the repeal in 
 question, can be met by a legislation that might stand 
 forth, notin the character of opposition, but in the 
 character of friendship and benignity to the lower 
 orders; a legislation that took the side not of 
 masters against servants, but of the poorest and 
 most helpless of these servants, against that crowd 
 of petty oppressors who were of somewhat elevated 
 conditio'n above them. A legislation of this sort, 
 whose equity recommends itself to every man’s 
 conscience never can awaken any popular disaffec¬ 
 tion that will be at all hazardous; and we there¬ 
 fore would repeat it as our fondest hope, that 
 Parliament will devise a method for putting down 
 those outrages, that we suspect at the very worst 
 are temporary, without at all impairing that fine 
 aspect of liberality, which is not less consonant. 
 
180 
 
 with the soundest economic wisdom, than it is in 
 grateful harmony with the spirit of our age.* 
 
 Tiie associated workmen with the cry of liberty 
 in their mouths, have most glaringly traversed all 
 the principles of liberty. They have erected 
 themselves into so many little corporations, and 
 are chargeable with all the monopoly and intoler¬ 
 ance of the corporation spirit. They have en¬ 
 deavoured to narrow the field of competition for 
 employment, by shutting the avenues to their re¬ 
 spective trades against the general population. 
 The same paltry selfishness which wont to charac¬ 
 terise in other days, the exclusive companies of 
 merchants, has now descended among our labour¬ 
 ers, and with them has acquired a still more hide¬ 
 ous complexion, from the savage cruelties where¬ 
 with it has been aggravated, and which have arm¬ 
 ed against their cause all that is generous and 
 good in the feelings of the country. Still it is 
 hoped that even misconduct so outrageous as 
 theirs will not precipitate the legislature back 
 
 * The Act Gtli George IV. c. I2Gth, is altogether in this spirit, ami "ill 
 go far to check in Scotland, the only evils of combination winch are really 
 formidable, or against which Government should ever array themselves. It 
 is entitled “ An Act to make provision in Scotland, for the further preven¬ 
 tion of maliciously shooting and attempting to discharge loaded fire¬ 
 arms, stabbing, cutting, wounding, poisoning, maiming, disfiguring, and dis¬ 
 abling his Majesty’s subjects.” There is particularly specified in this Act, 
 the offence of unlawfully throwing, or otherwise applying to any of his 
 Majesty’s subjects, any Sulphuric Acid, or other corrosive substance. This 
 and certain other outrages, (named in this Act) with the intent to murder, 
 maim, or do some other grievous bodily harm, are held to he capital, and 
 
181 
 
 again to those antiquated prejudices from which 
 they had emerged ; but well may it warrant them 
 to utter a voice of greater decision, and lift an arm 
 of greater strength than they have ever yet done, 
 against such enormities as can never be endured 
 in any Christian or civilized land. 
 
 Because government may have conceded to our 
 artizans and mechanics the fullest liberty not to 
 work, that is no reason why a power should be 
 permitted to arise in another quarter, which might 
 trench upon their liberty to work. Government 
 has nought, to do, but to assert itself the equal 
 patron and defender of both kinds of liberty. By 
 means of the one liberty, it will neutralise all the 
 mischief which is apprehended from the other. It 
 is not by a regimen which does violence to any of 
 the principles of natural freedom, but by the 
 equal and impartial maintenance of all its princi¬ 
 ples, that a wise government is enabled to uphold 
 the best and most wholesome state of society. 
 
 And so far from any call for any peculiar deli¬ 
 cacy or tenderness of legislation in this matter, 
 there is a very peculiar reason, why in every 
 manufacturing country, the attempt to molest or 
 impede workmen in the free exercise of their cal¬ 
 lings, should be visited with a treatment the very 
 opposite of that lenity, wherewith this offence 
 seems to be regarded at least in the Repeal Act. 
 It is not because of the alleged importance of our 
 manufactures to the public and political strength of 
 our nation; an advantage which we have long held 
 
182 
 
 to be quite imaginary; but it is because of the very 
 great number of those whose interest and safety are 
 involved in the protection of every workman from 
 the aggression of his fellows. We allude to the 
 workmen themselves. There is altogether as great 
 propriety in it, that the crime of forcing or inter¬ 
 rupting a labourer should be signalized above an 
 ordinary assault, by the severer penalties which are 
 annexed to it, as that the crime of forgery should 
 be so signalized. The latter severity, over rigorous 
 as it surely is, has been defended on the ground of 
 the extensive mischief done by forgery to the mer¬ 
 chants of a trading nation. The former might well 
 be vindicated on the ground of a mischief as exten¬ 
 sive, done, by the forcing of workmen, to the me¬ 
 chanics and artizans of a manufacturing nation. 
 To provide a barrier against the outrages of asso¬ 
 ciated workmen, it is not necessary to conjure up 
 again the legislation of barbarous times. It can 
 be done by a better legislation, which shall bear 
 upon its forehead the impress both of kindness to 
 the labourer, and of enlightened patriotism. 
 
 II. But what theoretically may appear to be a 
 good law in the statute book, might turn out, af¬ 
 ter all, to be practically a powerless or inapplicable 
 law in society; like a machine, that however beau¬ 
 tiful and perfect in the model, might not work 
 well in the manufactory. Therefore it is, that ere 
 such an inquiry as the present can be completed, 
 we must pass from the abstract jurisprudence of 
 the question, to the gross and living experience of 
 
183 
 
 the question; and, going forth on the outer field 
 of actual and concrete humanity, we must observe, 
 there, what the forces and the interests are which 
 come into busy play, and in how far such a law 
 as we have argued for, is of sufficient control over 
 them, for all right and salutary purposes. It is 
 not by the mere categories of ethical science that • 
 such a question ought to be determined. Such a 
 law as would suit the republic of Plato, or some 
 similar Utopia, might be the whole fruit of one’s 
 studious excogitations at home. But it is only by 
 a survey abroad, and over the domain of business 
 and familiar life, that he learns to modify, when 
 needful, the generalizations of abstract thought, 
 by the demands of a felt and urgent expediency. 
 
 Let us now look, then, to this outer field of con¬ 
 templation—not to the principles of the question in 
 any system of natural law, but to the exemplifica¬ 
 tions of the question in the midst of living society; 
 and we greatly mistake it, if it be not found that 
 there is a most entire harmony between them; and 
 that the complex workings of what may be termed 
 the economic mechanism, are altogether at one 
 with the simplicities of theory. We hold that 
 there are certain natural securities for a right ad¬ 
 justment between masters and servants, in the 
 very relationship itself, which ought to supersede 
 the interference of Government;—we mean, its 
 interference for any other object than the enforce¬ 
 ment of justice between the parties, and the pro¬ 
 tection of both from all sorts of personal violence. 
 
184 
 
 Even from the very history of some recent mis- 
 guided adventures, on the part of workmen, we 
 may learn what these securities are, and how pow¬ 
 erful and efficient they must ultimately prove in 
 their operation. So that the interference of Gov¬ 
 ernment, with the just and natural freedom of any 
 of the parties, is really superseded by those better 
 influences that lie in the mechanism and the spon¬ 
 taneous workings of human society. 
 
 The great compensation, then, for the evils of a 
 strike, is the power which masters have of replac¬ 
 ing those who have struck work by other hands. 
 We will not deny the very great temporary incon¬ 
 venience of such an event to masters; but we 
 deny that it is such as to warrant a legislation, 
 which traverses any of the principles of an obvious 
 or natural equity. And besides, we are not to 
 estimate the inconvenience in all time coming, by 
 any degree of it which might be felt or expe¬ 
 rienced at present; for now the conflict is at its 
 height in many places; and though, by this time, 
 subsided into quiescence in some quarters, yet, in 
 others, still in a state of busy and unsettled fermen¬ 
 tation. Still, however, we have to wait the vari¬ 
 ous terminations of this controversy, which the 
 repeal of the Combination Laws has so very na¬ 
 turally awakened all over the land, ere we shall 
 obtain the complete verification of its result. We 
 are yet in the suspense, and among the uncertain¬ 
 ties of the experiment; and though gradually 
 brightening towards it, we have not yet arrived at 
 
185 
 
 the fall and finished experience. This experience, 
 however, if waited for patiently, and for a sufficient 
 length of time, will, we have no doubt, be in the 
 highest degree tranquillizing to the combatants, and 
 satisfactory to the public at large. Meanwhile, 
 even from the already bygone history of these com¬ 
 binations, in places where the warfare has been 
 stoutest and most alarming, might we gather, I 
 apprehend, enough of argument why the great 
 principles of natural justice and liberty ought not 
 to be violated. 
 
 In the first place, then, on the event of a gene¬ 
 ral strike in an industrious establishment, there 
 have been frequent instances of the old hands be¬ 
 ing replaced by new ones, who were rendered 
 effective in the course of a few weeks. This has 
 been done, and with ultimate success, at collieries 
 and cotton-mills, and in many other manufactories. 
 At the Redding colliery, for example, belonging to 
 the Duke of Hamilton, and where the disturbances 
 assumed a very riotous character, this expedient 
 was resorted to. By a series of questions and 
 answers now before me, it appears that the man¬ 
 ager there, on the defection of the old colliers, 
 employed in their place such labourers as were 
 about the work, and who were before employed 
 in above-ground jobs, together with a few stran¬ 
 gers who accidentally came. The labourers were 
 instructed in their new occupation by three overs- 
 men of the work, and a few other colliers (three 
 or four, chiefly old) who did not join the associa- 
 
 Voi.. III. A a 
 
186 
 
 tion. They were allowed two shillings and six¬ 
 pence a-day at the first, but in a few weeks most of 
 them earned more by the piece; and the good 
 hands, in a very few weeks, made five shillings, 
 and even more per day. 
 
 This narrative is chiefly valuable as affording 
 the example of a good termination to the strike, 
 achieved by the mere vigour and promptitude of 
 the Sheriff-depute of the county. We feel per¬ 
 suaded, that without any recurrence to an antiquat¬ 
 ed law, the whole mischief of these combinations 
 might be neutralized by means of a greater spirit 
 and energy on the part of our executive officers. 
 A stronger or more efficient police might be neces¬ 
 sary for the purpose of putting down all that is 
 really bad in them; and this were far better than 
 to call in the aid of a legislation that traversed 
 any great principle of liberality or justice.* 
 
 * It seems that the sixty or seventy labourers who have been taken in to 
 replace the colliers who had struck, refused to work in'; consequence of a 
 grievious assault made by the latter on some of their body, when Mr. 
 M'Donald, with a daring and determination that do him great honour, inter¬ 
 posed for their protection, and prevailed on the whole of them to go to work. 
 
 Further extract from the examination of Mr. Robert M'Keclmie on this 
 subject. 
 
 “ After Mr. M‘Donald, the sheriff-depute, arrived, did the old men, the 
 strike-work men, return to their work?—No. 
 
 “Are they still out?—I stated before, that during the month of April 
 twenty or thirty of those strike-work colliers came to Mr. Johnston, his 
 Grace’s manager, and mentioned that they were willing to begin: they 
 wished him to take them back, which he did, and up to the period that I 
 left Scotland there were parties of them making application to be taken 
 back into the works. 
 
 “ Those that returned, did they return on any different terms than those 
 that existed in the colliery when they left?—Yes; I know from the infor¬ 
 mation of the manager, they arc getting now the wages that his Grace of- 
 
187 
 
 The next narrative, more especially as extended 
 in the notes below, serves to demonstate how much, 
 
 fered them at the time of the strike, a rise of wages not, however, to the 
 extent that they wanted. I believe they were allowed 2s. a ton previous 
 to the strike, and at or immediately after the strike they were offered 2s. 7d. 
 which they refused. They wished 3s. 6d,, and I believe now they are get¬ 
 ting 2s. 6d. or 2s. 7d. 
 
 “ Since the 15th of March, when they threatened Bishop, lias there been 
 any disturbance, or act of violence committed by any of them, on any of the 
 
188 
 
 without the aid either of law or of police, might be 
 accomplished by a mere spirit of determination on 
 the part of masters. It exhibits a fine miniature 
 specimen of the progress and the natural expiry of 
 combinations, by the action alone of those natural 
 forces and interests which are involved in them. We 
 think that it goes to establish the safety wherewith 
 (after Government has fulfilled its duty of protec¬ 
 tion from all outrages) the whole matter might be 
 left to its own issues: and we do think it hard that 
 the legislature should be called upon, either to 
 brave the odium, or to sustain the burden, of a man¬ 
 agement which devolves more properly on capital¬ 
 ists themselves. 
 
 The following is the extract of a letter from a 
 gentleman connected with a colliery near Ayr:— 
 “ Being firmly determined to withstand this system 
 of dictation, we looked about us for the means of 
 counteracting their measures; and nothing appear¬ 
 ing to us so effectual as the taking or employing of 
 
 “The labourers?—In consequence of Mr. M'Donald’s activity ami ex¬ 
 ertions in making repeated apprehensions of the persons who had been 
 guilty of the assault, and his coming almost daily upon the collieries, they 
 all returned to their work, but I may mention that his Grace’s manager 
 was obliged to keep up what is called an armed force during the night¬ 
 time to protect the machinery, he being afraid that a great body of colliers 
 might have come and destroyed these, but the labourers have been going 
 on from the week following the foresaid assaidt up to the time I left 
 Scotland. 
 
 “ Since that period when you and Mr. M‘Donahl were there, have any 
 attacks in fact been made on the machinery, or on those labourers so em¬ 
 ployed?—Not to my knowledge. 
 
 “ Is there an armed force now kept up ?—It was kept up partially to the 
 very day that I left Scotland. 
 
 “Watchmen?—Yes, armed watchmen.” 
 
189 
 
 new hands, we instantly set about preparing tools, 
 and engaging every labouring man we could ob¬ 
 tain. In about three weeks, we had introduced 
 seventy men into our pits; and the produce of 
 our colliery daily increasing, it became evident 
 that we were ultimately to prevail in the struggle. 
 The men whom we employed were mostly Irish¬ 
 men, but were picked up by us about the place. 
 Had we not succeeded in getting them in that 
 way, we had determined to send a person to Ire¬ 
 land to recruit there. Our old hands, at least such 
 as we have chosen to employ, have returned to 
 their work, and have, in a submissive manner, re¬ 
 nounced the system of associations. Our new col¬ 
 liers continue with us, and are doing well.”* 
 
 * The worth and importance of Mr. Taylor’s evidence, have induced ns 
 to present it to the reader entire. 
 
 “ Are yon concerned in extensive collieries in the county of Ayr ?—I am. 
 
 “ Have you conducted those collieries for a considerable period?—Yes, 
 for a considerable period; above twenty years. 
 
 “ Have you occasion to know the number of colliers in the county of 
 Ayr, occupied in your own and other collieries ?—I believe about 1,400; I 
 do not know precisely the number. 
 
 “ Have you at any period been subjected, in conducting your collieries, 
 to any inconvenience from associations among your workmen ?—We have, 
 at various periods. 
 
 “At what periods have you experienced such inconvenience?—We 
 have frequently had small combinations, but not to a great extent: the 
 first great combination we had, commenced the loth of November, 1817. 
 
 “ Can you state to the Committee any particulars respecting the combi¬ 
 nation in 1817?—It was in consequence of a general association of the 
 colliers about Glasgow, and in Ayrshire; it was principally originated by a 
 weaver of the name of Fallhouse Wilson; in consequence of that associa¬ 
 tion, all the colliers in Ayrshire resolved to strike work upon a fixed day. 
 When our colliers told us they should strike at a fortnight’s notice, we told 
 them we would dispense with the fortnight’s notice; that, if they weie to 
 
190 
 
 These are only two examples, selected almost at 
 random from the mass that lies before us, and 
 
 strike, they might strike immediately. Accordingly, they did strike im¬ 
 mediately. That continued from the 15tli of November, to the 1st o 
 December, when they all returned to their employment. IVe did not 
 nor ever thought of applying for legal proceedings, or legal measures, t< 
 put down combinations; we met it, by endeavouring to engage othci 
 workmen to execute the labour which those men bad deserted; and it wa; 
 in consequence of the numbers which were entering our work, and la 
 bourers becoming colliers, that we were enabled to put down that combi 
 nation. 
 
 “ What was their demand?—I do not remember the demand in 1817; ii 
 
 to prevent your men working?—No, it was not. 
 
 “ It was amicably settled at the end of that period?—It was. 
 “ How many new men had you brought in ?—About forty 
 
 “ How many had you working at that time?—Above a hunt 
 “ Were those, whom you brought in to work, allowed to i 
 work, after the old hands returned?—They were; such as c 
 
 only do half work, and for days decl 
 bis way thwarting him so much, that 
 When they follow that system, they w: 
 
 “ Are the men engaged in this 
 work ?—They are engaged for piei 
 “ For wliat period are they eng 
 the end of each fortnight, when tl 
 “ What is the nature of their cn 
 
 gaged ?—We consider them fr 
 they arc paid. 
 
 ngagement; by the ton ?—Yes, 
 
191 
 
 which serve to demonstrate the facility wherewith 
 raw and unpractised labourers can be rendered ef- 
 
 “ What do you reckon a ton ?—Our ton weighs about twenty-eight hun¬ 
 dred weight; indeed we seldom have occasion to weigh, because our en¬ 
 gagement is only to deliver a certain measure. 
 
 “ Has any thing occurred from 1817 up to a late period?—No strike at 
 all; occasionally thwarting in the manner I have mentioned, to obtain 
 
 “ Has any union or association taken place within the last year, different 
 from what before existed ?—Yes. 
 
 “ State the time at which, and the circumstances under which, that asso¬ 
 ciation took place—An association of the colliers in Ayrshire was formed, 
 in which our workmen joined. 
 
 “ At what period was that ?—It might be in November last, I should 
 think. The object of that association was to obtain in general a riso of 
 wages, and to exclude other workmen from entering the pits. 
 
 “ New men?—People that were not colliers before, but labourers. 
 
 “ Were any demands made of you, on behalf of the men, your refusal 
 to comply with which was stated as a ground of complaint by the associa¬ 
 tion ?—No; some time about the end of November, we voluntarily gave 
 them a rise of wages, with which they were perfectly satisfied at the time. 
 We deemed it proper, in consequence of the change of circumstances 
 of the country, and the demand for labour, voluntarily to raise their 
 
 “ What was the rate of wages before such rise was made?—It was eight 
 shillings per five waggons of coal; that was increased to nine shillings. 
 
 “What is the cpiantity in each waggon?—About twenty-eight hundred 
 weight, I believe. 
 
 “Do you keep to the same weight nearly?—We sell by measure; wo 
 seldom have occasion to weigh them; the measure is regular. 
 
 “ Can you state the rate of wages which your men were in general able 
 to earn, at the rate of payment which you have mentioned?—From 
 twelve to twenty shillings a-week, according as they chose to work. 
 
 “ Before the rise?—Yes, I should think so. 
 
 “ Did the average exceed half-a-guinea ?—Yes; it greatly exceeded that. 
 
 “ Did it exceed fifteen shillings ?—No, I should think fifteen shillings 
 might be about the average before the increase; but at the same time, if 
 the workmen have any discontent hanging upon their minds, they will not 
 work freely, so that we cannot say what it would be if they were giving 
 their minds cheerfully to their work. 
 
192 
 
 fective at least in this important branch of industry. 
 In many other branches masters have precisely 
 
 “ On occasions where there is no discontent, and they are satisfied, and 
 work fairly, what might the fair average earnings of the men he ?—I con¬ 
 ceive, at present, good workmen can earn from four to five shillings a day. 
 Our wages are one ninth part greater than they were at that period. 
 
 “ How long had that rate of eight shillings continued?—It had been for, 
 I should think, about two years. 
 
 “ How many hours do you reckon that they must work to earn fifteen shil¬ 
 lings a-week, under the old rate of eight shillings?—I should suppose about 
 eight or nine hours. Sometimes the workmen arc longer in the pit. The 
 rule is, to relieve the collier of his coals in rotation: a collier who gets his 
 coals taken first from him to-day, is second on the day following, and so it 
 
193 
 
 the same resource; but instead of encumbering 
 the text with any new cases, we refer for all our 
 
 gaven 35 to scor, which we wisli to obten; and their is 6 pance more which 
 belongs to the we pit, which they wish to obten. 
 
 “ We llimens, yours, &c. 
 
 (Signal by 84. pa-sms-.) 
 
194 
 
 additional ones to the notes which are appended 
 below. 
 
 “ Had not that increase extended to twenty-nine hundred weight, by 
 which the men were paid?—The men were paid hy the same measure at 
 which we sold. 
 
 “ Did you then sell the coals at twenty-nine liundrd weight, the same as 
 you paid the men for?—The same as we paid the men. 
 
 “ If you had not stored the coals in the manner you have stated, would 
 it not have been matter of necessity that you should have discharged a con¬ 
 siderable number of your men ?—It would. 
 
 “Is it not a rule with you to store?—Only at some collieries. At 
 others, the men are prevented from working, unless they can sell. Some 
 coal-masters will not store coals, because there is a loss upon them, a 
 
 “ What took place upon the receipt of the letter you have produced ?— 
 We stated to the colliers the same as we had said in 1817; that, if they 
 were to strike, they might do it immediately. 
 
 “ Did you refuse to comply with the demands herein stated?—We deter¬ 
 mined to listen to no demand made under that combination. That demand 
 was made in consetpience of directions issued at a general meeting of col¬ 
 liers at Kilmarnock: the object was, to attack the collieries in Ayrshire 
 individually, and reduce them one by one to their measures. 
 
 “ In what way do you know that orders were given hy the association to 
 the effect you have stated ?—I cannot well say how I know it: I know it 
 from the report of the colliers who had attended at that meeting, and from 
 many of our workmen; the greater part of our workmen were extremely 
 unwilling to strike, hut it was forced upon them hy the other colliers of the 
 
 “ Did you understand that your colliery had been selected hy the general 
 meeting at Kilmarnock, as that at which the men had been desired first to 
 strike?—I did. 
 
 “ Why did you prefer an immediate strike to taking time to consider 
 whether an arrangement could he made with the men ?—Because we re¬ 
 solved on employing other men. 
 
 “ You stated that part of your men unwillingly acceded to this; what 
 consequences did they apprehend from refusing to join in it?—They appre¬ 
 hended personal consequences to themselves. 
 
 “ Have any acts taken place of personal violence ?—No. 
 
195 
 
 But, secondly, we are aware that, in the greater 
 number of trades, a labourer from the general 
 
 “ Were there acts sufficient to induce the men to think that, if they per¬ 
 severed, there would he violence committed ?—There was, hut no act of 
 
 “ Was there any other object the men had in view hut a rise of wages ? 
 —Yes; the great object was the exclusion of other work-people. I sent 
 for the men to meet me. After receiving that letter, they assembled to 
 meet me; but I was delayed for a very few minutes, by a gentleman 
 on business, and the hour passed at which I had appointed to meet 
 with them: they were waiting not fifty yards from me; and, under the 
 direction of their leaders, when they found the hour had expired, they 
 resolved not to wait one minute longer, but to take me at a minute’s 
 
 for such conduct, and I gave out that not one of them need return to 
 their work. 
 
 “ How did you give that out, by a written letter?—No, verbally to a few 
 of the men. 
 
 “ That they should not he allowed to work ?—Yes. 
 
 “ Did you mean the whole of them?—No: I do not remember the ex- 
 
 tion, or the association. 
 
 “ Was your object, by the conduct then pursued, rather to induce them 
 by your firmness to agree to continue to work than to force them to leave ? 
 —My intention was, to state to them that I would not agree to any 
 terms made under that combination. 
 
 “ You had no wish to meet them afterwards?—None. 
 
 “ Y’ou did not send to ask them to meet you again?—No. 
 
 “What took place?—They struck work; there was no more work of 
 course by those men, and we set about immedi ately employing other work- 
 
 
 fortnight or three 
 
196 
 
 population is not so speedily convertible to use 
 as in collieries; and that, therefore, with even 
 
 would have nothing hereafter to do with it, and that they had been misled 
 and deceived. 
 
 “ Did you take those men on?—We did. 
 
 “ How many?—There were about twenty of them. 
 
 “ From the time of that strike up to the 2d of February, had tiie men 
 who had left you attempted by any acts of violence to prevent the men you 
 had at work from working?—No; there were one or two acts of violence, 
 but so trifling as not to be deserving of notice. On the 17th of February a 
 still greater number came in; I may say all of them came in on the 17th of 
 February, all whom we desired to take in, and they were all obliged to 
 declare that they would hereafter join no association. 
 
 “ Have they worked from that time to this quietly?—They have. 
 
 “ You have had no disturbance and trouble with them?—No; and they 
 harmonize very well with the new men; that was part of the obligation un¬ 
 der which they were taken back. 
 
197 
 
 full security for the new workmen, a time must 
 elapse, and loss must be incurred, and a most in- 
 
 “ Who attended?—I do not bear a precise recollection now of the names 
 of all who attended; there were about thirteen or fourteen. 
 
 “ Who took the chair?—I did. 
 
 “ What took place at that meeting?—At that meeting it was resolved, 
 that for six months no coal-master should engage those belonging to a 
 neighbouring colliery, without lie brought permission in writing. 
 
 “ Unless he received a certificate of good conduct V—Yes, and of being 
 discharged. 
 
 “Have you any copy of those resolutions?—I have not; I have only 
 notes of them. It was further resolved, to oppose all interference on tiie 
 part of tile workmen in the management or the conduct of the work; but 
 part of the resolution declared, that that was not to apply or prevent any 
 master from giving such advance of wages as might appear to him to be rea¬ 
 sonable in the altered circumstances of the country; it was only to prevent 
 an interference in the regulations of the work, not to prevent a rise of wages. 
 
 “ But to prevent any man belonging to the colliers club or association 
 from being employed by you?—Those masters agreed not to employ each 
 other’s men. 
 
 “ Did you come to a resolution, that you would not employ any man be¬ 
 longing to the colliers dub or association ?—No, wc diu not come to any re¬ 
 solution of that kind. 
 
 " What induced you, as there was no such resolution at that meeting of 
 masters, to declare that you would employ no person belonging to the col¬ 
 liers association?—I said so, from a feeling of my own, that we never could 
 have any satisfaction with our workmen while they were under an associa¬ 
 tion of that kind; I conceived there could be no harmony or good under¬ 
 standing between masters and men where the interference of others was 
 permitted; it was not against any combination of our own workmen that I 
 felt so strongly, but against the interference of strangers, and a committee, 
 sitting perhaps at Kilmarnock, directing the maimer in which our workmen 
 should conduct themselves. 
 
 “ Do you know whether the same regulation was adopted by any other 
 master collier than yourself?—I understand that the Duke of Hamilton has 
 followed the same plan which we did at Ayr, of engaging no men in asso- 
 
 “ The question was confined to any of those who had been requested to 
 attend, or did actually attend, that meeting in November?—There was no 
 other strike took place; the rest of the colliers of the county waited to see 
 the result of the strike at our work. 
 
198 
 
 convenient suspension of the manufacture must 
 take place, ere it can again be set a-going in the 
 
 “ Then the Committee are to understand that the colliers, save and ex¬ 
 cept that attempt upon you, have been regularly at work all the time?—I 
 understand so. 
 
 “ Was not that attempt upon you in consequence of a general resolution ? 
 
 —Yes. 
 
 “ That was the fndt of a general conspiracy ?—Yes. 
 
 “ The conduct of the masters, through you, prevented their carrying their 
 
 object into effect?—It did. 
 
 “ Have you seen the resolutions of the association at Kilmarnock ?_I 
 
 “ Can you state that that is a copy of them ?~[A paper being shown io the 
 witness .]—This is a copy of the resolutions, [producing another.] 
 
 “ When your men were not in work did they receive pecuniary allowance 
 from the association at Kilmarnock?—They did for about six or seven 
 weeks; they received in all about ±'3G0. 
 
 “ Among what number of men was that money distributed ?—I believe 
 between MO and laO. 
 
 “ Do you conceive the arrangements you have now made are such that 
 you have no apprehension of fresh difficulty from your men?—I have no ap¬ 
 prehension of it. 
 
199 
 
 same effective way as before. The old workmen 
 who have struck, cannot all at once be replaced by 
 
 tions to be a crime in Scotland; it was not before imagined to be so, and 
 Scotland has not laboured under the idea of being under the combination 
 laws until a very late period indeed. 
 
 “ Do you speak of a decision in 1810, or the decision in 1817?—T believe 
 the decision might be in 1817; indeed I did not know of that decision till 
 very lately. 
 
 “ In fact the combination laws lmve never been a matter before your 
 notice?—Never; they never influenced me at all. 
 
 “ Do you think it has ever influenced others ?—I do not think it has 
 
 “ Have not the men been anxious that a fixed rate or measure should be 
 adopted, by which they should know that they are to be paid ?—There is a 
 
200 
 
 the same number; and the new workmen who 
 succeed them, cannot all at once acquire the habit 
 
 “ Do not you conceive that you have at various times made efforts to 
 keep your men employed, which you could not have been induced to make 
 from your own feelings of interest?—Certainly, we had to prevent tire im¬ 
 posing on the men the hardship of being discharged. 
 
 “ Have you never discharged your men in cases of failure of trade?—We 
 have sometimes, hut not to any great extent; we have had a largo stock of 
 coals for two years on our hills. 
 
 If it was stated that the average of the wages of the men in your employ 
 had been before the increase, from 10s. to 11s. a week, should you consider 
 that as correct ?—I would not. 
 
and skill of their predecessors. It is certainly re¬ 
 lieving to observe how soon an ordinary labourer 
 
 “ And in point of fact it lias not teen acted upon in Scotland ?—No, it 
 lias not. An application was made by some people in Kilmarnock to force 
 an engagement, and the matter was sent to the crown lawyers in Edinburgh 
 
202 
 
 can be transformed into a good collier, and even 
 ma J e serviceable in many of the branches of cot¬ 
 ton-spinning. Yet there can be no doubt, that in 
 all those crafts and occupations which require a 
 long apprenticeship to be accomplished in their 
 mysteries, there might be a cessation of work 
 which, if persisted in beyond a certain length, 
 mi ght, be inconvenient to master manufacturers, 
 and still more inconvenient to their customers. 
 To look fairly and openly at all the possibilities, 
 one can conceive a great extent of inconvenience 
 from a universal strike of shipwrights, or house- 
 carpenters, and still more, perhaps, of clothiers 
 and shoemakers, and all classes of workmen that 
 cannot be so instantly replaced, as some others, out 
 of the general population. 
 
 Now, in the nature of the case itself, there is a 
 sufficient protection even against this evil, alarm¬ 
 ing as it may appear; and that without any ex¬ 
 press interference of parliament in the matter. We 
 mean the certainty, that, sooner or latter, the 
 workmen who have struck must surrender them¬ 
 selves to terms of agreement with their employers. 
 They cannot hold out against this self-inflicted 
 blockade beyond a certain period. There must 
 
 “ During the last year no such acts of violence have taken place?—I was 
 informed by the master of the colliery, the matter was regularly debated 
 which of these colliers should put him to death. 
 
 “ Has any thing of the kind come to your knowledge in the proceedings 
 of the colliers during the last year?—Nothing of the kind; we never had 
 acts of violence in the western parts of Scotland.” 
 
203 
 
 of course be a rapid expenditure of their means; 
 and, if living without work, and therefore with¬ 
 out wages, their resources must soon melt away. 
 No associated fund can, for a great length of time, 
 afford the indispensable allowances to the men, 
 and their families, of a very numerous combina¬ 
 tion ; and so, of necessity, the combination must 
 sooner or later be broken up. They may submit 
 to very great privations, and put their faculty of 
 suffering to its uttermost endurance, ere they will 
 again resign themselves to a treaty with their 
 employers. But stern necessity must at length 
 prevail over their resistance; and a visit, in tiro 
 first instance, from one or two stragglers, or the 
 offer of some new and modified terms, will be the 
 sure precursor to a general surrender of the whole 
 body. It is altogether misplaced and unnecessary 
 for government to meddle, but for the prevention 
 or punishment of crime, with the steps of a pro¬ 
 cess that will'so surely terminate in the very result 
 which it can be the only object of government to 
 effectuate.* 
 
 * So far Lack as a good many months ago, the run of several of these 
 combinations was finished in this way, and many more have since given in ; 
 and, we have no doubt, left a lesson of efficacy behind them, which will do 
 more to tranquillize the working classes, than law could possibly do with all 
 the terror of its penalties. The Minutes of Evidence taken before the Se¬ 
 lect Committee record some of the earlier instances, beside being ricli in 
 such disclosures respecting the state of many of the existing combinations, 
 as afford the surest presage of their inevitable and speedy termination. 
 
 From the examination of Mr. T. Ilcbbletluvaite:— 
 
204 
 
 And what we hold to be of prime importance 
 in this argument, is, that the result brought about 
 
 know of it till last November; we had heard of it before, but the men 
 would not confess they had joined it till the very last day. 
 
 " Are you certain no combination existed among your men previously to 
 the repeal of the combination laws?—1 believe not. 
 
 “ You had no reason to suspect it?—None at all. 
 
 “ Do you suppose the repeal of the laws tempted the men to form them¬ 
 selves into an association?—I think it (lid. 
 
 “ Did they so form themselves into an association shortly after the repeal 
 of those laws was known ?—I cannot say how long after; but they have got 
 a very large fund, they paid three halfpence a week; they have got a fund 
 which keeps them now for six weeks. 
 
 “ Wien did they begin to form that fund?—I cannot say. 
 
 “ Do they keep those matters secret from you?—Yes. 
 
 “ Are there other manufacturers of the same description near you?—Not 
 very near, there is about a mile off. 
 
 “ Have the workmen in those other manufactories also struck?—Some 
 of them have, but none since they turned out with us, because as we did 
 not submit to them, they have gone on at other places; if we had submitted 
 they would have turned out in the other two manufactories. 
 
 “ What reason have you to believe that?—That is what the people in the 
 union say; we have got part of our own family turned in again, and they 
 call them black ones. 
 
 “ What has become of the men who have retired from the works?—They 
 have been walking about 
 
 “ And living upon the funds of their society?—Yes. 
 
 “ Do you know what they receive?—Some of them receive nine shillings 
 a week, and three shillings for each child. 
 
 “ How long have they continued to receive it?—There were many of 
 them continued thirteen weeks; then they would not go any where else to 
 seek work; then the committee said, that they would not pay them any 
 more money; and then they turned in at their old wages.” 
 
 “ Had you many strikes with your men before the year 1S21 ?—Yes, I 
 had one strike about ten years ago. 
 
 “ What was the cause of that strike ?—They wanted more wages, and I 
 would not give it. 
 
205 
 
 in this natural way, has a far more permanent 
 and pacifying effect upon the workmen, than 
 
 “ What was the consequence of that ?—They lay idle probably about 
 eight or ten days. 
 
 “Was there any mischief done by them at that time?—No, Ido not 
 recollect any.” 
 
 From tlie examination of Mr. William M'AlIister:— 
 
 “ Is it the intention of your association to continue and to enforce in fu¬ 
 ture the regulations contained in that printed paper?—How long or how 
 short it will continue, I cannot say; it seems in a wavering situation at 
 
206 
 
 when overborne out of their combination by the 
 force of legal restraints, and the terror of legal 
 
 “ You are to have no funds until you require them again?_No. 
 
 “ Do not you think it would he desirable for you to abstain altogether 
 from the association, and to let it drop ?—I think it was very near dying a 
 natural death if they had let it alone; if the masters had not interfered, by 
 their agitating it, and bringing men up to London, summoning them to 
 London, and so on; that will agitate the men’s minds against their mas¬ 
 ters.” 
 
 From the examination of Adam Brown, one of Mr. Taylor’s workmen:— 
 
 “ Have you returned to the work?—Yes. 
 
 “ Did you get what you wanted ?—No, we did not. 
 
 “ How came you to return?—I do not know precisely the reason. 
 
 “ Did you think it best to give up ?—Yes, I thought it was best to return, 
 aud there were many who were of the same notion. 
 
 “ Is not Mr. Taylor always a good master?—I never saw any thing else. 
 
 “ Were you discharged?—The whole body was discharged. 
 
 “ He would not agree to any alteration?—No, 
 
 “ Did you report to the association?—Yes. 
 
 “ Did they make you any allowance ?—Yes, we received eight shillings a 
 week for a time. 
 
 “ After that period what did you do?—There were a good many went 
 away to different places, and some returned, and I returned. 
 
 “ Did you return to work in the same manner that you had done before, 
 
207 
 
 penalties. It will be of far more quiescent and 
 satisfying power, when it is the result of their 
 
 “ Do not you think these associations will soon fall to pieces; that the 
 men will not continue to pay money, unless they see masters likely to take 
 advantage of them ?—I think if it was let alone, it would die a natural 
 death. 
 
 « Has any body meddled with it?—Calling us up here. 
 
 “ Do you think the stir about the combination laws has tended to keep 
 up these associations?—I do not know whether it has not; hut I know no¬ 
 thing about the proceedings of the association, I was only a few weeks 
 in it altogether. 
 
 “ You are all satisfied now, and every thing is going on quietly and 
 peaceably?—Yes.” 
 
 From the examination of John Swift. 
 
 “ What makes a member ?— 3d. paid. 
 
 “ How often?—I-Ic pays 3d. in the commencement, and subscribes 3d. a 
 week till he subscribes .-£1, and then his subscription ceases, except in case 
 of any strike for advance of wages, and tiien he takes his part of it, but that 
 is kept as a regular fund; .€1 each member. 
 
 “ How many days did the men stand out ?—Perhaps three days. 
 
 “ You paid the wages of tiiose three days out of the fund?—We did. 
 
 “ What wages did you pay out of the fund ?—Wo allow a married man 
 who has a wife and one child, 9s. a week.” 
 
 From the examination of Mr. Henry Taylor. 
 
 “ Do you know whether at any prior period strangers were admitted to 
 come to Bristol and work there without any objection being made on the 
 part of the club ?—Yes, the last four or five years, hut not previously to 
 that; for the last four or five years they had no money. 
 
 “ Then if there was a long strike, from what source do you apprehend 
 they could get funds to enable them to go on?—I have heard they could 
 get it from London. I know they have it not of themselves. They could 
 not stand out long in Bristol.” 
 
 From the examination of Mr. Joseph Fletcher. 
 
 “ Was that combination broken up?—It wore itself out by their having 
 no money left. They had accumulated together, some said, as much as IS 
 or £20,000, the loss to the shipwrights on the river at that time could not 
 lie computed at less than £90,000, in labour, out of the pockets of the 
 
208 
 
 own experiment. They will be greatly more 
 manageable, after having themselves made full 
 
 From the examination of Benjamin Lomax, Shipwright. 
 
 “ You collect funds in your association?—Yes. 
 
 “ How are they collected?—Men, when at work, pay a penny per day to 
 the funds; if not at work, nothing. 
 
 “ Do you know the amount of the fund?—We have not much fund now, 
 
 because we have had such very heavy calls upon it_I do not know exactly 
 
 what balance we have now, hilt not above £200, or £300. 
 
 “ You were asked a question just now respecting the amount of funds; 
 can you state what was the largest amount of funds at any one period?—! 
 do not think at any time we have had £500, in our possession.” 
 
 From the examination of Charles Husband, Shipwright. 
 
 “ Then, with the exception of those four days, and the fortnight you were 
 at Mr. Castles’, you have been out of employment?—Yes. 
 
 “What did you receive during that time from the Union?—I received 
 one or two weeks at the rate of a guinea, and one I received at the rate 
 of 12s. 
 
 “ What was the reason of the difference?—Because our funds would not 
 allow of it. I got about four or five days work for an owner of a ship; I 
 believe four days and a half.” 
 
 Of course these combinations must vary in greater or less degrees of oh. 
 stinacy; and perhaps the following extract from the minutes of evidence 
 before the Commons’ Committee, furnishes us with one of the strongest 
 cases of determination on the part of workmen. 
 
 From the examination of Mr. W. Richmond, Ship-owner in North- 
 Shields. 
 
 “Do you think the ship-owners should be allowed to fix any rate of 
 wages they think proper for the men, nnd the men should not be allowed 
 to make what demands, or fix what rate they think proper?—The men 
 have an undoubted right to demand what they please, and we surely ought 
 to have a similar right to offer what we please; but if we will not give 
 what the men demand, the influence of the committee is so strong, they 
 will endure starvation and hunger, to my knowledge, rather than not carry 
 
 “ You think it hard that they will rather starve than work on your terms ? 
 —I am not capable of expressing myself upon that question.” 
 
 “ Have those resolutions been attended to ?—No, we found it in vain, 
 
209 
 
 trial of their own impotency, than when festering 
 under a sense of the injustice and hostility where¬ 
 with, under the old combination laws, they con¬ 
 ceived that the hand of government was lifted up 
 against the interests and natural rights of their 
 order. It was quite to be expected, that there 
 should be frequent, and even fierce out-breakings 
 on their part, after the repeal of these laws; but, 
 most assuredly, this general experience of the 
 upshot will be of far more healing influence, than 
 any thing so fitted to exasperate and tantalize, as 
 the re-enactment of them. And it should fur- 
 
 becausc the men are consistent and united in their purpose, even to the ex- 
 
 successfully combine against their workmen. 
 
 “ Do you mean they would rather starve, than work against the regula¬ 
 tions which they thoughtright for their own protection ?—T do really think so.” 
 
 We feel quite assured that nought but perseverance is requisite in such 
 a case as this, for bringing the men to a surrender; if they indeed demand 
 more than the fair market price of labour in a free state of things. 
 
 From the examination of Robert Raven, a Cooper. 
 
 “ Do you think your funds amount to .-£500?—No. 
 
 “£300?—No, nor £200, 1 think. 
 
 “ How could you pay I Sr. a week to seven hundred of the trade, even 
 for one week?—If it would not amount to that we should not pay them; 
 
 “ If that fund was exhausted, have you any means to resort to to raise 
 more?—No. 
 
 “ Have you come to any resolution what amount the persons striking on 
 Wednesday are to receive?—They are to receive according to the regular 
 rule as long as the stock may last. 
 
 “ What is the regular rule?—18s. I have stated." 
 
 What earthly call is there for legislating against people so helpless; or of 
 superadding the penalties of law to those still more effectual penalties 
 wherewith nature visits every unfair combination in the shape of sore and 
 
 Vor.. III. D d 
 
210 
 
 ther be recollected, that, when freely left, first, 
 to their own experiment, and then to their own 
 experience of its failure, all the accompaniments 
 of the process are such as serve to deter from the 
 repetition of it. They will not be so readily 
 tempted to place reliance again upon an associa¬ 
 tion that has failed, and from very powerlessness, 
 to make good any of those plans and promises 
 which had so deceived them. And they will be 
 still further alienated from such an enterprise, by 
 their recollection of the miseries to which it al¬ 
 ready had exposed them—of the hardships which 
 they had to suffer while it lasted—and, finally, of 
 the humiliating prostration of themselves to their 
 masters, in which it terminated. For they will 
 not forget, that, should the perseverance of their 
 employers outlast their own, it places them on 
 high vantage-ground, and themselves in a state 
 of most submissive helplessness. Should the 
 master have but partially replaced them by new 
 workmen during the strike, then he may not have 
 room for all, after the strike is over; and he 
 might signalize the ringleaders of the opposition 
 by a determined exclusion of them; and he 
 might re-admit the rest on less favourable terms 
 than before.* Under all these recollections, the 
 
 * It should be observed, that the success even of one master, over his 
 own special combination, must have a paralyzing effect on all other combin¬ 
 ations, and more especially in the same trade. Should he have replaced so 
 many of his strike-work men by new hands, and rejected as many after they 
 have given in; these are thrown upon the country in a state of idleness, and 
 will naturally go in quest of employment, to other establishments of a sinii- 
 
211 
 
 proposal for another combination may be re¬ 
 peated, in the course of years, but it will not 
 just have the same charms for them. And bet¬ 
 ter security far, we affirm, for the quiescence of 
 our working classes, that they should be con¬ 
 ducted to it, at length, by the lessons of their 
 own experience, than that they should be con¬ 
 strained to it, at once, by the laws of autho¬ 
 rity. 
 
 And it is really not for the interest of the 
 masters, that there should be a revival of these 
 laws. Greatly better for them too, that there 
 should have been a trial of strength, after which 
 both parties are landed in that state of settlement 
 and repose, which comes after a battle that has 
 been decisively terminated. We are aware of the 
 spirit which is now abroad among the workmen, 
 and that it is going forth in succession through 
 the manufacturing districts of the land. But, 
 
 lar kind to that from which they have hcen discarded; and so bring a force 
 of competition to bear upon other combinations besides tiiat which has just 
 been broken up. And as a very few unemployed workmen agreeable to the 
 principles that wc havd tried to expound, can effect n very grievous reduc¬ 
 tion on the wages of a whole body of tradesmen, it has the effect of aggra¬ 
 vating the natural penalty of these combinations, by making the reaction all 
 the more tremendous. 
 
 From the examination of Mr. Alexander Guthrie. 
 
 “ Do you expect that this association will endeavour to carry into effect 
 its regulations, with reference to the workmen employed in collieries in the 
 county of Ayr?—I cannot 6ay exactly; I think that the check they got by 
 Mr. Taylor’s success will have a considerable effect in keeping them quiet 
 for some time. 
 
 “You do not apprehend any trouble from them at present?—No, not for 
 
212 
 
 truly, we contemplate the progress of these out- 
 breakings with no other feelings, and no other 
 anticipations, than we should regard the progress 
 of an ambulatory school, whose office it is to 
 spread the lessons of a practical wisdom over the 
 face of the country; and the peace and meekness 
 of wisdom will be the inevitable results of it. 
 Accordingly, we do find that the earlier combina¬ 
 tions have been dispersed, and given place to the 
 re-establishment of a good understanding between 
 the workmen and their employers; while other 
 and more recent combinations are still in progress. 
 This is just to say, that in some places they have 
 acquired the lesson, while in others they are only 
 learning it. The country is still at school upon 
 this subject; and it were a pity that she was not 
 permitted to finish her education.* For ourselves 
 
 * We feel assured that, at this moment, there is a more pacific habit, the 
 fruit of their recent experience, among the workmen of Glasgow, than 
 among those of many parts in England; and that among the capitalists of 
 the former place, there is a more general conviction, the fruit, also, of re¬ 
 cent experience, that combinations, if simply let alone, will soon work them¬ 
 selves out, and that no other legislative remedy is called for than a sufficient 
 protection against the violence of the outstanding workmen. 
 
 Besides, it appears very evident that the lesson is making rapid progress, 
 and will, in all probability, if it meet with no interruption, he perfected in a 
 very few months. We found this affirmation upon such articles of daily in¬ 
 telligence as the following;— 
 
 “ We are happy to state that the proprietors of coal-works in Renfrew¬ 
 shire are discomfiting, in grand style, the colliers’ confederation. Mr. 
 Houston’s works are fast filling with new men; and, from the quality of 
 the coal, most of them will become expert colliers within a month. They 
 are to he allowed at the rate of three shillings per day wages. They are to 
 work from eight to ten hours, according to the work done, and which is to 
 
213 
 
214 
 
 away. But, for this purpose, it is indispensable 
 that they should work themselves out by their own 
 
 cognition of the union society by the masters, so far as not to require any of 
 their workmen to disown it. With this explanation, and this consolation, 
 the meeting, which consisted of from 1200 to 1500 workmen, seemed satis¬ 
 fied ; and a vote of thanks was carried unanimously, on the motion of Mr. 
 Yester, seconded by Mr. Walworth, to Mr. Wood and Messrs. Read, for 
 the readiness they had shown to meet the men on the present occasion, and 
 for their liberal conduct towards their workmen. The meeting dispersed in 
 perfect good humour at nightfall, it having been previously announced from 
 the chair, that no further meetings would be held at this place.” 
 
 “ We commence the printing of a second edition at a late hour, to an. 
 nounce to the public the gratifyingdnforination, that the long existing dif¬ 
 ferences between the master manufacturers of this town and their men are 
 now rapidly drawing to a close. This afternoon a deputation of Mr. Wood’s 
 
natural effervescence, instead of being forcibly re¬ 
 pressed by the hand of authority. One conse- 
 
 of the union society, now considerably diminished, for the purpose of saving 
 expenses, still continue their sitting at the Roebuck Inn, and their principal 
 endeavours are directed to supplying the unemployed workmen with such 
 
216 
 
 quence is very obvious. It will serve to bring out 
 more singly, and therefore more impressively, to 
 
 remembrance of it will do more for tile future peace of the community, 
 than could he done in a legal way by all the wisdom of Parliament. 
 
 We cannot refrain from the insertion of one notice more upon this sub- 
 ject, as being quite conclusive of the point, that the chastisements of Na¬ 
 ture and Necessity on rash combinations are severe enough in themselves, 
 and require not the superadded chastisements of law. 
 
 “ Disasters of the Bradford Turn-outs. 
 
 “ We stated last week,” says the Leeds Intelligencer, “ that about 1,700 
 of those misguided men found it impossible, on any terms, to obtain em¬ 
 ployment, and that the resources of the Union were entirely drained. It 
 now appears, that, including the wives and children of the unfortunate be¬ 
 ings, the total number at present in a state of the most abject destitution, 
 
21 ' 
 
 the view of workmen, the natural control and ascen¬ 
 dancy which masters have over them. It has an 
 influence the very reverse of pacific, when servants 
 are led to regard their master in the light of one 
 who is invested, by arbitrary laws, with the power 
 of a tyrant. But let Government and the laws be 
 kept out of this controversy altogether. Let it be 
 reduced to a single-handed contest between the 
 power which should belong to the one party of 
 giving or withholding employment, and the power 
 which should equally belong to the other party, of 
 giving or withholding their services. Let Parlia¬ 
 ment not meddle in this altercation at all; and it 
 is impossible, but that at length, by the simple 
 operation of its own rival and conflicting forces, a 
 fair adjustment must come out of it. And a solid 
 peace will be the fruit of this adjustment. After 
 the artificial checks to combination have been with¬ 
 drawn, workmen will be taught, and become intel¬ 
 ligent as to the real power and operation of the 
 natural checks; and they will not be so readily 
 thrown agog by the plausibilities which now so 
 
 to devise some means of immediate relief to the suffering unemployed 
 workmen and their families; and I have no doubt but what can be effected 
 by tlie kind benevolence of the gentlemen ami tradesmen of the town and 
 neighbourhood, will be done in mitigation of the present extreme distress.” 
 
 “ We are happy to find that the demand for stuff goods in the Bradford 
 market, on the last two market days, lias been nearly equal to that of the five 
 months preceding; and though there is not yet any material improvement 
 in prices, the indications of an improving trade are already too clear to be 
 at all mistaken.” 
 
 Voi.. III. E e 
 
218 
 
 mislead and agitate them. More especially, they 
 will come to perceive, that apart from the autho- 
 rity of law altogether, there is a natural power 
 which belongs to the holders of capital; and 
 we are persuaded, that the demonstrations which 
 have been recently given of it in the defeat of 
 many associations, will do more to compose the 
 turbulence of workmen, than all the threats and 
 penalties of the statute-book. And better, greatly 
 better for the masters, that their security should 
 be founded upon this, than upon any odious and 
 unpopular legislation, which has the effect of alien¬ 
 ating from their persons, the respect and gratitude 
 of their own servants. Let this hateful intermed¬ 
 dling of law be withdrawn from their negotiations; 
 and, on both sides, there will at length be felt the 
 sweets and the ties of a natural relationship. The 
 mutual dependence, and the mutual obligation will 
 be far better understood. And employers will 
 never be on so secure and kindly a footing with 
 their workmen, as when the latter have been 
 taught, by sad experience, precisely to estimate 
 how much they have to fear from any scheme of 
 hostility against the interest of the former, and how 
 much it is they owe for admission and continuance 
 in their service.* 
 
 On every view then of this question, we feel as 
 
 * In Mr. Taylor’s testimony it appears, that there was, after the entire 
 defeat of the combination against him, “ a great good temper among the men.” 
 ■\Ve hold it quite in keeping with human nature, that when, instead of firm 
 
219 
 
 if there was nothing so much to be abjured and 
 deprecated, as any regress, on the part of Govern¬ 
 ment, towards the combination laws. It were en¬ 
 dangering the peace of the country for the interest, 
 and that, too, the imaginary interest, of merchants 
 and master manufacturers. It were bringing upon 
 Government the burden of a popular odium, which, 
 for the cement and security of the social fabric, 
 every friend of public order should rejoice in see¬ 
 ing it delivered from. It were setting the autho¬ 
 rities of the land in array against the population; 
 and that, for a purpose which is abundantly pro¬ 
 vided for by the workings and the influences, and 
 the actions and re-actions of the natural mechan¬ 
 ism of society, if that mechanism were only left to 
 its own free operation. We are reminded, while 
 on this argument, of the delusions which have been 
 so well exposed by Dr. Smith; and which were 
 practised by the traders of other days upon Govern¬ 
 ment, when they attempted, and but too success¬ 
 fully, to enlist her on the side of their own pecu¬ 
 liar interests. Hence the wretched jealousies of 
 
 resistance, there was partially a giving way to the men, and some conces¬ 
 sions made in their behalf, there should still he an unquelled spirit of turbu¬ 
 lence and discontent. 
 
 The following is from the examination of Mr. Alexander Guthrie 
 
 “ Wliat answer did you give to the delegates ?—I told them to work away 
 peaceably, and come to nr and that if we could see the means of 
 
 raising our prices we >vou'. uieirs also. 
 
 “Since you mndc the advance, the men are working satisfactorily?— 
 Yes; they are grumbling sometimes, but they work pretty fairly. 
 
 Do they belong to the association ?—Ye-." 
 
220 
 
 that mercantile system, which is now verging to 
 an overthrow; and by which the relation of Great 
 Britain with all foreign nations, was placed on a 
 footing the most vulnerable and precarious. In 
 like manner, there are certain home jealousies, 
 to which we trust that Government will not lend 
 herself as the instrument of any subserviency what¬ 
 ever, else her own relation to the plebeian orders 
 of the community, which it were so desirable should 
 be a relation of kindness on the one side, and of 
 grateful and confiding attachment on the other, 
 might be turned into a relation of hostility and 
 discontent. By the late enlightened reformations 
 of her economical code, she has done much to 
 propitiate the favour of people abroad; and of 
 consequence she is now strong in the admiration 
 and approving regards of all Europe. Let her 
 proceed in the career upon which she has entered, 
 of economical improvement at home, and higher 
 achievement still, she will become equally strong 
 in the affections of her own population. 
 
 The mercantile system, with its competitions 
 and jealousies, has been the fertile source of many 
 foreign wars, which we now trust will not be so 
 easily or so frequently kindled as in past genera¬ 
 tions. And the same system turned inwardly upon 
 ourselves, has been the prolific source of many in¬ 
 testine divisions, which we trust, by the wisdom 
 of a more enlightened policy, will henceforth be 
 effectually superseded. It is too much, that 
 Government, to appease the premature and ex- 
 
221 
 
 aggerated alarm of our capitalists, should be 
 called forth to interfere in such a way, as must 
 excite against her the heart-burnings of a whole 
 population. Her wisdom is forbearance; and 
 save for the punishment of crime, or the defence 
 of obvious and natural equity, she might safely 
 leave the whole question to the determination of 
 the parties themselves, to the adjustment, in which 
 it will of its own accord settle down by the way, in 
 which the claims of the one are met and limited 
 by the counteractions of the other. 
 
 Government might, with all confidence, leave the 
 price of labour to find its own level, in common 
 with all other marketable commodities. The re¬ 
 cent outrages that have arisen from the repeal of 
 the combination laws, called most certainly for an 
 exercise of legislation, but an exercise altogether 
 distinct from that by which any great principle 
 of natural liberty is trenched upon or violated. 
 It will really be too much, if any premature or 
 imaginary alarm on the part of interested capital¬ 
 ists, shall precipitate our rulers into a departure 
 from that wise and liberal policy, by which they 
 have earned both the attachment of the people, 
 and the admiration of all those who are any way 
 versant in the philosophy of human affairs. The 
 best friends of peace and order in our land, will 
 ever regret that most useless waste of popularity 
 which they must incur, if they give way to the 
 sensitive fears,'or the sordid wishes of traders and 
 manufacturers upon this subject—a class of men, 
 
222 
 
 who, centuries ago, led our lawgivers into that 
 Ishraaelitish policy, which laid us open to the hos¬ 
 tility of all surrounding nations; and some of whom 
 would now have us to brave the hazards of a still 
 more fearful hostility at home, and despoil our 
 truly paternal Government of her fair and natural 
 inheritance in the affections of her own children.* 
 
 * There can he no doubt, however, that a very great number, and, per¬ 
 haps, even tile majority of our capitalists, desiderate no enactment what¬ 
 ever against combinations, and would he abundantly satisfied with security 
 against the violence of the outstanding workmen. 
 
 The following is from the examination of Mr. Walter Glascock, proprietor 
 of the Irish Times Newspaper:— 
 
 “ Is it within your own knowledge, that in former years outrages arising 
 
223 
 
 CHAP. XXL 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 
 
 It is competent for masters too, to frame such 
 articles of agreement with their workmen, as shall 
 protect them in a great measure from any sudden 
 or unlooked-for cessations; and for the violation 
 of which, these workmen shall bring down upon 
 themselves, not the arbitrary, but the rightful 
 penalties of law; and which penalties, should it be 
 found necessary, might be still further aggravated, 
 without any offence to the principles- of an obvious 
 or natural morality. They could engage their 
 labourers for a service of months, instead of weeks 
 or days, and then put forth a most legitimate 
 strength to compel their fulfilment of the stipula¬ 
 ted period. To make the security more effectual, 
 they could hire their workmen in separate classes 
 at all separate periods; so that, at worst, it could 
 only be a partial, and never a universal strike at any 
 one time. They could further ascertain before¬ 
 hand, as in domestic service, whether any of them 
 mean to leave their employment at the termination 
 of their bargain; and thus masters, with time to 
 look about for new workmen, could never be 
 caught unprepared. We do not imagine that all 
 these devices will be found necessary, but it is well 
 that they lie in reserve, as so many natural expe- 
 
224 
 
 dients for preventing a mischief, the prevention of 
 which, ought not to be the office of law, but the 
 office of the parties concerned. All that law has 
 to do, is to avenge violence and to redress injustice; 
 and a master, secure of these, should make no 
 further demand upon Government, but take upon 
 himself the burden of his own arrangements, for 
 the right and the prosperous conduct of his own 
 affairs.* 
 
 • Perhaps there might be additional law requisite, to enforce, with more 
 adequate penalties, the fulfilling of engagements on the part of workmen; 
 and this were altogether in a right spirit of legislation. 
 
 From the examination of Mr. W. Richmond:— 
 
 “ Have you any power by law to compel these men to fulfil their engage¬ 
 ments?—Yes, I believe there is, on application to the magistrates; hut it 
 is an inefficient remedy in such a case. 
 
 “ Was any application made to magistrates to compel the men in this 
 case to fulfil their engagements and proceed on the voyage ?—I should think 
 not; I am pretty sure there was not. 
 
 “ Are we to understand that the demand on the part of the men was yielded 
 to by the owner rather than take the men before a magistrate to compel the 
 execution of their contract ?—The affidavit gives as a reason, that she was 
 a large ship, and if she had lost that opportunity of sailing, she might have 
 laid there a very long time at that season of the year. 
 
 “ Was there time for the master of the ship to have made a regular com¬ 
 plaint before the magistrate, so as to have got his ship to sea?—I do not 
 know how far that might be the case, as it was near high water. The ma¬ 
 gistrate could not have compelled them to go to sea; he could only commit 
 them; nor would any other men have come and taken their places. That 
 is a principle amongst them, which nothing will induce them to deviate 
 
 From the examination of Mr. Henry Heath:— 
 
 “ You are aware that there is a new Act enabling you to bring any sea¬ 
 man, who shall refuse to perform the articles he has signed, to immediate 
 punishment?—Yes, I stated I was aware of it. I beg to state that I be- 
 
225 
 
 And, more than this, such is the plenitude of his 
 means for the counteraction of his associated work¬ 
 men, that he can not only protect himself from 
 them, by the system of prevention which we have 
 now adverted to; but, railing this, there is a way in 
 which he may find compensation for any losses 
 which lie may have sustained by the suspension of 
 his works. Masters and manufacturers can lay an 
 assessment on the wages of the re-admitted work¬ 
 men, or, which is the same thing, can take them 
 in again upon reduced wages, till they have re¬ 
 covered, by the difference, a complete indemnifi¬ 
 cation for all that they have suffered by the inter¬ 
 ruption of the manufacture. This has often been 
 held out as a threat, although we are not aware of 
 any instance in which it has been put into execu¬ 
 tion. Still it is an available method, which, if 
 adopted, would at once make up for the strike, and 
 afford another security against the repetition of it. 
 It were a competent, and, in many cases we be¬ 
 lieve, a fair chastisement inflicted by the employers 
 upon their workmen, and so would serve to in¬ 
 crease the weight of all the other chastisements, 
 which, by the very nature and necessity of the case, 
 are sure to follow in the train of such a combina- 
 
 licve the Act only rims in this wav, that if any seaman should refuse, after 
 haring; signed the articles, to proceed to sea, he may he taken before a ma¬ 
 gistrate, and he hears him; and on his continuing to refuse, the magistrate 
 may then commit hint to the house of correction. So far the Act is cer¬ 
 tainly defective: it does not punish the act of refusal if the man afterwards 
 thinks proper''to go.” 
 
 Vol. III. 1’ f 
 
226 
 
 tion. There is no need that to these there should 
 be superadded the terrors of the law, or that mas¬ 
 ters, with such a weight of natural ascendency 
 as belongs to them, should call in the aid of Gov¬ 
 ernment for the settlement of their own private 
 quarrels with their workmen. They have ample 
 means for this in their own hands; nor is it fair to 
 saddle our legislature with the odium and the re¬ 
 sponsibility of a most objectionable law; and that, 
 for the purpose of bringing about a result which 
 their own power and their own spirit should fully 
 enable them to achieve. 
 
 At the very worst, and though masters should 
 not be wholly able to protect themselves from in¬ 
 convenience and loss by combination, this should 
 just be regarded as one out of many other hazards 
 to which their business is exposed. Manifold are 
 the casualties to which they are subjected, whether 
 from lire or shipwreck, or unlooked-for fluctua¬ 
 tions in the state of the market. It is not more the 
 part of Government to interfere for their defence 
 against the uncertainties of the market for labour, 
 than against the uncertainties of the market for 
 those commodities in which they deal—against 
 the fitful elements of discontent or cupidity in the 
 minds of their workmen, than against the fitful 
 agitations of the weather or of the ocean. It is 
 for them to lay their account with the chances and 
 the changes in the price of labour, as well as in 
 the price, whether of their raw material or of their 
 finished commodity, and just to charge or to cal- 
 
227 
 
 culate accordingly. In a word, it is altogether 
 their own affair; and Government has acquitted 
 itself fully of all its duties to them, if, watching 
 over the preservation of the peace, it simply pro¬ 
 tects all, and provides for all, in the exercise of 
 that full natural liberty which belongs to them.* 
 But what completely exonerates Government 
 from the duty of protecting masters against the 
 losses that may arise from simple combination is, 
 that, in the mere workings and effects of such a 
 transaction, there does naturally, and at length* 
 cast up a most liberal compensation, we will not 
 say to each individual master, but certainly to the 
 general body; so that their interest, viewed as a 
 whole, does not suffer by it. The master, in truth, 
 is only the ostensible, or at worst the temporary 
 sufferer by this conspiracy of his workmen; and 
 if there be any sufferer at all in the long run, it is 
 not he but the customer. He loses profit for a 
 season; but it is all made up to him by the even¬ 
 tual rise of profit that ensues on the production of 
 
 • This is somewhat brought out in the examination of Mr. Eli Chad¬ 
 wick. 
 
 “ If I might be allowed to make an observation, this case involves a more 
 serious inconvenience to us than seems to be apprehended; for our orders 
 were taken at a certain price, and we were obliged to give an advance that 
 interfered most seriously witli our profits. 
 
 “ You made no contract with your men?—No. 
 
 “ Would you not suffer the same inconvenience if a rise in the raw mate¬ 
 rial was to take place after you had made a contract ?—We were labouring 
 under that at the time. 
 
 “ Have you suffered that inconvenience also?—Yes.” 
 
228 
 
 his commodity being suspended. This is the 
 well-known ’effect of a general strike among ope¬ 
 ratives. It relieves the overladen market of the 
 glut under which it labours, and, by the time that 
 worknjen at length give in, the manufacturer en¬ 
 ters upon what to him is the most enriching of all 
 harvests, the harvest of a brisk demand upon empty 
 warehouses. These cessations are the very calms 
 which not only precede, but ensure the gales of 
 prosperity that come in between them. This pal¬ 
 try attempt of the legislature, to regulate and re¬ 
 strain the monsoons of the trading world, works 
 nothing beneficial to the one party, while it hurts 
 and harasses the feelings of the other. Would 
 they but withhold that perpetual interference by 
 which they are ever cramping and constraining the 
 liberty of things, they would find how much better 
 the laws of nature, and the laws of political eco¬ 
 nomy, provide for the great interests of human life, 
 when unchecked by the laws of parliament.* 
 
 • Even during the currency of n partial strike, masters may find a har¬ 
 vest in combinations. This is exemplified in nothing more remarkably than 
 in coals. The smaller quantity which is thrown out of the pits, in conse¬ 
 quence of the colliers working less than their masters would have them, or 
 in consequence of inefficiency on the part of the new men who have been 
 brought in to replace the outstanding colliers, tells instantly on the price of 
 the article; and, from the principles already stated, tells all the more power¬ 
 fully tiiat coal is a necessary of life. This accounts for the advantage which 
 so many coalmasters have derived from the combinations; an advantage ac¬ 
 cruing to them necessarily from the law which regulates the fluctuation of 
 prices—amt an advantage that lias come, in all probability, without foresight 
 or contrivance on their part. Tile price which they obtain is the fair mar- 
 
229 
 
 There is one consideration more on which the 
 friends of the combination laws would plead for 
 the re-enactment of them, and that is, the difficulty 
 of legislating effectually against outrages. When 
 once an association is formed, there are innumer¬ 
 able ways by which it can control workmen out of 
 their liberty, and which are utterly beyond the 
 correction or the cognizance of law. There is a 
 formidable authority in the very contempt and ha- 
 
 ket price for the quantity of coal actually wrought; and it is a price, which, 
 by inciting competition, and encottragingan entry upon new mines, may soon 
 fluctuate so as to make coals as unnaturally cheap, as they are now unnatur¬ 
 ally dear in the west of Scotland. 
 
 Wc insert the following, only for the sake of the fact which it unfolds, 
 and without participation in the reflection against masters, wherewith it is 
 accompanied. 
 
 “ Sin,—A constant reader of the Free Press, respectfully recommends to 
 the Editor, an inquiry into the present exorbitant price of coals. The 
 honest coal-masters have added 3s. to 3s. Gd. to the waggon of 2-1 cu t. on 
 the plea of giving their colliers a corresponding increase of wages. But, 
 Mr. Editor, this is not the fact; these gentlemen having only given their 
 workers, (unless the writer is greatly misinformed,) additional wages in the 
 proportion of 9d. to the waggon, thus kindly affording the public an oppor¬ 
 tunity of paying to them the difference of 2s. 3d. to 2s. 9d. which they take 
 as a solatium, perhaps, for their unhappy disputes with their workmen. For 
 the perfect accuracy of this statement, the writer cannot vouch, though he 
 derived his information from the manager of a coal work. The rise, how¬ 
 ever, is of great importance to the community, particularly to the poor, and 
 calls loudly for the interference of the independent press. Tile fault lies 
 somewhere there is no deficiency in the bowels of the earth, and it is 
 therefore an intolerable oppression that the masters or servants should have 
 it in their power to give an adventitious value to tileir coals, at this inclement 
 season of the year. Were some of the Joint Stock Companies to turn their 
 speculating energies to coal mining, a profitable result would certainly at¬ 
 tend their enterprising exertions. Allow me to apologize for obtruding my¬ 
 self on yuur attention, and I remain, yours, fox" 
 
230 
 
 tred of a large body; and thus, by the bare exist¬ 
 ence of a combination, although no overt act can 
 be charged on any of its . members, might all those 
 who are willing to work, be despoiled of their natu¬ 
 ral freedom, and brought under the power of a vir¬ 
 tual despotism. And better, it may be thought, 
 that by a law against combinations there should be 
 a preventive security established against a very 
 sore oppression, against whose acts and whose 
 positive outbreakings no law can be devised which 
 might operate with efficacy as a corrective. A 
 law against combination, it may be contended, that 
 has this preventive power, even though it should 
 contravene the abstract principles of legislation, is 
 to be preferred to a law against outrages, which, 
 however accordant with the dictates of natural jus¬ 
 tice and morality, is utterly devoid of that correc¬ 
 tive power which is essential to the ends of practi¬ 
 cal utility.* 
 
 • From the examination of Mr. Robert Hutton:— 
 
 “ The law, with respect to threats, being not relaxed by the late Act, do 
 you attribute that increase of the system of intimidation to the change of the 
 law?—The law, as it stands at present, is completely nugatory with respect 
 to threats; it requires two witnesses to prove a threat; no man will make 
 a threat where there are two witnesses, and in many eases, even if only one 
 witness is necessary, there is an easy mode of evading the name of a threat; 
 A. comes to B. and says, you are a friend of C., C. had better go away, if he 
 does not go away, he will receive some bodily injury, but you must not men- • 
 tion my name in the matter, or I shall be injured; I have known a number 
 of instances of that kind.” 
 
 From the examination of Mr. William Chippendale:— 
 
 Has any violence, or acts of intimidation, or any ill conduct on the part 
 
231 
 
 Bat here it is altogether forgotten, that if there 
 be difficulties, which we most fully admit, in de- 
 
232 
 
 vising an effective law against the outrages of work- 
 men, there are equal, we think greater difficulties, 
 
 From the examination of Mr. John Oldfield:— 
 
 “ What became of the other?—The other left me and remained with the 
 union. After that, two of the weavers who were desirous of remaining 
 with me, joined the union. One said, he could not possibly remain at 
 peace or he at all comfortable, that he was obliged to enter the union, and 
 if I could not allow him to continue in it, he could not help leaving me. 
 Another said the same, viz. that he had not entered the union, hut lie 
 should he obliged to do so for safety. 
 
 “ Did he tell you why?—He told me they were so constantly wishing 
 him to enter, and when he went out of doors they were pointing at him and 
 annoying him in every possible way, so that he could not he peaceable or 
 comfortable in the neighbourhood, and amongst the people with whom he 
 usually associated. It was represented to him that it would be so beneficial 
 to them generally, that it was really his interest to enter the union. 
 
 “ What become of the forty men ?—They have remained with me. But 
 I found it would be really impossible for mo to keep on my business if I did 
 not allow them to enter the union, and as I did not wish them to be longer 
 persecuted, I gave them permission. Having abided by me three mouths, 
 they had given sufficient proof of their willingness to oblige me if they could 
 do it with safety. I did not discharge any of them in consequence. 
 
 “ Did any individuals in your factory receive personal violence in conse¬ 
 quence of working with you?—I have not a factory. My work is given to 
 the men at their homes. They have not received personal violence, only 
 intimidations by gesture and threats. One of the had effects which must 
 result from the union is, that it will separate the masters and work people 
 in a moral point of view. It will make them enemies to each other. We 
 had, previously to the union, been accustomed to act with a kindly feeling 
 towards each other.” 
 
 From the examination of Mr. Chadwick:— 
 
 “ Can you state any nets of violence which have produced that sort of 
 danger which you think prevented your obtaining men?—It is not re¬ 
 quisite that there should be acts of violence in order to deter men, who arc 
 not in the union, from engaging in any manufacturer’s employ, because they 
 are marked objects of ridicule and contempt.” 
 
 From the examination of Mr. Jonathan Cockerell 
 
 “ Do you think that from the want of numbers of those who hare not 
 
c m 
 
 in devising an effective law against combinations. 
 It is quite notorious, that, previous to the repeal of 
 
 been obliged to join the union, or from the apprehension of those who have 
 joined the union ?—I think from the apprehension; the men would be afraid 
 to go on board. 
 
 “ Do they apprehend personal violence?—They are subject to a degree 
 of ridicule; they are called scab men, and pointed at and insulted: 
 
 “ Have you ever seen any of this ridicule going on ?—I have heard sailors 
 express that they have been so abused and ridiculed, and called scab men, 
 because they would not join the union.” 
 
234 
 
 these laws, combinations were frequent, and fully 
 as atrocious in their proceedings, upon the whole, 
 as they have been since. After the repeal, there 
 has been a most natural imagination among the 
 workmen, which is making progress from one dis¬ 
 trict of the land to the other, as if now they were 
 on the eve of some great coming enlargement. 
 This imagination has nearly finished its course, and 
 has had also its correction—a far more salutary 
 correction, from the hand of experience, than any 
 which could possibly be administered by the hand 
 of authority. And, meanwhile, the statute book is 
 purged of the old unpopular aspect which formerly 
 sat upon it. It now represents more truly the 
 real spirit and design of Government towards the 
 humblest peasantry of our land—a spirit of un¬ 
 doubted benignity and good will, if the people 
 would only think so; and to conciliate the affec¬ 
 tion and confidence of these people is a mighty ob¬ 
 ject, and an object that will at length be promoted 
 mightily by the repeal of the combination laws.* 
 
 “ What kind of insult?—It is a very easy tiling to insult a workman, 
 and to drive him almost out of his mind, without coming within the law; 
 crying after him, ‘ There he goesgetting up when he goes into a public- 
 house, and crying, ‘ Get out of his way.’ Two of our men, who are 
 at work, told me this morning, they must join the union, or leave the 
 country.” 
 
 • The testimonies are various, in regard to the comparative atrocity of 
 the outrages before and since the repeal of the Combination Laws, flic 
 following arc a few specimens out of the many. 
 
235 
 
 It is not that we imagine of these laws against 
 combination, that they, can really keep down the 
 
 From the examination of Mr. Michael Farrell. 
 
 “ Will you state what, in your opinion, has been the character for outrage 
 and violence or ill humour of the strikes in Dublin since the repeal, com- 
 
236 
 
 wages of workmen, or that, by so doing, they can 
 secure a larger profit to the capitalist than he would 
 
 “Were you one of those who signed?—I should think I would. 
 
 “ Do you recollect the government issuing a proclamation in consequi i 
 of that, and sending tile military down to crush and put down this distil 
 nnce?—I recollect a large fleet of men-of-war, and the military also com 
 
 “ Do you recollect any individuals who suffered personal violence, or lost 
 their lives on that occasion?—No, not the smallest; I do not recollect any 
 personal violence to any individual. 
 
 “ Were there no duckings amongst each other?—I think I never saw 
 more decorum among men than Uiere was at that time; quite a military or¬ 
 ganization among themselves. 
 
 “ Was there any military employed ?—The horse soldiers were employed. 
 
 “ How long did they continue?—I suppose six or seven weeks. 
 
 “ Do you recollect whether, at that time, several vessels of coals were 
 not despatched under the protection of soldiers?—There were some at¬ 
 tempts made; I don’t recollect how many succeeded. 
 
 “ Is that the only case of serious disturbance that you recollect taking 
 place on the river?—No, I recollect several others previous to it. 
 
 “ Any subsequent to that time ?—No, that was the last. It was settled 
 in one hour. As soon as the military acted, the sailors never put forth a 
 pretence after it. All the objects they contended for they quietly lost sight 
 of, and resumed their ordinary duties. 
 
 “ Since this association of seamen has been formed, have there been any 
 such acts of violence as took place during these years you have mentioned? 
 —No, I have remarked, ill my own observation, a very considerable dif¬ 
 ference in the mode of conducting these things among the seamen. 
 Formerly, it was the mere angry ebullition of a pared of school-hoys. 
 They did a great deal of mischief, with a great deal of apparent good hu¬ 
 mour; (there are many good and valuable men among them;) and there it 
 
237 
 
 obtain in a state of perfect freedom between the 
 parties. The truth is, that a large profit goes to 
 
 more pleasantness between the operatives and masters since the repeal of 
 these laws, and a better understanding than there was when they were 
 
 “ What was your situation before ?—We viewed each other with extreme 
 jealousy. Whenever the operatives met together, they generally met in 
 that secret way, that the masters considered the object of their meeting was 
 something which they did not wish to he publicly known. Their meetings 
 were generally at that time held in secret, and that secrecy has been re¬ 
 moved, and their meetings are now quite open. ” 
 
 “ When was the union entered into ?—Last year. 
 
 “ Before or since the repeal of the combination laws?—Before the re¬ 
 peal.” 
 
 “ Has any alteration been made in the nature or constitution of the soci¬ 
 ety, since the repeal of the combination laws?—No. 
 
238 
 
 augment capital, and so eventually to reduce itself. 
 Should manufacturers, by any artificial means, be 
 
 stated to me, is, that if they did any tiling contrary to the rules of the com¬ 
 mittee, they can no longer be employed, (that is to say) that no member of 
 
 “ Do you not believe it would be infinitely better for a man to renounce 
 his employment on the river altogether, and seek subsistence in some other 
 employment, than, having been a member of the union, to enter into your 
 service, declining to comply with the regulations of the union ?—Certainly; 
 
239 
 
240 
 
 manufacture that additional capital, which will 
 bring down the profit to the rate at which it would 
 
 feet reliance, there were several circumstances, sufficient in my mind to in¬ 
 dicate that these acts of extreme violence could have no origin hut as con¬ 
 nected with the measures of the combination. 
 
 “ Have you the names of those who were tried?—M'Connell was one, 
 Cameron another, and Callaghan the third. This case of Mr. Orr was in 
 
241 
 
 have settled in a natural state of things. That 
 process, by which it might appear at the outset, 
 that profits will be increased at the expense of 
 wages, must very soon work in favour of the la¬ 
 bourers, so that the increase shall again come 
 back to them, and bring their wages just to what 
 they would have been, although no disturbing force 
 
 and heard these people talking of shooting some person for not 
 .£10. This was inexplicable to mo at the time, and seemed to 1 
 nection with the facts on the trial. On subsequent inquiry, 
 
242 
 
 had ever been brought into operation. So that 
 though all combinations of workmen were forcibly 
 put an end to, there would yet remain an effective 
 security for fair and adequate wages in the com¬ 
 petition of the capitalists. However much the 
 interference of Government, in favour of the latter, 
 should raise their profits in the first instance, the 
 ultimate effect would be to allure more capital into 
 their branches of industry than otherwise would 
 have flowed into them; and so, by producing a 
 larger demand for workmen, would just cause the 
 wages to rise to the very height from which they 
 had fallen by the adverse and unpopular law. In 
 other words, it is not possible for any legislature, 
 even though it would, permanently to ensure a 
 higher profit to the masters, and that, by means 
 of a lower wage to their workmen than what would 
 take place on a free and natural adjustment of the 
 matter betwixt them. It cannot, by the force of 
 any enactment, bring up the average rate of profit 
 in a land, by reducing the market price of labour. 
 On the moment of this being done, there would, 
 by the now higher profit, be the formation and the 
 influx of more capital into all the departments 
 where these profits were realized; and thus, by the 
 greater competition of capital, which is tantamount 
 to a greater demand for labour, the price or wages 
 of this labour would be speedily brought up to the 
 level from which it had descended. 
 
 Were there no other depressing influence then 
 brought to bear upon wages than combination laws, 
 
243 
 
 these would be altogether harmless; and the friends 
 of the lower orders might cease from all alarm and 
 indignation upon the subject. But there is an evil 
 in these laws which might well alarm the friends of 
 loyalty. However innocent they may be in effect, 
 they bear towards the working classes an aspect of 
 hostility. The artizan or the labourer understands 
 them in no other way than as looking adversely to¬ 
 wards himself; and, instead of recognizing a friend¬ 
 ly and a paternal Government, in the reigning 
 authority of the state, he will view it as leagued 
 with his employers in the fellowship of one com¬ 
 mon tyranny. The only interpretation which he 
 puts upon the enactment, is, that it is on the side 
 of the masters and against the workmen; and it is 
 quite fearful to contemplate the advantage which 
 such a feeling, when widely diffused and deeply 
 seated in the hearts of our peasantry, might give 
 to the demagogues of our land. There should be 
 some very strong and imperious necessity made out 
 ere the burden of such an odium be laid upon Go¬ 
 vernment, or a task in every way so invidious be put 
 into its hands. It were surely better for peace and 
 for public order, if capitalists and workmen could 
 be left to settle their own affairs; and it is hard that 
 the tranquillity of the state should be endangered 
 for the sake of an interest, which the natural eco¬ 
 nomics of the case seem most abundantly to have 
 provided for. It perhaps is all the more pro¬ 
 voking, that for the object on account of which the 
 interference is made, it is altogether nugatory— 
 
244 
 
 that after all, neither masters are the better, nor 
 workmen are the worse for it—that the hand which 
 Government lifts up in this business of regulation, 
 is a hand of entire impotency, but that, felt at the 
 same time, by the labouring classes, as a hand of 
 hostile and menacing demonstration, it should have 
 the effect of alienating, from the established order 
 of things, the largest class of society. 
 
 On the other hand, if there be an utter impo¬ 
 tency on the part of Government to depress wages 
 beneath the fair market price of labour, there is 
 just as great an impotency on the part of workmen 
 permanently to raise the wages above this level. 
 The fair market price of labour, is that at which it 
 would settle in a free state of things, on the given 
 state of its demand and supply. Labourers, them¬ 
 selves, cannot force a permanent elevation of the 
 wages above this level, but by excluding from the 
 competition a certain number of their own body; 
 or, in other words, by a monopoly more hurtful 
 and oppressive still than that of any mercantile 
 society that has ever been recorded, and which Go¬ 
 vernment does a most righteous and equitable 
 thing in preventing. Workmen cannot raise their 
 wages above the fair market price of labour, but 
 by the infliction of a grievous injury on certain of 
 their own body, whom they would violently eject 
 beyond the pale of that competition to which all 
 are equally admissible, both by justice and by law. 
 Government is only acting in discharge of her 
 most beneficent functions, as the parent, and the 
 
245 
 
 equal protector of all, when she interposes against 
 the restraints and outrages of labourers upon their 
 fellows, and that with penalties just as strong 
 and as severe as shall be adequate to put them 
 down. But though this way of advancing the re¬ 
 muneration of labour cannot be permitted, there 
 is another and a patent way by which labourers 
 may most effectually, and, at the same time, most 
 legitimately secure the very advancement which 
 they are aiming at. When they succeed in raising 
 their wages by violence, it is just by lessening the 
 supply of labour, and this supply is lessened by the 
 number of labourers whom they have forced away 
 from the field of competition. The very same rise 
 would have taken place, if, instead of that num¬ 
 ber being forced away, they simply had not been 
 in existence; or, if the whole population of the 
 country had just been equal to that portion of them 
 who maintain their ground on the field of competi¬ 
 tion, after having made outcasts of the rest. Had 
 there just been a less population by these outcasts, 
 their object would have been carried without any 
 assertion on their part, and simply by the operation 
 of the demand of capitalists upon a smaller supply. 
 It is the redundancy of their own numbers, and 
 nothing else, which is the cause of their degrada¬ 
 tion. They charge their masters with depressing 
 them; but the truth is, that they depress and el¬ 
 bow out one another. And in spite of all the ridi¬ 
 cule, and of all the sentimental indiguancy which 
 have been heaped on the doctrine of population, it 
 
246 
 
 remains as unalterable as any of nature’s laws, that 
 nothing can avail for the conducting of our pea¬ 
 santry to a higher status, but a lessened competi¬ 
 tion for employment, and in virtue of there being 
 somewhat fewer labourers. 
 
 This guides us to the view of another great mis¬ 
 chief in these combination laws. The former mis¬ 
 chief, that of creating a disaffected peasantry, is 
 more felt by the patriot, who has conceived a strong- 
 affection for the cause of loyalty. The other great 
 mischief to which we are now to advert, is more felt 
 by the general philanthropist, who has conceived 
 a strong affection for the good of the species, and 
 more especially for the enlarged comfort and in¬ 
 telligence of the lower orders. He who looks to 
 the wrong quarter for a disease, will, in all likeli¬ 
 hood, betake himself to a wrong remedy. And 
 this, perhaps, is the very worst consequence of 
 combination laws. They have turned the atten¬ 
 tion of our artizans and labourers away from that 
 only path on which they can reach a higher status 
 in the commonwealth. They are misled as to 
 where the disease of their economic state lies; and 
 are, therefore, alike misled as to the application of 
 the remedy. It were well, if they had no pretext 
 for referring to the policy of Government, that 
 degradation and misery which are altogether due 
 to their own habits. They behold an adverse en¬ 
 actment against them in the statute book, and they 
 look no further. They conceive this to be the 
 only bar in the way of their elevation, and they 
 
247 
 
 ply not the expedient which is in their own hands; 
 and by virtue of which, they might attain an inde¬ 
 pendence which Government can neither give nor 
 take away. They would lay upon the state the 
 whole burden of that responsibility, which, in fact, 
 lies upon themselves; and this at once makes them 
 resentful to their superiors, and reckless of that 
 alone way by which themselves can be guided on¬ 
 ward to a more secure and permanent comfort than 
 they have ever yet enjoyed. It is altogether a way 
 of peace and of sobriety; a way that “ cometh not 
 with observation;” and by which, without the din 
 or disturbance of any popular ebullitions, the solid 
 interest of the people will come at length to be 
 established on a basis that shall be impregnable. 
 
 Should the present repeal law be superseded, 
 not by a law that is restrictive, but by a law that 
 is perfective of freedom, this will conduct the peo¬ 
 ple to a state of things, the best possible for en¬ 
 lightening them both in what that is where their 
 weakness, and in what that is where their strength 
 lieth. Let the principle, in the first place, be left 
 untouched of the utmost freedom to all workmen 
 who, either conjunctly or severally, are not willing 
 to work. In the second place, let this be followed 
 up by the principle, not yet adequately provided 
 for, of the utmost protection and freedom to all 
 workmen who, either conjunctly or severally, are 
 willing to work. For this purpose, let law put 
 forth all the preventions and all the penalties which 
 can be devised to secure every willing workman 
 
from the terror or the violence of his fellows—and 
 then the whole machinery of these combinations 
 will proceed in that very way which is most fitted 
 to develope, even to the popular understanding, 
 the real cause of a people’s degradation, and so 
 the real and only corrective by which it can be ef¬ 
 ficaciously met. It will then be quite palpable, 
 that they are the new, or unassociated workmen, 
 who have broke up the combination—that the out¬ 
 standing workmen have not been able to enforce 
 their own terms, just because of the numbers beside 
 themselves, who are thankful for their employment 
 on lower terms—that their masters stood upon a 
 vantage ground, not because of any legal power 
 over them, but because of the natural resource 
 which they had in the men whom they could find, 
 or in the men who offered themselves out of the 
 general population. For this purpose, these mas¬ 
 ters have only to enlist the willing, and do not 
 need to compel the unwilling—or, in other words, 
 they prevail in this struggle, just because there are 
 so many who are willing to be thus enlisted. If, 
 instead of finding so many, they had found that 
 the population of the land were barely enough to 
 satisfy the demand for labour, and to fill up its 
 various departments in the country, then they 
 could not have allured new workmen into their 
 service, but by the offer of a higher remuneration 
 than they were earning in some previous service. 
 This would reverse the competition; and, instead 
 of workmen pressing for admittance into employ- 
 
249 
 
 ment upon a lower wage, we should behold masters 
 detaining, by a higher wage, those whom others 
 were endeavouring to seduce from their employ¬ 
 ment. Workmen would come at length to per¬ 
 ceive, that the question between them and their 
 employers all hinged on the single element of their 
 own numbers—that if there be too many labourers, 
 no combination can keep up their wages—or, if 
 there be too few, no law against combinations can 
 keep them down—and that, in short, with the com¬ 
 mand which they have over this element, they have 
 themselves, and neither their masters nor their 
 rulers, to blame as the authors of their own degra¬ 
 dation. 
 
 They are not in circumstances for making this 
 discovery, so long as the imagination lasts among 
 them, that in every effort to better their condition 
 they are thwarted and kept in check by the op¬ 
 pressive enactments of the statute-book. Better 
 far that all these enactments should be swept 
 away, and that workmen should be let forth on 
 the arena of a free competition with their em¬ 
 ployers. On this field, let them be made wel¬ 
 come to every attempt and every expedient for a 
 rise of wages which is not criminal. They will 
 soon arrive at a sound experience upon the sub¬ 
 ject ; and at last acquiesce in the conclusion, that 
 they have no other control over the price of labour 
 than that general control, wherewith, by means of 
 their moral and prudential habits, they can limit 
 and define the number of labourers. 
 
250 
 
 And certain it is that this will avail them, with¬ 
 out the expedient of any organised association at 
 all. For the sake of simplicity, let us confine the 
 argument to any one branch of manufacture which 
 we might suppose to be in the hands of a certain 
 number of capitalists, and that it is somewhat strait¬ 
 ened for a supply of labourers. In consequence, 
 the commodity will be produced in somewhat less 
 abundance than can fully meet the demand for it 
 in the market, and its price inevitably rises. This 
 increment of price, in the first instance, raises the 
 profits of the masters; but its final landing-place 
 is among the workmen, for, in the second in¬ 
 stance, and without combinations, it will go to 
 the raising of the wages. The rise of profits in 
 any trade tends both to create more of capital 
 within the trade, and to allure to it more of capi¬ 
 tal from without. In other words, master manu¬ 
 facturers will not long be permitted to enjoy this 
 additional profit; for out of it there will almost 
 instantly emerge a busier competition, either 
 among themselves, or from new adventurers en¬ 
 ticed to this more hopeful walk of speculation. 
 The prosperity of any trade is ever followed up 
 both with the means and the efforts to extend it; 
 but this cannot be done without a call for more 
 operatives than before. Each individual master, 
 while the demand is brisker than the supply, and 
 therefore profits encouraging, will try to widen 
 and enlarge his own establishment; and, as the 
 effect of this competition among all, a higher 
 
251 
 
 wage will be held out than before to labourers. 
 Let there be an endeavour, on the part of every 
 capitalist, to make out a full complement of 
 workmen; and nothing more is necessary than a 
 difficulty of doing so, from the smallness of the 
 numbers to be had, in order to secure for these 
 workmen a liberal remuneration. Apart from any 
 association on the side of the operatives, their 
 object is gained by a competition on the side of 
 their masters. And all which they have to do, is 
 to cultivate, eacii in his own family, those habits 
 of foresight and sobriety, without which it is ut¬ 
 terly impossible, either by device or by violence, 
 to save them from the miseries of an over-peopled 
 land. 
 
 It is true, that we have only reasoned on the 
 case of one manufacture; and it is a possible 
 thing, that any deficiency in its workmen may be 
 recruited from the general population, either by 
 enlisting those who are without employment, or 
 by alluring from previous service those who are 
 engaged in the service of other manufacturers. 
 But the supposition of a more intelligent and bet- 
 ter-habitted peasantry, precludes the idea of any 
 being without employment. It would secure the 
 state not merely of one, but of all manufacturers 
 having barely enough of labourers to keep them 
 a-going. It would extend the competition from 
 masters in but one line of employment, to that 
 of all the masters and capitalists in our land. 
 
252 
 
 This of itself will elevate the condition of the 
 working classes. Let there but be somewhat 
 more of virtue in their conduct, and somewhat 
 more of prudence and delay in their marriages, 
 and there will forthwith commence that progress, 
 by which, silently, and gradually, and indefinite¬ 
 ly, the price of their services must rise, and 
 themselves must ascend to a higher status in the 
 commonwealth. And all this, without the tur¬ 
 moil or effervescence of combinations. These 
 can never permanently raise the price of labour. 
 There is one precise point at which this price set¬ 
 tles ; and this point is altogether determined by 
 the proportion which obtains between the work 
 to be done, and the number of workmen that are 
 to be had for the doing of it. The effect of 
 strikes, and associations, and long suspensions of 
 work, followed up by hurricanes of prosperous 
 trade, and high wages—the effect of all this may 
 be, to produce large oscillations on each side of 
 the average price of labour, but certainly not at 
 all to raise the average itself. This average is 
 fixed by the proportion before specified; and la¬ 
 bourers have a command over this proportion, be¬ 
 cause they can command one of the terms of it. 
 Their own number is wholly dependent on then- 
 own general character and habits; and, if they 
 will but limit the supply of workmen, a higher re¬ 
 compense for work, not in virtue of any concert 
 among themselves, but in virtue of competition 
 
253 
 
 among their masters, will be the inevitable result 
 of it.* 
 
 * It has been questioned by Mr. Malthus, whether a higher standard of 
 enjoyment among the labouring classes would diminish the population of a 
 country upon the whole. We have often thought, that it facilitated a right 
 apprehension of the result, to conceive of all the labourers in a land as 
 divided into three classes; first, the agricultural, employed in providing the 
 first necessaries of life—secondly, a class employed in providing the second 
 necessaries—and thirdly, the class employed in the preparation of lux¬ 
 uries, and who, on that very account, and because luxuries may either be 
 shifted or dispensed with, might he aptly enough termed the disposable pa¬ 
 pulation. 
 
 It is obvious that, if by the term “second necessaries,'* we include every 
 thing additional to food which enters into the maintenance of labourers, 
 
254 
 
 Every thing in the state and history of the com¬ 
 mercial world, announces how little capitalists have 
 it in their power to sustain an extravagant rate of 
 profit, for any length of time, at the expense of 
 their customers or of their workmen. It is a pre¬ 
 valent impression among workmen, that they are 
 too much at the mercy of capitalists. If they only 
 knew the whole truth, they would soon perceive 
 that capitalists are wholly at the mercy of each 
 other; and in such a way, that without being able 
 to help it, they are very much at the mercy of 
 their workmen. At least, if it be not so, it is al¬ 
 together the fault of the workmen themselves; 
 
 of labourers, for higher gratifications, tako an exclusive direction towards 
 the second necessaries of life, this will not diminish the population, and will 
 hut affect the distribution of them. The second class is extended thereby; 
 a greater number is taken into the service of labourers, and withdrawn from 
 tire service of landlords. An addition is made to the wages of the one 
 party; and without that addition being necessarily made (as many of lticar- 
 do’s disciples imagine) at the expense of profit, it may in fact consist partly, 
 nay wholly, of the consequent diminution that has been made on the rent 
 of the other party. 
 
 Hut should the demand of labourers for higher gratifications take the di¬ 
 rection which it might partly do towards a more liberal use of the agricul¬ 
 tural produce, as by the larger use of bread, or beer, or spirits, or confec¬ 
 tionaries, or animal food, this would nbsolutely lessen the population, and 
 have just the same cft'ect ultimately on the rent of the landlord, as if the 
 soil of which he is proprietor had been stricken with a certain degree of 
 barrenness. There is nothing in this change of habit to lessen the agricul¬ 
 tural population; nothing to lessen the proportion which the second class 
 of labourers bears to the whole body, provided that each, over and above 
 his more abundant use of agricultural produce, has just the same demand 
 lor the second necessaries of life; and so the landlord would be the nlone 
 sufferer by this change—he having both n less rent, in virtue of the greater 
 wage now given to lirrm-servants, and having a greater wage to bestow for 
 the service of each individual of the now lessened disposable population. 
 
255 
 
 who, by the simple regulation of their numbers, 
 might, not in a way of turbulence, but in a way of 
 order and peace, become the effectual dictators in 
 every question between them and their employers. 
 These employers cannot, though they would, re¬ 
 serve in profit to themselves any part of that, 
 which, in the state of the labour market, must go 
 in wages to their labourers. They cannot keep 
 up their profits beyond a certain rate at the ex¬ 
 pense of their workmen, and in the progress of 
 things, too, this rate is constantly falling. For 
 how short a time can any lucrative branch of trade 
 be upheld in its lucrativeness! In a few months 
 the rush of capital fills it to an overflow. Let but 
 a stage coach upon any road, or a steam boat upon 
 any river, have realized the smallest centage of 
 excess above the ordinary profits of the country, 
 and in a moment, by other coaches and other 
 boats, the excess, or perhaps the whole profit to¬ 
 gether is annihilated. The same holds true of 
 every other department. Each is crowded with 
 capital—and profit, all over the land, is rapidly 
 verging to a minimum. This is satisfactorily de¬ 
 monstrated by the fall in the interest of money; 
 and perhaps a still more striking exhibition of it 
 is the way in which capital is going about among 
 all the schemes and possibilities of investiture that 
 are now afloat, and absolutely begging for employ¬ 
 ment. With such a creative and accumulating 
 force in capital, the labouring classes may be in per¬ 
 fect security, that any hostile combination of their 
 
256 
 
 masters against them must speedily be neutralised, 
 by competition among themselves. On the other 
 hand, would labourers but restrain their own num¬ 
 bers, and so guard their wages against the depres¬ 
 sing effects of competition among the members of 
 their own body, this would have in it all the force, 
 without any of the ferocity or turbulence, of a most 
 overwhelming combination. This is the high-way 
 to their independence—a noiseless way, on which 
 they will neither strive, nor cry, nor cause their 
 voice to be heard upon the streets—a way on which 
 every philanthropist would rejoice to witness their 
 advancement, and by which, without danger or 
 disturbance to society, they will raise the whole 
 platform of their condition, and secure a more 
 abundant share of the comforts and accommoda¬ 
 tions of life, than they have ever yet enjoyed. 
 
 Nevertheless, and although it is by a process 
 altogether independent of combinations, that the 
 state of the working population is to be elevated, 
 yet for reasons, which have in part been already 
 given, we should deprecate any return, however 
 slight, to a law against combinations. The whole 
 mischief of them will at length be wrought away 
 in the violence of their own fermentation. It is 
 right, too, that all the occasional violence which has 
 attended combinations, should be repressed by the 
 utmost force of legislation; and this is a legisla¬ 
 tion, which, however severely it may bear on the 
 radicals or the ringleaders of a popular tumult, 
 will at length have the full consent and acqui- 
 
escence even of the popular understanding to go 
 along with it. A government never does excite 
 any permanent or wide-spread hostility against it¬ 
 self, by those laws which recommend themselves 
 to our natural principles of equity ; and it is only 
 when the equity is not very obvious, that a sense 
 of oppression rankles in the hearts of the people, 
 and carries them forth to proceedings of turbu¬ 
 lence and disorder. Now, the equity of a law of 
 protection for all who are willing to work, is ob¬ 
 vious. The equity of a law of compulsion against 
 any, even although in concert and joint delibera¬ 
 tion, who are not willing to work, is not obvious. 
 Let the latter law, therefore, be expunged, but 
 the former be instated in full authority, and have 
 the weightiest sanctions to uphold it. After this, 
 workmen might, with all safety, be left to them¬ 
 selves. They will soon feel their way to the evil 
 of combinations, and make discovery, that, apart 
 from them altogether, there is a secure and a 
 peaceful road by which the people might help 
 themselves onward to a state of greater sufficiency. 
 It is a great lesson to teach them that this is the 
 only road;—a lesson which they never can be 
 taught, so long as law debars them from any other 
 expedient which possesses a virtue in their imagi¬ 
 nation. It were the most precious fruit of their 
 liberty, that this imagination should be dissipated; 
 and that so they should be shut up by their own 
 experience, that most authoritative of all school¬ 
 masters, to the only remaining expedient which 
 
2.58 
 
 can avail them. It is well for them to know, that 
 it is the weight of their own numbers, and nothing 
 else, which degrades and depresses them; and 
 that the cause of all their sufferings does not lie 
 in the want of protection from the legislature, or 
 of kindness from their masters, but in the want of 
 prudence and economy among themselves. 
 
 And, for ourselves, we confess it to be a cheer¬ 
 ing anticipation, that the labouring classes shall, 
 not by a midway passage of anarchy and misrule, 
 but by a tranquil process of amelioration in their 
 character and habits, make steady amelioration 
 at the same time in their outward circumstances. 
 We believe it to be in reserve for society, that, of 
 the three component ingredients of value, the 
 wages of labour shall at length rise to a perma¬ 
 nently higher proportion than they now have, 
 either to the profit of stock or the rent of land ; 
 and that thus, workmen will share more equally 
 than they do at present, with capitalists and pro¬ 
 prietors of the soil, in the comforts and even the 
 elegancies of life. But this will not be the achieve¬ 
 ment of desperadoes. It will be come at through 
 a more peaceful medium, through the medium of a 
 growing worth and growing intelligence among the 
 people. It will bless and beautify that coming pe¬ 
 riod, when a generation, humanised by letters, and 
 elevated by the light of Christianity, shall, in virtue 
 of a higher taste and a larger capacity than they 
 now possess, cease to grovel as they do at present 
 among the sensualities of a reckless dissipation. 
 
259 
 
 This dissipation stands often associated with a 
 stout and a sullen defiance; and the two together, 
 characterize a large class of the mechanics of our 
 present day. But these are not the men who are 
 to accomplish the enlargement of that order to 
 which they belong;—at one time on the brink of 
 starvation by their own extravagance, and' then 
 lying prostrate at the dictation of their employers; 
 at another, in some season of fitful prosperity, 
 made giddy with ambition, and breaking forth in 
 the complaints and the clamours of an appetency 
 which is never satisfied. It is not by sucb a pro¬ 
 cess of starts and convulsions as this, that our 
 working classes are to be borne upwards to that 
 place of security and strength, which, neverthe¬ 
 less, we believe to be awaiting them. But there 
 is no other foundation than that of their own so¬ 
 briety and good principle on which it can solidly 
 be reared. And the process in this way may be 
 easily apprehended. In proportion as man be¬ 
 comes more reflective and virtuous, in that pro¬ 
 portion does he seek for something higher than 
 the mere gratifications of his animal nature. His 
 desires take a wider range; and he will not be 
 satisfied but with a wider range of enjoyment. 
 There is a growing demand for certain objects of 
 taste and decency; and even the mind will come 
 to require a leisure and a literature for the indul¬ 
 gence of its nobler appetites, now brought into 
 play by means of a diffused education. Alto¬ 
 gether, under such a regimen as this, the heart of 
 
260 
 
 a workman is made to aspire after greater things 
 than before; and in perfect keeping and harmony 
 with a soul, now awakened to the charms of that 
 philosophy which is brought down to his under- 
 standing in a mechanic school, is it that he should 
 hold, as indispensable to his comfort, a better style 
 of accommodation than his forefathers, whether in 
 apparel, or furniture, or lodging. And it is just 
 by means of a more elevated standard than before, 
 that marriages become later and less frequent than 
 before. This we deem to he the precise ligament 
 which binds together an improvement in the char¬ 
 acter with an improvement in the comfort of our 
 peasantry; and makes a taste for certain conve¬ 
 niences, the very stepping-stone by which a people 
 do arrive at them. It is enough that these conve¬ 
 niences should be regarded as among the essential 
 ingredients of maintenance ; and then will a sense 
 of their importance come to operate with effect, as 
 a counteractive to the temptations of precipitate 
 or imprudent matrimony. The man who counts 
 it enough for himself and his family, that they 
 have rags, and potatoes, and a hovel, will rush 
 more improvidentiy, and therefore more early, 
 into the married state, than he who feels that, 
 without a better provision and a better prospect 
 than these, he should offend his own self-respect, 
 and compromise all his notions of what is decent, 
 or dignified, or desirable. We are aware of the 
 exceeding difference between one individual and 
 another in the same country; but this does not 
 
261 
 
 prevent a certain average standard of enjoyment 
 in each country; and thus, in respect of this ave¬ 
 rage standard, may the difference be very great 
 between one country and another. And, if we 
 except the case of still youthful colonies, we shall 
 be sure to find, that, corresponding to this differ¬ 
 ence in the average standard of enjoyment, is there 
 a difference in the average period of marriage. 
 The higher the one is, the later the other is. 
 The greater the demand for family comforts, the 
 smaller and the fewer are the families. The larger 
 the ambition of labourers, the less is the number 
 of labourers;* and sure consequence of this, the 
 greater are the means in the hand of each for satis¬ 
 fying his ambition. This is one of those felicitous 
 cases, in which the desire of good things is at 
 length followed up by the power of obtaining 
 them. It is thus that workmen can enforce their 
 demand for higher wages. Those distempered 
 outbreakings which approach to the character of 
 rebellion, will retard instead of forwarding their 
 cause. But nothing can arrest the inarch of light 
 among the people; and when this light is con¬ 
 joined with virtue, it will guide their ascending 
 way to a vantage ground, where they will make 
 
 * See the lust note, from which it will appear that, in as far as the higher 
 taste of the people leads to their more abundant use of the second neces¬ 
 saries of life, it does not lessen the number of the people, but only affects 
 the distribution of them. .And it is only in so far as this higher taste leads 
 to a more abundant use of agricultural produce in families, that the popula¬ 
 tion is diminished thereby. 
 
262 
 
 good the precise status to which their worth shall 
 entitle them—a status for all whose comforts and 
 accommodations, they will then be in circum¬ 
 stances to prefer their demand with a small and a 
 still, but yet an irresistible voice. 
 
 It is by a tranquil process, such as this, that 
 the general condition of our people will at length 
 be elevated. It is by a slow, but a resistless 
 movement, which combination cannot speed, but 
 which will be sure to make its way, though in the 
 absence of all combination. In none of its suc¬ 
 cessive steps is there aught that can endanger 
 the peace of society, or that should give alarm 
 to the rulers of it. The triumph that awaits the 
 humbler classes, will not be extorted from the 
 higher by the outcry of popular discontent, but 
 silently and insensibly gained from them, by the 
 growth of popular intelligence and virtue. What 
 is there to convulse our land, in the multiplication 
 of schools, in the exchange which our people 
 make of loathsome dissipation for respectable 
 scholarship, in their habits of improving comfort 
 and cleanliness, in their general postponement of 
 marriages, and in the consequent result of smaller 
 but well-conditioned families ? In the whole of 
 this beautiful progression, there is nothing to 
 alienate, but every thing to attach the people to 
 that established order of things under which they 
 find that industry meets with its recompense, and 
 that, with the labour of their own hands, they 
 can rear their children in humble, but honest in- 
 
263 
 
 dependence. Instead of so many fiery spirits, 
 now in bitterness, under a sense of difficulties, 
 and in the vain imagination that they are so many 
 wrongs inflicted by the hand of an arbitrary go¬ 
 vernment, casting resentment and reproach on 
 the politics of the kingdom, we should find each 
 in busy occupation with the management of- his 
 own thriving affairs, and recognizing, in the hope¬ 
 ful prosperity of his own household, the best evi¬ 
 dence of a sound public administration. The 
 question of wages, instead of being agitated in 
 stormy debate between the parties, may be de¬ 
 cided with all the quietness of a common market 
 transaction, yet decided in favour of the work¬ 
 men ; and that simply because, in virtue of their 
 now purer, and more prudential habits, they 
 have not overdone the supply of labour. Ere 
 this result is arrived at, there may, or there may 
 not be frequent combinations. In themselves 
 they are altogether useless; but let workmen be 
 at full liberty to make the experiment. Let not 
 government, save for the sake of justice between 
 man and man, interpose in this controversy be¬ 
 tween them and their employers. Let not la¬ 
 bourers be driven from their associations by the 
 penalties of law, and they will soon be schooled 
 out of them, by those chastisements of Nature 
 and Necessity which follow in their train. They 
 will, all the sooner because of this liberty, be 
 schooled into the lesson, that wages must, by a 
 necessity which no force or artifice of man can 
 
264 
 
 overbear, be fixed by the proportion which ob¬ 
 tains between the work to be done, and the num¬ 
 ber of workmen to be had for the doing of it— 
 that for this number they are themselves respon¬ 
 sible— a nd that, without the education to which 
 all the good and the wise of the land are inviting 
 them, and the moral and religious culture to 
 which they are bound by far higher than any 
 earthly obligations, and the consequent elevation 
 which must ensue in their whole taste and stan¬ 
 dard of enjoyment—and, lastly, as the result of 
 all this, that, without the prospective economy 
 w hich of itself will push forward the average 
 date of marriages in the country, no power under 
 the sun can help them out of the degradation into 
 which nothing, on the other hand, can plunge 
 them, but their own recklessness and folly. Let 
 them look as fiercely as they may at the other 
 classes of society, there is most gross and griev¬ 
 ous injustice in all their indignation. They are 
 only wreaking upon the innocent the mischief 
 which they have brought upon their own heads; 
 for, in truth, government and the wealthier or¬ 
 ders of society are most innocent of it all. And 
 should, in the wild surges of a popular frenzy, 
 the institutions of this fairest and most flourishing 
 country in the world be ever swept away, it will 
 be the impartial voice of justice in ail distant 
 ages, that, under pretence of resentment and re¬ 
 sistance to the tyranny of the few, all the equi¬ 
 ties of human life had been most oppressively 
 
365 
 
 lorded over by the iniquitous tyranny of the mul¬ 
 titude. 
 
 . In the act of dealing equally with the vari¬ 
 ous classes in society, it is perhaps impossible to 
 avoid saying what might occasionally be offen¬ 
 sive to them all. And if, on the one hand, there 
 are labourers who need to be rebuked out of 
 their turbulence and unjust discontent; so, on 
 the other hand, there are still a few of the Bri¬ 
 tish aristocracy who eye with jealousy and dread 
 all the advances that are making by the people in 
 knowledge, and even in the sufficiency and style 
 of their enjoyments. More especially have the 
 recent outbreakings of workmen engendered in 
 certain quarters a dislike of Savings Banks, as the 
 likely organs of building up such a capital for the 
 lower orders, as might be the instrument at length 
 of a popular despotism, at once the most fearful 
 in itself’ and the most destructive of all the great 
 political and economic interests in our land.* 
 
 • From the examination of Mr. Oldfield:— 
 
 “ Can you suggest any means to prevent tile inconveniences you 
 complain of?—If the government could prevent them from accumulating 
 
 From the examination of Mr. Eli Chadwick 
 
 “ Does it occur to you to suggest any mode by which that inconvenience 
 which you have suffered from the men could he prevented ?—I should con¬ 
 ceive, one great means of preventing it would he, preventing their accu¬ 
 mulation of funds; it is that which gives them the chief portion of the 
 influence they now possess, in disturbing the manufactory in the neigh¬ 
 bourhood.” 
 
 These testimonies, however, apply to associated funds;—and certain it 
 
266 
 
 We think that we can discern pretty obvious ma¬ 
 nifestations of this jealousy brought before the 
 eye of Parliament itself. And therefore, before 
 closing our remarks upon this whole subject, we 
 should like, in a few sentences, to state our opi¬ 
 nion of the result that would ensue from a habit 
 of accumulation amongst the working classes of 
 society. 
 
 The connection of this habit with a higher rate 
 of wages, we have already endeavoured to explain. 
 It is not in the foresight or the contemplation of 
 such an ulterior effect that the habit is adopted. 
 Each individual who does accumulate, has been 
 led to do it from the mere impulse of a taste and 
 an affection for a property to himself. He does 
 not consider the effect which such a taste and ha¬ 
 bit, if they became general among workmen, would 
 have upon society. Nevertheless, it is not the less 
 true, though he should not perceive it, that a spirit 
 of economy among the lower orders would land us 
 in a more reflective, and rational, and sober pea¬ 
 santry; and that a certain postponement of mar¬ 
 riages would surely accompany this growing taste 
 for property, and for the enjoyments which pro¬ 
 perty can command. The consequent rise in the 
 price of labour, is from the quiet operation of an 
 economic law, even the law of dependence that 
 subsists between the price of an article and its 
 supply; and so in the present case is the result of 
 a somewhat diminished number of labourers. 
 
 This result is arrived at by a peaceful process, 
 
267 
 
 and' not by the power which a capital would give 
 to labourers of holding out for a greater length of 
 time in combinations. The truth is, that when 
 once a property is built up by a man, and embo¬ 
 died into a given sum, and expressed by the bank 
 credit which he holds in his hand, and made the 
 object of his strong and distinct affection for it, he 
 feels a pain in any violation of its entireness; and 
 this new feeling comes into play against those 
 combinations which impose a protracted season of 
 idleness upon their members. Such a season, in 
 the present state of the working classes, only brings 
 privations upon them, which they can weather from 
 day to day by the mere power of endurance; and 
 far more readily, we are persuaded, than a man 
 can suffer the careful product of the economy of 
 many long and laborious years to be melting away 
 before his eyes. In other words, we should hold 
 this habit to be more a security than otherwise 
 against combinations. By him who had won his 
 way to the possession of a small and cherished 
 capital, the waste of this capital would be felt as 
 one of the sorest evils. He would bethink him¬ 
 self well ere he submitted to those repeated 
 draughts upon his capital, which a suspension of 
 labour must surely bring along with it; and so 
 he, and such as he, would not be so prone to the 
 rash or misguided adventure of a strike, as our 
 present race of desperadoes. 
 
 And there is a very substantial, and, at the same 
 time, a very pure compensation, awaiting the 
 
higher classes of society, for this encroachment, or 
 rather for this appearance of an encroachment, 
 that is made upon them by the increased wages of 
 the lower. It is founded upon this: the greater 
 amount and value of the services that will then be 
 rendered. We are not indulging any Utopian 
 imagination; but speaking, in fact, to the experi¬ 
 ence of practical men, when we say that there are 
 a power and a charm in a certain generous style 
 of remuneration, the whole benefit of which will 
 come to be realized in that better state of things, 
 to which we believe that society is fast tending. 
 We are aware of the union which often obtains, 
 in large manufacturing establishments, between 
 the enormous wage, and the reckless, loathsome 
 dissipation of its workmen. But, ere the higher 
 wage that we contemplate shall obtain throughout 
 the country at large, this recklessness must have 
 very generally disappeared, and a sober, reflec¬ 
 tive, and well-principled character, substituted in 
 its place. Now we pre-suppose such a character, 
 when we prophesy a sure compensation to the 
 higher orders, for the then more elevated status 
 of the population beneath them ; and for the ex¬ 
 perimental proof of our anticipation, we appeal to 
 cases where servants are at once well-principled 
 and well-paid. We are confident of being fully 
 met by the recollection of many masters, when we 
 affirm an overpassing worth in the labour of such 
 servants; and that, where there are that higher 
 tone of character, and that self-respect, and that 
 
269 
 
 fidelity, which can only be upheld by the well¬ 
 conditionedness of a better remuneration, then the 
 difference in the worth of the service greatly more 
 than atones for the superior wage which has been 
 rendered. If masters will reflect, they will gene¬ 
 rally find, that those men whom they found to be 
 perfect treasures as servants, were never so be¬ 
 cause of the lowness of his wage, but always so be¬ 
 cause of the trustiness of their own character; and 
 that the difference in the amount of that materiel 
 which they render out in wages, is far more than 
 made up in the larger return which comes back, 
 because of that higher and better morale which 
 pervades the workmen of their establishment. The 
 same lesson is afforded by the reverse experience 
 of those farmers, who employ a set of worthless, 
 degraded, and half-paid paupers, in the business 
 of their agriculture. They are far more unprofit¬ 
 able, as workmen, than the regular servants who 
 obtain a full and respectable allowance. This 
 points, it is obvious, to a very delightful consum¬ 
 mation—a higher peasantry, yet a fuller tide of 
 affluence all over the land, in which, too, the great 
 and the noble will participate more largely than 
 ever—the basis of the social polity more elevated, 
 yet, at the same time, its pinnacles towering more 
 proudly, and blazing more gorgeously than before 
 —the labourer upholden in greater comfort, yet the 
 landlord upholden in greater elegance and enjoy¬ 
 ment,—the fruit of that exquisite, but substantial 
 harmony, which obtains among all the truly de¬ 
 sirable interests of human society. 
 
270 
 
 And, upon this subject, we have often felt that 
 the legislature have missed ail opportunity, but 
 which still, we fondly hope, is not irrecoverable. 
 They should have combined the two questions of 
 combination and of pauperism, and made a com¬ 
 promise between them. In the act of expunging 
 from their statute-book that law of combination 
 which bore an aspect of hostility to the lower or¬ 
 ders, although it does them little harm, they were 
 most favourably situated for expunging from their 
 statute-book that law of pauperism, which bears an 
 aspect of friendship to the lower orders, although 
 most assuredly it does them no good. They should 
 have availed themselves of this balance between 
 the partialities and the prejudices of the popular 
 understanding. The people of England might 
 have acquiesced in the abolition of that law for 
 which they have a predilection, because feeling it 
 compensated by the abolition of that law for which 
 they had a dislike. When the burden was re¬ 
 moved from the industry of workmen, then was 
 the time for attempting a removal of the burden 
 from the property of landlords. The thing is not 
 yet so definitely settled, as that it can be said to 
 have conclusively gone by, or as to have precluded 
 the adjustment of a great and comprehensive ques¬ 
 tion of equity between the labourers and the land¬ 
 lords. When to the one there is conceded the 
 entire right to make the most, without the old le¬ 
 gal obstruction, of the product of their service, to 
 the other let there be conceded the entire right to 
 
271 
 
 make the most, and without the present legal ob¬ 
 struction, of the product of their soil.* It were a 
 fair reciprocal acquittance between the two par- 
 ti es _the higher and the lower classes of society 
 
 _leaving to the one an unburdened property in 
 
 their land, and to the other an unburdened pro¬ 
 perty in their labour.f And even though a high 
 wage should be the ultimate consequence of such 
 an arrangement, there is no country where this 
 
 * We, of course, must be understood to point at the nbolition of the law 
 of pauperism, only in the way which we have already attempted to ex¬ 
 plain, in a former volume of this work—a gradual way, by which it might 
 he accomplished, without violence done to any of the existing paupers, and 
 
ought to be more thankfully acquiesced in by the 
 higher ranks of society than in England. For to 
 her, of all others, there would accrue the most 
 abundant compensations. She, in the first place, 
 would have a compensation in those better and 
 more productive services that are rendered by 
 well-paid labourers, rather than by labourers sunk 
 as they now are, in the sloth and degradation of 
 pauperism. And secondly, she would have still 
 more palpable compensation, in being eventually 
 disburdened from that enormous tax of six mil¬ 
 lions in the year for her poor, which were enough, 
 of itself to afford a much higher sufficiency to a 
 perhaps somewhat reduced, but greatly more 
 sound and serviceable population. 
 
273 
 
 CHAP. XXII. 
 
 ON CERTAIN PREVALENT ERRORS AND MISCONCEP¬ 
 TIONS, WHICH ARE FOSTERED BY ECONOMIC THE¬ 
 ORIES, AND WHICH ARE FITTED TO MISLEAD .THE 
 LEGISLATURE, IN REGARD TO LABOUR AND THE 
 LABOURING CLASSES. 
 
 III. It is not alone in the minds of the common 
 people, that we have misunderstanding and pre¬ 
 judice to contend with; nor is their ignorance 
 the only obstruction in the way of a right adjust¬ 
 ment between masters on the one hand, and work¬ 
 men on the other. We admit, that it might go 
 far to effect a reconciliation between the two par¬ 
 ties, if the latter could be rationalized into a just 
 discernment of all that economics which had to 
 do with Profit and Wages. But we are fully per¬ 
 suaded, that the former are nearly as destitute of 
 the true principle on which the question hinges, 
 and that, ere the reconciliation can be completed, 
 they have both much to learn, and much to un¬ 
 learn. We even think, that, among our most in¬ 
 fluential classes, there is a deal of false imagina¬ 
 tion as to the real economic interests of the coun¬ 
 try ; and that still restrains our Legislators from 
 that full march of liberality, on which they have 
 lately broken forth, and made a progress that fills 
 the sanguine friends of humanity with very high 
 
 Voi.. III. M 
 
274 
 
 and bright anticipations. There is with all this, 
 however, a certain remainder of fearfulness, in 
 virtue of which they at times shrink back again, 
 even from the proper advances which themselves 
 had made on the career of amelioration. So that, 
 in retracing their path, they, along with the er¬ 
 rors into which they have fallen, do occasionally 
 recai the real improvements upon which they had 
 entered. We have no doubt that they are on the 
 way of being speedily unfettered from the last 
 drags and difficulties by which they are yet in 
 some degree held; and that the soundest Econo¬ 
 mical System which has ever been promulgated 
 by our philosophers in theory, will also be real¬ 
 ized by our statesmen in practice. The tendency 
 of our present rulers is all in this direction; al¬ 
 though, even in spite of the great and glorious 
 advance which they have made, it can still be 
 perceived, that, even on the path which them¬ 
 selves have struck out, they walk with somewhat 
 trembling and unconfirmed footstep. The truth 
 seems to be, that they would proceed faster than 
 the country will let them; and that they must for 
 a period defer to the voice of a public, who, in 
 light and liberality, are greatly behind them¬ 
 selves. We often hear of men of science, who, 
 in their speculations, but seldom of men of office, 
 who, in their acts or in their actings, outrun the 
 spirit of the age. Now, this is the rare and hon¬ 
 ourable exhibition by which our rulers are at 
 present signalized. They are fast freeing our 
 
215 
 
 mercantile code of its many errors, yet still in 
 such a way as to evince that there is still a leaven 
 of the mercantile system, either in their own spi¬ 
 rits, or in the spirits of those who have ascendancy 
 over them. We can imagine that we can perceive 
 no slight tokens of this, in their whole treatment 
 of the question of combinations; and if to rectify 
 the notions of workmen, we hold it desirable that 
 the light of economic science should be let down 
 to the very basis of society, it is not because we 
 conceive that to be a pure and a perfect light 
 which shines in its upper places. There may not 
 be the utter darkness of the lower region. But 
 there is often, at least, a glare of false speculation, 
 which, if it do not altogether blind, is sure to be¬ 
 wilder those who are exposed to it; so that, even 
 among the guides and legislators of the commu¬ 
 nity, there may be notions which admit of being 
 rectified. 
 
 Now, one of the most inveterate of these we 
 hold to be that by which, not only the conduct of 
 Parliament, but almost our whole authorship in 
 political economy, is infected. If, before illus¬ 
 trating what it is by examples, we were required 
 briefly to express this erroneous notion in language 
 of the utmost generality, we should say, that it 
 proceeded on a preference of the means to the end. 
 Capital and commerce, and the various branches 
 of both, which are distinguished by so many in¬ 
 terests, such as the shipping interest, and the ma¬ 
 nufacturing interest, and the trading interest; 
 
276 
 
 these supply so many high-sounding terms, by 
 which the public understanding has been juggled 
 into a false estimate of the magnitude of things. 
 The truth is, that this whole apparatus of com¬ 
 merce and of capital is but of instrumental sub¬ 
 serviency towards an ultimate and a terminating 
 object; and it is not surely by casting one’s eye 
 along the steps of a process, but it is by settling 
 our regards on the result of it, that the good of the 
 whole is to be perceived. It has all the self-evi¬ 
 dence of a truism, and yet is strangely overlooked 
 both in economic reasonings and in economic re¬ 
 gulations, that the worth of that by which a thing is 
 done, is all derived from the worth of that for which 
 the thing is done. It is by several hundred ships 
 that coals are carried from Newcastle to London— 
 and it is for the comfort and utility of good fires to 
 the families there that they are so carried; and we 
 affirm the latter to have the precedency, in consi¬ 
 deration and importance, over the former. Now 
 what we complain of is, that this is lost sight of 
 both by philosophers and by statesmen; by the 
 one in the construction of their theories, by the 
 other in the business of their practical administra¬ 
 tion. The shipping interest of the Tyne is an ob¬ 
 ject of greater moment and magnificence in their 
 eyes, than the cheapness or the abundance of fuel 
 in the metropolis. It is forgotten that the end is 
 greater than the means; and although Smith has 
 formally asserted that the end of all production is 
 consumption, yet even he, in the course of his ar» 
 
277 
 
 iniment, seems often to have forgotten this maxim, 
 in a certain value, per se, which he attaches to 
 trade and manufactures. Now, it ought ever to 
 be kept in mind, that trade and manufactures have 
 all their worth and significancy as subservient to, 
 and none whatever as apart from, the enjoyment 
 of consumers. The worth of commerce lies wholly 
 in the terminus ad quern, and not in the iter per 
 quod. 
 
 Now, both by politicians and political econo¬ 
 mists, this principle is traversed. It is in the 
 working up of the commodity, in the buying of it, 
 and selling of it, and transporting of it, in the 
 succession of various movements and exchanges 
 which it is made to undergo, in that whole series 
 of transactions through which it passes from him 
 who first put forth his hand upon its raw material, 
 to him who made the final purchase of it, so that 
 it ceased to be an article of merchandise any more 
 —it is in these various steps which properly be¬ 
 long to the manufacture of the commodity, or to 
 the merchandise thereof, that the whole prosperity 
 of our land is conceived essentially to lie. And 
 yet they are of no farther signification, than as 
 constituting a mere train or progression of stepping 
 stones to the very last or concluding act of the 
 whole process, even that by which the consumer 
 turns his purchased commodity to use or to enjoy¬ 
 ment. This is the terminus ad quern, for which it 
 was conveyed through the busy hands of a fac¬ 
 tory, and had to travel from one shop, and from 
 
278 
 
 one market to another, till it reached its final des¬ 
 tination. Without this destination, all the preced¬ 
 ing industry which had been expended on its 
 preparation and conveyance, is but laborious idle¬ 
 ness. And yet this last consequence, for which 
 the whole apparatus was set agoing, is felt to be 
 of no consequence. They lose sight of an article 
 of trade on the moment that it enters the house 
 of the consumer, because then all the game of 
 trading and trafficking with it is over. Its benefit 
 there, is deemed of little account by those who 
 expatiate most on the blessings of commerce. 
 They in fact regard commerce as a thing set up 
 for the good of producers, and not of consumers. 
 They look to the play of its mechanism, and not 
 to that landing place, whither its products are 
 ultimately carried, and where the whole purpose 
 of commerce is fulfilled, by there directly minis¬ 
 tering to the comfort and accommodation of man. 
 The process, and not the end of the process, is 
 all that is in view of the disciples of the mercan¬ 
 tile system; and even they who have obtained 
 emancipation from many of its errors, can occa¬ 
 sionally manifest to what amount the residuum of 
 its spirit still adheres to them. 
 
 For by combinations, or by any other cause, 
 let there be a suspension in some quarter of the coal 
 trade. It is on the stoppage in some anterior part 
 of the process, and not on the suffering that is 
 felt at the place where the process terminates, 
 that a genuine disciple of the mercantile system 
 
279 
 
 will look. And even still, what is the spectacle 
 which on such an occasion calls forth the chief 
 notice and sympathy of Parliament? Not the loss 
 or inconvenience that is sustained from the higher 
 price of coals by the families of London. But 
 what engrosses them most, is the spectacle of com¬ 
 merce at a stand, of vessels laid up, of capital 
 lying idle, of a certain portion of the national in¬ 
 dustry being suspended, and the property of mer¬ 
 chants and owners melting away, because not 
 alimented by the wonted returns of profit. This 
 carries in it to their eye, a far more louring aspect 
 on the prosperity of the country, than all the 
 abridgment which may have taken place in the 
 fuel, and so in the household comfort of families. 
 This last is regarded only as a private inconveni¬ 
 ence, but the other as a public loss. There is a 
 strange perversion of the judgment, certainly, in 
 thus counting the means to be more valuable than 
 the end; and hence grieving far more because of 
 a diminution in the work of commerce, than be¬ 
 cause of a diminution in the only thing that com¬ 
 merce ivories for. But such is the nearly universal 
 delusion of the country—a delusion in which Par¬ 
 liament fully shares, as is enough manifest, in that 
 they feel a higher price, or a greater privation of 
 coal in London to be a bagatelle, when compared 
 with the calamity which hangs over the shipping 
 interest in the Tyne. 
 
 To estimate the mischiefs of this suspended 
 trade, we observe no examinations of the incon- 
 
venience sustained by consumers, but only of the 
 loss sustained by producers. That is the quarter 
 where the mighty evil is apprehended to lie. The 
 distress, or the destitution of families from the 
 want of coal, is not inquired into. It is only the 
 derangement that has come upon capital, and upon 
 the plans of capitalists from the want of the coal 
 trade. In virtue of certain interruptions which 
 this trade has been made to suffer, there is a limited 
 supply of coal in the metropolis. That is the 
 essential evil—and one should think that the way 
 to ascertain its dimensions, would have been to 
 call witnesses from the various ranks of citizenship 
 there, as to the amount and soreness of the conse¬ 
 quent privation. The natural investigation would 
 have been into the degrees of hardship and of ad¬ 
 ditional expense that it laid upon the humbler 
 classes; and, perhaps, whether it had the effect 
 of compelling any families to apply for aid from 
 the parish. Had the Committee on the Combina¬ 
 tion Laws taken this direction, we should have 
 had the fathers of poor families in London, and 
 perhaps the overseers of its parishes, or managers 
 of its work-houses, brought under a close ques¬ 
 tionary process. It was no doubt natural to look 
 to the seat of that which was the origin of the 
 mischief, with a view to the application of a re¬ 
 medy; and this may in part explain the peculiarity 
 to which we are now adverting. But it is by no 
 means the whole explanation. For, in truth, upon 
 these topics our most enlightened men are exceed- 
 
281 
 
 ingly apt to look the wrong way; to seek for in¬ 
 formation, not from the place where commerce 
 lands her commodities, but from the place where 
 commerce plies her machinery for the carriage and 
 preparation of them* Any distress in the former 
 place is not half so formidable to their imagina¬ 
 tions, as a derangement in the latter place. Com¬ 
 merce, in truth, is regarded as an end, and not as 
 an instrument. The wants of consumers are not in 
 all their thoughts. The great engrossment is about 
 the producers—the stoppage that has taken place 
 in the processes of trade and manufactures—the 
 witlulrawment or transportation of capital—the 
 disappearance, one after another, of the branches 
 of our national industry. 
 
 It is further instructive to perceive by what 
 kind of mischief a committee on mercantile affairs 
 would be most impressed, when offered to their 
 notice on the examination of witnesses. One evil 
 of a suspended coal trade, is the privation, or the 
 additional expense which it would lay on private 
 families. But let this further evil be made out, 
 that some manufactories, such as iron works in 
 the neighbourhood, were in danger of being sus¬ 
 pended. This second would be felt as the heavier 
 calamity of the two. The evil to ultimate con¬ 
 sumers of abridging their fuel, would be regarded 
 as nothing when compared with the evil to pro¬ 
 ducers of abridging or stopping the processes of 
 their manufactory. And yet these processes, like 
 all others in trade, are but processes of subservi- 
 
 Voi.. III. X n 
 
282 
 
 ency to the wants of consumers. Trace the pro¬ 
 gress of the evil in this ramification a little farther, 
 and its whole amount is a privation, or a higher 
 price to families, not of the fuel which upholds 
 the fire, but of the grate which contains it, or the 
 fire-irons which stir it, or the pots and pans which 
 are laid upon it. Now, a legislature would never 
 busy itself with this last consideration. It is only 
 when the evil is in prospect or menace, through 
 an interruption of the works, that it appears to be 
 of national magnitude. When the evil has reached 
 its consummation in the inconvenience to which 
 customers are subjected, from a more limited sup¬ 
 ply of the things which are wrought, the whole of 
 its national importance is dissipated. 
 
 The delusion is still more glaring when the ar¬ 
 ticle of trade is less essential to the comfort of 
 families. Among many others who were examined 
 on the effects of combination, there were manu¬ 
 facturers of shawls. There is enough of magni¬ 
 tude to fill the imagination in the shipping inte¬ 
 rest. But one can scarcely uphold in his mind 
 any associations of greatness, or of public impor¬ 
 tance, with the shawl-making interest. Still it is 
 a branch of fancy-work; and that again a branch 
 of the general manufactures of the country. So 
 that the making of shawls, and the making of 
 toilinette waistcoats, and the making even of most 
 frivolous toys, all merge into, and serve to swell 
 the account of what, in sound, and in appearance, 
 at least, is sufficiently imposing—the manufactur- 
 
ing interest. At all events there are a good many 
 hundred workmen employed in the fabrication of 
 shawls; and if they choose to strike, shawls will 
 cease for a time to be multiplied. Now, our sim¬ 
 ple position is, that the real good of these shawls 
 lies in the wearing of them, and not in the weav¬ 
 ing of them. The whole “ cul bono?” of this 
 manufacture, lies in the gratification of the taste 
 and fancy of the wearers; and the counterpart 
 evil to this, from the suspension of the manufac¬ 
 ture, is the vexation or disappointment which 
 they must feel in not meeting with their wonted 
 supply. But were either the one seen to be the 
 whole good, or the other seen to be the whole 
 evil, the legislature would most certainly never 
 interpose at all in the matter ; and that they actu¬ 
 ally do interpose, proceeds from their imagination 
 of a good in this and in all other manufactures, 
 distinct from the subservience of their products 
 to the use or the enjoyment of customers. There 
 were something grotesque and ridiculous in an 
 assembly of senators, sitting in grave deliberation 
 on the comfort of shawls, or the tastefulness of 
 fancy waistcoats; and, therefore, when they do 
 enter upon this subject, they never bestow one 
 thought upon the good which the supply of these 
 brings to the consumers: it is altogether upon the 
 good which the making of these brings to the 
 producers. They figure some sort of inherent 
 virtue in trade, that is separate from and indepen¬ 
 dent of the enjoyment which lies in the use of its 
 
284 
 
 commodities. They have elevated commerce from 
 the state of a handmaid, to being the very goddess 
 of their idolatry; and would anticipate somethin^ 
 far more tremendous to the country, from the de¬ 
 struction of the shawl-making interest, than a ne¬ 
 gation to the country of shawls. 
 
 But it will be said, that the worth of a manu¬ 
 facture is not to be measured by the mere worth 
 of the articles which are thrown off by it. It is 
 contended, that there is something more of impor¬ 
 tance in it than this; and really something more 
 is necessary to be made out, in order to vindicate 
 the high place to which it has been exalted in the 
 imagination of many a statesman, and the system 
 of many an economist. For ourselves, we are not 
 aware of one other earthly contribution which a 
 shawl-maker renders to the interest of his country, 
 than simply his shawls; or a stocking-maker, than 
 just stockings; or a coach-maker, than coaches. 
 These are the respective parts which they per¬ 
 form ; and they are their whole parts. More has 
 been ascribed to them; and though neither the 
 glory nor the strength of a nation lies in its shawls, 
 its stockings, or its coaches; yet both its glory 
 and its strength have been conceived, as somehow 
 bound up with the occupations of the men who 
 are employed in making them. It is tins which 
 constitutes another and most inveterate of our 
 delusions, that a manufacture does more for the 
 public and political importance of the state, than 
 simply furnish its own commodities lor the graii- 
 
285 
 
 fication and use of the individuals who compose 
 it. A false halo has thus been thrown around 
 commerce; and not, we believe, till it be wholly 
 dissipated, will legislators cease to meddle with 
 that which they had far better let alone. 
 
 And herein it is that the delusion appears to lie. 
 It is agreed, on all hands, that a manufacture does 
 thus much for a country. It furnishes its own 
 products for the accommodation of those who live 
 in it. But, over and above these products, it is 
 further conceived, that it calls into being the re¬ 
 turns which it obtains for them. To the articles 
 which it works off, and by which we would mea¬ 
 sure its whole importance to the community, there 
 are superadded the articles which are gotten in 
 exchange for them; and it is precisely this super¬ 
 addition, which gives to manufactures all the ex¬ 
 aggerated importance that has been ascribed to 
 them. In rating the worth of any one manufac¬ 
 ture, we should make account of nothing more, 
 than simply the goods which it issues forth upon 
 society. But, on their way thitherward, they have 
 to pass through a market, and undergo the opera¬ 
 tion of a sale, when a value is given for a value that 
 has been received. Now these two values are 
 generally blended together in the imagination of 
 the observer, and he credits the manufacture with 
 both; first with its own produce, and then with 
 the price that has been given for it. It is out of 
 this price that masters are enabled to live in Splen¬ 
 dour, and workmen to live in decent sufficiency. 
 
286 
 
 A thriving village is perhaps the result of it; or, 
 however the dependent population may be ar¬ 
 ranged, there stands visibly associated with the 
 manufacture, a flourishing groupe of cheerful and 
 industrious families. The legislature would, in 
 all probability, never let itself down to a delibera¬ 
 tion, the sole object of which, was the due and 
 regular supply, either of ladies with shawls, or of 
 gentlemen with toilinette waistcoats. But that is 
 no reason why it should not bestow its most anxi¬ 
 ous care, and give all the benefit of its wisdom to 
 a matter that seems to involve in it the employ¬ 
 ment, and, along with the employment, the sub¬ 
 sistence of many thousand members of the British 
 commonwealth. It is neither in the shawls, nor 
 yet in the waistcoats, where the national impor¬ 
 tance of the question is conceived to lie; but it is 
 in the spectacle of so many human beings, whose 
 whole revenue and support are linked with the 
 fabrication of them—a revenue that forms, it is 
 imagined, an integral part of the wealth, and a 
 support, without which we should lose an integral 
 part of the population of the empire. 
 
 In this whole process, the distinction is lost sight 
 of, between the two sides of every mercantile trans¬ 
 action, so as that the separate functions are not ad¬ 
 verted to; first, of the manufacturer who makes the 
 article, and, secondly, of the purchaser who uses it. 
 There is positively nothing but the article that 
 comes from the side of the manufacturer; and main¬ 
 tenance, or the power of acquiring it, comes alto- 
 
287 
 
 gether from the side of the purchaser. There 
 might be some derangement upon the one side, in 
 virtue of which, the article is no longer forth¬ 
 coming; but this can never send across, upon the 
 other side, a devouring blight on the maintenance 
 that was in readiness there to be discharged, as 
 usual, in the purchase of the article. It may so 
 happen, that in virtue of suspended work, or of 
 now exhausted material, the article in question has 
 disappeared from the market, and is nowhere to 
 be found. But the maintenance that went for the 
 article is still in reserve, as entire in the amount, 
 and as effective in the support and sufficiency which 
 it can diffuse through families as before. It will 
 neither be destroyed, nor yet will it be suffered to 
 lie idle. It will go forth, if not in the purchase of 
 the old article, at least of some others; the pre¬ 
 paration of which, will draw to it as many hands as 
 were before employed in the manufacture that now 
 has vanished from the land. We do not deny, that 
 a temporary distress must be felt while this change 
 in the distribution of the people is going on. Nei¬ 
 ther do we affirm, that the very individuals who 
 have been discarded from that branch of industry 
 which is now at an end, will all find a ready ad¬ 
 mittance, and as liberal a recompense as before, 
 in such other branches as are sure to spring up or 
 be extended. But we are sure that there is nought 
 in the destruction of any one manufacture, which 
 can at all impair the ability of those who want to 
 purchase its commodities, and so to effuse both 
 
among masters and workmen, all the maintenance 
 which they ever desired from their connection 
 with it. This maintenance will go forth upon as 
 great a population as before, in return for some 
 new services; not, perhaps, for shawls, but for 
 something else in their place. And after a short 
 season of inconveniences, and disquietudes, and 
 boding alarms, we shall behold the spectacle of as 
 many industrious families, as well upheld in the 
 comforts of life as before. 
 
 There is really too much of virtue attributed to 
 a manufacture, when it is figured, that it both 
 gives employment to a people, and gives them 
 maintenance also. It gives employment, but it 
 does not give maintenance. The fruit of the em¬ 
 ployment is a marketable commodity, and the 
 maintenance which is given in return for it, comes 
 from some other quarter of society, than from the 
 manufactory where the employment was carried 
 on. Although the manufactory should come to a 
 cessation, the same amount of subsistence for 
 human beings will spring up in that quarter as 
 before. Shawls will cease to be produced; but 
 that other produce, which wont to subsist the shawl 
 makers, will come forth as abundantly as ever. 
 And they who have a power or a property, in the 
 first instance, over that produce, will not cease to 
 transfer it to others as before, merely because there 
 are no more shawls to be purchased. They who 
 go a-shopping will be at no loss to spend as largely 
 as they wont; and if they cannot find shawls, they 
 
289 
 
 will find something else on which to expend the 
 price of them. In so doing, they give a shift to 
 the employments of the people. They do not 
 support less of industry than before—they only 
 impress a new direction upon it; so that, in place 
 of the thousands of shawl-makers, we shall have as 
 many thousands employed in the preparation of-cer¬ 
 tain other articles of taste or convenience. With 
 every fluctuation in the demand of customers, 
 there will be a corresponding fluctuation in the 
 direction of industry; but that, without ultimately 
 affecting either the amount of work that is re¬ 
 quired, or tlie amount of wages which are paid 
 for it. And, if the Legislature would only wea¬ 
 ther the period of transition, with all its uncer¬ 
 tainties and fears, they should at length find with 
 what safety they might abstain from all interfer¬ 
 ence: sure as it is to terminate in as great an 
 abundance as ever, discharged on as great a popu¬ 
 lation. 
 
 Our Legislature would be less tremulously alive 
 upon this subject, were the calamity of a sus¬ 
 pended, or even an annihilated manufacture, re¬ 
 duced to its proper dimensions. It is only a shift, 
 and not a substraction. It is apprehended to be 
 the latter; and hence as prompt an alarm on the 
 part of government, as if on the eve of having a 
 portion of the British territory wrested away from 
 us. Were it, on the other hand, perceived to be 
 only the former, government would remain at 
 quiet, amid the slight internal agitations that were 
 
 Voi.. III. o o 
 
290 
 
 caused by the disappearance of an old manufac¬ 
 ture, and the substitution of a new one as great 
 in its room. It would acquiesce in the new dis¬ 
 tribution of its family, could it only be satisfied, 
 that it was to remain as great and as prosperous 
 a family as before; and that, after the transition 
 had been undergone, not one fraction of its own 
 strength or importance had forsaken it. 
 
 These statements, though general, have a di¬ 
 rect application upon the present question. When 
 a manufacture stops, an alarm is felt for the sta¬ 
 bility of the manfacturing interest; and because, 
 through the mistiness of those indistinct appre¬ 
 hensions which we have endeavoured to expose, 
 the importance of this interest has been most 
 unduly magnified, a consequent alarm is felt for 
 the strength and the vital prosperity of our na¬ 
 tion. It would mitigate the alarm, could the 
 precise nature of the mischief be clearly under¬ 
 stood—even that all which the nation loses, is its 
 wonted supply of those goods which the manu¬ 
 factory issued, and that, at the very worst, it has 
 no other character than that of an inconvenience 
 to families, more or less tolerable, according to 
 the kind of that commodity whose fabrication has 
 for a time been suspended. It loses for a season 
 the employment of the men who have struck, or 
 rather, the fruits of their employment. But it has 
 not lost the maintenance of the men. If con¬ 
 sumers cannot obtain their wonted gratifications, 
 the price of them remains in their pockets; and 
 
291 
 
 the maintenance which this price, in the hands of 
 workmen and their families, would have called 
 forth, remains in the storehouses of the nation. 
 The country sustains no other suffering than that 
 which we have mentioned. It is as full of power 
 for the subsistence of men, and has within its li¬ 
 mits the same rewards and encouragements by 
 which to stimulate their industry, as before. If 
 the public can afford to want the products of their 
 industry, there are none who seriously suffer but 
 the foolish men themselves who choose to be idle 
 for a little, and so will not take that support and 
 nourishment which the country has to give them, 
 and which lies in reserve, to be discharged again 
 upon them, when they return to their wonted oc¬ 
 cupation. And even though they should, in hard 
 and heroic obstinacy, resolve rather to starve than 
 to surrender, the nation will survive in as great 
 vigour as before, the loss both of them and of 
 their services. That aliment which they refused, 
 will still continue to be produced and to be poured 
 forth in as great abundance from its granaries as 
 ever. And still, after the little hour of efferves¬ 
 cence and of fear, which their discontents may 
 have occasioned, will the old spectacle be re¬ 
 stored, of an industrious population as great, and 
 a maintenance as liberal, spread abroad among all 
 its families. 
 
 In reference to all those manufactures where 
 combination is practicable, Nature has given such 
 superiority to the purchasers over the producers, 
 
292 
 
 that, for the protection of the former from the 
 latter, it seems quite unnecessary for law to in¬ 
 terfere. In agriculture, there, is less danger to 
 be apprehended of a strike among the labourers, 
 than even of a combination among the capital¬ 
 ists ; and it will in general be found, that, when 
 a conspiracy among workmen for higher wages 
 can be most easily formed and supported on the 
 one side, then the article wrought can be most 
 easily dispensed with on the other. It is not dif¬ 
 ficult to perceive which of the two parties has the 
 advantage in this contest, and whether the pub¬ 
 lic, on the one hand, can hold longer out with 
 the want of the manufactured commodity, or the 
 workmen with the want of their maintenance. 
 There are forces in operation, and which are 
 enough of themselves to decide this question 
 against the labourers. It is a pity that govern¬ 
 ment should step forward with a show of hostility, 
 and anticipate the result. The terrors of a po¬ 
 verty that is growing apace, and looking more 
 ghastly by every day of their perseverance in a 
 state of idleness; at length, their own sensa¬ 
 tions of hunger, and the cries of their famishing 
 children,—these are the guarantees of a sure and 
 speedy termination to the warfare. The wisdom 
 of government is forbearance. Save for the in¬ 
 terests of obvious and substantial justice, they 
 should leave Trade to the unfettered play of its 
 own mechanism; and, secure in the conscious¬ 
 ness that the basis of our nation’s prosperity is 
 
more deeply founded than to be within the reach 
 of its fluctuations, they should cease to feel as 
 an interested party, and leave the determination 
 of this controversy between the manufacturers 
 and customers, to those who are immediately 
 concerned. 
 
 On this question, then, we should feel less- in¬ 
 clined to defer to the alarm of capitalists, than 
 to the alarm of their customers—of those who 
 fabricate, or who deal in any of the articles of 
 trade, than of those who consume them. One 
 can imagine of the operatives who make the 
 shoes, that they might cease from work, and 
 hold out so long as to bring a real inconvenience 
 upon all who wear them. And the more that the 
 article approaches to a necessary of life, the greater 
 is the inconveniency that might be felt; as if, for 
 example, a whole city population were subjected, 
 from such a cause, to an artificial scarcity of coals. 
 This alarm, on the part of the purchasers or the 
 users of a commodity, is altogether distinct from 
 the alarm of its manufacturers or venders, and is 
 therefore entitled to a distinct consideration. 
 
 In reference, then, to those articles which are 
 not of prime necessity, it will at once be perceived, 
 how unequal the conflict is between the maker 
 and the consumer. The former depend upon the 
 latter for their whole income; and, so soon as by 
 the cessation of their work any accumulated capi¬ 
 tal has been melted away, this dependence be¬ 
 comes urgent and immediate; and they can hold 
 
294 
 
 out no longer in the want of all subsistence for 
 themselves and their families. Whereas the latter 
 depend on the former, only for the product of their 
 industry, which, by the supposition, not being in¬ 
 dispensable to the support of human life, can for 
 any indefinite season be dispensed with. The 
 workmen, for example, of a toy manufacture, could 
 never starve the public into a compliance with 
 their terms, but would themselves be starved in 
 time out of all their refractoriness, by a public 
 resolved against the extravagance of their de¬ 
 mands. This applies more or less to every species 
 of work, when the thing wrought did not essen¬ 
 tially enter into the maintenance of those who 
 purchased it. They can keep aloof from the pur¬ 
 chase, whenever they feel the price to be exorbi¬ 
 tant. They who purchase have a clear superiority 
 over those who prepare the article. The former 
 can want the article. The latter cannot long want 
 the employment, for their employment is to them 
 the vehicle of all the necessaries of life which are 
 brought to their doors. 
 
 Even in regard to many of the more necessary 
 trades, the determination of customers not to pay 
 more than a certain price, can far outlast the de¬ 
 termination of the workmen not to work for less 
 than a certain wage. Let the instance be again 
 taken from shoes, and a competition of this kind 
 be imagined between those who make shoes, and 
 those who wear them; a competition, it will be 
 observed, between the single want ol one party, 
 
295 
 
 and that not for a first, but a second necessary of 
 life, and all the wants of the other party for all the 
 articles whatever of human comfort and subsis¬ 
 tence. Even a single pair, with all its capacities 
 of being patched and prolonged, though by house¬ 
 hold hands, for months together, could give enough 
 of advantage in this very unequal contest; and 
 still more, if there was aught like the possession of 
 a decent stock: an expedient, by the way, whereby 
 the wealthier classes might arm themselves, in all 
 time coming, against all that appears most fright¬ 
 ful in this bugbear of combination. By enlarging 
 somewhat their various stocks of consumption—by 
 means of an additional outlay on all their present 
 stores, whether in the cellars, or the wardrobe, or 
 the outhouses, they strengthen and prepare them¬ 
 selves for any future warfare of this kind. It will 
 be found, that by this simple arrangement, an ar¬ 
 rangement, too, which naturally follows in the 
 train of advancing wealth, there is raised an effec¬ 
 tual defence against that indefinite power, where¬ 
 with it may be dreaded that a growing capital 
 would invest the working classes of our land. It 
 would reduce itself to a contest of endurance be¬ 
 tween one species of accumulation and another; 
 and it is not difficult to estimate with which of 
 the parties the inducement would be strongest to 
 terminate the contest—whether with the work¬ 
 men, from whom every day of idleness would take 
 away a portion of their general means, and so 
 make them poorer than before, or with the cus- 
 
296 
 
 tomers, who, in the season of some outstanding 
 trade, were only becoming more bare and desti¬ 
 tute in some one article of human enjoyment. We 
 feel, indeed, as if it were a vain expenditure of 
 argument, to reason at all upon any such distant 
 anticipation. But we deem it of the utmost prac¬ 
 tical importance, that legislators should feel a 
 greater confidence than they are often inclined to 
 do, in its own proper workings of the mechanism 
 of human society; and that when they brood over 
 the apprehended mischiefs of a strike among tay- 
 lors, or masons, or house-carpenters, they would 
 bethink themselves of the natural correctives which 
 are already provided against it, in the very state 
 and composition of the body politic. It should 
 be enough to lull their disquietude, that it is far 
 easier for the public at large to put up for months 
 with such clothes, or houses, or furniture as they 
 have, than it were for the operatives in these 
 branches of industry, to put up for the same time 
 with an utter suspension of all revenue. 
 
 And it is comfortable, as one goes in detail over 
 the various articles which enter into the main¬ 
 tenance of a family, to perceive that those which 
 are most indispensable are also most beyond the 
 reach of being rendered artificially dear by means 
 of combinations. Of those articles to the fabrica¬ 
 tion of which a long apprenticeship is necessary, 
 and for the making of which, therefore, in the 
 event of a strike, we cannot draw on the general 
 population, there are many which have such a dura- 
 
297 
 
 bility in themselves as will enable their posses¬ 
 sors to stand out any season of combination that 
 shall be at all practicable for the workmen. This 
 applies particularly to furniture and houses, the 
 customers in which cannot be reduced to a total 
 destitution of them so soon as the workmen would 
 be reduced to a total destitution of the necessaries 
 of life. There are other workmanships, which, 
 though abandoned by the regular operatives, can 
 be served in such a way by domestic industry, or 
 by more general labourers, as must at least hasten 
 the breaking up of a combination. It is so with 
 the mending, and even making, of all sorts of ap¬ 
 parel ; and as to that most important commodity, 
 fuel, we have recent and most satisfactory experi¬ 
 ence, for the facility wherewith the transition 
 can be made, by people drawn at random from 
 other branches of industry to that of working in a 
 coal mine. And then, as to the very first of hu¬ 
 man necessaries, as to the supply of food, or agri¬ 
 cultural produce, there is nought more palpable 
 than the readiness wherewith men of any, or of all 
 works, can be turned to field labour. There is 
 less, we are sure, to be apprehended from a strike 
 of ploughmen than of any other class of operatives 
 whatever. For, besides the ease wherewith they 
 could be replaced, there is the difficulty where¬ 
 with they could be associated for any general or 
 concerted plan of operation among themselves. 
 The same obstacles, which have been so well and 
 forcibly represented by Dr. Smith, against a com- 
 VOL. in. ' p,, 
 
bination of farmers for a rise in the price of grain, 
 exist in much greater strength against a combina¬ 
 tion of farm servants for a rise in the price of 
 country labour. There could be no common un¬ 
 derstanding established among men so spread as 
 they are over the whole surface of the land. It is 
 among congregated, and not among widely dif¬ 
 fused. workmen, that such plans are hatched and 
 brought into any degree of maturity; so that, save 
 for the one purpose of interposing against crime 
 and violence, there seems no call upon Govern¬ 
 ment to meddle in the rivalry between workmen 
 and their employers. In the case of luxuries, the 
 public interest does not require any such interfer¬ 
 ence; and, indeed, there is, in this instance, a 
 control on the part of customers over workmen, 
 to which the whole of the adjustment between 
 them might very safely be left. In the most im¬ 
 portant necessaries, there are other, and still more 
 effective securities against the damage that might 
 be apprehended from such combinations; and the 
 security is most complete of all in the article of 
 food, that prime and vital necessary which is the 
 most indispensable of all. 
 
 But there is another aspect of mischief in these 
 combinations that is apt to alarm our legislature. 
 In the suspension of so many works, they not only 
 apprehend the disappearance from our land of so 
 much industry; they further apprehend the loss or 
 the disappearance of so much capital. The one 
 we hold to be a bugbear, insomuch as we deem 
 
299 
 
 the essential evil of the stoppage to lie in the ces¬ 
 sation, for a time, of the products of industry, and 
 never in the cessation of a power to maintain the 
 producers. They choose to become outcasts for a 
 season, from the benefits of this power; and so to 
 bring upon themselves the hardships of an increas¬ 
 ing poverty, and, at length, the sufferings of pen- 
 ury and starvation. On the side of the consumers, 
 there is an inconvenience that can be borne with. 
 On the side of the producers, there is a hard and 
 ever-growing necessity, that must at length compel 
 a surrender; and when the surrender is made by 
 a return, on their part, to their wonted employ¬ 
 ments, they will just come back again to the foun¬ 
 tains of sustenance which they had forsaken, and 
 find them as generous and abundant as before. To 
 the one party there has been a stagnation of their 
 wonted enjoyments. To the other, there has been 
 a period of severe but salutary discipline, which we 
 should like to see fully accomplished; and with¬ 
 out interference, if possible, by the hand of autho¬ 
 rity. We think that labourers would come forth 
 of the trial, wiser and better than before; and that 
 after having made full proof of their own favourite 
 expedient, and found its inefficacy, they would he 
 far more effectually schooled into a state of quies¬ 
 cence, than by all the terrors of legislation. The 
 petty fermentations which are now in progress 
 over the empire, will never amount to a storm 
 that shall overthrow the fabric of its economic 
 prosperity; but will rather demonstrate the sta- 
 
300 
 
 bility of that basis upon which it is reared. The 
 experience that should be earned in this way, 
 would put a most impressive mockery on the dark 
 conjurations of many philosophers and many states¬ 
 men. 
 
 But the other we hold to be a bugbear also. 
 We have just as little to apprehend for the destruc¬ 
 tion of a nation’s capital from these combinations, 
 as for the ultimate disappearance or diminution of 
 a nation’s industry. The one delusive fear, how¬ 
 ever, is fully as inveterate as the other; and, ac¬ 
 cordingly, in the Report by the Select Committee 
 on the Combination Laws, we find a strongly ex¬ 
 pressed alarm, lest “ capital be withdrawn, or 
 transportedand so, lest “ the source of every 
 branch of our industry should gradually be cut oft) 
 and the whole labouring population of the coun¬ 
 try consigned to the distress and misery, which it 
 is the tendency of the ill-advised combinations, in 
 which so great a portion of it is implicated, rapidly 
 and inevitably to produce.” 
 
 This introduction of capital into the argument, 
 suggests a new topic of alarm. It serves to com¬ 
 plicate, and so to cast an obscurity over the whole 
 subject. We know' how closely associated fear is 
 with indistinct vision; and in as far as the import 
 and the precise function of capital are dimly ap¬ 
 prehended, in so far is the mind liable to dread 
 and to disturbance, from the imagination of any 
 hazard to which it may be exposed. Were the 
 darkness that hangs over this quarter of economic 
 
301 
 
 speculation dispersed, these spectres would fly 
 away along with it. It is the mist that lies spread 
 over certain departments of political science, which 
 so magnifies the terrors of our political alarmists, 
 and this by distorting to their vision the real shape 
 and magnitude of things. On no subject has this 
 been more signally manifested than on that of capi¬ 
 tal; and we even think that the views here of our 
 most celebrated economists, have a tendency to 
 nurture a false alarm rather than to appease it. 
 
 One thing is obvious, that after capital is formed, 
 it is the lure of a profit which draws it to any em¬ 
 ployment ; and it is the continuance of that profit 
 which detains it there. But this profit is just an 
 ingredient of the price that is rendered for those 
 commodities, on the preparation of which for the 
 market, the capital is vested. The profit of the 
 master is just as resolvable into an antecedent 
 ability on the part of his customers, as are the 
 wages of his workmen. The one channel through 
 which the wealth of these customers found its 
 way, carrying both to labourers their remunera¬ 
 tion, and to capitalists their gain—this channel 
 may be obstructed for a season; but it is one thing 
 to shift the conveyance of wealth, and altogether 
 another thing to annihilate it. The price that 
 wont to be given by a family for shawls, if shawls 
 are no longer to be had, is in reserve for some 
 other article of expenditure; and in the purchase 
 of that article, it will pass onward, and contribute 
 as liberally to profit, and as liberally to wages as 
 
302 
 
 before. We are quite aware of the temporary in¬ 
 convenience which attends every change in the 
 direction either of capital or industry. But we 
 are not to confound this evil with that of a total 
 disappearance, and so a permanent diminution 
 either of the one or other in our land. So long as 
 the agriculture is as productive, and so the first 
 necessaries of life are as abundant as before, capi¬ 
 tal will be as fully replaced, and labourers as abun¬ 
 dantly recompensed as before. The fund for both 
 is in every way as efficient—even that fund, which 
 consisting as it does of the indispensable aliment 
 of human life, is both that which calls a population 
 into being, and impresses any direction that the 
 holders of it will upon their industry. If this 
 great primary source flow with the same copious¬ 
 ness, then the wealth of its holders is of the same 
 force, both to replace stock, and to remunerate 
 labour. The tide of it may be diverted, but nei¬ 
 ther the amount nor the strength of it is taken 
 away; and when either the suspension of any 
 manufacture is ended, or the shift from it to an¬ 
 other is made out, we behold as flourishing a mer¬ 
 chandise, both for masters and workmen, as ever. 
 
 We are aware, that what we count a delusion 
 on the subject of capital, has been very much fos¬ 
 tered by the speculations of Dr. Adam Smith, who 
 every where speaks of capital as the fruit of a la¬ 
 borious parsimony; and who imagines, that if by 
 any cause a portion is taken away from the trading 
 capital of our nation, a new' course of painstaking 
 
303 
 
 accumulation must be entered upon, till in a 
 series of years, perhaps, we recover that fulness 
 from which we had been reduced. Still he re¬ 
 gards the departure of that capital, which has now 
 to be replaced by the strenuous economy of our 
 more industrious and sober-minded citizens, as a 
 permanent loss to the nation; for, had it remained 
 with us, we might still have had the benefit of 
 those savings by which it has been made up, and 
 so we might have had two capitals instead of one. 
 It is this which in his eye constitutes the chief evil 
 of our national debt, by which he conceives that 
 so much of capital has been absorbed, and for ever 
 lost to the nation. He calculates how much 
 richer the country would have been, with a sum 
 of so many millions still performing the functions 
 of a capital; and in that capacity dispensing such 
 an amount of revenue to its owners, and of sub¬ 
 sistence to the people whose revenue was upheld 
 by it. It is not to be wondered at, then, if the 
 disciples of this great economist—the habitual and 
 unquestioning followers in the train of such a spec¬ 
 ulation as this, should read the approaching down- 
 fal of a nation in the disappearance, by successive 
 portions of its mercantile capital. Those enligh¬ 
 tened ministers who proceed so fearlessly on his 
 whole doctrine of free trade, do no more than 
 catch the alarm of their master; when, associating 
 with the combinations of workmen the withdraw- 
 ment from the country of one branch of capital 
 after another, they anticipate as the still gloomier 
 
304 
 
 consequence, “ that the source of every branch of 
 our industry will gradually be cut pff; and the 
 whole labouring population of the country be con¬ 
 signed to distress and misery.” 
 
 We hold that there is much of exaggeration in 
 these forebodings; but to demonstrate our views 
 of the subject, we shall have recourse to examples. 
 Let a capitalist, with ten thousand pounds, have 
 his money all vested in some of the simpler manu¬ 
 factures, as that of bricks. We specify this, as 
 being one of those that require almost no fixed 
 capital, and that can chiefly be carried on by means 
 of a circulating one. The money thus laid out is 
 repaid to him with a profit; so that, at the end of 
 the year, he may find himself in possession of eleven 
 thousand pounds; of which he may appropriate 
 one thousand as revenue to his personal or fa¬ 
 mily uses, and embark the ten thousand in his 
 business, as before. Or, instead of this, we might 
 conceive him, at this point, to be suddenly trans¬ 
 formed into a spendthrift, that greatest enemy, as 
 he is represented by Dr. Smith, of the public in¬ 
 terest. He may be seized by a fit of extravagance, 
 and squander the whole of his eleven thousand 
 pounds in the course of the ensuing twelvemonth. 
 By this proceeding, there is certainly so much of 
 capital effaced from the country. An integral 
 portion of that capital which was vested in the em¬ 
 ployment of brick-making, is now withdrawn from 
 it. A fund, out of which a certain population ob¬ 
 tained the wages of their industry, and a certain 
 
addition was made to the annual produce of the 
 labour of the country, has now been dissipated. 
 The prevalent conception is, that the country is 
 thrown permanently aback by such an event.; and 
 that, though it should recover the distance which 
 it has lost, it is by means of a force of parsimony, 
 which, had there been no loss to repair, would 
 have carried the country permanently forward. 
 Now, we think it easy to demonstrate, that the de¬ 
 ficiency could be made up in another way; and 
 that, without any greater parsimony on the part of 
 other brick-makers, or without any influx of capi¬ 
 tal to this manufacture from without. We hold, 
 that ere a single year pass by, the capital embarked 
 upon this business will regain its former extent, 
 and so be of avail to maintain as liberally the same 
 number of labourers, who shall work off the same 
 produce as before. 
 
 To make this palpable, let us imagine that there 
 has been withdrawn for a year from the business 
 of brick-making, some sensible proportion, as one 
 tenth of the capital that had been vested in it. 
 There are two ways in which this deficiency may 
 be made up; and in one or other, or both these 
 ways, the certainty is, that it will be so made up 
 in the course of a twelvemonth. By the disap¬ 
 pearance of this portion of capital, there are so 
 many men thrown loose from employment. The 
 same master can no longer hire them; for the fund 
 out of which he paid their wages is no longer in 
 existence. They will, therefore, go in quest of 
 
306 
 
 other masters; and we may first conceive that they 
 offer themselves to those in the same trade. This 
 would be the natural direction for them to take; 
 and in which case, we should behold the competi¬ 
 tion of workmen for employment from a smaller ca¬ 
 pital than can well afford to maintain them. The 
 capital engaged in brick-making has been reduced 
 to nine tenths of what it was; and on this dimi¬ 
 nished capital, the discarded workmen, to the 
 amount of one tenth of the whole number, are seek¬ 
 ing for admittance. A general reduction of wages 
 must ensue; and, although it is not necessary to 
 our argument, yet, in point of truth, this reduction 
 would greatly exceed the fraction by which the 
 capital has declined. In other words, the remain¬ 
 ing masters would be able, and more than able, to 
 enlist into their service the same number of la¬ 
 bourers as were employed in the preceding year; 
 and upon this capital, though diminished to nine 
 tenths of what it was, the same quantity of bricks 
 is still brought to market. But on the supply 
 being the same, and the demand the same, (and 
 there has nothing happened which should lessen 
 the demand,) the price of this article will continue 
 as before. In other words, the masters of the pre¬ 
 sent year have as large an aggregate return upon 
 their reduced capital, that the masters of the for¬ 
 mer year had upon their full capital. If ten thou¬ 
 sand pounds be taken from one tenth of the whole 
 capital that wont to be engaged in the business of 
 brick-making, then the aggregate capital of the 
 
307 
 
 former year was an hundred thousand, and the 
 aggregate return, by our hypothesis, of the profit, 
 must have been an hundred and ten thousand 
 pounds. But this return, consisting, as it does, 
 of the whole market-price of the bricks, is just 
 as great in the second year as the first. The 
 same number of men is employed on reduced 
 wages. The same quantity of bricks is wrought 
 off, and the same prices given for them. There 
 comes in the same sum of a hundred and ten 
 thousand pounds as before; and the remaining 
 capitalists of ninety thousand pounds, have not 
 only this old capital with the old profit replaced 
 to them; but, over and above, they have returned 
 into their hands both the capital and profit of him 
 who had squandered away his property, and so 
 was forced to retire from the business. It is thus 
 that the capital which had disappeared re-appears; 
 and that not by any strenuousness of accumula¬ 
 tion on the part of the remaining capitalists, but 
 by the operation of a simple economic law'. By a 
 force, as unfailing as that of a hydrostatic pres¬ 
 sure, the capital, in a few months, rises to its 
 wonted level; and becomes as commensurate to 
 the business as before. And the men, after a year 
 of depression, are now met again by a capital as 
 large, and may be restored to wages as large. 
 
 The capital in this case is repaired at the ex¬ 
 pense of one year’s reduced wage to the labour¬ 
 ers. The deficiency that had been created costs 
 them a year of sufferings and privations, ere it 
 
can be made up. This is a mischief, we admit; 
 but it is the whole mischief; and, after the strait¬ 
 ening or the hardship of a short season, leaves 
 no further trace behind it. It is a mistake, that 
 the want of capital, occasioned by the extrava¬ 
 gance of one master, must be atoned for by the 
 parsimony of the rest. To them it is followed 
 up by a season of prosperity; and the fruit of 
 this prosperity is, that they become the posses¬ 
 sors of that capital which their brother in the 
 trade had dissipated. At all events, the capital 
 is fully built up again; and by a process which 
 demonstrates how little the care and the effort of 
 a legislature are requisite to assist that law in the 
 mechanism of trade, which ensures both its speedy 
 and its complete restoration. 
 
 But, should this process fail, there is still an¬ 
 other, by which a shrunk or a reduced capital is 
 sure to be expanded to its former dimensions. 
 The workmen who had been discarded from 
 brick-making, in virtue of the fund which sus¬ 
 tained them being dissipated, might, not think of 
 trying to obtain service from the remaining mas¬ 
 ters in the trade. They might seek about for 
 other employments, and be merged into the gen¬ 
 eral population. The remaining capitalists in 
 the brick manufacture continue with their old 
 labourers ; and, having just the same number of 
 men, and the same capital in their hands as be¬ 
 fore, they will employ them on the same wages. 
 It is not, therefore, from the fall of wages, that 
 
309 
 
 they in this case will obtain any extension of their 
 capital ; but there is another source from which 
 they will obtain it. They can only work up the 
 same number of bricks which they did on the pre¬ 
 ceding year; or, in other words, from the disap¬ 
 pearance of so much capital and industry in their 
 line of trade, there is only nine tenths of the 
 usual quantity brought to market, upon the whole. 
 But there is nothing in the state of things which 
 we now suppose, that can affect the rate of de¬ 
 mand, Purchasers will go in quest of the same 
 quantity as before, but will only meet with nine 
 tenths of the amount that would satisfy them. 
 The effect of this is, a competition on the part of 
 the customers, and a rise in the price of the 
 article. It may not be easy to compute the pro¬ 
 portion which the increase of price will bear to 
 the short-coming of the supply. This will de¬ 
 pend on the place which the article possesses in 
 the scale of comforts or necessaries. We know 
 that in the case of a first necessary, the rise of 
 price would greatly exceed in proportion the de¬ 
 ficiency of the supply; and that if grain were 
 deficient by one tenth from its usual abundance, 
 there might be a rise of at least one third in its 
 usual price. Bricks would not rise in so high a 
 proportion; but, it is likely, higher than by one 
 tenth. But let us only assign to it the average 
 rise of one tenth; or, in other words, that, al¬ 
 though the supply falls short by one tenth of what 
 it used to be, yet that, in virtue of its augmented 
 
310 
 
 price, the same money is expended by all the 
 customers that there used to be. We shall still 
 have in this second case, the aggregate return of 
 .£110,000 to the remaining brickmasters. Prom 
 this source, they will have, as before, their old 
 capital and profit replaced to them, along with 
 the capital and its profit, which the extravagance 
 of their now retired colleague in the business had 
 swept off from the employ. And all this, with¬ 
 out any extraordinary forcing upon their part. 
 The want of capital is filled up by an influx from 
 without, just as water flows in to fill up a va¬ 
 cuum. It is not they who work this effect; but 
 the laws of the economic machine work it for 
 them. They are the passive subjects of a pros¬ 
 perity which they have not caused. They have 
 become, as before, the proprietors of that fortune 
 which their companion had dissipated; and, just 
 as before, in the course of a few months, their 
 trade is reinstated in that full capital which had 
 been previously embarked upon it. The supply 
 of the article wall again be enlarged with this en¬ 
 largement of the capital; and on the price again 
 filling to the average of profits in the country, 
 this trade will settle down to its even and ordinary 
 tenor. 
 
 In the first way of it, the capital is repaired at 
 the expense of the labourers. In the second way 
 of it, it is repaired at the expense of the con¬ 
 sumers. Whether in either way exclusively, or 
 (which will happen most frequently) by a mix- 
 
311 
 
 ture of them both, it will recover, and in a single 
 year, the magnitude from which it had fallen. 
 We deny not the evil which there is, in workmen, 
 for even this short period, being compelled to 
 subsist on inferior wages. Neither can we deny 
 the evil which there is, in the country, for the 
 same period, being compelled to put up with a 
 scantier supply of those conveniences which are 
 suited to it. All we affirm is, that these are the 
 only evils; and that they are not such as entitle 
 them to all that anxious care wherewith our le¬ 
 gislature, in the brooding anticipation of evils 
 still more dire and irremediable, professes to 
 watch over the preservation and entireness of our 
 national capital. The due increase of capital 
 may in fact, with all safety, be confided to the 
 force of its own native and essential buoyancy. 
 This certainly is not a consideration for which 
 any obvious principle, either of freedom, or of 
 natural justice, ought to be sacrificed; and just 
 ranks among many other of those economic in¬ 
 terests which governments are prone to meddle 
 with, but which they had better let alone. 
 
 These processes for the almost immediate repro¬ 
 duction of extinguished capital, explain what, in 
 the eyes of Dr. Smith and others, is a seeming 
 mystery*—the sufficiency, or rather the super- 
 
 * “ During the course even of tile most expensive wars, the frugality and 
 good conduct of individuals seem to have been able, by saving and accumu- 
 lation, to repair all the breaches which the waste and extravagance of Go- 
 
312 
 
 abundance of capital, in spite of its great absorp¬ 
 tions by the national debt. The sum of ten thou¬ 
 sand pounds may have been withdrawn from the 
 brick manufacture, by the owner of it becoming a 
 subscriber to a public loan; and, although one 
 tenth of the capital vested in this employment had 
 been thus removed from it, there is nothing in 
 this that will, immediately at least, lessen the de¬ 
 mand of the country for bricks. Even when in 
 the progress of taxation and of public debt, the 
 revenue of private consumers comes to be shared 
 in larger proportion by government and the cre¬ 
 ditors of the nation, the joint expenditure of all 
 those parties among whom it is divided, will set 
 the same amount of industry in motion, or give 
 maintenance to as great a number of servants, as 
 
 verament hail made in the general capital of the society. At the conclusion 
 of the late war, the most expensive that Great Britain ever waged, her 
 agriculture was as flourishing, her manufactories as numerous ami as fully 
 employed, and her commerce as extensive, as they had ever been before. 
 The capital, therefore, which supported all those different branches of in¬ 
 dustry, must have been equal to what it had ever been before. Since the 
 peace, agriculture has been still further improved; the rents of houses have 
 risen in every' town and village of the country, a proof of the increasing 
 wealth and revenue of the people; and the annual amount of the greater 
 part of the old taxes, of the principal branches of the excise and customs, in 
 particular, lias been continually increasing; an equally clear proof of an in¬ 
 creasing consumption, and, consequently, of an increasing produce, which 
 could alone support that consumption. Great Britain seems to support with 
 ease, a burden, which, half a century ago, nobody believed her capable of 
 supporting. Let us not, however, upon this account, rashly suppose that 
 she is capable of supporting any burden; nor, even be too confident that she 
 could support, without great distress, a burden a little greater than wlmt has 
 already been laid upon her.”— Smith's Wealth of Nations, Book V. chap. ui. 
 
313 
 
 when more of that revenue was untouched by the 
 impositions of the state, and permitted to remain 
 in the hands of its original proprietors. At all 
 events, the capital absorbed by the national debt 
 is replaced by the same speedy operations with 
 the capital that has been dissipated by extrava¬ 
 gance. When a proportion of capital is thus .with¬ 
 drawn from any employment, either the wages of 
 labour in that employment fall, by so many of the 
 now disengaged workmen being unwilling to leave 
 it, or the article which they prepare is manufac¬ 
 tured in less quantity, and so rises in price. From 
 one or other, or both of these sources, the capital 
 is again dilated to its former bulk with the force 
 and almost with the speed of elasticity, so as to 
 be as commensurate as before to the demand which 
 there is for its products, to the business which it 
 is called upon to do. And, accordingly, it is quite 
 palpable, that no sooner was capital withdrawn 
 from the trade of the country to its funds, than its 
 place has been filled up again; that, in spite of 
 its immense absorption, it has never fallen behind 
 the business of the nation, but rather overcrowded 
 and pressed upon it.; and now that the absorption 
 has ceased, instead of a season of accumulation 
 being needed, in order to recruit, as from a pro¬ 
 cess of exhaustion, the commerce of our land 
 through all its branches, absolutely labours under 
 a weight of capital greater than it well can bear. 
 We see throughout no privation of capital, but 
 rather every symptom of a plethora. We no- 
 
 Voi.. III. H r 
 
314 
 
 where see any employment, that wears even the 
 remotest likelihood of a decent return, languish¬ 
 ing, or at a stop for the want of capital; but 
 everywhere we see capital at a loss for the want 
 of employment. It now riots in sportive abun¬ 
 dance among all sorts of chimerical enterprizes 
 and wild imaginations. And this exuberance of 
 capital, after that it had been drawn upon to the 
 extent of nearly a thousand millions, speaks most 
 decisively to some vast creative and multiplying 
 power by which it is sustained. 
 
 We are aware, that this view does not harmonize, 
 nay, that it may be in jarring contrariety with the 
 political economy of those whose habits of thought 
 and of speculation have been moulded by the study 
 of the most approved writers in the science. Cer¬ 
 tain it is, that Smith seems not to have adverted 
 to this sudden re-ascent of capital, when a portion 
 of it has been dissipated either by the extrava¬ 
 gance of its individual holders,- or by their having 
 become creditors, in consequence of what he would 
 term the extravagance of the nation. And yet 
 the way in which it regains its former magnitude, 
 per saltum, and not by any slow or laborious pro¬ 
 cess of accumulation, may be clearly educed from 
 those elementary principles that have been so well 
 illustrated by this great master. It is, in fact, 
 the immediate consequence of that re-action which 
 a variation of capital has upon profit. Let a part 
 of the capital vested in any business, (the extent 
 of which is measured by a demand exoteric to the 
 
315 
 
 business itself,) be lopped away; and then, both 
 from a fall of wages in that business, and from a 
 rise in the price of that article which it brings to 
 market, but whose supply is lessened for a time, 
 profits rise, and sink not to their former rate, till 
 the capital resumes the extent from which it had 
 been reduced. It is true that this process, may 
 be anticipated by a rush of capital from other 
 quarters; and then, instead of a sensible oscilla¬ 
 tion in one branch of trade, there will be a slight 
 oscillation in several, after which the old state both 
 of capital and profits will be restored. But it is 
 by an oscillation, and that a pretty quick one too, 
 that the re-adjustment is made. And it has this 
 property of an oscillation belonging to it, that, in 
 proportion to the wideness of the deviation which 
 has been made, is the regressive force that carries 
 capital back again to its old slate of quiescence. 
 The more that capital is lessened in any trade, 
 whose commodities are as largely and effectively 
 demanded as before, the higher are the profits of 
 it raised, and a greater impulse towards a recovery 
 brought to bear upon it. It is thus that a nation’s 
 capital is fitted to survive the disturbance and the 
 rough handling, from which many would appre¬ 
 hend its deadly overthrow; and that it re-attains 
 the bulk from which it had been at any time con¬ 
 tracted, with almost the speed of an explosion. 
 
 In Dr. Smith’s chapter on the Division of Stock, 
 lie describes what may be termed the great econo¬ 
 mic cycle which is performed by the annual pro- 
 
316 
 
 duce of the land, and labour of the country. In 
 the course of its revolution, this produce is distri¬ 
 buted into three parts. One part goes to repair 
 the fixed capital. Another part goes to replace 
 the circulating capital; and a third part enters 
 into the stock that is reserved for immediate con¬ 
 sumption. It is certainly possible, that during the 
 revolution of one year, the consumption may be 
 unduly extended, so as that too much of the pro¬ 
 duce shall go to the third part, at the expense of 
 the other two; and so both the fixed capital may 
 be impaired, and the circulating capital may be 
 diminished. This distinctly took place with our 
 brick-master, when he forsook his business, and 
 squandered on his own personal gratifications the 
 ten thousand pounds, wherewith he wont to pay 
 the annual wages of those in his employ; and it 
 would have alike taken place, had he, instead of 
 continuing in the trade, lent the money which was 
 vested in it to government. In either case, it is 
 that year transferred from the circulating capital 
 to the stock of immediate consumption; being 
 either consumed by himself in dissipation, or con¬ 
 sumed by the servants of the state, the fruit of 
 whose labour does not reappear in the shape of a 
 capital for the support of future labour, instead of 
 being consumed by the servants of a manufactory, 
 the product of whose labour will command a price 
 that is to purchase and maintain their labour for 
 the year wliich is to come. All this undoubtedly 
 takes place for that year—an increase of unproduc- 
 
317 
 
 tive consumption—a diminution of capital. But 
 in the very next revolution of the cycle, there is a 
 restorative process which brings all right again, 
 and that, whether with the now diminished capital, 
 there is the same work performed for less wages, 
 or less work for the same wages. In the one case, 
 less of the annual produce than before is consumed 
 on the personal and household expenses of la¬ 
 bourers. In the other case, a smaller product is 
 served out to customers than before, in return for 
 that price by which dealers are enabled to recruit 
 their capital: even that product, which, turned to 
 immediate use by its purchasers, may be regarded 
 as entering into the stock for their consumption. 
 It is thus, that if, on the preceding revolution, too 
 much of the produce may have passed from capital 
 into consumption, on the next revolution, it will, 
 by a sure economic law, vibrate back again from 
 consumption into capital. In other words, there 
 is a vis medic airix in the economic machine itself, 
 that should supersede much of that anxiety which 
 legislators have expended on it; and in virtue of 
 which it is, that much of their vigilance, and many 
 of their labours are uncalled for. It is a want of 
 confidence in this, that has wholly misplaced their 
 care, and wholly misled their policy on many 
 questions of commercial legislation. It is true, 
 that on most of these topics, they have now ceased 
 to be sensitive. But they are still sensitive on the 
 subject of capital; and, in their treatment of this 
 very question of combinations, we can perceive the 
 
318 
 
 fearful imagination of certain irrevocable evils that 
 will ensue, should either the functions of capital 
 for a time be suspended, or a portion of capital 
 itself be forced, in some season of difficulty and 
 embarrassment, to take its departure away from 
 our borders. 
 
 But before proceeding to this application, it 
 might be right to allege something further, in illus¬ 
 tration of our general views on the subject of capi¬ 
 tal. Although the waste created by an occasional 
 extravagance, on the part of a few individuals, can 
 thus easily be repaired, does it follow, that capi¬ 
 tal is indestructible by any amount or degree of 
 extravagance whatever? Even though it has main¬ 
 tained itself against the most expensive wars, and 
 borne up under the oppression of a large public 
 debt, every shilling of which was abstracted from 
 capital, are we thence to infer, that no process of 
 abstraction can be set agoing, which might utterly 
 exhaust it? Must there not be a limit to the pos¬ 
 sibility of capital thus surviving the adverse influ¬ 
 ences which are brought to bear upon it; and 
 though, at a certain rate of bleeding, it may keep 
 as strong and healthy as ever, may it not still be 
 made to bleed so profusely, as gradually to con¬ 
 sume away, and finally to expire? 
 
 But though we must admit, that there is a pos¬ 
 sible way of bringing on the decay, and at length 
 the extinction of a nation’s capital, it does not 
 therefore follow, that there should be any prac¬ 
 tical alarm of such an event, as at all probable, 
 
319 
 
 or like to be realized. There is just the same 
 possibility, and might be the same alarm, on the 
 subject of population. A war could be imagined 
 of utter extermination in the country, or a pesti¬ 
 lence which might carry off the last man of its 
 inhabitants. But history has scarcely, if ever, 
 given authentic record of such a war, or of such 
 a pestilence; and, in point of experience, after 
 almost all the actual visitations of this sort, we 
 have witnessed in a few years the population so 
 replenished, and made up again, as to have pre¬ 
 sented no voids or vacancies, as vestiges of the 
 many thousands that had fallen. Such is the ex¬ 
 pansive force of population, that it has now 
 ceased to be the care of our rulers, or rather 
 their care has of late taken the opposite direction. 
 There is no alarm lest the numbers should not keep 
 up to the subsistence. The anxiety is, that they 
 shall keep within the subsistence. At all events, 
 the old policy upon this subject has been com¬ 
 pletely superseded. It is no longer conceived of 
 population, that it needs the fostering hand of a 
 legislature, for the purpose either of augmenting 
 it, or of keeping it up to that amount which the 
 country’s good shall render expedient. We do 
 not hear, as formerly, either of checks to emigra¬ 
 tion, or of fears lest disease should waste away the 
 inhabitants of our land.—Neither would it now be 
 one of the arguments against a new war, that it 
 might permanently bring down the population of 
 our empire, and so inflict an irrecoverable damage 
 
320 
 
 on this great element of national prosperity and 
 strength. We are now familiarized to other views 
 upon this subject, and have become satisfied of the 
 force and facility wherewith the population repairs 
 the inroads that are made upon it. An unwonted 
 mortality, caused by the ravages of an epidemic in 
 one year, is followed by an unwonted number of 
 births through two or three succeeding years. And 
 so of the ravages in any country of our most deso¬ 
 lating wars. And so also of the drain that is caused 
 by a continued efflux of our people in the way of 
 emigration. It would just create space for a larger 
 influx in the way of births; and the influx would 
 take place accordingly. It is conceivable, nay, 
 possible, that there may be such an epidemic as 
 shall wholly depopulate our land—and such a war 
 as may turn it into a wilderness—and such an emi¬ 
 gration as may leave it altogether empty: but prac¬ 
 tically, we do not stand in dread of any such; and 
 so population has ceased to be one of those topics 
 which influence the calculations or the measures of 
 government, in the way that it used to do. It 
 has now become one of those interests, for which 
 those apprehensions are no longer felt, that wont 
 to embarrass and mislead the policy of our rulers. 
 It is found to have a vis medicatrix of its own, 
 which requires no helping hand from any other 
 quarter. There can be no question as to the indi¬ 
 vidual suffering which disease, and war, and even 
 emigration, bring in their train; but their effect 
 on the general aggregate of a country’s population 
 
321 
 
 is but slight even at the time, and can easily he 
 recovered; and as it is with aggregates that a 
 legislature have properly to do, they have begun 
 to regard population as one of those self-regulat¬ 
 ing interests, from which it is far better that the 
 regulations or encouragements of the state should 
 be altogether withdrawn. 
 
 It is not so yet with capital. This is another of 
 our economic interests, which has been the subject 
 of kindred alarm, and we think fully as groundless 
 as any of those which were felt aforetime on the 
 subject of population. There is a like expansive 
 force with both; in virtue of which, each in every 
 given state of a country’s progress, will be of that 
 magnitude which the country can best sustain, and 
 in all seasons will vary just at the rate which is 
 best suited to the country’s circumstances. A 
 superabundance of food will afford room for large 
 families by which to increase the population. A 
 superabundance of business, created by the wants 
 of this growing population, will afford large profits 
 by which to increase the capital. There is no 
 danger of either not keeping pace, and by its own 
 proper forces, with the natural course of things; 
 and it were just as unwise to force a capital upon 
 a business whose profits could not afford an ade¬ 
 quate return, as to force a population upon a 
 country whose food could not afford an adequate 
 subsistence. The food will certainly draw a popu¬ 
 lation; and the population under a system of se¬ 
 cure property and equitable laws, will as certainly 
 
 Voi.. III. y s 
 
322 
 
 draw a capital after it. The legislature have been 
 led to regard the one, but not yet the other, in 
 the light of a self-regulating interest. They are 
 still haunted by the visions of a diminished, or of 
 a departing capital. They do not yet apprehend, 
 as in population, the sufficiency of those restora¬ 
 tive forces, by which it is not only kept up to that 
 amount which is most for the advantage of the 
 country, but by which, like population, it tends to 
 an overplus. The views still, in fact, of our best 
 economic writers, have led them to regard capital 
 more as a leader, than as a follower in-the train of 
 national prosperity—more as the creator of that 
 prosperity, than as itself the creation of it. 
 They do not yet perceive, when a vacancy is 
 formed in capital, how instantly there are forces 
 set agoing by which it can be filled up again, as 
 surely as a vacuum in Nature by a collapse of the 
 surrounding atmosphere. They fear, lest, with 
 any inroad on capital, there shall be an inroad on 
 all those economic interests which constitute the 
 strength and fulness of a nation; and this fear 
 still continues to embarrass a policy which, has 
 now been emancipated from the thraldom of many 
 other fears. If this were to appear in any ques¬ 
 tion at all, it was most natural that it should on a 
 question between masters and workmen. There 
 is no longer the apprehension now, lest our na¬ 
 tion should suffer from the declining numbers of 
 the latter; but there is the apprehension still, that 
 it may suffer from the declining capital of the 
 
323 
 
 former. The one we hold to be as much a bug¬ 
 bear as the other; and in this controversy between 
 the two parties, we should regret if government 
 were to be misled by any bugbear, from the path of 
 evenhanded justice between them. 
 
 They are now in full possession of the confi¬ 
 dence, that population will soon recover itself 
 from the horrors of war or of disease, or will 
 maintain itself under the copious and repeated 
 draughts of a system of emigration. But so also 
 will capital. The armies that, in passing over 
 the face of a territory, should destroy one third 
 of the capital of clothiers, will leave the soil in 
 possession of all its capabilities; and, when the 
 population does come up again to the level of 
 these capabilities, will leave as many men to be 
 clothed as well as fed, and willing to offer their 
 services, or the price of them, for their wonted 
 supply of the second, as well as the first necessary 
 of life. But till the capital is repaired, the supply 
 of cloth is short, and the profit of cloth-making 
 is high; nor will it cease to be so, till the capital 
 be fully built up again. Ere this is accomplished, 
 the people are worse clothed, at the same ex¬ 
 pense, than they had used to be. This is the 
 great hardship; but it is a temporary one. This 
 is the way in which the loss has to be borne; but 
 after the season of endurance is over, all the ves¬ 
 tiges of the desolation are filled up, and no longer 
 visible. The country emerges again into its old 
 state, and recovers not merely the symptoms, but 
 
324 
 
 the stamina of a state as healthy and flourishing 
 as before. 
 
 And there is a like analogy between population 
 and capital, in respect of the waste which the 
 former undergoes by disease. A prevalent phy¬ 
 sical distemper might seize upon households, and 
 carry off many families. The consequent abun¬ 
 dance of provisions will speedily bring forward 
 other families in their room. A prevalent moral 
 distemper, even that of ruinous extravagance, 
 might seize upon merchants, and sweep away 
 many of our capitals. The consequent abun¬ 
 dance of profits will construct other capitals, and 
 raise up other capitalists, with a rapidity like that 
 of magic. We question not the individual dis¬ 
 tress that is caused by the death of relatives, and 
 the downfal of fortunes in families. But we are 
 reasoning on the public calamity which, it is 
 feared, might ensue from these events, in virtue 
 either of a deficient population, or a deficient 
 capital. The individual distress is a dire and 
 dreadful reality. The public calamity is a mere 
 imagination. There takes place an almost imme¬ 
 diate adjustment to neutralise it; after which, the 
 country is as full of people, and as full of capital, 
 as ever. 
 
 But population has its preventive, as well as its 
 positive checks. Instead of disease carrying oft 
 families from the stage of existence, families may 
 be prevented from ever entering on the stage, by 
 the celibacy of our present generation. It is true, 
 
325 
 
 that, if the celibacy were universal, the present 
 generation would not be replaced by a succeed¬ 
 ing one; but it is also true, that, though very 
 many were to refrain from marriage, this would 
 just make room for others to have families, who 
 could not otherwise have been able to rear or to 
 dispose of them; and with a very large propor¬ 
 tion of celibacy, the population of the country 
 may still be fully kept up to its means of subsis¬ 
 tence. And, in like manner, there might be ca¬ 
 pitals, which come into the hands of thoughtless 
 and extravagant men, who dissipate them in some 
 rapid whirl of extravagance; and so they are 
 never brought upon the field of business at all. 
 This will just permit a freer and more prosperous 
 operation to the capitals that are brought forward, 
 and ensure to them a safety and a profit which 
 they could not else have realised; so as that, at 
 any rate, a capital is upheld, commensurate to the 
 need which there is for it, or to the business 
 which it has to do. It is true, that, should all 
 the owners of capitals either withdraw or with¬ 
 hold them from business, and choose to waste 
 them utterly, capital would wholly disappear. 
 Still it is also true, that capital does not suffer 
 in extent, though there are many spendthrifts; 
 just as the population does not suffer in extent, 
 though there are many old bachelors. 
 
 Neither in population, nor yet in capital, are 
 the preventive checks carried so far as to supersede 
 the positive. It is because of the too frequent 
 
326 
 
 and too early marriages, that the field of competi¬ 
 tion for labour, and for its wages, is overcrowded; 
 that families jostle out each other; that so many 
 are outcasts from well-paid employment; that 
 disease is engendered among them by spare liv¬ 
 ing, and thins the overpeopled land of its num¬ 
 bers, by the premature deaths of infancy and 
 childhood. To the mere student of political sci¬ 
 ence, it may wear the air and the boldness of a 
 paradox, when we affirm of capital, that too little 
 goes into the stock for immediate consumption, 
 and too much is adventured upon the field of com¬ 
 merce—that the competition for business, and for 
 its profits, is greatly overcrowded—that traders 
 jostle out each other, and so many become out¬ 
 casts from safe or gainful merchandise—that what 
 disease does with the redundant population, bank¬ 
 ruptcy does with the redundant capital of our 
 land; relieving the overdone trade of its excess, 
 and so reducing capital within those limits beyond 
 which it cannot find any safe or profitable occu¬ 
 pancy. This might appear wild and extravagant 
 to a disciple of any of our reigning schools; and 
 yet we describe nothing but the daily and familiar 
 experience of practical men. Should the capital 
 of a million suffice for the trade of Britain in the 
 one article of pepper, and half a million more, at a 
 loss for employment, and seeking about for a pro¬ 
 per investiture, be adventurously thrust into the 
 business by its side, it would be absorbed in los¬ 
 ing speculations. And so of capital in all other 
 
327 
 
 trades. There is a limit beyond which, for the 
 time being, it can find no return; just as there is 
 a limit beyond which, for the time being, the po¬ 
 pulation can find no subsistence. In both cases 
 there is a check to further extension, and in nei¬ 
 ther case does the preventive check keep capital 
 or population within their limits, but each presses 
 upon them, and encounters the positive check by 
 which the one is kept even with the food, and the 
 other with the business of the world. 
 
 Legislators have now ceased from their alarm 
 for the emigration of people. They have truly as 
 little reason to be alarmed for the emigration of 
 capital. To meet the first alarm, we may quote 
 the authority of Dr. Smith, when he says, that 
 man, after all, is the most sluggish, and the least 
 transportable of all commodities; so that it will 
 be only a few out of the many who will renounce 
 home, and all its charms, for the perils of a distant 
 and untried land. This is very true; but another 
 security is, that although many were to go out 
 from amongst us, their place would speedily be 
 filled up again by the elastic force of population. 
 To meet the second alarm, we may quote the au¬ 
 thority of Ricardo, who speaks of the heavy dis¬ 
 advantages to which the vast majority of traders 
 will submit in their own country, ere they can be 
 tempted to transfer their operations to another. 
 This also is true; but there is a farther security in 
 the elastic force of capital,—the effect of its with- 
 drawment from any business upon the profits of 
 
that business—the certainty wherewith, under this 
 principle, it will speedily regain its greatness, and 
 be as commensurate as before to the work which 
 it had to do; so that, if we have nothing to fear 
 from the egress of our country’s population, we 
 have just as little to fear from the egress of its 
 capital. 
 
 At first sight, we perceive not the error which 
 is involved in the regret of those who would cal¬ 
 culate on a much greater population in this our 
 day, had there been no wars in the last or in former 
 generations, or who think that the census of our 
 numbers would have yielded a much larger return, 
 had the vaccine inoculation been discovered ear¬ 
 lier. This is quite a process of reflection, that 
 many an economist of the last century would have 
 gone along with. And still the economist of our 
 present century will both feel and utter a kindred 
 regret on the subject of capital, as if there would 
 have been more of trading capital in the land at 
 this moment, had it not been for the expenditure 
 of so many wars, or the extravagance of so many 
 spendthrifts. This is precisely the regret which 
 Dr. Smith indulges in; and it is quite evident, 
 that he could never have anticipated such a ful¬ 
 ness of capital, along with such a weight of public 
 debt, as are both verified so strikingly at present. 
 It is evident from his work, that he occasionally 
 had bright glimpses of the true theory of popula¬ 
 tion ; and that had he entered on a distinct prose¬ 
 cution of this subject, he would soon have per- 
 
329 
 
 ceived by how speedy an operation it was, that all 
 its gaps were repaired. There is likewise a speedy 
 operation for filling up the gaps or deficiencies 
 that either public or private expense effects upon 
 capital; and we have as little reason for believing 
 that it would have been greater now, had it not 
 been for the dissipation of so much treasure in our 
 wars, as that the population would have been 
 greater now had it not been for the loss of so 
 many lives in battle, or for the ravages of the 
 small-pox. 
 
 From the description which Dr. Smith has given 
 of what we have ventured to term the great eco¬ 
 nomic cycle, it will be seen how much the annual 
 produce of the land and labour can do, even in the 
 course of one revolution. It can replenish the 
 circulating capital of the country, and it can keep 
 in repair all its fixed capital; and, over and above 
 this, it supplies the whole of the immediate con¬ 
 sumption. If too much have been taken in any 
 one year into the stock for immediate consump¬ 
 tion, both an encroachment may have been made 
 on the- circulating capital, and the fixed capital 
 may have fallen thereby into a certain state of 
 disrepair; and, altogether, the trading capital of 
 the nation will, in some of its branches, be less 
 effective than usual; and some commodities will 
 become scarcer and dearer than before. We have 
 already experienced how this causes the annual 
 produce of next year to vibrate back again from 
 the stock of immediate consumption into capital, 
 
 Voi„ III, T t 
 
330 
 
 so as to restore it to its old amount and efficiency. 
 The same produce, out of which, in one revolu¬ 
 tion, all that capital which circulates is replaced, 
 and all that capital which is fixed is upholden, can 
 surely in one, or at most in a very few revolutions 
 more, make up the fraction by which, through the 
 extravagance of any one year, both those capitals 
 have in some degree been diminished. This is done 
 by the action of a diminished capital upon profits, 
 which restores the capital as surely as the popula¬ 
 tion is restored from any diminution which it may 
 have sustained, by the action of that diminution 
 upon wages. 
 
 There is much of palpable history which can 
 only be accounted for by this regenerating power 
 of capital, and without which principle many 
 things can only be wondered at without being 
 understood. Even in the hands of Smith, the 
 buoyancy of our nation, under the weight of the 
 national debt, was an unresolved mystery; and 
 there is much in the state of other nations, which 
 even our most approved systems of political eco¬ 
 nomy are too meagre in experimental truth tho¬ 
 roughly to account for. The confident imagina¬ 
 tion of Mr. Pitt, as to the impending ruin of 
 France, because of her commerce being in a state 
 of stagnation, and her capital wasting away, or 
 languishing for the want of productive employ¬ 
 ment, was the natural error of a devotee of the 
 mercantile school, from the lessons of which we 
 never can gather the explanation of that strong 
 
331 
 
 and youthful prosperity into which she so sud¬ 
 denly emerged. It belongs to the same class of 
 phenomena, that Russia and Austria, and the 
 other states of the continent, recruited so speedily 
 from the desolations that passed over them, and 
 that now, as healthy in their economic condition 
 as ever, there is not one trace to be found in them 
 of the footsteps of the destroyer. These facts are 
 still gazed at by the politician, as so many anoma¬ 
 lies ; whereas they are but the confirmations of a 
 general law. For let the agriculture of a country, 
 that has just been delivered of its ruthless invad¬ 
 ers, yield its wonted quantity of subsistence, and 
 the high wages that are given to its surviving 
 labourers will speedily bring on the families which 
 shall replace its population; and the high profits 
 that are given to its surviving traders shall as 
 speedily replace its capital; and the country, in¬ 
 destructible as the phoenix, shall, in a few years, 
 rise again out of the ruins of its overthrow, unto 
 all the freshness and glory of its proudest days. 
 
 So that capital, like population, is one of those 
 self-regulating interests, the care of which does 
 not properly belong to a legislature. The fear 
 lest it should depart from our kingdom by succes¬ 
 sive removals, is altogether chimerical. The very 
 first portion that went abroad, if only large enough 
 for the effect, would cause a larger profit at home, 
 which should act first by a detaining power on the 
 capital that was left behind, and then, by an ex¬ 
 tending power, again to fill up the vacancy. It is 
 
332 
 
 not for government to concern itself about an in- 
 terest which the laws of political economy have 
 abundantly provided for. There may be a call 
 upon its justice, when the rights of any one order 
 of men are encroached upon by the aggression of 
 another, but let not this be complicated with other 
 objects, as on the occasion before us; nor let it 
 imagine any call upon its wisdom or its authority 
 for the protection of an economic interest, that is 
 abundantly safe without its interference. 
 
 If any where, a combination could force an in- 
 definite addition to wages, we should regard that 
 of the sailors in the Tyne, as, perhaps, one of the 
 most formidable; not because of its effect on the 
 shipping interest there, but because of its effect on 
 the supply of coals in London. One might imagine 
 the two parties, the sailors and shipmasters, to be 
 most obstinately at a stand; and each resolved not 
 to comply with the terms or propositions of the 
 other. If the trade be, in consequence, suspended, 
 the first effect is to raise the price of coals in Lon¬ 
 don, and, perhaps, to lower the price at New¬ 
 castle. The tendency of this were to enhance the 
 profits of a voyage, so as to enable, it may be, the 
 ship-owner both to raise the wages of the seamen, 
 and to have additional gain for himself. It is con¬ 
 ceivable, however, that even this temptation of a 
 mutual advantage might not prevail upon them to 
 come to an agreement; in which case, we should 
 have the spectacle prolonged, both of unemployed 
 men, and of unemployed capital. We should like 
 
333 
 
 that such an experiment were permitted to have 
 its full swing, for it would land, we think, in an 
 experience more tranquillizing far, than all the ter¬ 
 ror and authority of legislation. In the first place, 
 the men could not stand out indefinitely. Their 
 resources must waste rapidly away; nor could all 
 the devices of union and committeeship ward off 
 the starvation which must sooner or later compel 
 a surrender. But the dread seems to be, lest the 
 capital should moulder away, or take flight in the 
 mean time. It is very true that the vessels might 
 fall into disrepair; and the owners, from want of 
 their accustomed returns, might suffer them to de¬ 
 teriorate. It is also true, that some of them might 
 abandon this scene of idleness, and go in quest of 
 employment, to other, and, perhaps, to foreign 
 places;, thereby giving plausibility to the fears 
 which have been expressed, of capital being lost to 
 our land by emigration. But then new forces 
 would come into action; and, it is more than pro¬ 
 bable, that the very first movement in this direc¬ 
 tion would be of avail to break the confederacy. 
 All the prospects of the men would be utterly re¬ 
 versed, and all their calculations frustrated, when, 
 instead of so many ships waiting for sailors, sailors 
 beheld the ships moving away from the trade, one 
 after another, and felt themselves to be irrecover¬ 
 ably losing them. There would be a look to them 
 of disaster and menace in the change which they 
 saw to be approaching, when, instead of more 
 ships than there were sailors willing to man them, 
 
334 
 
 there were palpably more and more of sailors every 
 week, than there were remaining ships for their 
 accommodation. There is nought but unfaulter- 
 ing perseverance requisite on the part of capitalists 
 to dislodge men from unreasonable terms. Would 
 they only brave the hazards and the consequences 
 as much as they might, there would be less, both 
 of trouble to the legislature, and of danger to the 
 peace of society. And, after the surrender is 
 made in this instance, what is there so very irre¬ 
 mediable, in the disabled and somewhat diminished 
 shipping of the trade, after that the trade has 
 again been set agoing ? Should there not, for a 
 time, be a sufficient apparatus for the transporta¬ 
 tion of coals to London, less of coal would be 
 transported, and a greater price would be given 
 for it, till repairs were completed, and additional 
 vessels were procured, and the shipping were made 
 as commensurate to its business as before. The 
 capital w'ould, almost on the instant, be got up 
 again, at the expense, no doubt, of the families in 
 London, who, for a season, would have less of 
 fuel, and at a heavier cost, than they had been 
 used to. And even, without taking into account 
 the rush of capital from without, to repair the de¬ 
 ficiencies that had been incurred upon the Tyne, 
 we can see, how, out of the energies of the trade 
 itself, there would be a quick re-ascent of capital, 
 up to the point of its full ability for the business 
 which it had to perform. 
 
 We are quite sensible that matters will never 
 
335 
 
 proceed so far. We have now got upon an ima¬ 
 ginary field-, but just imaginary, because combina¬ 
 tions are not so impregnable as to permit of the 
 supposition that alarms our legislature ever being 
 realized. Sailors will not hold out, till ships shall 
 either be withdrawn, or taken down in the despair 
 of employment. Or, in other words, the process 
 by which it is apprehended that capital and its 
 attendant commerce are to take leave of our 
 island, so far from taking effect to any extent, 
 will not even be so much as entered upon. But 
 it should complete our security, that the very be¬ 
 ginning of such a process would prove the deci¬ 
 sive blow which should annihilate the confederacy 
 that caused it; and that on the trade being set 
 up again, it would, on its own resources, make up, 
 in a few months, all the capital which had been 
 wasted, or removed from it. For ourselves, we do 
 not even anticipate the commencement of the pro¬ 
 cess; and though we did anticipate, we should 
 not fear it—believing, as we do, that in its ulterior 
 consequences, it would prove innocent of all harm 
 to the economic welfare of our nation. These 
 consequences; indeed, are so far ulterior, as not to 
 have been distinctly perceived; and in virtue of 
 the spectral dimness and magnitude wherewith 
 they are accordingly invested, they have power to 
 mislead the judgment, by disturbing the imagina¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Long indeed ere it come to this, in the case 
 that we have now selected for illustration, there 
 
336 
 
 would certain other forces come into play, and by 
 which the whole embarrassment might speedily 
 be terminated. A suspension of the trade between 
 Newcastle and London, would cause, and that al¬ 
 most instantly, an enormous rise in the price of 
 coals; and, out of this, encouragement could be 
 afforded to ships and sailors from a distance; and 
 against this attempted monopoly in the Tyne, a 
 force of competition could be brought from all 
 parts of the kingdom, and nothing could prevent 
 it but a confederacy extending over all the ports, 
 and including all seamen; and even were such a 
 confederacy possible, foreign vessels, and nanned 
 by foreigners, could be hired. This is the vulner¬ 
 able place at which to aim, and through which it 
 will be easy to bring down the combination. And 
 we are aware that this also is the place where the 
 outstanding workmen, skilled in the whole tactics 
 and management of such a war, put forth their 
 fiercest resistance. The violence, and the out¬ 
 rage, and the intimidation, are chiefly directed 
 against the new hands that are brought to occupy 
 the place which they have left; and could these 
 be kept down, the victory over combinations is 
 secured. This, then, is the great object towards 
 which the force and the wisdom of legislation 
 should be directed. We do not see the obvious 
 justice of the enactment that would make simple 
 combination amongst the labourers, who choose 
 not to work, unlawful. But there is a justice, the 
 most obvious and unquestionable, in the enact- 
 
337 
 
 ment, that would make every encroachment on the 
 freedom of those labourers who are willing to work 
 unlawful. Let such then be the enactment, and 
 the only enactment; but armed, if necessary, with 
 penalties greatly more formidable than any which 
 our legislature has yet ventured upon. The whole 
 sense and feeling of the community would bear 
 out our rulers, when they came forward in this 
 attitude—not as the oppressors of workmen, but 
 as the protectors of the most needy and helpless of 
 them all—'the protectors, in truth, of the weak 
 against the strong, of the less powerful among the 
 labourers against the terror and tyranny of a most 
 odious monopoly on the part of the more power¬ 
 ful. This is the right place for the application of 
 law; and were law just strong enough and vigi¬ 
 lant enough in its application here, there would 
 just be as little need for the revival of the old com¬ 
 mon, as for the revival of the old statute law, 
 against combinations, simply and in themselves. 
 Our preference would certainly have been, that 
 the common law against combinations had not been 
 revived; but that a new and still more efficient law 
 had been enacted for the punishment of all offences 
 against the liberty of individual workmen. One does 
 not altogether see the equity of a restraint upon 
 the mere act of combination; but one immediately 
 sees the equity of a restraint upon all sorts of vio¬ 
 lence. We believe that, upon the strength of the 
 latter restraint alone, the triumph over all unright¬ 
 eous combinations would soon have been practi- 
 Vol. in. u u 
 
388 
 
 cally carried. This we deem to be the more ex¬ 
 cellent way. By admitting a doubtful principle 
 into any department of our public administration, 
 we admit into it an element of weakness. On the 
 other hand, nothing can resist the authority, all 
 whose enactments are at one with conscience and 
 natural morality, and when law quadrates with 
 that sense of justice which is in every bosom. A 
 law against all intimidation and violence, though 
 fortified by the strongest sanctions, and most rigid¬ 
 ly enforced in every instance of infringement, would 
 have just been such a law. We are quite confident 
 that, by its own single strength, it could achieve 
 the victory over all that is really hurtful and un¬ 
 fair in combinations. The country never can be 
 tranquillized under the operation of a law, although 
 in power it is absolute, if in principle it is ambigu¬ 
 ous. But a sure and lasting tranquillity will be 
 the result, when the law in the statute-book, is at 
 one with the law of the heart; and.so, when, with 
 whatever terrors it may be guarded, or with what¬ 
 ever severities it may be upheld, it carries the pub¬ 
 lic sentiment irresistibly along with it. 
 
 We therefore persist in thinking, that all injuri¬ 
 ous combinations would have been more effectually 
 gotten the better of, had the authority of the com¬ 
 mon law against combinations, merely as such, not 
 been revived; and instead of making that to be an 
 indictable offence, which does not very clearly of¬ 
 fend against any principle of right or of equity, 
 had the whole force of law been directed to the 
 
339 
 
 one object of defending the freedom of individual 
 workmen, against the injustice of those popular cor¬ 
 porations, which, because they are popular, are not 
 therefore the less flagrantly deformed by all that 
 is odious and tyrannical in the corporation spirit. 
 In this way the new act might have breathed but 
 one expression, the expression of friendship to the 
 unprotected, and to the unprotected among work¬ 
 men, too. It would then have been in complete 
 harmony with the spirit of the former ones. The 
 object of the first was to set up, in behalf of la¬ 
 bourers, a defensive stay against the alleged op¬ 
 pression of their masters. The object of the second 
 would have been to set up, in behalf of labourers, 
 a defensive stay against the actual oppression of 
 their own fellows in society. If the first was at all 
 necessary for the freedom of the working classes, 
 the second is indispensable for the completion ofit. 
 To have this liberty fully made out and secured 
 for them, there must be a liberty to work for any, 
 as well as a liberty not to work at all. The one 
 liberty is that which masters might be tempted to 
 violate, and it is right, therefore, that it should 
 have a safeguard provided for it. The other liber¬ 
 ty is that which fellow-servants might be tempted 
 to violate, and it is equally right that it should 
 have a safeguard provided for it. We are quite 
 satisfied, that the one liberty would fully neutralize 
 any mischief that might be dreaded from the other. 
 If, in consequence of all being at liberty not to 
 work, the artizans of any establishment should 
 
340 
 
 strike their tools, and bring its industry to a stand, 
 then, in consequence of all being also at liberty to 
 work, a door would be opened for the competition 
 of the whole population, and this industry be again 
 most surely and speedily set agoing. The distinct 
 business of law should be, to keep that door open, 
 and the access to it safe, whether for young ap¬ 
 prentices, or for workmen from all other places of 
 the land. Let but competition be secure, and 
 there is not one injurious combination that would 
 not in time be defeated by it: and its members, in 
 having exiled themselves to the condition of un¬ 
 provided outcasts, would be sorely punished for 
 the extravagant and unreasonable demands which 
 they had made. Better this natural punishment, 
 than punishment under an arbitrary law, whose 
 principle, at best, was doubtful, and could be but 
 dimly apprehended. Better than all the correc¬ 
 tives of an artificial jurisprudence, are the correc¬ 
 tives of the free and equitable system itself; and 
 over which government presides not as the parti- 
 zan of one class of society in opposition to another, 
 but as the parent that abjured all favouritism, and 
 stood forth the equal protector of all its families. 
 
 The intimidation of new or strange workmen 
 by others, who, either by wealth, or by numbers, 
 are more powerful than themselves, is not to be 
 borne with; and no expense, whether of agency, or 
 treasure, should be spared to put it down. We 
 should rather that half the British navy were put 
 into requisition, to ensure the manning of our mer- 
 
341 
 
 chant vessels by the sailors who would, than that 
 any obstruction should remain impracticable, which 
 may have been thrown in their way by the sailors 
 who would not. At a hundredth part, we believe, 
 of this exertion, all that is needed or is desirable 
 in this way could be accomplished. But still, 
 while the fermentation lasts, and ere that full expe¬ 
 rience, so tranquillizing to workmen themselves, is 
 not yet completed, it. should be the distinct object 
 of our nation’s policy, and of our nation’s police, to 
 protect the independence of all persecuted work¬ 
 men. And, for such an obj'ect, whatever strength¬ 
 ening of the nation’s police was requisite, we are 
 sure that the voice of the nation would go most 
 thoroughly along with it. Connected witli a pur¬ 
 pose like this, a strong executive would be hailed 
 by all the true patriots of our land; employed as 
 it would be, not in fastening the chains of a uni¬ 
 versal oppression, but in unlocking these chains, 
 and so acting as the guarantee and the guardian of 
 a universal liberty. It seems an axiom in the 
 rights of men, that none shall be forced to work 
 who is unwilling. But it is surely an axiom as in¬ 
 disputable, that all shall be suffered to work who 
 are willing. The line of equity between them, is, 
 on the one hand, to permit the combination, and, 
 on the other, to protect all who do not belong to 
 them, from the terror and the tyranny of com¬ 
 binations. So long as they are not permitted, the 
 popular mind will continue to fester under a sense 
 of provocation, that will have much of the sem- 
 
342 
 
 blance, and somewhat, perhaps, of the reality of 
 justice in it. And this will be further influenced 
 by the imaginary virtue which they will still ascribe 
 to an expedient not yet fully tried, and from which 
 they will conceive themselves debarred by the 
 hand of arbitrary power. But, with the permission 
 to them, and the protection to all others, not one 
 shadow of complaint will be left to them. They 
 will have leave to try their own boasted expedient, 
 and it will be a pacific experience, both to the 
 country and themselves: for sooner far than our 
 fears will allow us to think, they will make full 
 proof of its impotency. We feel persuaded, that, 
 in a few months, this feverishness would subside, 
 and at length give way to the sound and the set¬ 
 tled conviction, that, after all, by the turbulence 
 of their politics and associated plans, nothing is to 
 be gained. And so we should look for a tranquil¬ 
 lity more solid than our land has ever yet enjoyed, 
 as the precious fruit of that temperate, yet firm 
 legislation, which can at once be tolerant of com¬ 
 binations, yet most sternly intolerant of crimes. 
 
343 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 ON THE EFFECT WHICH THE HIGH PRICE OF LABOUR 
 IN A COUNTRY HAS UPON ITS FOREIGN TRADE. 
 
 There can be no doubt of that impartial spirit 
 which so honourably signalizes the rulers of our 
 country; and in virtue of which, they have the 
 unquestionable inclination to deal fairly and 
 equally with all. We do not think that the most 
 enthusiastic friends of the lower orders can re¬ 
 proach our government with an undue bias to the 
 other classes of society; or if ever, in arbitrating 
 between them, there is a seeming preference of 
 masters to servants, that they have been led to it, 
 either by a partiality of affection towards the rich, 
 or by any lordly indifference to the rights and in¬ 
 terests of the poor. There is a principle of even- 
 handed justice which runs throughout nearly all 
 the public administrations of our land; and when 
 at any time bewildered from this rectilinear path, 
 it is, generally speaking, not a favouritism towards 
 one order of the community, but a false imagina¬ 
 tion of what is best for the interests of all the 
 orders, that leads them astray. In other words, 
 theirs is an honest, though at times a mistaken 
 legislation; and to this nought has contributed 
 more than a dim-sighted political economy, a 
 science through the opacities of which, when Par- 
 
344 
 
 liament does attempt to flounder, it is all most 
 purely and uprightly for the best. It is truly a 
 cheering contemplation, to behold the effect of 
 that light which is now breaking upon them; and 
 how, under its guidance, they are fast purifying 
 our jurisprudence from the errors and the many 
 crudities of former generations. But it will take 
 a-time ere the emancipation is completed. And 
 meanwhile, we think, that there are certain eco¬ 
 nomic dogmata, which do sway our politicians 
 against the cause and interest of the working 
 classes, and which dispose them to look adversely 
 and fearfully to that higher status, towards which 
 a virtuous and intelligent peasantry must at length 
 make their way. 
 
 This proceeds from the association, in their 
 minds, between a rise in the price of British labour, 
 and a proportional fall in the extent and pros¬ 
 perity of British commerce. It will bring down, 
 it is thought, our ascendancy in foreign markets; 
 and the introduction of this new element, like the 
 problem of the three bodies in physics, has thick¬ 
 ened the perplexities of the whole speculation. 
 Its general effect is, to give a hostile feeling 
 towards a more liberal remuneration for the in¬ 
 dustry of workmen at home, lest this should pro¬ 
 ceed so far as to limit, and perhaps destroy, our 
 merchandise abroad, and so bereave our nation 
 of the gains of that merchandise. It is thus con¬ 
 ceived, that the avenues may be closed of that 
 trade which binds us to the surrounding world, 
 
345 
 
 and by which the whole world, it is thought, be¬ 
 comes tributary to the wealth and importance of 
 our Empire. The price of labour forms one main 
 ingredient of the price of every commodity which 
 labour is wrought up into. Should this price then 
 become too high at home, the price of its pro¬ 
 duce may become too high for being disposed of 
 abroad. The article that wont to be exported, 
 and which could be bought at such a rate here as 
 to be sold again with advantage there, can no 
 longer be made the subject of this profitable 
 transaction. In other words, because of the high 
 wages, the trade upon which they were earned 
 comes to a cessation; and, as the fruit of our at¬ 
 tempt to elevate the status of labourers by means 
 of a higher recompense for their work, the fear 
 is, that foreign trade, in the occupations of which 
 so many of our capitalists reap their incomes, and 
 so many of our labourers reap their livelihoods, 
 may be wholly swept away. 
 
 The whole of our policy for centuries has been 
 directed to the object of enabling merchants to 
 export as cheaply as possible, so that they may 
 undersell the competitors of all other natious, and 
 thus obtain possession of the foreign markets. 
 For this purpose, if taxes were imposed on any 
 article when brought into the country, they were 
 generally taken off, in whole or in part, when 
 sent out of it again; or, the tax that was laid on 
 the commodity manufactured by ourselves, and 
 intended for consumption at home, was remitted 
 
346 
 
 when carried forth to be made the subject of a 
 bargain abroad; or every device was employed to 
 furnish the industry of our own people with the 
 raw material on the easiest terms, by giving every 
 encouragement to its importation, and burdening 
 its exportation with the heaviest duties. But 
 when, instead of the exportation of raw material, 
 it came to the exportation of produce that had 
 been wrought out of it, then, in place of duties 
 being imposed, bounties were given. And all, 
 that the merchant might be enabled to effect a 
 sale in foreign parts, with advantage to himself at 
 least, and so involving, it was supposed, the ut¬ 
 most advantage to the country at large. Now, 
 the whole of this policy would be traversed by 
 the high price of British labour, affecting, as it 
 would, the rate at which its products could be 
 sold, just as a tax would on the high price of the 
 raw material. It is thus that many apprehend, as 
 the result of greater wages, the ruin of many 
 branches of our foreign trade, and the consequent 
 ruin of all those manufactures which this trade 
 kept agoing. This were enough, with many a 
 shrewd and secular politician, to condemn, as an 
 idle romance, the whole speculation of a higher- 
 conditioned peasantry. Their imagination is, 
 that it would bereave us of our commerce. 
 They could tolerate a larger payment for the ser¬ 
 vices of our workmen, if it only subjected the 
 other classes of society at home to a higher price 
 for all manufactured commodities. This would 
 
347 
 
 just have the effect of admitting labourers into a 
 more equal share of the enjoyments of life with 
 the holders of capital and the proprietors of land. 
 To this no objection would be felt by many who 
 might foresee an insuperable objection in another 
 quarter. We cannot, beyond a certain extent, sub¬ 
 ject the people abroad to this higher price for our 
 manufactured commodities. They might find them 
 cheaper elsewhere, and we should lose our cus¬ 
 tomers. The trade, with all its beneficial ramifica¬ 
 tions, might thus be destroyed. And the feeling 
 is, that what might else have been desirable, even 
 a more liberal recompense for the industry of our 
 workmen, must be deprecated and guarded against 
 to the uttermost, when thus blended in their ap¬ 
 prehension with the overthrow, or, at least, the 
 derangement of a great national interest. 
 
 To meet this imagination, it may be observed, 
 in the first place, that although our export manu¬ 
 facturers find their market abroad, and fetch their 
 prices from customers there, yet, it does not ne¬ 
 cessarily follow that the wealth of these foreign 
 purchasers is the primary fountain out of which 
 either their own profit, or the maintenance of their 
 workmen has flowed. The process, in the greater 
 number of instances, is thus. The produce of our 
 home industry is sent to some country abroad; as, 
 for example, our hardware and haberdashery to 
 Portugal. By this trade there are so many debtors 
 constituted in Portugal, to so many creditors in 
 Britain. On the other hand, there is a trade by 
 
348 
 
 which foreign produce is imported into our country, 
 as of wine from Portugal, for the use of consumers 
 at home. By this trade there are constituted so 
 many debtors in Britain, to so many creditors in 
 Portugal. The two trades are carried on by wholly 
 distinct individuals, who, throughout the whole of 
 their respective operations, may have no right, and 
 take no cognizance of each other. The export 
 manufacturers of Britain appear only to do with 
 their Portuguese customers; and to these good 
 customers they may ascribe both their own pros¬ 
 perity, and the livelihood of a numerous depen¬ 
 dent population. And, conversely, the wine 
 growers of Portugal may look only towards the 
 British customers, with the same feeling of depen¬ 
 dence upon their payments, and of dread lest, by 
 any chance, trade, wherewith they link so much of 
 their revenue, should be interrupted or put an end 
 to. The exporters of each country look to the 
 other, as that out of which their prosperity ema¬ 
 nates; and the imagination is not peculiar to them, 
 that if the channels of interchange were in any 
 way obstructed, a large portion of the integral 
 wealth of each would thereby disappear—even a 
 portion, at the least competent to, and therefore 
 commensurate with the profits of all the capitalists 
 engaged in these trades, and the wages of all the 
 workmen. 
 
 Now, this is a very natural, and certainly the 
 general conception of men unpractised in economic 
 speculation. And we are not even sure, it there 
 
349 
 
 be much in our most esteemed economic theories 
 that is fitted to rectify it. It does not, however, 
 require a very piercing or profound sight into the 
 arcana of the subject, to prove, that however great 
 might be the alarm of individuals concerned in this 
 trade, did it come to a termination, there is really 
 nothing in this event that should alarm a patriot 
 or a statesman, either for the strength or the 
 safety of our nation. For let us only notice how 
 it is that the British creditors of Portugal are paid. 
 There might be a direct remittance from the 
 debtors in Portugal; but this is not the way of it, 
 any more than there is a direct remittance from 
 the consumers of wine in Britain to the growers of 
 it in Portugal. The matter is adjusted in this 
 way. The debtors to Portugal in Britain, are 
 made over to the creditors of Portugal in Britain 
 by bills of exchange. By a similar device, the 
 debtors to Britain in Portugal are made over to 
 the creditors of Britain in Portugal. It is thus 
 that our export manufacturers are virtually brought 
 into contact with the inland consumers of this 
 country. Their orders come to them from cus¬ 
 tomers abroad, but their payments come to them 
 from consumers at home. They apparently are 
 working in the service of those who wear British 
 cloth, and make use of British hardware in Portu¬ 
 gal ; but effectively, they are working in the ser¬ 
 vice of those who drink the wine, and eat the 
 oranges, and use the dye-stuffs of Portugal, in 
 Britain. '1'be imports from Portugal are paid by 
 
350 
 
 exports to Portugal; and they of Britain who work 
 up, or furnish the exports, obtain their return from 
 them of Britain who use the imports. This is the 
 real character of the transaction between the two 
 countries. That part of our British population, 
 who are engaged, whether by manufactures or by 
 commerce, in this export trade, might have had 
 the same maintenance from the hand of British 
 consumers, in the direct employment of minister¬ 
 ing to their enjoyment, by serving them with arti¬ 
 cles of home manufacture. But the consumers 
 happen to have a preference for certain foreign 
 articles, and so the former are sent out in exchange 
 for the latter; and there is the substitution of so 
 much foreign for so much home trade. Still, it 
 is virtually in the service of inland consumers, 
 that these export manufacturers are employed; 
 not in preparing the commodities which they use, 
 but in preparing that which purchases the com¬ 
 modities they use; and, in return for this service, 
 they obtain their full maintenance, not out of a ful¬ 
 ness that is in Portugal, but out of a fulness that 
 is in the fountain-heads of their own land. 
 
 It would not be difficult to estimate the precise 
 advantage of such a foreign trade as we are now 
 imagining. Let the value exported in hardware 
 be just equal to the value imported in wine, and 
 a trade, consisting of these two processes, does not 
 add to the population of the country, for there is 
 no subsistence imported by it. It does not fetch 
 a maintenance to the people who work up hard- 
 
35 1 
 
 ware for exportation. Ail that it fetches is wine, 
 in consideration of which, a maintenance is given 
 to these people by those who drink it, out of home 
 resources, and home granaries. But still this 
 foreign trade does something. It supplies the in¬ 
 land consumers with an article which they like, 
 better than any other which they could procure 
 in its place. It is altogether a mistake, that it 
 supplies our export manufacturers with their live¬ 
 lihood. This is dealt out to them by the con¬ 
 sumers of wine, and might have been dealt out to 
 them with equal liberality, in return for any article 
 of home industry, had there been no foreign trade, 
 or no wine imported by it. But the foreign trade 
 has in this instance presented another article 
 which the consumers choose in preference, and for 
 which they afford as good, but not a better main¬ 
 tenance, to as great, but not a greater population. 
 All that this foreign trade has done, is to bring in 
 wine to a set of home consumers, who, but for the 
 foreign trade, would have had to be satisfied with 
 something else. It has substituted for them one 
 enjoyment in place of another. Their taste is 
 better suited, in consequence, than it otherwise 
 would have been, and this is certainly an advan¬ 
 tage. But there is nothing more; for every thing 
 beside which stands connected with the wine 
 trade, is just as it would have been, although 
 there had been no such trade. There would have 
 been the same amount of industry, but directed to 
 another object. There would have been the same 
 
352 
 
 population, but engaged in another service. There 
 would have been the same maintenance for that 
 population. The ability which can now uphold 
 so many export manufacturers, who work up hard¬ 
 ware, and get wine in return for it, lies with the 
 purchasers of that wine at home; and should this 
 foreign trade be destroyed, the ability is still in 
 reserve to uphold the discarded manufacturers, 
 equally well, in another employment. They suffer 
 a temporary inconvenience from the change, and 
 certain inland consumers would suffer a permanent 
 inconvenience. But we contend that it forms the 
 whole, and the only inconvenience which can be 
 sustained by the destruction of this foreign trade 
 —even that the affluent of our land are bereft of 
 one gratification, and forced to take up with an¬ 
 other, and to them an inferior gratification, in its 
 room. 
 
 Could politicians be led to entertain and to adopt 
 this view of foreign trade, they would cease to as¬ 
 sociate with its continuance, as they have hitherto 
 done, the very existence, or, at least, the power 
 and prosperity of our nation. But it is just with 
 the foreign, as we have already stated it to be 
 with the home trade. In measuring the value of 
 each, they look to the terminus ad quern of neither, 
 but merely to the processes of operation. They 
 prize the mere working of the mechanism, more 
 than they do its workmanship ; and in reference to 
 the goods of merchandise, are far more refreshed 
 by the spectacle of their being made, and sorted, 
 
35 ; 
 
 and sent forth, and shipped, and conveyed, than 
 by the spectacle , of that gratification which .they 
 yield at their final landing-place. The good, ac¬ 
 cording to their estimation, does not appear to lie 
 in the use of the commodities, but in the prepara¬ 
 tion of them—not in the object which set the 
 industry agoing, but in the hustle, and extent, 
 and spirit, and glowing activities of the industry 
 itself. The delusion is, that this industry is not 
 only the creator of its own produce, but is also 
 the creator of its own maintenance. Now, it must 
 be accredited only with one of these things, for it 
 is in no way entitled to the credit of them both. 
 In such a case of foreign trade as we have sup¬ 
 posed, the maintenance lay stored with the con¬ 
 sumers of the imported article; and in return for 
 it, went forth among the families of the export 
 manufacturers. Were the trade annihilated, the 
 maintenance would still find its way among the 
 same number of people, in return for a different 
 service. . The whole amount of the mischief would 
 lie in the exchange of a better article of consump¬ 
 tion, for a worse; or, rather, of a better liked 
 article for a worse. Now, the apprehension is, 
 that a far more tragical consequence than this 
 would ensue from the annihilation of our trade 
 with Portugal—that the operatives in this trade 
 would cease to work, and therefore to live; and not 
 merely that the customers in this trade would 
 cease to drink wine, or to.eat oranges. The whole 
 regret would be, that it put a stop to the wonted 
 
 VOL. Til. Y y 
 
354 
 
 production, and not that it put a stop to the 
 wonted consumption; and could it only be seen 
 that all those who were engaged in the production, 
 might be turned to the service of producing some¬ 
 thing else, and be as well maintained in that service 
 as before, every political alarm, at least, would be 
 tranquillized. The change which had taken place 
 in the consumption, might affect the feelings of 
 private families, but would never call forth the 
 fears of our statesmen. Their big imagination of 
 the West India interest, would be mightily brought 
 down, did they perceive the whole mischief that 
 should ensue from its destruction, to be only of 
 this description, that our tea would no longer be 
 sweetened as it had been heretofore; or of the 
 East India interest, that, on its disappearance from 
 the land, tea itself should forthwith disappear from 
 our breakfast tables: or of any other trading in¬ 
 terest whatever, that all the good of its presence 
 to the nation, lay in the article which it furnished, 
 and that all the loss of its absence, or its ruin, lay 
 in the loss of that gratification which was yielded 
 to consumers in the use of that article. The prac¬ 
 tical likelihood is, that as the ability which now 
 sustains all these interests, would, upon their over¬ 
 throw, sustain interests of equal extent in some 
 other quarter, other countries abroad would be 
 repaired to in quest of the very same produce, so 
 as to uphold an equal foreign trade, and to secure 
 the same articles of enjoyment as before. But 
 even in the failure of all these resources, and though 
 
3 55 
 
 forced by some strong political necessity to aban¬ 
 don the whole of our external commerce, and fall 
 back upon ourselves, we should only lose by this 
 the produce of foreign parts, and get, in its room, 
 the produce of that industry of our own people, 
 which took the direction before of export trade 
 and export manufactures; and they, in this new 
 direction of their labour, would be met by the very 
 wages and the very profit which they had former¬ 
 ly. There would neither be loss of population nor 
 loss of industry in consequence. But it would be 
 industry restricted to home products; and we can¬ 
 not deny, that, in virtue of the restriction, there 
 would be less of enjoyment. This would un¬ 
 doubtedly be a loss, and the whole loss. But 
 other losses of a far more tremendous character 
 than that of enjoyment, float before the imagination 
 of our rulers, and lead them to associate with all 
 these mercantile interests, a might and a 'magnifi¬ 
 cence which do not really belong to them. 
 
 It is not the loss of the wine, but the loss of the 
 wine trade, that would so disturb our mercantile 
 politicians, on the cessation of all intercourse with 
 Portugal. But could they be made to see, that 
 there is really nothing in the cessation of this in¬ 
 tercourse which can deprive us of the maintenance 
 we before had for our export manufacturers, and 
 that so, no other loss but that of the wine would 
 follow upon the loss of the wine trade,—then the 
 charm of our foreign commerce, and by which 
 they have been led so to exaggerate its importance, 
 
356 
 
 might at length be dissipated. They would never 
 once dream of a decay of national strength, be¬ 
 cause of the mere negation of the wine of Portu¬ 
 gal. Neither would they dream of a decay of 
 nationhl strength, in the mere negation of the 
 oranges of Portugal. It would be curious how¬ 
 ever to observe, whether they might not in all 
 probability demur, should they be told that there 
 is just as little danger to our national prosperity 
 or strength, in the negation of the dye-stuffs of 
 Portugal. This were fitted to revive the old im¬ 
 pression of the worth of our manufactures,—an 
 impression founded not on the value of their pro¬ 
 ducts, but on a value, per se, in their mere pro¬ 
 cesses. When oranges are mentioned, this sug¬ 
 gests the idea of mere subserviency to a consump¬ 
 tion that might be dispensed with, and the price 
 of it reserved for an equally large return to the 
 export manufacturers in some other service. But 
 when dye-stuffs are mentioned, the first and readi¬ 
 est suggestion is, that of their subserviency to the 
 business of our dye-works, to the employment of 
 producers, and not to the gratification of consum¬ 
 ers. The illusion is prolonged by an act of men¬ 
 tal transference from one branch of industry to 
 another; and ere it can be dispersed, there must 
 be another transference of our thoughts, from the 
 work of those who put on the colours, to the en¬ 
 joyment of those who are arrayed in them; and 
 who, in paying for the enjoyment, prove that it is 
 with these the customers, and not with those the 
 
357 
 
 actors of the trade, that the maintenance lies of 
 all its dependent families. If it do not contribute 
 to the strength or greatness of a nation, that so 
 many of it shall drink wine or eat oranges, as little 
 surely does it contribute to any public interest, 
 that they should be arrayed in grey, or green, or 
 yellow, or have any foreign tincture whatever put 
 upon the habiliments which they wear. Yet this, 
 in the present instance, is the whole power of our 
 boasted commerce to aliment and uphold our na¬ 
 tion ; however inveterate the delusion may be by 
 which it is regarded throughout all its branches, 
 not as a handmaid to the gratifications of those 
 who have a maintenance to bestow on others be¬ 
 side themselves, but as the creator of that main¬ 
 tenance, as the sovereign dispenser of their sub¬ 
 sistence, and of their very being, to the families of 
 the land. 
 
 It will probably be long ere the principle which 
 we labour to establish, shall be fully acquiesced 
 in; even that all which a trade furnishes to man¬ 
 kind is its own commodity; and that when we 
 describe the use or the gratification of this com¬ 
 modity to the purchaser, we describe the whole 
 advantage of the trade. The sugar trade ema¬ 
 nates nothing but sugar; and the tobacco trade 
 nothing but tobacco; and the spice trade nothing 
 but spices. Each emanates its own article, and 
 nothing more. It is not the emanating fountain 
 of a maintenance to those who are engaged in it. 
 It only draws this maintenance from a fountain- 
 
358 
 
 head anterior to itself* and distinct from itself. 
 It does not even pay a tax to government. It is 
 the price given by the consumer which achieves 
 all, and comprehends all. The trade does nought 
 but supply him with its own produce. The other 
 blessings of which it is conceived to be prolific, 
 are all due to the customer. It is he who gives 
 both to government and to capitalists, all the re¬ 
 venue which they derive from the trade; and it is 
 he who gives their subsistence to its labourers. 
 
 Were the true functions of trade precisely un¬ 
 derstood, and its importance reduced to its real 
 and proper dimensions, it would be felt that the 
 strength and stability even of so great a commer¬ 
 cial nation as ours, do not rest on a basis so pre¬ 
 carious as is commonly apprehended. It is no 
 doubt very natural, that the people of our great 
 manufacturing towns, should feel as if their very 
 existence depended on the foreign countries 
 which afforded a market to their respective com¬ 
 modities; that, with the American market, and 
 the colonial market, and the other distant markets 
 of the world, there should stand associated in their 
 imagination, both the profits of all their trade, and 
 the subsistence of those numerous workmen who 
 are engaged in it; and that thus, as villages grew 
 up to the magnitude of cities, and suburbs took 
 from one year to another a wider circuit than be¬ 
 fore, it should be conceived that foreign trade was 
 the instrument of all these accessions to the wealtli 
 and population of our empire. They are working 
 
359 
 
 for the supply of their immediate customers abroad, 
 and are not conscious that they may, in fact, have 
 been working all the while in the service of con¬ 
 sumers at home; that, when exporting muslins to 
 the West Indies, or hard-ware to Portugal, they 
 were, in effect, bringing home the sugar of the 
 one country, and the wine or oranges of the other; 
 and that, in return for these, they drew a revenue 
 and a maintenance from the people of their own 
 land. It may, after all, have been the improve¬ 
 ment of the country that surrounds them, that has 
 given extension to our towns. Their population 
 may have increased, just because the aliment that 
 subsists them has increased; and the proprietors 
 of this aliment, now richer than before, can in¬ 
 dulge to a greater extent in foreign luxuries than 
 before, and so maintain a greater number of ex¬ 
 port manufacturers in the service of preparing the 
 articles which go forth in the purchase and in 
 exchange for these luxuries. And so, though an 
 impassable barrier were raised between us and all 
 foreign countries, there might remain as great a 
 population and only a change in their employ¬ 
 ments ; the same amount of industry, and only a 
 change in the distribution of it. 
 
 A few more explanations will complete all that 
 we shall advance, at present, on the subject of this 
 chapter. 
 
 For the sake of simplicity, we had conceived 
 that the price of the wine imported from Portugal 
 was just equal to that of the hardware exported 
 
360 
 
 from this country. But it is not because wine is 
 imported here, that hardware is exported there. 
 The people here have a taste for their wine; the 
 people there have use for, our hardware: and 
 these two circumstances are distinct from and in¬ 
 dependent of each other. Portugal might come 
 to stand in no need of any hardware from us, and 
 still the squires of Britain might have such a taste 
 for the wine of Portugal, as willingly to persist in 
 their wonted sacrifice to obtain it. If a third 
 country, as France, should attain to the manufac¬ 
 ture of hardware of as good a quality and at as 
 cheap a rate, they might dispossess our export 
 trade from the market of Portugal. We should 
 be undersold, and the effect would be, that while 
 imports passed from Portugal into Britain, uo ex¬ 
 ports, of British manufacture at least, would pass 
 in return for them from Britain into Portugal. 
 
 There is one way in which this matter could be 
 adjusted. The landed proprietors of Britain would 
 not now support a population of export manufac¬ 
 turers at home, whose employment it was to work 
 up hardware for the payment of the wine that 
 comes from Portugal. But still resolved upon hav¬ 
 ing the wine, they might, rather than want it, ex¬ 
 port directly of the produce of their estates, for 
 the purchase of a luxury so agreeable to them. 
 And this is just the arrangement that takes place 
 in every country which cannot work manufactures 
 cheap enough to pay for their imports. They pay 
 for it by the exportation of rude produce. This 
 
361 
 
 would be the undoubted effect, if there were a 
 general underselling of the British by other na¬ 
 tions, in all foreign countries. Britain would be¬ 
 come an exporting country; that is, would export 
 grain in return for the products of foreign lands. 
 That population which, in other circumstances, 
 we could have maintained at home, would be 
 maintained abroad. Our landed proprietors might 
 have a command, as before, of foreign luxuries. 
 With a produce over and above the maintenance 
 of their own households, they could make some¬ 
 thing of it abroad, if they found no more agree¬ 
 able use for it at home. If determined upon wine 
 from Portugal, they could, by means of this spare 
 produce, fetch it to their doors. But then we 
 should lose our whole population of export manu¬ 
 facturers; and there would be the access thereby 
 of an equal population to other countries. The 
 manufacturers for home consumpt, might still 
 cluster in towns as before; but then these towns 
 should be abridged of export manufacturers; and 
 in proportion as this underselling of Britain took 
 place in foreign markets, in that proportion might 
 Britain fall back towards the limits of her agra¬ 
 rian population. 
 
 But it is not the underselling of Britain in one, 
 or even in several countries, which will necessarily 
 produce this effect. Her hardware, for example, 
 and indeed all her other manufactures, might be 
 wholly driven from the market in Portugal, and 
 she continue to import as much wine as before 
 
 Voi.. HI. 7. •/. 
 
362 
 
 from that country, without having a single quarter 
 of agricultural produce to export in return for it. 
 We have supposed her undersold in Portugal by 
 France. Let us imagine a million sterling worth 
 of wine imported from Portugal to Britain; and 
 that France now supplies the former country with 
 that million sterling worth of hardware, which Bri¬ 
 tain had before given in exchange for her wine. 
 Still it is conceivable, that though Britain is not 
 able to cope with France in hardware, she is more 
 than able to cope with her in muslin; and that 
 France herself is supplied from this country with a 
 million worth sterling of that commodity. By this 
 simple export of muslin, might Britain save her¬ 
 self from the export of grain, or of any thing else, 
 to Portugal. She can, in fact, pay the wine im¬ 
 ported from Portugal, by the muslin exported to 
 France. She has now, it is true, no debtors in 
 Portugal, whom she can direct, as before, by her 
 bills, to make the payments due to her creditors in 
 Portugal. But she has debtors in France; and 
 these she can make over to her creditors in Por¬ 
 tugal. By this device, which it is here unneces¬ 
 sary to explain with any minuteness, the receivers 
 of British muslin in France could pay what they 
 owe for it to the exporters of French hardware to 
 Portugal; and these hardware exporters, having 
 obtained their payment in this way, can leave then- 
 debtors in Portugal to settle with the creditors of 
 Britain there, from whom this country received 
 their wine. It is thus that the wine from Portu- 
 
363 
 
 gal is paid by sending out muslin to France; and 
 it is thus that, by the indirect or circuitous route 
 of bills of exchange, the imports from one country 
 may be paid for, not by the exports either of pro¬ 
 duce or of manufactures to that country, but 
 wholly by the exportation of manufactured goods 
 to other countries. 
 
 It is thus that Britain can afford to have larger 
 imports from particular countries, than she can 
 pay for by the export manufactures which she gets 
 disposed of in these countries; and that, without 
 being reduced to the necessity of exporting agri¬ 
 cultural produce. To save her from this necessity, 
 it is enough that the value of her export manufac¬ 
 tures, on the whole, is equal to the value of her im¬ 
 ports on the whole; for then, she pays for these 
 imports, without having to export any rude pro¬ 
 duce in return for them. In other words, she 
 keeps all her means of subsistence to herself, and 
 with it feeds a population at home, who by their 
 industry provide her with all the foreign commo¬ 
 dities that she obtains. Had it been otherwise 
 —had she, from any cause whatever, been put to 
 such heavy expense in the working up of her ex¬ 
 port articles, as to be undersold by competitors in 
 foreign markets, then, if she still persisted in the 
 use of foreign commodities, she behoved to send 
 forth agricultural produce in return for them; and 
 so to feed a population abroad, which she now 
 feeds at home. Such is the precise effect of being 
 undersold in foreign markets; a;i effect, however, 
 
364 
 
 which is not realized by our being undersold in 
 some markets, and not in others. If we can but 
 secure as many markets as will take off a value of 
 manufactured goods from us, equal to that of all 
 our imports from all places, then we shall not need 
 to export agricultural produce for the payment of 
 these imports. If those markets do not take off 
 so great a value as that of all our imports, then we 
 shall have to export agricultural produce in pay¬ 
 ment of the difference. If, on the other hand, 
 they take off a greater value than that of all our 
 imports, the difference is shifted to the other side, 
 and it has to be made up by the importation of 
 agricultural produce. 
 
 It is thus that, while the country which is un¬ 
 dersold to a certain extent in foreign countries, 
 becomes an exporter, the country which under¬ 
 sells to a certain extent becomes an importer of 
 agricultural produce. Let any country, as Bri¬ 
 tain, be at that point of neutrality, where her export 
 manufactures just so balanced the foreign com¬ 
 modities imported by her, that she had neither to 
 export nor to import food. Then observe the ef¬ 
 fect of some sudden cheapening that took place in 
 her working up of these export manufactures, whe¬ 
 ther by a fall in the price of labour or of raw ma¬ 
 terial, by the invention of machinery, by the dis¬ 
 covery of coal, or by tiny other advantage of her 
 situation for preparing articles of commerce at an 
 easier rate than in neighbourin/; countries. Let 
 the average reduction in the expense of preparing 
 
365 
 
 commodities for foreign markets be twenty per 
 cent. This, in the first instance, would add twenty 
 per cent, to the profit of the export capitalist; and 
 in the second instance, allure more of capital from 
 other employments to a trade so advantageous; 
 and, in the third, raise the profit in these other em¬ 
 ployments also, now drained to a certain extent 
 of their capital; and, in the fourth, create among 
 capitalists a desire to extend their trades now more 
 profitable than before, and so a competition among 
 them all for labourers. The effect at home would 
 be to raise wages, and so, eventually, to increase 
 our population by the encouragement given to 
 earlier and more frequent marriages. It is true, 
 that all the while we have not supposed any pro¬ 
 cess going on for an addition to the food, along 
 with this addition to the population of the coun¬ 
 try. And certainly there is nothing among the 
 earlier steps of the process which we have now 
 described, that should lead at once to an enlarge¬ 
 ment of the home supply of food, by any stimulus 
 which they are fitted to give to the agriculture of 
 our own land. On the contrary, this rise of wages 
 should rather, in the first instance, contract our 
 agriculture. So far from enabling the husband¬ 
 man to bring more land into cultivation, it should 
 make the cultivation of the last land taken in, or 
 that which can barely afford a profit, and no rent, 
 cease to be profitable. But although there is no 
 process going on at home for the increase of food, 
 along with the tendency which there now is, from 
 
366 
 
 the rise of wages, to an increase of population, 
 there is such a process going on abroad. The 
 export manufactures, at first twenty per cent, more 
 profitable, are, by the rush of additional capital 
 into the trade, wrought off in greater abundance 
 than before. They are carried abroad in larger 
 quantities. They become cheaper in all the fo¬ 
 reign markets to which they previously had access. 
 Nay, they can afford the expense of being trans¬ 
 ported to more distant markets. They can bear, 
 perhaps, a land carriage to remote and inland dis¬ 
 tricts, into which they had never penetrated before. 
 The British merchants there supplant and under¬ 
 sell traders with whom they had not before come 
 into competition. And thus, by the command of 
 so many more outlets, and the possession of so 
 many more markets, there may now be a much 
 greater value of British goods sent abroad, than at 
 the time when food did not form one of those im¬ 
 ports by which the exports were paid. It is true, 
 that the now additional exports could still be paid 
 for by additional imports, not consisting of food— 
 if we could suppose that the additional profit now 
 made by our manufacturers, and the additional 
 wages now given to our labourers, were all ex¬ 
 pended upon foreign luxuries—or, in other words, 
 that no sooner did the means of purchasing a cer¬ 
 tain style and amount of enjoyment come into 
 their possession, than they instantly fixed upon 
 this higher standard of enjoyment, and expended 
 accordingly. This is not likely. Capitalists, in- 
 
367 
 
 stead of spending all their augmented profits, 
 would, for the pleasure of accumulation, extend 
 their business the more, and so add to the manu¬ 
 factured products for exportation. Workmen, in¬ 
 stead of spending all their augmented wages, so as 
 to marry as late as before, would, for the pleasure 
 of a domestic life, marry, on the average, somewhat 
 sooner, and with greater frequency, and so add to 
 the population of the land. This increase of po¬ 
 pulation would increase the price of food, would 
 make it bear the expense of being transported from 
 distant countries, would, in fact, call for the ad¬ 
 ditional import of food wherewith to balance the 
 additional exports that were now sent forth, in con¬ 
 sequence of their being more cheaply manufactured 
 than before. Thus it is, that those facilities or 
 advantages for industry, which enable one nation 
 to bring manufactured commodities cheaper to 
 market than its neighbours, may at length cause 
 that nation to be an importer of food; and so land 
 it in an excess of population beyond what it can 
 maintain out of its own agricultural produce—a 
 superinduced population, dependent on foreign 
 supplies for subsistence, and so forming an ex¬ 
 crescence upon that natural population, which can 
 be fed and sustained from the natural resources of 
 their own land. 
 
 There is a limit, however, to this excess of po¬ 
 pulation ; and that, in virtue of causes which act 
 so speedily and powerfully, as, in most instances, 
 to prevent its going very far beyond the extent 
 
368 
 
 of the natural population. Ere we arrive at this, 
 we do not need to wait till the world is saturated 
 with British manufactures; for, long before the 
 completion of such an object, these manufactures 
 must, in spite of all our peculiar advantages, be 
 at length wrought at such an expense, that the 
 world will, after being supplied with them to a 
 certain yearly extent, cease to look after them. 
 It does not follow, although manufacturers, at 
 the outset of the process which we have now 
 imagined, could afford their commodities at 20 
 per cent, cheaper than before, they will be able 
 to afford it long. In the train of consequences 
 that flow out of such a state, there is a rise in the 
 price of food, and, connected with this, a rise 
 in the price of labour. The very fact of grain 
 being imported to help out the subsistence of a 
 nation, implies a dearer subsistence in that na¬ 
 tion than in others. Two grains of the same 
 quality do not fetch two prices when brought to 
 market; and so the home and foreign grain will 
 be equally dear. In other words, the population 
 at home are fed at a greater expense than the 
 population abroad; at an expense greater by the 
 price of the carriage of grain from foreign coun¬ 
 tries. This will so far countervail the original 
 advantages wherewith the British manufacturer 
 set out, and by which he was enabled to under¬ 
 sell the manufacturers of other nations by more 
 than 20 per cent. He might not now be able to 
 undersell them bv more than 10 per cent., and 
 
369 
 
 that in the more accessible markets. The more 
 remote markets, which the original superiority of 
 twenty per cent, could have found him access to, 
 might now, with this reduction, be shut against 
 him. He might have been able to carry his 
 goods with advantage to remote and inland dis¬ 
 tricts, had he retained his original superiority; but 
 not with this superiority impaired by the rise of 
 provisions, and consequently of wages, at home. 
 This supplies a limit to the demand for British 
 manufactures; and, what gives a surer necessity 
 to the limit, it should be recollected, that, in 
 proportion as we extend our supplies of grain 
 from abroad, it must be brought home at a heavier 
 expense to us. We must fetch it from more dis¬ 
 tant or dearer countries than at the first; or that 
 country, whose coast, or the side of whose navi¬ 
 gable rivers, could satisfy our moderate demand, 
 might, when that demand increased, have to draw 
 the produce from its upland districts, and so ex¬ 
 pose us to a great addition of expense for car¬ 
 riage. It is out of these two causes,—first, from 
 the expense attendant on the carriage of British 
 manufactures; and that an expense constantly in¬ 
 creasing in their progress towards the more inac¬ 
 cessible parts of the world,—and, secondly, and 
 chiefly, from the expense attendant on the car¬ 
 riage of agricultural produce to Britain ; and this 
 too an expense constantly increasing, in propor¬ 
 tion as we extend our demand, and have to draw 
 for it from more inaccessible parts than before;— 
 
 Vol. III. A ii ;i 
 
370 
 
 it is from the operation of these two causes, that 
 a certain limit is formed, beyond which, the ex¬ 
 portation of British manufactures can no longer 
 proceed with advantage to the capitalist. He 
 finds that, even with all his original advantages, 
 there are countries so impracticable, that lie 
 could not introduce his goods amongst them, but 
 at an expense which would subject him to be un¬ 
 dersold. But he farther finds, that these original 
 advantages are counterpoised by the now higher 
 price of subsistence, and so the now higher price 
 of labour. There is thus a point of equilibrium 
 between the natural advantages of a country for 
 the industry of its people, and the high price at 
 .which a people, when these advantages have ac¬ 
 cumulated beyond the extent of their natural po¬ 
 pulation, are consequently maintained,—a point 
 beyond which a greater amount of manufactures 
 will not be exported, and a greater amount of 
 agricultural produce will not be imported,—the 
 point, in fact, at which the accretion ceases of 
 families subsisted from abroad, and when the 
 country labours under all that weight of superin¬ 
 duced population which it can bear. 
 
 There is perhaps no country in the world, where 
 the industry of man is made so effective, both by 
 natural and political advantages, as Britain. Its 
 unbounded supply of coal, its machinery, its extent 
 of coast, its roads and inland navigation, enable it, 
 beyond most other nations, to bring its manufac¬ 
 tured goods cheaply into market. It was therefore 
 
371 
 
 to be expected, that it should be a country which 
 imports grain, and it does so accordingly. It would 
 have been interesting to notice, how far all these 
 advantages carried its population beyond their 
 natural limit, or at what point it would have ceased 
 to import agricultural produce. From this we are 
 in a certain measure precluded, by the operation of 
 our corn law's. It is only under a system of free 
 importation, that w r e could have known how far a 
 country, with our peculiar advantages, would have 
 extended its population beyond their natural limits. 
 We do not think, that even with full scope and 
 encouragement, and the removal of all prohibi¬ 
 tions, the excess would have proceeded beyond a 
 small fraction of the natural population, and neither 
 do we think it desirable that it should. In years 
 of scarcity, when all the restrictions on importa¬ 
 tion are taken off, the greatest annual importation 
 ever known, amounted to about one-tenth of the 
 whole consumption of the island; and the actual 
 importation, on the average of several years pre¬ 
 vious to 1800, only supplied eleven days consump¬ 
 tion, or one thirty-third of the whole. It would, 
 we have no doubt, be greater than this, were the 
 corn trade throwm completely open; our export 
 manufacturers, on the one hand, being enabled 
 thereby to work off' their goods at a cheaper rate, 
 from the somewhat reduced price of corn, and so 
 to obtain a more extended possession of the mar¬ 
 kets abroad; and foreign countries, on the other, 
 finding it cheaper, in consequence of our signal 
 
372 
 
 helps and facilities for all sorts of industry, to pur¬ 
 chase our manufactures, though wrought by a 
 population whom they feed at a distance, than if 
 they were wrought by a population whom they 
 feed at their own door. This, however, from the 
 causes already explained, would have its limit; 
 nor do we think it either likely or desirable, that 
 this exterior limit should go very greatly beyond 
 that of the natural population. 
 
 When there is not enough of imports to pay for 
 the exports, the exchange is in favour of the ex¬ 
 porting country. But that state of exchange 
 which is in favour of a country, is against its ex¬ 
 port manufacturers; and may at length be so 
 much against them, that the trade shall cease to 
 yield a remunerating profit. This affords another 
 view of the limit, beyond which they cannot carry 
 their operations. Did they continue to export 
 more, even though with as little expense at home, 
 and as great a price abroad, yet to realize that 
 price, it must come to them through the medium 
 of an exchange, which their own augmented trans¬ 
 actions have made more unfavourable to them¬ 
 selves. It is quite evident that a free corn trade 
 would enlarge this limit. It would add to the 
 vajue of our imports, by allowing a free admission 
 to this import commodity. The exchange would 
 not be so much in favour of the country, and less 
 against the export manufacturers than before; 
 and they might work up commodities, and semi 
 them forth to a greater extent, ere they touched 
 
373 
 
 that limit where the exchange became so unfavour¬ 
 able, that the profit of the trade yielded a bare 
 remuneration for the capital invested in it. 
 
 Ricardo, in his chapter on foreign trade, states 
 with truth, although not with sufficient explicit¬ 
 ness, that the improvement of a manufacture in 
 any country tends to increase the quantity of com¬ 
 modities, at the same time that it raises general 
 prices in the country, where the improvement takes 
 place. He here makes an important correction, 
 on a position of Dr. Smith’s, when, by a conclu¬ 
 sive, but greatly too concise process of reasoning 
 for general readers, he establishes the rise that 
 takes place in the general money prices of a coun¬ 
 try, when the commodities of some one or more 
 manufactures can, by the abridgment of labour, be 
 wrought up at less expense than before. This ef¬ 
 fect must be farther aggravated by our corn laws, 
 seeing that export commodities, which might have 
 been paid by corn, will, in defect of a sufficient 
 value of other imports, have to be paid for by gold 
 and silver. Hence a still larger accumulation of 
 the precious metals in our country, and an increase 
 beyond what would otherwise have place in the 
 money price of all its commodities. Were corn 
 permitted a free entry from foreign parts, this ac¬ 
 cumulation would be reduced, and a general cheap¬ 
 ening of all things would be the consequence. 
 The produce of British industry would become 
 cheaper than it is now; and there is no doubt that 
 the abolition of our corn laws would give an im- 
 
374 
 
 pulse and an extension to our export manufac¬ 
 tures. We should, after this abolition, have a 
 larger importation of agricultural produce than we 
 have at present, and, corresponding to this, a larger 
 excess of superinduced over our natural popula¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Now, the undoubted effect of lower wages at 
 home, were to increase our exports, and so to en¬ 
 large this superinduced population. It would just 
 land us in a greater number of people, over and 
 above those who are subsisted by our own agricul¬ 
 tural produce. It would stretch the population, 
 by a certain degree, beyond the limits of the natu¬ 
 ral population, and land us in some fractional 
 excess of families, for whose maintenance we 
 should have to depend on supplies from abroad. 
 The good of this, to say the least of it, is very am¬ 
 biguous. It might be deemed by some an acces¬ 
 sion to our empire; but certainly it is not such an 
 accession as would be afforded by an enlargement 
 of our borders, by such a circumambient belt of 
 territory reclaimed from the sea, as should feed 
 the whole of these additional inhabitants. There 
 would accrue thereby an additional population to 
 the country; but, in computing the additional 
 wealth, you would only have the wages of so many 
 more labourers, and the profits of so many more 
 capitalists, without the rent of so many more land¬ 
 lords. This last ingredient only belongs to that 
 wealth which is connected with the natural popu¬ 
 lation ; for the surplus population may be said to 
 
375 
 
 labour in the service of landlords in other coun¬ 
 tries, whose rent or revenue it is that forms the 
 main, if not the only fund, out of which the pub¬ 
 lic expenses of a state are defrayed. When to this 
 is added the precariousness to which a nation is 
 exposed, when thus dependent for food upon dis¬ 
 tant countries, it will be felt to be not a clearly . 
 desirable thing that her commerce should be very 
 greatly extended beyond the basis of her own agri¬ 
 culture, or that, having much of subsistence to 
 import from abroad, there should be a much larger 
 population residing within her borders than can be 
 fed from the produce of her soil. 
 
 And the particular views of many statesmen are 
 in full coincidence with these doctrines of theory. 
 Our corn laws, at least, indicate that the exten¬ 
 sion of our people beyond the produce of our own 
 land, had not been felt by them as an object of 
 very urgent importance. The taxes which still 
 continue on the several necessaries of life form 
 another obstacle to this extension, as serving to 
 raise the price of British labour, and so to lessen 
 the power of British merchants to undersell the 
 merchants of other countries. In both these ways, 
 the tendency to a surplus population in Britain 
 has been considerably restrained; and yet, not¬ 
 withstanding, a certain surplus population has 
 been actually formed. Even with the corn laws, 
 then, and with our present taxes on various of the 
 secondary accommodations of life, a higher wage 
 could be afforded to our labourers; and on the 
 
376 
 
 abolition of these laws and taxes, a much higher 
 wage could be afforded ere the natural population 
 would be trenched upon, or ere we should become 
 the exporters of agricultural produce. In other 
 words, there is no country whose clear and sub¬ 
 stantial interests would be less endangered by a high 
 standard of enjoyment among our workmen, and 
 a consequent high remuneration for their work, 
 than those of Britain. Such are her natural 
 advantages, that even with a great comparative 
 dearness of labour, she could maintain that supe¬ 
 riority, or rather that equality in foreign markets, 
 which is really all that is desirable. So that with¬ 
 out let or hinderance from any apprehension in 
 this quarter, she may give herSelf indefinitely up 
 to the pure and patriotic task, of raising the con¬ 
 dition, by raising the character of her peasantry. 
 
 We are abundantly sensible, that the argument 
 of this chapter is altogether superfluous to those, 
 who, with Ricardo and his followers, maintain the 
 doctrine, that profits fall just to the extent that 
 wages rise. It were out of place, to offer here 
 any estimate of this doctrine; nor is it necessary 
 for any present or practical object of ours, seeing 
 that the economists of this school can have no 
 such alarm, as it is the purpose of our foregoing 
 observations to dissipate. They, on the contrary, 
 must regard the high price of British labour as 
 forming, not a prohibition, but a passport for Bri¬ 
 tish commodities into foreign markets. The truth 
 is, that, according to this view, any rise in the ele- 
 
377 
 
 ment of labour must be more than compensated 
 from the element of a reduced profit; for this last 
 will tell, on each successive transfer of the com¬ 
 modity from one dealer to another; so that, on the 
 last sale which it undergoes in the market, it will 
 turn out to be all the cheaper for the work of pre¬ 
 paring it having become dearer than before. . We 
 repeat, that we do not now mean to appreciate this 
 doctrine; but hold it satisfactory, that the disciples 
 of a fashionable and rising school must be all on 
 the generous side in the question of wages. In 
 their apprehension, a liberal remuneration for the 
 work of British hands must extend the sale of Bri¬ 
 tish manufactures. We can scarcely persuade our¬ 
 selves of such a result; and we count it enough of 
 vindication for the cause, that, with a far more li¬ 
 beral remuneration than labourers at present en¬ 
 joy, there might still be such an export of manu¬ 
 factures as would save the exportation of food, 
 and so maintain the entireness of our natural po¬ 
 pulation. 
 
 VOT.. HI. 
 
378 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 ON MECHANIC SCHOOLS, AND ON POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 AS A BRANCH OF POPULAR EDUCATION. 
 
 The mechanic schools which are now spreading 
 so widely and so rapidly over the face of our 
 land, must be regarded as a mighty contribution 
 to those other causes, which are all working to¬ 
 gether for the elevation of the popular mind. 
 But it should not be forgotten, that the scientific 
 education which they provide for those who choose 
 it, forms only one of these causes, and that ere 
 we can prevail upon all, or even upon the majority 
 in the working classes of society so to choose, 
 there must have been anterior causes, both of a 
 preparatory and of a pervading nature, in previous 
 operation. We can scarcely expect any demand 
 for a higher scholarship from those who have not 
 been furnished, in some tolerable degree, with 
 elementary learning; and we might farther af¬ 
 firm, with all safety, that the most willing attend¬ 
 ants on the ministrations of a Sabbath, are also 
 the most willing attendants on the ministrations 
 of a week-day instructor. However little it may 
 have been reflected upon, it is not the less true, 
 that there obtains a very close affinity between 
 a taste for science, and a taste for sacredness. 
 They are both of them refined abstractions from 
 
379 
 
 the grossness of the familiar and ordinary world; 
 and the mind which relishes either has achieved 
 a certain victory of the spiritual or the intellec¬ 
 tual, over the animal part of our nature. The 
 two resemble in this, that they make man a more 
 reflective and a less sensual being, than before; 
 and, altogether, impress a higher cast of respecta¬ 
 bility on all his habits, and on all his ways! It 
 does occasionally happen, that, on entering the 
 house of a mechanic, the eye is pleased with the 
 agreeable spectacle of a well-stored book-case. It is 
 generally the unfailing index of a well-conditioned 
 family; and this, whether it be loaded with the pu¬ 
 ritanic theology of our forefathers, or with the po¬ 
 pular science of the present day. Now, we are sure 
 that this never can, from an occasional, become 
 a common or a frequent exhibition, but by a pro¬ 
 cess through which our peasantry must ascend to 
 a higher style of outward comfort, as well as to 
 a higher state of mental cultivation. We, there¬ 
 fore, hail the scientific education of the people, 
 as being a most powerful auxiliary towards a 
 translation so desirable; and we are sure, on the 
 other hand, that the cause of mechanic schools 
 will be most powerfully aided, by a greater effi¬ 
 ciency being given, both to the methods of com¬ 
 mon and of Christian education, in parishes. 
 How this can best be accomplished in cities of 
 overgrown population, we have already, with all 
 amplitude, endeavoured to explain; and we 
 barely refer to former chapters of this work, for 
 
380 
 
 our description of those processes, by which we 
 conceive that the lessons both of religion and 
 of ordinary scholarship, may most effectually be 
 served out to plebeian families.* 
 
 We have also, in part, to make the same refer¬ 
 ence, that a complete view may be afforded of the 
 estimate in which we hold the salutary operation 
 of mechanic schools, on the circumstances of our 
 general population.! We have already made ap¬ 
 plication to this subject of the very obvious truth, 
 that a process of political economy may take effect 
 upon men, who do not understand the steps or 
 rationale of the process. It is not necessary, for 
 example, that the philosophy of Malthus should 
 be studied by our common people, ere they shall 
 come under the operation of that moral and pre¬ 
 ventive check, through which we are taught, hy 
 his philosophy, that labourers might attain to a 
 greater comfort and sufficiency than they are now 
 in the possession of. It is not necessary, for this 
 purpose, to read lectures, or to circulate tracts 
 among them, which shall expound the theory of 
 population, in order that they may realize the be¬ 
 nefits which would ensue from a right practical 
 application of this theory. The same object is 
 accomplished by the ordinary and general pro- 
 
 * See more particularly the 4th Chapter in the First Volume of this work, 
 anti a pamphlet which I had occasion to publish some years ago, entitled, 
 “ Considerations on the System of Parochial Schools in Scotland, and on the 
 advantages of establishing them in large towns.” 
 f See the first chapter of this work. 
 
381 
 
 cesses, whether of spiritual or of scholastic cul¬ 
 ture. A lettered and religious population will 
 exemplify the truth of this system, though ignorant 
 of all its doctrines, and therefore totally unacted 
 upon by its authority. Such people have, gene¬ 
 rally speaking, a self-respect and a self-command 
 —a taste for decent accommodations—a habit of 
 enjoyment, and, therefore, a habit of expense, 
 which demands a higher wage than what can af¬ 
 ford the mere homely subsistence of an Irish fa¬ 
 mily. And we have already explained how it is 
 that the demand becomes effective—just by the 
 habit of later and less frequent marriages—a habit 
 to which, without the bidding of any theory, 
 they are naturally led by their own sense of what 
 that is, which makes the adequate and the re¬ 
 spectable provision for a distinct family establish¬ 
 ment. This stands very palpably out, in the cus¬ 
 tom, at one time nearly universal, of our Scottish 
 peasantry, when, after the virtuous attachment 
 had been formed, and the matrimonial promises 
 had been exchanged, even years of delay were 
 incurred, ere the matrimonial state was entered 
 upon. These years formed an interval of eco¬ 
 nomy and exertion with each of the parties, 
 whose aim it was to provide respectably in furni¬ 
 ture, and in all sorts of •plenishing, for their fu¬ 
 ture household. Here the connection is quite 
 distinct, between a higher standard of enjoyment, 
 and a later period of marriages. And it was 
 certainly then by another tuition than that of any 
 
economic theory, that a habit in every way so 
 wholesome found its establishment among our 
 population. And the exposition of such a theory 
 to the understanding of the people, is just as 
 little needed now, for the purpose either of re¬ 
 storing or of raising this practical habit amongst 
 them. The thing is brought about, not by means 
 of imparting a skill or an intelligence in politi¬ 
 cal economy, but simply by those influences 
 which give a higher tone to the character; and 
 of which influences, education may certainly be 
 regarded as one of the most powerful. 
 
 It is thus that mechanics’ schools, even though 
 the lessons of economic science should for ever 
 be excluded from them, are fitted to work the 
 greatest of economic improvements in the condi¬ 
 tion of the people. It is enough that they call 
 forth the aspirations of that higher nature, which 
 has so long been overborne by the urgency of 
 their animal wants, and the unchastened violence 
 of their mere animal propensities. Political, it is 
 true, may, like physical science, be addressed to 
 them as an object of liberal curiosity, and simply 
 by the excitement and the exercise which it gives 
 to the mental faculties, it may sublimate the whole 
 man to a more intellectual region than the one he 
 usually breathes in. But either astronomy or 
 chemistry could subserve the same end; and 
 therefore we repeat, that, though in deference to 
 a general, but ill-founded alarm, the education ot 
 workmen in political economy should be kept out 
 
383 
 
 of these schools, another education can be devised 
 which shall be fully as effectual for the accom¬ 
 plishment of the most desirable processes in poli¬ 
 tical economy. They might be made to exemplify 
 the principles in which they are not enlightened; 
 and, without being taught the bearing which a 
 higher taste and style of enjoyment have upon the 
 circumstances of our peasantry, they can be led 
 to imbibe this taste, and so to realize all its even¬ 
 tual benefits. For this purpose, it is not one, but 
 many kinds of scholarship, that are effectual. 
 Whatever may stimulate the powers of the under¬ 
 standing ; or may regale the appetite for specula¬ 
 tion, by even that glimmering and imperfect light 
 which is made to play, in a mechanic school, 
 among the mysteries of nature; or may unveil, 
 though but partially, the great characteristics of 
 wisdom and goodness that lie so profusely scat¬ 
 tered over the face of visible things; or may both 
 exalt and give a wider compass to the imagina¬ 
 tion ; or may awaken a sense that before was dor¬ 
 mant, to the beauties of the divine workmanship, 
 and to the charms of that argument, or of that 
 eloquence, by which they are expounded;—each, 
 and all of these, might be pressed into the service of 
 forming to ourselves a loftier population. Every 
 hour that a workman can reclaim from the mere 
 drudgeries of bone and muscle, will send him 
 back to his workshop and his home a more erect 
 and high-minded individual than before. With 
 his.growing affinity to the upper classes of life in 
 
mental cultivation, there will spring up an affinity 
 of taste and habit, and a growing desire of en¬ 
 largement from those various necessities by which 
 the condition of a labourer may now be straitened 
 and degraded. There will be an aspiration after 
 greater things; and the more that he is fitted by 
 education for intercourse with his superiors in 
 rank, the more will lie be assimilated to them in a 
 taste for the comforts and the decencies of life. 
 In the very converse that he holds with the lec¬ 
 turer, who one day expounds to him the truths of 
 science, and another day examines and takes ac¬ 
 count of his proficiency, there is a charm that not 
 only helps to conciliate him to better society, but 
 that also familiarizes him in some measure to the 
 tone of it. This might only proceed a certain 
 way; and yet, however little that way is, it must 
 be obvious, that such a man will not so aptly, or 
 so heedlessly, rush into marriage with no other 
 prospect before him than a potatoe diet for bis 
 constant regimen, and one closely huddled apart¬ 
 ment for his home. Now, this is all that we 
 want, to relieve the labour-market of the glut 
 which oppresses it, and so to secure a higher wage 
 for our labourers. Towards this result, the me¬ 
 chanic schools lend a most important contribu¬ 
 tion ; and they will speed a most desirable process 
 in political economy, even though they should 
 never initiate so much as one disciple into the prin¬ 
 ciples of the science. 
 
 Still, however, we hold it desirable that this 
 
science should be admitted, with others, into our 
 schemes of popular education; and that for the 
 purpose of averting the very mischief which many 
 have dreaded, and which they apprehend still 
 from the introduction of it. To this they have 
 been led, by the very title of our science giving 
 rise to a fancied alliance in their mind with poli¬ 
 tics ; and, in virtue of which, they would liken a 
 lecturer upon this subject, in a school of arts, to a 
 demagogue in the midst of his radical auditory. 
 Now the truth is, that the economical science 
 which enables its disciples to assign the causes of 
 wealth, is as distinct from politics, as is the arith¬ 
 metical science which enables its disciples to com¬ 
 pute the amount of it; and there is just as much 
 reason to fear an approaching democracy, because 
 the people are now taught to calculate prices, as 
 there will be when people are taught soundly to 
 estimate and to reason upon the fluctuation of 
 prices. We do not happen to participate in the 
 alarm even of those who should, above all things, 
 deprecate, from our mechanic institutions, what 
 might strictly and properly be termed the science 
 of politics, believing, as we do, that all truth is 
 innocent, and that the greatest safety lies in its 
 widest circulation. But we confess a more espe¬ 
 cial affection for the truths and the doctrines of 
 political economy; and, so far from dreading, do 
 greatly desiderate the introduction of its lessons 
 into all those seminaries which have been instituted 
 for the behoof of our common people. It is ut- 
 
386 
 
 terly a mistake that it cannot be taught there, 
 without the hazard of exciting a dangerous fer¬ 
 mentation. Instead of tins, we are not aware of a 
 likelier instrument than a judicious course of eco¬ 
 nomical doctrine, for tranquillizing the popular 
 mind, and removing from it all those delusions 
 which are the main causes of popular disaffection 
 and discontent. We are fully persuaded, that the 
 understanding of the leading principles of econo¬ 
 mical science, is attainable by the great body of 
 the people; and that when actually attained, it 
 will prove not a stimulant, but a sedative to all 
 sorts of turbulence and disorder; more particu¬ 
 larly that it will soften, and at length do away 
 those unhappy and malignant prejudices which 
 alienate, from each other, the various orders of 
 the community, and spread abroad this salutary 
 conviction, that neither government, nor the higher 
 classes of the state, have an v share in those econo¬ 
 mical distresses to which every trading and manu¬ 
 facturing nation is exposed; but that, in fact, the 
 high road to the secure and permanent prosperity 
 of labourers, is through the medium of their own 
 sobriety, and intelligence, and virtue. 
 
 But, in confirmation of this our sentiment, we 
 must go somewhat into detail; and, in so doing, 
 shall have to describe the rapid sketch of what we 
 deem to be a right course of popular economics. 
 
 It, in the first place, can be made abundantly 
 obvious to the general understanding, that the 
 price of an article has a certain and necessary de- 
 
387 
 
 pendence on the two elements of demand and sup¬ 
 ply; and so, on the one hand, that the buyers 
 can promote their interest of lessening its price, by 
 lessening their demand; and that the sellers can 
 promote their interest of raising its price, by les¬ 
 sening the supply. The principle is too elemen¬ 
 tary to be dwelt upon here at any length, yet, 
 nevertheless, might, with its many instances and 
 illustrations, be made the subject of a most pleasing 
 and popular lecture; and might, when once in 
 thorough possession of the mechanic scholars, be 
 subsequently turned into the instrument of many 
 precious applications. It might be made, in fact, 
 to neutralize, or to sweep away the most inflamma¬ 
 tory of those topics wherewith the radical orator 
 seeks to irritate the passions, and to enlist upon his 
 side, the violence of the multitude—that multi¬ 
 tude, of whom it has been well said by Talleyrand, 
 that we have nothing to fear, if we but treat them 
 with frankness; and over whom, so soon as we 
 carry their reason and their sense of justice along 
 with us, we are sure to gain a resistless ascen¬ 
 dancy. 
 
 On the strength of this single doctrine, it will 
 not be difficult to convince them, first, that in the 
 scarcity of any article, when the supply is small, 
 they are not properly the sellers, but the buyers 
 who make the price. It is the competition of 
 those who are in want of the commodity, and fear 
 that they cannot get enough—it is this which is 
 the efficient cause of its dearness. In the higglings 
 
388 
 
 of a market, it is often the seller who names the 
 price, and hence the popular imagination that he 
 makes it. But substantially the juster view of the 
 case is, that the buyer offers the price. The 
 dealer, in fact, would have sold it at a lower price 
 to one customer, had not another customer, more 
 urgent than he, been willing to give a higher price 
 for it, rather than want it altogether. The odium 
 of the high price is castuponthe merchant, whereas, 
 at each given state of the supply, it may be re¬ 
 garded as wholly the creation of the purchasers. 
 He no doubt takes the highest price that he can 
 get; but this is only saying that he takes the high¬ 
 est price which any buyer is willing to give, rather 
 than suffer the inconvenience of wanting it. In 
 other words, it goes to him who is most eager to 
 obtain it; and, had it gone to another, or which is 
 the same thing, had it sold at a rate beneath that 
 market price to which it would be brought by the 
 free and natural competition, it would have been 
 an act of favouritism to one, but at the expense to 
 another, of a sorer and heavier disappointment. 
 The vender, in closing with the highest prices for 
 his article, just sends it to those places where there 
 is the most intense feeling of its necessity. The 
 interest of the dealer is at one with the interest of 
 the public; for, in taking the highest offer, he is 
 just sending his commodity to the quarter where it 
 is most needed and desired. It is thus that the 
 streams of commerce are made to flow towards the 
 places of greatest vacancy; and any violence by 
 
389 
 
 which this process is thwarted, for the relief of suf¬ 
 fering and destitution in one place, must be at the 
 expense, in another place, of a suffering still more 
 intense, of a destitution still more grievous. 
 
 It is by a train of simple argumentations like 
 these, that Smith’s great lessons upon the corn 
 trade might be still further extended and brought 
 home to the popular understanding. They are all 
 of them eminently fitted to allay the passion and 
 prejudice of the working classes. They are not 
 the farmers, or the middlemen, who make the high 
 prices in a year of scarcity. They are tire pur¬ 
 chasers, each intent upon his own share, and each 
 labouring to outbid his fellows. This may not be 
 ostensibly, but it can be easily demonstrated, even 
 to the satisfaction of the most plebeian student, 
 that this is virtually the process. It is not the 
 growers, or carriers of the corn, who fix its price. 
 They are the consumers of the corn: and to force 
 the sale of it at a lower price than that at which 
 the free operation of the market would settle it, is 
 just to wrest the food of our land from those whose 
 necessity is most urgent, and shift its direction to 
 those whose necessity is less so. There cannot be 
 a doubt that there would be more of acrimony and 
 bad blood excited by such a restraining policy, than 
 when the trade is left to its own spontaneousness. 
 This surely is a lesson fitted to pacify, and not to 
 exasperate. To expound a doctrine like this, is 
 not to scatter mischief among the people. It 
 would act, in truth, as an emollient upon their 
 
390 
 
 feelings. And whether it be the reasoning and re¬ 
 flective process, which, in a mechanic school, they 
 might be made to undergo, or this conclusion of' 
 a sound political economy to which it carried them, 
 there is not only wisdom, but the meekness of wis¬ 
 dom in them both. 
 
 But a still more important application of the 
 elementary doctrine on the subject of prices, is, 
 that when instead of a scarcity, there is the over¬ 
 abundance of any article, the low price to which 
 it falls, may be regarded more properly as the 
 deed of the sellers, than that of the buyers. All 
 the keenness of the competition, is transferred, in 
 such a state of the market, from the latter to the 
 former. The anxiety is now on the side, not 
 of the customers to obtain goods, but of the 
 traders to dispose of them. For this purpose, 
 each tries to undersell his neighbour; and as in 
 the first process, we saw that they were the con¬ 
 sumers who made the ascent from one step to 
 another, in the lifting up of price, so in the second 
 process, we see that they are the venders who 
 make the descent in the letting of it down. In a 
 season of dearness, you cannot blame the mer¬ 
 chant for taking the highest price which men will 
 consent to give; and if blame in the matter attaches 
 to any, it must be to the other party who offers 
 it. In a season of cheapness, you cannot blame 
 the purchaser for taking the article at the lowest 
 terms on which he finds the seller willing to part 
 with it. It is not his doing, but the doing of him 
 
391 
 
 who holds the commodity. It is thus that we 
 cannot carry the pupils of this science, a very 
 little way into the interior mechanism of trade, 
 without reversing to their eye the first aspects of 
 things; and we are persuaded, that in these very 
 first, and in all their future advances in this philo¬ 
 sophy, it will be found, at every step which is cor¬ 
 rectly taken, that the alliance is most intimate 
 between the spread of philosophy in a nation, and 
 the stability of its peace. 
 
 The exemplification of this last doctrine, in 
 which the attendants of a mechanic school have 
 the greatest interest, is that which regards the 
 price of labour. It is not a tangible commodity, 
 but liable to the same laws of variation in price, 
 with every other commodity which is brought to 
 market, or which can be made in any way the 
 subject of a bargain. It is exposed to the fluctua¬ 
 tions of a greater or a less demand, and it might, be 
 furnished at a greater or less rate of supply. The 
 labourers of our land are the sellers of this article; 
 and it is virtually they who fix and determine the 
 price of it. The buyers are those who employ 
 them; and they are not to blame because of the 
 miserable price which they give for labour, for 
 this is the price at which the other party have 
 offered it. The true cause, at any time, of a de¬ 
 pression in the wages, or the price of labour, is not 
 that masters have resolutely determined to give no 
 more, but that servants have agreed to take so 
 little. The infuriated operatives, instead of look- 
 
392 
 
 ing to capitalists as the cause of their distress, 
 should look at one another. They would have 
 greatly more reason, at a time of well-paid labour, 
 to look to capitalists as the cause of their high 
 wages, than to look to them as the cause of their 
 low wages, at a time of ill-paid labour. In the one 
 season, it is the overbidding of each other for 
 labour, by the masters, which is the efficient cause 
 of its high price. In the other season, it is the 
 underselling of each other, by the labourers, which 
 is the efficient cause of its low price. Whatever 
 be the external complexion, this is the substantial 
 character of these transactions; and this might 
 easily be made to appear to the disciples of a popu¬ 
 lar economic course, among the foremost revela¬ 
 tions of the science. It is a science, through the 
 arcana of which, the ordinary attendants on a school 
 of arts are abundantly capable of being led, and 
 we should confidently look for patience, and peace, 
 and charity, as the practical fruits of it. 
 
 A master may require one additional workman, 
 but may have no use whatever for two. Two, 
 however, may offer themselves, whereof the first 
 is willing to serve him for two shillings a-day, and 
 the second, rather than be without employment, 
 would thankfully agree for one shilling and six¬ 
 pence. It is not the master’s fault that he has 
 hired in a labourer at this lower wage. It is the 
 doing of the labourer himself, and not his doing. 
 He would, in fact, have inflicted a sorer disap¬ 
 pointment, by accepting the proposal of the first, 
 
393 
 
 and rejecting that of the second, than by closing 
 as he has done, with the inferior offer. He would, 
 at least, have withheld the employment from him 
 who stood most urgently in need of it. He would 
 have refused admittance to the man who, by the 
 very terms of his proposal, made demonstration 
 before him of the most abject necessity. There 
 is odium cast upon the masters, in every season of 
 depressed wages; but the truth is, that, did they 
 reverse their proceedings, and acquiesce in the 
 higher demand, while they rejected the lower 
 offer, they might inflict a suffering still more 
 grievous, and perhaps incur an odium still more 
 implacable. It is felt as all the greater hardship, 
 when one man’s solicitation for work has been 
 declined by the master, though upon more fa¬ 
 vourable terms, while another, upon terms less 
 favourable for the master, has been preferred be¬ 
 fore him. It is not, in fact, the hard-hearted 
 tyranny of masters which has brought down the 
 wages of workmen. It is the imploring cry of 
 the most helpless among themselves, craving a 
 participation with their fellows, and offering to be 
 satisfied with a smaller share, rather than be out¬ 
 casts altogether. The lowness of the wage is, 
 in fact, all resolvable into the excess of their own 
 numbers. And, in every season of ill-paid work, 
 the true character of the transaction between 
 masters and workmen, is not that masters refuse 
 to give a greater wage, but that workmen con¬ 
 sent to take a less one. 
 
 There could, after ibis, be explained the cause 
 
 voi.. hi. d .1 a 
 
394 
 
 of those periodic depressions which take place in 
 the wages of manufacturing labour, and the way 
 of averting it—even, as we have already stated, 
 by an accumulated capital in the hands of work¬ 
 men. And, even although the economical lec¬ 
 turer could point out no remedy for this state of 
 things, there would be a salutary and pacific in¬ 
 fluence in his demonstration of the causes which 
 produced it. It is well when workmen are con¬ 
 vinced, that the low price of labour is not what 
 they at first sight imagine, the doing of their proud 
 oppressors; but the fruit of a necessity over which 
 masters have no control. If wages were at the 
 fiat of theii employers, why are they ever per¬ 
 mitted to rise at all, and often to treble at one 
 time their amount at another? But these tides of 
 fluctuation, at one time adverse, and at another 
 favourable for one or other of the parties, are set 
 agoing by different forces altogether from the ar¬ 
 bitrary will of capitalists; and it must serve to 
 disarm the hostility of the humbler, for the higher 
 classes, when they are made to understand that the 
 ebbs and flows of a labourer’s prosperity, depend 
 upon the laws of a mechanism, for which their mas¬ 
 ters are as little responsible, as they are for the 
 laws of the planetary system. 
 
 But what should make an acquaintance with 
 political economy so valuable to the working- 
 classes, is, that a remedy can be pointed out. The 
 low price of labour is as much the doing of the la¬ 
 bourers themselves, as the low price of a commo¬ 
 dity is the doing of the dealers, who, in the case 
 
395 
 
 of an excessive supply, undersell each other. 
 Their only relief is in the limitation of the supply; 
 and there is positively no other permanent or effec¬ 
 tual relief for the low wages of labour. All that 
 combination can effect in this way, is but partial 
 and temporary; and it is only by a lessening of the 
 proportion between the number of labourers, and 
 the demand for labour, that the working classes 
 will ever find themselves on a stable and secure 
 vantage-ground. They have no command over the 
 second term of this proportion. They cannot in¬ 
 crease the demand for labour. But they have a 
 full command over the first. They can restrain 
 the supply of labourers. A general conviction of 
 this amongst our work-people would go far to 
 tranquillize them. It would wean them, at least, 
 from all vain and hopeless experiments. Even 
 though thej' should despair of any immediate re¬ 
 sult from that expedient which is alone effectual; 
 yet it is well for them to know that it is the only 
 expedient, and that there is no other. It may at 
 least keep them from idly or mischievously ram¬ 
 bling in pursuit of other expedients; and, far 
 better corrective to that general restlessness of 
 our mechanics and labourers, which of late has so 
 alarmed us, than the force either of our statute or 
 common law against combinations, would be the 
 spread of an enlightened conviction among them 
 of their total inefficacy. 
 
 But though no immediate effect on the wages 
 of labour could accrue from any change in the 
 habit of labourers, yet the effect would be far 
 
396 
 
 speedier than is generally counted upon. And 
 this were one of the most important lessons that 
 could be urged or expounded among the disciples 
 of a mechanic school. It were not at all difficult 
 to manifest to their understandings, that a very 
 slight excess in the number of labourers, creates 
 a very great reduction in the price of labour; 
 and so conversely, that it may only require the lop¬ 
 ping away of a very small excess to elevate, from a 
 state of very sunken debasement, the condition of 
 an overpeopled land. It won id serve to remove 
 from their minds the despair of any quick or great 
 amelioration; when made to perceive on how mi¬ 
 nute a difference in the number of labourers, there 
 turns a most momentous difference in the remu¬ 
 neration which is given to them. And if, in any 
 manufacture, as in that of weaving for example, 
 there should be a small overplus of hands, and so 
 a great depression of wages, it is not by the in¬ 
 stant and forcible exclusion of this overplus that 
 the relief is arrived at. It may be obtained by a 
 more quiet and gradual, but withal a very speedy 
 operation. Simply, let the egress at the one end, 
 of individuals from the general body of weavers, 
 by old age or death, not be so fully replaced as 
 heretofore by the ingress of apprentices or new 
 hands at the other. Let there be somewhat of a 
 slackening in the annual supply; and this, in a 
 few years, will lighten the competition for work, 
 by at least some small yet sensible fraction of the 
 sum total of operatives; a fraction which, though 
 minute in itself, would be mighty in its conse- 
 
397 
 
 quences, and would tell with effect on the general 
 circumstances of the whole body. This were the 
 treatment by which the workmen, however low 
 they may have fallen in any branch of trade, 
 might be restored to a state of sufficiency and 
 respect; and there is no other treatment by which 
 we ever can accomplish any great or general ascent 
 in the circumstances of a whole population. It is 
 not by a sudden excision of the overplus that re¬ 
 lief is arrived at. Even though a single year of 
 emigration should take off the whole redundancy, 
 a very slight increase of the births would speedily 
 fill up again the room which had been left; and a 
 land will always be peopled up to the degree at 
 which its inhabitants hold existence to be toler¬ 
 able. It were better that they aimed at something 
 higher and more dignified than a barely tolerable 
 existence; and so, that the population were kept 
 considerably within the limits of its utmost pos¬ 
 sible extension. But this can only be done by 
 the taste and habits of the people themselves ; by 
 a rise in their standard of enjoyment; by a conse¬ 
 quent shifting forward in the average period of 
 their marriages, and so a lighter progeny where¬ 
 with to burden and oppress the coming genera¬ 
 tion. And to accomplish a desirable change, so 
 very great a stride, as some may apprehend, would 
 not be indispensable, and far less any thing like a 
 revolution in the customs of society. That very 
 gradual refinement of soul, which might be 
 achieved among the people by their now improv¬ 
 ing education; that small, though perhaps nearly 
 
398 
 
 insensible effect which this is calculated to have 
 on the time of their entering upon families; and 
 hence the almost imperceptibly fewer births that 
 will take place in the country;—these are the 
 sure, though simple means of that enlargement 
 which we believe to be awaiting the peasantry of 
 our land. A very small oscillation in the number 
 of workmen, will produce a very great oscillation 
 in their wages; and so when their translation is 
 effected into a state of comfort and sufficiency 
 which they have never yet experienced, this 
 change, momentous as it is, will proceed in a way 
 so gentle and so noiseless, that it may truly be 
 said of it, “ it cometh not with observation.” 
 
 Now all this might be set forth with enough of 
 clear and commanding evidence for the under¬ 
 standings of the common people. With all the 
 incredulity which they feel about the philosophy 
 of Malthus, they recognize the whole truth and 
 application of it in particular trades; and when 
 they combine, as they have often done, to limit 
 and restrain the admission of apprentices into their 
 own craft, they are just lending their testimony to 
 the obnoxious theory of population. A smaller 
 general population will supply fewer apprentices; 
 and this favourite object of theirs, and which they 
 have tried to effectuate by forcible exclusions, can 
 be rightly arrived at in no other way, than by that 
 which the philosophy of Malthus has expounded. 
 And here may be exposed with effect, the odious 
 and unjust character of many of their combina¬ 
 tions—in that, by dictating the number of appren- 
 
399 
 
 tices, they are acting in the unfair and illiberal 
 spirit of monopoly. They are quite vehement 
 against the alleged tyranny of masters; yet, in 
 this instance, they may well be charged with hav¬ 
 ing become the tyrants and the oppressors them¬ 
 selves. They would enact corporation laws in 
 their own favour; and, under the pretext of ob¬ 
 taining security against the aggression of their 
 hostile employers, they would, in feet, by the re¬ 
 strictions which they propose upon the employ¬ 
 ment, commit an act of most glaring hostility 
 against the families of all other workmen save 
 their own. It is thus that each distinct trade 
 would form itself into its own little oligarchy; 
 and in no possible way could a system be devised 
 more fatal to real liberty, and more full of an¬ 
 noyance to the general population. We are con¬ 
 fident, that a lecturer of any talent at all might, 
 .upon this subject, carry the most crowded am¬ 
 phitheatre of plebeian scholars along with him. 
 He might, in the first instance, gain their com¬ 
 pliance with the whole of Smith’s argument on 
 the subject of free trade. He might enlist them 
 on the side of competition, and make them par¬ 
 take in his own indignation against the hatefulness 
 of monopoly. He might thus prepare his way 
 for entering upon the subject of combinations; 
 and, however fair or innocent he might allow 
 them to be in themselves, yet, on the strength of 
 such principles as he had just expounded, he 
 might feel himself on high vantage ground for 
 disarming them of all their evil, by denouncing 
 
400 
 
 whatever is wrong or mischievous in their prac¬ 
 tices. All the terror, and outrage, and forcible 
 exclusion, which they have at any time directed, 
 whether against new apprentices or workmen— 
 the enormity of these he could make quite pal¬ 
 pable to the popular understanding; and would, 
 I am persuaded, be borne along on the tide of 
 popular sympathy, when, in the midst of his ap¬ 
 plauding hearers, he lifted, against dictation in all 
 its forms, the honest remonstrances of justice and 
 liberty; and advocated the general rights of the 
 population, whether against the now exploded 
 oppressions of the statute-book, or the still sorer 
 oppression of upstart and recently organized bo¬ 
 dies among themselves. It is not through bear¬ 
 ing down the passions by the force of law, but 
 through forming and enlightening the principles 
 of the commonalty by the force of instruction, 
 that the present fermentations are to be allayed. 
 And we despair not of the day when the science 
 of political economy, instead of being dreaded as 
 the instrument of a dangerous excitation, will be 
 found, like all other truth, to be of powerful effi¬ 
 ciency in stilling the violence of the people. 
 
 On this branch of the subject, there is one in¬ 
 valuable result, that might be obtained from the 
 demonstrations of a lecturer; and that is, a con¬ 
 viction, on the part of his hearers, that pauperism 
 was in truth their worst enemy, though their 
 enemy in disguise, and that it had a most depres¬ 
 sing effect on the wages of labour, and the real 
 comfort of the labourers. 
 
401 
 
 After having discussed the causes which influ¬ 
 ence wages, the explanation of those causes which 
 influence profits, would lead to another, and a 
 most interesting branch of a popular course. 
 And here it must be obvious, how easy it were, 
 on the strength of a few plain and intelligible 
 simplicities, to infuse, even into the hearts of 
 workmen, a spirit of candour and of conciliation 
 towards their employers. More particularly, 
 could they be made to apprehend, how impossi¬ 
 ble it is, in a state of freedom, for profits to sub¬ 
 sist, during any length of time, at a higher rate 
 than they ought to do. When profits are high, 
 capital accumulates; and when capital is accu¬ 
 mulated, profits fall. Again, when, in virtue of 
 some accidental influence, profits are very un¬ 
 equal, so as to he unreasonably high in one trade, 
 there is, in a state of liberty, a rush of capital 
 from all other trades, so as to bring all down to a 
 general level. In this increase of capital, and 
 competition of capitalists, labourers will at length 
 be made to perceive that their security lies; and 
 that, if they will only so far respect themselves, 
 as that their high standard of enjoyment shall 
 have the inflaence already explained, in restrain¬ 
 ing the increase of population, a high wage for 
 work will be the inevitable consequence; and 
 such a wage, as is alike independent, either of 
 illegal enactments, or of illegal combinations. It 
 would have been greatly more satisfying to us, 
 had the legislature not felt it necessary to assume 
 even the semblance of hostility to the working 
 
 Voi,. III. E i' o 
 
402 
 
 classes. Certain it is, that no real hostility is 
 felt; and that, even if it were, it would be wholly 
 ineffectual. It could not depress the wages of 
 labour a single farthing beneath the rate at which 
 it would have settled, in virtue of those econo¬ 
 mic laws over which the government of a country 
 has no control. Even though it were death by 
 the law, for one labourer so much as to talk of 
 wages to another; and though a universal espi¬ 
 onage were to make the law as operative as it is 
 barbarous; yet this could not bear down the ele¬ 
 vating power upon wages, which lies in an accumu¬ 
 lating capital upon the one hand, when it meets, 
 upon the other, with a population restrained 
 within right limits, by the prudential and moral 
 habits of the individuals who compose it. The 
 law against combinations is a telum imbelle, if its 
 object be to depress wages; and it is only desir¬ 
 able, that workmen should be so far enlightened 
 as to perceive this. Then would they leave it to 
 repose in its own inefficiency; and, instead of go¬ 
 ing forth to the battle, either against their rulers 
 or their employers, they would learn, that the sure 
 road to victory was, for each quietly to betake 
 himself to the virtues and the frugalities of pri¬ 
 vate life. 
 
 It is thus that, without any effort, certainly 
 without any combined effort, and without even 
 their looking for it, there may, purely by a 
 change of general habit, on the part of our work¬ 
 men, be a gradual, but sure elevation, in the 
 price of their labour. Capitalists cannot, though 
 
403 
 
 they would, long realize au extravagant profit at 
 the expense of wages. The same competition 
 among labourers which brings down wages, ope¬ 
 rates also among capitalists, to bring down profit. 
 What labourers have to do, is, to slacken the for¬ 
 mer competition, by keeping down the supply of 
 labourers, and leave the latter competition to ope¬ 
 rate. Let them but restrain the increase of po¬ 
 pulation, and then make their harvest of the in¬ 
 crease of capital. Masters, however willing, have 
 it not in their power to realize, for any time, an 
 excess of profits to the prejudice of the servants; 
 for excess of profit gives rise to the exuberance of 
 capital, and so to a keener competition for more 
 labourers. Other capitalists will plant themselves 
 in their neighbourhood, and, either by outbid¬ 
 ding, wrest from them their workmen, or force 
 them to give a higher wage than before. There 
 is no organization of labourers required to bring 
 about this result—nothing, in fact, but that higher 
 style of comfort and decency, which it is the 
 elfect both of Christian and common education to 
 spread over the land. The foolish but impotent 
 outbreakings of the last year will end in no per¬ 
 manent result whatever. A busy process of moral 
 and mental culture, would, in a very few years, 
 tell, and permanently tell, on the condition of out¬ 
 general peasantry. The market is overstocked 
 with capital. Let not the advantages of this to the 
 working classes be neutralized, by the market being 
 also overstocked with labour. Then, instead of 
 men seeking after masters, we shall have masters 
 
404 
 
 seeking after men. Instead of workmen undersel¬ 
 ling their labour, we shall have capitalists over¬ 
 bidding for it. For this blissful consummation, 
 workmen do not need to step abroad and form 
 themselves into grotesque committees, and frame 
 laborious articles, and make their cunning inven¬ 
 tions of sign and countersign. They will gain 
 nothing by all this, so long as they suffer them¬ 
 selves to be oppressed by the weight of their own 
 numbers. It is this, and not the tyranny of their 
 masters, which oppresses them. Let them but re¬ 
 lieve themselves of this, and they will carry their 
 point without all that curious machinery of coun¬ 
 cils, and correspondence, and deputations, in which 
 heretofore they have vainly imagined that their 
 strength lay. They would not need, in fact, to 
 call upon masters; for masters, overcharged with 
 capital, and desirous of extending their works be¬ 
 yond the supply of workmen, would call upon 
 them. Instead of turbulently meeting in the hall, 
 or in the field, each might stay quietly at home, 
 and at his own business; and the day of a coming- 
 enlargement to our labourers will not come one 
 whit later, though they should leave the expe¬ 
 dient of a combination for ever untried. There is 
 no other way in which the tables can be turned 
 between them and their masters; so that instead of 
 workmen begging from capitalists for their em¬ 
 ployment, capitalists shall go a begging among 
 workmen for their services. This we should re¬ 
 joice in, as a consummation devoutly to be wished. 
 It were a great economic revolution brought about 
 
405 
 
 by the peaceful operation of moral instruments: 
 Labourers would share more equally with land¬ 
 holders and traders than before; insomuch, as 
 wages would bear a higher proportion, both to rent 
 and to profit. The social fabric would still have 
 its orders, and its gradations, and its blazing pin¬ 
 nacles. But it would present a more elevated ba¬ 
 sis. At least the ground floor would be higher, 
 while, in the augmented worth and respectability 
 of the people, it would have a far deeper and 
 surer foundation. 
 
 One great object of a wisely conducted econo¬ 
 mic school, whose presiding spirit would be that of 
 loyalty to the state, and love to the population, 
 were to labour well the proposition, that it is not 
 in the power of master manufacturers to realize, 
 for any length of time, any undue advantage over 
 their workmen. And here it might be well to ex¬ 
 pound the relation which there is between the pro¬ 
 fit of capital, and the interest of money, after which 
 the fall of interest might be alleged as affording 
 patent exhibition of the universal decline that has 
 taken place in profits. This would lead to some 
 other cause for any depression in the wages of 
 operatives, than the extravagant gains of their em¬ 
 ployers; and would enable even the homeliest of 
 the disciples to perceive, that they are deprived of 
 the advantage which they might have gotten from 
 the competition of a now greatly increased capital, 
 just because it was outdone by the stronger com¬ 
 petition of a still more greatly increased population. 
 In other words, that it was an advantage of which 
 
406 
 
 the population had deprived themselves. At all 
 events, the capitalists are quite innocent. They 
 cannot help themselves as the labourers can. It is 
 well for the spread of peace and charity among the 
 working classes, that they should be delivered from 
 the false imagination that their masters are their 
 oppressors. And it is further well for the spread 
 among them of virtuous, and temperate, and ele¬ 
 vated habits, that they should be thoroughly pos¬ 
 sessed with the true doctrine of wages; that they 
 are themselves their own deadliest oppressors; and 
 that, without the co-operation of their own moral 
 endeavours, no benevolence on the part of the af¬ 
 fluent, and no paternal kindness or care on the part 
 of their rulers, can raise them from the degradation 
 into which a reckless or unprincipled peasantry 
 shall have fallen. 
 
 It is needless, at present, to inquire how much 
 farther mechanics could be raised, in the scale of 
 doctrine and information, on the subject of econo¬ 
 mical science. This would better be ascertained 
 afterwards. But we are thoroughly persuaded, 
 that the few elementary truths, along with then- 
 obvious and popular applications which we have 
 now specified, could not only be received by the 
 popular understanding, but would go far to dissi¬ 
 pate all those crudities of imagination which excite 
 the fiercest passions of the vulgar, and are, in fact, 
 the chief elements of every popular effervescence. 
 To make the multitude rational, we have only to 
 treat them as if they were fit subjects for being 
 discoursed with rationally. Now this, in reference 
 
407 
 
 to the great topics of misunderstanding between 
 them and their employers, has scarcely ever yet 
 been done; and the experiment remains to be 
 made, of holding conference with the people on 
 the great principles of that economic relation in 
 which they stand to the other orders of society. 
 We anticipate nothing from such a process, but a 
 milder and a more manageable community; and 
 feel confident, that the frankest explanations of the 
 mechanic teacher would be received by his scholars 
 in the spirit of kindness. He may be in no dread 
 of the utmost explicitness, or lest those truths 
 which bear severely either upon the sordidness or 
 the violence of the people, should fall unwelcomely 
 upon their ears. They will bear to be told both 
 of the worthlessness of pauperism, and the gross 
 injustice of those workmen who would infringe on 
 the liberty of their fellows. Even those truths 
 which go to vindicate their masters, and which 
 look hardly or reproachfully upon the operatives, 
 ought, in no way, to be withheld from them. We 
 affirm, that reason will make any thing palatable to 
 the lower orders; and, if only permitted to lift her 
 voice in some cool place, as in the class-room of a 
 school of arts, she will attain as firm authority over 
 the popular mind, as she wields now within the 
 walls of parliament. And political economy, the 
 introduction of which into our popular courses has 
 been so much deprecated, will be found to have 
 pre-eminence over the other sciences, in acting as 
 a sedative, and not as a stimulant to all sorts of 
 turbulence and disorder. It will afford another 
 
4Q8 
 
 example of the affinity which subsists between the 
 cause of popular education, and that of public tran¬ 
 quillity. Of all the branches of that education, 
 there is none which will contribute more to the 
 quiescence of the multitude, than the one for whose 
 admittance into our mechanic schools we are now 
 pleading. They will learn from it, what be the 
 difficulties by which the condition of the working- 
 classes is straitened, and how impossible it is to 
 obtain enlargement therefrom, while they labour 
 under a redundancy of numbers. It will at least 
 help to appease their discontent, when given to 
 understand, that with this redundancy, any solid 
 or stable amelioration of their circumstances is im¬ 
 practicable; and that, without this redundancy, 
 the amelioration would follow of itself, and that, to 
 bring this about, the countenance of legislators, 
 and the combination of labourers, were alike un¬ 
 necessary. The lessons of such an institution 
 would be all on the side of sobriety and good or¬ 
 der. They would at length see, that for the suffi¬ 
 ciency of their own state themselves were alone 
 responsible, and after bidding adieu to all then- 
 restlessness, they would be finally shut up to that 
 way of peace and of prudence, by which, and by 
 no other, they can reach a secure independence. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
London, No. 73, Cheapside, 18-16. 
 
 MR. TECC HAS JUST ISSUED THE FOLLOWINC NEW 
 PUBLICATIONS, 
 
 or SUPERIOR CHARACTER, GENERAL UTILITY, AND POPULAR INTEREST, OX THE 
 .HOST IXTHBEST1XG SUli.IlSCT.-5 OF LITERATURE AND SCIEXCE. 
 
 *** Orders from Merchants, for Exporter,on, of whatever magnitude, executed with 
 Correctness and Despatch. 
 
 BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION. 
 
 BARNES'S NEW TRANSLATION OF ISAIAH. One larec Volume. ! 
 BROWN’S SELF-INTERPRETING BIBLE. 4to. Ah™, &c. . 
 
 -DICTIONARY OF THE IIOLY BIBLE. Svo. 
 
 -CONCORDANCE OF THE IIOLY SCRIPTURES. 2-tmo 
 
 BURDER’S ORIENTAL CUSTOMS. New Edition. Bv Guoseii. IIvo. 
 CAMPBELL’S NOTES ON THE GOSPELS. 2 vols. Svo. 
 
 CALVIN’S COM.MENTARY ON THE PSALMS. 3 vols. Svo. 
 
 CARPENTER’S BIBLICAL COMPANION. Imperial Svo. . . . 
 CHALMERS’S (Dr.) LECTURES ON THE ROMANS. -1 vols. Svo. 
 CLARKE’S (DR. ADAM) COMMENTARY ON THE OLD AND NEW 
 TESTAMENTS. 6 vols. ImperialSvo. . . . . . 
 
 -SUCCESSION or SAC’RED LITERATURE. 2 vols. Svo. 
 
 DODDRIDGE'S FAMILY EXPOSITOR. Imperial 8vo. 
 
 SI.EY’S ANNOTATIONS ON THE GOSPEI, AND ACTS. Bv Walker. S 
 FURY’S MANNERS or tub ANCIENT ISRAELITES. Bv A-Churr. 12n 
 AY AND PERCY’S KEY TO TIIE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. II 
 -NRY’3 COMMENTARY ON THE SCRIPTURES. Bv Blomtiflo. 4 
 HORNE’S (Bp.) COMMENTARY ON TIIE PSALMS. Svo. 
 
 KNNINGS’S JEWISH ANTIQUITIES. Svo. 
 
 ONUS’S BIBLICAL CYCLOPAEDIA. 8vo. . 
 
 .ELAND’S DIVINE AUTIIORITYor tub OLD and NEW TESTAMENTS 8 
 .OCICE AND DODD’S COMMON-PLACE BOOK TO THE BIBLE. Svo. 
 .OWTII’S (Bp.) LITERAL TRANSLATION OF ISAIAH. Svo. 
 
 -LECTURES ON HEBREW POETRY. Svo. . 
 
 LUTHER ON THE GALATIANS. Svo. 
 
 NEWTON’S (lip.) DISSERTATION ON THE PROPHECIES. Svo. 
 
 OWEN’S EXPOSITION OF THE HEBREWS. 4 vols fivo 
 
 -EXEUCITATIONS PREFIXED TO TIIE HEBREWS. Svo. 
 
 PATRICK, LOWTH, WHITBY, AND LOWMAN’S COMMENTARY ON 1 
 OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 4 vols. Imperial Svo. 
 
 I’RIDEAUX on tub OLD and NEW TESTAMENTS. BvDr. M’Cant voI= 8 
 SCOTT’S COMMENTARY on- the OLD and NEW TESTAMENTS 3 vols 
 STACKHOUSE’S HISTORY or the BIBLE, Now Edit. BvD. Dewar,P.D. Imp 
 STUART’S COMMENTARY ON THE ROMANS. S ; ’o. 
 
 TROLLOPE’S NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK, and ENGLISH NOTES. Svo 
 WHITBY and LOWMAN’S COMMENTARY os tub NEW TESTAMENT. I.npl. 
 
 WILLIS’S GEOGRAPHY OF ’I 
 
 E OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. I 
 
 LTGIIT READING & BOOKS IN TIIE PICKWICK STYLE. 
 
 ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN BOUO. 
 
 - PAUL PERIWINKLE, on 
 
 - GRACE DARLING. AT 
 
 ■RESS-GANG. 40 Cuts. 
 
 C'OLMA.VS BROAD GRINS, villi Cuts, Cloth, Gill Ed- 
 COMIC ARITHMETIC. Bv Martin. 40 Cuts. Svo. 
 
 DOINGS IN LONDON. 30 Eiisiaviuus. lOtli Edit. Svo 
 EGAN’S PILGRIMS OF THE'THAMES. 26 Plates. Svo. . 
 
 - BOOK OF SPORTS AND MIRROR OF LIFE. Cuts, Svo. 
 
 GIDEON GILES THE ROPER. Bv Mh-lru. Plates. Svo. 
 
 GODFREY MALVERN. Bv Miii.bh. Plates. Svo. 
 
 GRANT’S SKETCHES IN LONDON. 24 Eu-ravin-s I„- Pmz Svo. ' 
 HONE'S STRUTT’S SPORTS OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. Svo. 
 
 - EVERY-DAY BOOK AND TABLE BOOK. 3 vols. Svo. 
 
 '-A EAR BOOK. New Edition. Cuts. Svo. . 
 
 -MAXWELL’S FORTUNES OF HECTOR O’HALLOUAN. 8vo. . 
 MORNINGS AT BOW-STREET. Cuts bv Cru.ksiiaxk. Fean. Svo. 
 
 ODDITIES OF LONDON LIFE. //Cut's. 2 vols. post Svo 
 I'ICKWICIC ABROAD. Bv Reykolds ; l'latcs bv Phiz, Sic. Svo 
 
LIGHT READING, &c., CONTINUED. 
 
 PARTERRE OF HISTORICAL ROMANCE, ANECDOTE, &e. 4vols.8vo. . 0 16 0 
 PUNCH AND JUDY, with 24 Plates, by Cruihshank. Post 8vo. . .040 
 
 ROBERT MACAIRE. 18 Plates, by Phiz. Post 8vo. . . .0106 
 
 SYNTAX’S (Dr.) TOUR IN SEARCH OF THE PICTURESQUE. 8vo. . 0 12 0 
 TITMARSH S COMIC TALES. 20 Plates. 2 vols. post 8vo. . ..110 
 
 WORLD (THE) OF LONDON. By John Fisher Murray, Esq. ]2mo. . .060 
 
 GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY, AND BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 ADDISON’S DAMASCUS & PALMYRA, 
 ADVENTURES itt ALGIERS, 3 vols. 8vo. 
 
 BARROW'S PETER THE GREAT, 5s. 
 BLUNT’S REFORMATION, as. 
 BROOKES’S GENERAL GAZETTEER, 
 
 GOLDSMITH’S HISTORY of ENGLAND, 
 GUTHRIE’S GEOGRAPHY IN M1NIA- 
 1IISTORY OF THE JEWS,'by Miljiaii, 
 HOLLINGS’TlFE of GUSTAVUS ADOL- 
 
 BROOKES’S GENERAL GAZETTEER 
 
 IN MINIATURE, by Fisdlay, ISmo, 7 1. 
 
 CAMPBELL’S LIVES OF BRITISH 
 ADMIRALS, fcap. 8vo. 7». IM. 
 
 CAVE’S LIVES OF THE FATHERS, 
 
 CAVE'S LIVES OF THE APOSTLES, 
 
 CEC^L’sTlFE OF NEWTON, 32mo, 2s. 
 CONDER'S MODERN TRAVELLER; each 
 Work sold separately, viz. 
 
 AMERICA, 2 vols. 10s. 
 
 ARABIA, 5s. 
 
 AFRICA, 3 vols. Maps St Plates, 15s. 
 
 BRAZIL & BUENOS AYRES, 2 vols. 10s. 
 COLUMBIA, 5s. 
 
 EGYPT, NUBIA, and ABYSSINIA, 2 vols. 
 
 GREECE, 2 vols. 10s. 
 
 INDIA, 4 vols. 1/. 
 
 ITALY, 3 vols. I6s. 
 
 MEXICO and’GUATEMALA, 2 vols. 10s. 
 
 Palestine; 5s. 
 
 PERSIA and CHINA, 2 vols. 10s. 
 
 PERU AND CHILI, 5s. 
 
 RUSSIA, 5s. 
 
 SPAIN A PORTUGAL, 2 vols. 10s. 
 
 SYRIA & ASIA MINOR, 2 vols. 10s. 
 TURKEY, 5s. 
 
 MODERN TRAVELLER, 33 vols. 97. 
 CUNNINGHAM’S (ALLAN) LIVES OF 
 BRITISH PAINTERS, SCULPTORS, Ac. 
 
 DAVENPORT’S LIFE OF ALl PACHA, 
 VIZIER OF EPIItUS, 5s. 
 DAVENPORT’S HISTORY OF THE 
 BASTILE, 5». 
 
 DRUMMOND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 
 A. H. ROWAN, ESQ.,8vo.7s.Gd. 
 EDMONDS’S LIFE AND TIMES OF 
 WASHINGTON, 2 vols. ;0s. 
 
 EUSTACE’S CLASSICAL TOUR IN 
 
 FULLER’S CHURCH HISTORY of BRI- 
 FULLER’S WORTHIESVf ENGLAND, 
 
 FULLER’S HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, 
 WALTHAM - ABBEY, AND INJURED 
 INNOCENCE, by Nichols. 8vo. I I j. 
 GIBBON’S DECLINE and FALL of tub 
 ROMAN EMPIRE, Imperial 8vo. II. u. 
 
 IRVING’S LIFE and VO Y AGES of CHRIS¬ 
 TOPHER COLUMBUS. ISmo. .is. 
 JOHNSON’S HIGHWAYMEN, Ac. Svo,9s. 
 JOSEPHUS’S HISTORY OF THE WARS 
 
 JOSEPHUS’S HISTORY OF THIS WARS. 
 Complete in lvol.7s. Cd. 
 
 LANDER’S DISCOVERIES to the NIGER, 
 
 LANGIIORNli’S PLUTARCH, 8vo. 9s. 
 LIFE OF CICERO, by Bollings, 18mo. 5s. 
 LIFE OF RICHARD I., 18mo. as. 
 
 LIFE OF MAHOMMED ALI, lCmo, 3s. 
 LIFE OF MAIIOMET, bv Rfv. S. Guefn, 5s. 
 LIFE OF BRUCE, by Major Head, 18mn.5.-. 
 LIVES OF EMINENT PHYSICIANS, 
 
 M’CRIF.’S LIFE OF KNOX, 12mo, 4s.6rf. 
 MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF DR. ADAM 
 
 CLARKE, by One of the Family, 8vo. 7s. i'»t. 
 MEMOIRS of JOHN SHIPP, New Edit. 
 M C FAR LANE’S LIVES AND EXPLOITS 
 OF BANDITTI AND ROBBERS, ISmo. 5*. 
 NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE’S LIFE and 
 ADVENTURES, 2rols. !8mo. in*. 
 NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE, THE CAMP 
 AND COURT OF, 18mo. 5s. 
 
 NEAL’S HISTORY OF THE PURITANS, 
 by Toct.MiN, 3 vols. 8vo. U. His. 
 
 PALO RAVE’S ANGLO-SAXONS, I Smo, o*. 
 PILKINGTON’S DICTIONARY OE 
 PAINTERS. By Allan CfSMNGii.ot. 8vo. 2U. 
 ROLLIN’S ANCIENT HISTORY, G vols. 
 8vo. Maps, ]/. 12*. 
 
 SEGUR’S NARRATIVE of NAPOLEON’S 
 EXPEDITION IN RUSSIA, 2 vols. i-Smo. 10*. 
 
 SKETCHES FROM THE HISTORY OF 
 
 VENICE, Maps and Cuts, 2 rob. ISmo. IPs. 
 
 SOUTHEY’S LIFEofNELSON, Cuts, Ac. 5s. 
 TOUR THROUGH SOUTH IIOLLAXD 
 AND UP THE RHINE, ISmo. is. 
 TYTLER’S LIVES OF SCOTTISH WOR- 
 
 TYTLER’S UNIVERS AL HISTORY, 6 vols. 
 WATSON’S LIFE OF PHILIP II. 8vo. 9s. 
 WATSON’S LIFE OF PHILIP III. 8vo. 9s. 
 WELLS’S GEOGRAPHY OF THE OLD 
 
 AND NEW TESTAMENTS, Maps, 12s. 
 
 WILLIAMS’S LIFE AND ACTIONS OF 
 ALEXANDER THE GREAT. I8mo.is. 
 WILSON’S MISSIONARY VOYAGE TO 
 THE SOUTH SEAS, 2s. 
 
NOVELS AND ROMANCES. 
 
 adventures of captain bonne- 
 cavendisii, OR THE PATRICIAN AT 
 CCELElis" in SEARCH OF A WIFE, 
 
 DE ME’s"LIFE AND°ADVENTURES of 
 ROBINSON enUSOF,, . 2 rols. (Oxford) 
 
 DE FOE’S LIFE AND ADVENTURES of 
 CAPTAIN SINGLETON, St. 
 
 DE FOE’S LIFE AND ADVENTURES of 
 COLONEL JACK, 5s. 
 
 DE FOE’S MEMOIRS OF A CAVALIER, os. 
 DE FOE’S FORTUNATE MISTRESS, on 
 LIFE OF ROXANA, 5S. 
 
 DE FOE’S CARLTON’S MEMOIRS and 
 
 | FLYING DUTCHMAN, by tlio Author of 
 
 COOPER’S LIONEL UNCOLIf, 12uio. 3s. 
 IRVING’S KNICKERBOCKER’S H1S- 
 
 JACK TENCII, OR MIDSHIPMAN 
 
 TURNED IDLER, HI Plates, Sto. lOt. Cii. 
 LIFE AND TIMES OF DICK YVIIIT- 
 TINGTON, 22 Plates, Svo. 8t. 
 
 PORTER’S (MISS) LAKE OF KILLAR- 
 
 ROBERT MACAIRE m ENGLAND, Plates 
 by Phiz, 8vo, IOt. 6,(. 
 
 WORTLEY MONTAGUE,3 vols. lf.lls.Gt/. 
 TITMARSII’S COMIC TALES AND 
 
 TREASURY of" VAT 'and ANECDOTE, 
 
 BOOKS FOB CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE. 
 
 ABBOTT’S ROLLA AT SCHOOL, Royal 
 
 ---— ItOLLA’S VACATION, Royal 
 
 TESOP’s’ FABLES (Wl.ittingliam), 32mo. 
 
 AIKIN’S CALENDAR OF NATURE, 2s. G ,1 
 BOY’S OWN BOOK, 19th Edit, snuarc, 6s. 
 BREAKFAST-TABLE SCIENCE, 2s. 6,1. 
 BREWSTER’S NATURAL MAGIC, 5s. 
 BOY’S BOOK OF SCIENCE, IGnio, 7s. 6,1. 
 CHESTERFIELD’S ADVICE to IIIS SON 
 
 CHILD’S (MRS.) STORIES FOR llOLI- 
 CIIILD’S (THE) OWN BOOK, 7lit Edition, 
 
 CHILD’S 'inE)BOTANY,squareIGnto, 2s. 
 COPLEY’S (ESTHER) EARLY FR1END- 
 
 COPLEY’S POPLARGROVE, 2s. G d. 
 EARLY IMPRESSIONS, bv a Lady, Is. 6d. 
 EDGEWORTH'S EARLY LESSONS, 
 
 EDGEWORTH’S ROSAMOND, 2 vols. 
 
 ENDLESS "AMUSEMENTS, ISmo, 2s. 
 ENTERTAINMENT for the NURSERY’, 
 
 FISHER’S ’ YOUNG MAN’S COMPA- 
 GIUL’S OWN BOOK, by Mrs. Child, 141 
 
 GRIFFIN’S BOOK OF TRADES, 4s. 6,1. 
 HISTORY OF SANDFORD and MERTON, 
 
 HOME, bv Sedgwick, 2s. 
 
 MARY’ HO WITT’S JUVENILE BOOKS, 
 
 r'sTUIVE AND THRIVE. 
 
 2. HOPE ON HOPE EVER. 
 
 3. SOWING AND REAPING. 
 
 •1. ALICE FRANKLIN. 
 
 5. WHO SHALL BE GREATEST. 
 
 6. WHICH IS T1IE YV1SER. 
 
 7. LITTLE COIN MUCH CARE. 
 
 8. WORK AND WAGES. 
 
 9. NO SENSE LIKE COMMON 
 
 MARY’ IIOWITT’S WORKS— continued. 
 
 11. MY UNCLE, the CLOCK-MAKER. 
 
 12. THE TWO APPRENTICES. 
 
 13. MY OWN STORY’. 
 
 JANEWAY’S TOKEN FOR CHILDREN, 
 
 JUVENILE SCRAP-BOOK, TALES,&. 4s. 
 JUVENILE EVERY’-DAY BOOK, 4s. 
 LOOKING-GLASS FOR THE MIND,2s.Grf. 
 LOVE TOKEN FOR CHILDREN, by Miss 
 
 MOTIIEit’S STORY BOOK, by Mrs. Child, 
 PETER PARLEY’S GRAMMAR OF GEO- 
 
 PETER PARLEY’’S LIVES OF FRANK¬ 
 LIN AND WASHINGTON, It. C,l. 
 
 PHILIPS’S' CONVERSATIONS 1 ' 8 ABo'uT 
 
 PHILIPS’S CONVERSATIONS ABOUT 
 thcTOOI.Sand TlIADEStifANIMALS, U.M. 
 RICH POOR MAN AND POOR RICH 
 
 STORIES ABOUT POLAND, 2s. Grf. 
 TEGG’S PRESENT FOR AN APP1IEN- 
 
 TOM TELESCOPE’S NEWTONIAN PHI- 
 
 VILLAGE AND THE VICARAGE, 2s. 6,1. 
 WATTS’S DIVINE SONGS, 6 d. 
 WATTS’S DIVINE SONGS ; with Essay 
 
 WHITE’S NATURAL HISTORY OF 
 SKLBORNE, bv Lady Doveb, 3<. Gil. 
 WRIGHT’S OCEAN WORK, 18mo. 2s. 0 d. 
 YOUNG MAN’S AID TO KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 SENSE. 
 
 10. LOVE AND MONEY’. 
 
 YOUNG LADIES’ STORY-TELLER, by 
 
THEOLOGY AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 ADAMS' PRIVATE THOUGHTS ON RELIGION. 13mo. 
 
 AMBROSE'S (?) LOOKING UNTO JESUS, AND HIS OTHER WORKS. 8vo. 
 ALLEINE’S ALARM TO UNCONVERTED SINNERS. 32mo. 
 
 BARROW’S (REV. I.) WHOLE WORKS. 3 vols. 8to. 
 
 BAXTER’S SAINTS’ EVERLASTING REST. lSmo. 
 
 -WORKS. 4 vols. Imperial 8vo. 
 
 BEAN’S FAMILY WORSHIP. Now Edition, liimo. 
 
 BERKLEY’S (BISHOP) WORKS, NOTES TRANSLATED. 2 vols. Svo. . 
 
 BLAIR’S (DR. HUGH) SERMONS. Svo. 
 
 BOLTON’S TREATISES ON COMFORTING ..FFLICTED CONSCIENCES 
 BOOTH’S (REV. ABRAHAM) SELECT WORKS. 12mo. . 
 
 BRIDGE’S (REV. WILLIAM) WORKS. Notv first collected. 5 vols., 8vo. . 
 BUNYAN’S PILGRIM’S PROGRESS. And Life hv Adam Clarke 
 -With Plates. Svo. 
 
 BURDER’S FIFTY-TWO VILLAGE SERMONS. 12mo. . . .03 
 
 -RITES AND CEREMONIES OF RELIGION. Svo. . . 0 12 
 
 BURNET’S EXPOSITION OF THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES. 8vo. . 0 7 
 
 BUTLER'S (BISHOP) ANALOGY OF RELIGION. With Index. 12mo. . 0 3 
 
 - SERMONS. 12mo.0 3 
 
 CALVIN’S INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 2 vols. 1 7 
 
 CAMPBELL’S LECTURES ON ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 8vo. . 0 S 
 
 -DISSERTATION ON THE MIRACLES. Svo. . . .07 
 
 -(D.D.) WORKS NOW FIRST COLLECTED. 0 vols. Svo. . 2 2 
 
 - PULPIT ELOQUENCE AND PASTORAL CARE. Svo. 0 7 
 
 CAVE’S PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY. Nett Edition hv Cary. Svo. . 0 8 
 
 CIIILLINGWORTH’S RELIGION OF PROTESTANTS—A SAFE WAY 
 
 TO SALVATION. 12,no. ’.0 7 
 
 CLARKE ON THE PROMISES OF SCRIPTURE. 32,no. . ..01 
 
 CLARKE’S (DR. ADAM) CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. Bv Dunn. 12mo. . 0 G 
 
 -LETTER TO A YOUNG PREACHER, AND 
 
 TRAVELLER’S PRAYER.0 2 
 
 - SERMONS. With great Additions. 4 vols. . .14 
 
 COLES ON GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY’. 12ino. . . . .01 
 
 COOPER’S SERMONS ON THE LEADING DOCTRINES OF THE GOSPEL, 
 
 PRACTICAL AND FAMILIAR.0 3 
 
 CUDWORTIl’S INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM, WITH MOSIIEIM’S NOTES 
 
 TRANSLATED. 3 vols. 8vo.2 2 
 
 DAVIES’S LECTURES ON PROPHECY’. 12,no. . . . .02 
 
 DODDRIDGE’S MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. Imperial Svo. . .11 
 
 -RISE AND PROGRESS OF RELIGION IN THE SOUL . 0 1 
 
 DUNN’S SELECTIONS FROM THE YVORKS OF REV. J. HOWE . 0 G 
 
 -— CALVIN . . .00 
 
 DWIGHT’S SY’STEYI OF THEOLOGY’. 5 vols. Bvo. . . . 1 10 
 
 - 5 vols. Porket Edition . .0 14 
 
 EDWARDS’S (REV. JONATHAN) THEOLOGICAL YVORKS. 2 v. Imp. Svo. 2 10 
 ELLIS’S KNOWLEDGE OF DIVINE THINGS FROYI REVELATION . 0 G 
 EVANS’S SKETCH OF ALL RELIGIONS. New Edition. 12,no. . 0 j 
 
 FINNEY’S SERMONS ON IMPORTANT SUBJECTS. 12mo. . .04 
 
 FISHER’S MARROW OF MODERN DIVINITY. 12,„o. . . . 0 .7 
 
 FULLER’S (D.D.) DISCOURSES ON THE BOOK OF GENESIS. 12mo. . 0 5 
 FULLER’S HOLY AND PROFANE LIFE. Portraits. 8vo. . . .0 10 
 
 GILL’S BODY OF PRACTICAL DIVINITY. 2 vols. 0vo. . .11 
 
 - CAUSE OF GOD AND TRUTH. 8vo. . . . 0 12 
 
 GOODYVIN’S CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY’. Bv Dunn. 12mo. . . 0 G 
 
 -REDEMPTION REDEEMED. New Edition. Svo. . .0 12 
 
 GURNALL’S CHRISTIAN IN COMPLETE ARMOUR. Bv Campdf.li.. Svo 0 12 
 HALL’S CONTEMPLATIONS ON THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 0vo. 0 0 
 
 - (REV. ROBERT) SELECT THEOLOGICAL YVORKS. 12mo. . 0 3 
 
 HALYBURTON’S THEOLOGICAL YVORKS. Svo.Oil 
 
 HANNAM’S PULPIT ASSISTANT. Netv Edition. Gvo. . . .0 12 
 
 HAYVKER’S (REY’. ROBERT) POOR MAN’S MORNING PORTION AND 
 
 EVENING PORTION. Svo. . . . . - 0 1a 
 
 IIERVEY’S TIIERON AND ASPASIO. 8vo.0 10 
 
 -MEDITATIONS AND CONTEMPLATIONS. 8vo. . .05 
 
 HILL’S (REY’. ROYVLAND) VILLAGE DIALOGUES. 34th Edition. 12mo. 0 6 
 
 HOOKER’S ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. 2 vols. Svo.Oil 
 
 JENKS’S FAMILY DEVOTION. Bv Simfon. 12„,o. . . .03 
 
THEOLOGY, &c. &c., CONTINUED. 
 
 LAWS OF CHRIST RESPECTING CIVIL OBEDIENCE, &c. Svo. 
 LEIGHTON’S (ARCHBISHOP) WORKS. Svo. 
 
 ----LECTURES, THEOLOGICAL, &c. 
 
 LOWTH’S (BISHOP) SERMONS. By Hall. 8vo. . 
 
 MASON ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 3>mo. . 
 
 - SPIRITUAL TREASURY FOR THE CHILDREN OF GOD. Svo. 
 
 MASSILLON’S SERMONS. New Edition. Svo. 
 
 MILNER’S CHURCH HISTORY. By IIaweis. 8vo. 
 
 MORE'S (HANNAH) PRACTICAL PIETY. 32mo. 
 
 LEGATE, and GILES-IX-TIIE-FIELDS. 
 
 \iw KitiMoil. IIV .1. IMCIIOI.S. U vols. Svo. 
 
 MOSIIELM'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 2 volt. 8vo. 
 
 NELSON’S FASTS & FESTIVALS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Svo 
 NEWTON’S (REV. JOHN) THEOLOGICAL WORKS. Svo. 
 
 OLXEY HYMNS. Bv Cowrat ami Newton. 32iuo. 
 
 ORTON’S (REV. JOB) PRACTICAL WORKS. 2 vols. Svo. 
 
 PALEY’S WORKS. New Edition. Svo. .... 
 
 -NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. Bv Paxton. A vols. Svo 
 
 PASCAL’S THOUGHTS ON RELIGION. IGuio. 
 
 PEARSON ON THE CREED. A New Edition. Bv Nichols. Svo 
 PITMAN’S SERMONS FOR EVERY SUNDAY IN THE YEAR. 2 vols. 
 
 -SECOND COURSE. 2 vols. . 
 
 PORTEUS’S (BISHOP) LECTURES ON ST. MATTHEW. Svo. 
 
 PULPIT (THE BRITISH). C vols. Svo. (Scairc) 
 
 QUARLES’ DIVINE AND MORAL EMBLEMS. Sqr. 32mo. 
 
 - SCHOOL OF THE HEART. Sqr. 32,no. 
 
 QUESNEL’S REFLECTIONS on the GOSPELS. H»s.,v l.v W.tman, 3 vols. I2mo 
 ROBERT’S ORIENTAL ILLUSTRATION OF THE SCRIPTURE, Svo. 
 ROBINSON’S SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS. Svo. 
 
 ROMAINE’S THEOLOGICAL WORKS. Svo. . , 
 
 ROWE’S DEVOUT EXERCISES OF THE HEART 
 SALMON'S SERMONS. New Edition. Bv Bciidek. 3 vols. 
 
 SCOTT’S (REV. THOMAS) THEOLOGICAL WORKS. Chiswick. . 
 SIMPSON’S PLEA FOR RELIGION AND THE SACRED WRITINGS. 12 no. 
 SOUTH’S SERMONS AND POSTHUMOUS WORKS. -1 voK ,'ivo. 
 SPRING’S OBLIGATIONS OF THE WORLD TO THE BIBLE. 32mo. 
 STURM’S REFLECTIONS ON THE WORKS OF GOD. Bv Dr. Claiike. 2 vols 
 THE SABBATH SCHOOL AS IT SHOULD BE. Roial 32ino. 
 
 TODD'S SABBATH SCHOOL TEACHER . 
 
 -WORKS ON SUNDAY TEACHING, &c. Svo. 
 
 VENN’S COMPLETE DUTY OF MAN. 12mo. 
 
 WAKE’S (BISHOP) GENUINE APOSTOLICAL EPISTLES. 12uw. 
 WARDEN’S SYSTEM OF REVEALED RELIGION. Bv Nichols. Svo. 
 WATTS’S PSALMS AND HYMNS. -ISmo. Pocket Edition . 
 
 ■-SCRIPTURE HISTORY. 12mo.' 
 
 -HOPEFUL YOUTH FALLING SHORT OF HEAVEN 
 
 •-GUIDE TO PRAYER. 32mo. 
 
 -DEATH AND HEAVEN. 32mn. 
 
 WESLEY’S SERMONS, Edited by Diifav. 2 vols. Gvo. 
 
 WIIEATLY OX THE COMMON PRAYER. Svo. 
 AVILBERFORCE’S PRACTICAL VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY. 32,i: 
 WILLIAMS’S CHRISTIAN PREACHER. BvJickson. 12mo. 
 WITSIUS ON THE COVENANT BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. 2 
 
 0 8 0 
 0 10 0 
 0 1 6 
 
 1 d 0 
 0 12 0 
 
 2 0 0 
 0 2 6 
 0 10 6 
 
 1 1 0 
 
 2 14 0 
 
 0 2 0 
 1 1 0 
 
 0 9 0 
 
 0 4 0 
 
 0 2 0 
 0 8 0 
 
 0 3 0 
 0 10 0 
 0 1 0 
 0 10 0 
 0 4 0 
 
 CHEMISTRY, NATURAL HISTORY, BOTANY, MEDICINE, See. 
 
 ABERCROMBIE’S POCKET GARDEX- 
 
 BUCIIAN’S DOMESTIC MEDICINE, 
 Svo. 7s. fi d. 
 
 BUFFO.VS NATURAL HISTORY, New 
 
 CHEMICAL CATECHISM (PARKE’S',3s. 
 DAVY’S AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY, 
 
 GRIFFIN’S SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY 
 I IIUBER’S OBSERVATIONS ON THE 
 i MAWE’S EVERY MAN I1TS OWN GAU- 
 
 i NATURAL HISTORY of INSECTS. Cuts. 
 2 rids. 10.f. 
 
 RYDGE’S VETERINARY SURGEONS’ 
 
 I THOMSON'S INORGANIC CHEMISTRY, 
 in ZOO- I WHITE’S 8 NATURAL HISTORY OF 
 
SCHOOL BOOKS, &c., CONTINUED. 
 
 GKOGUaPHY AND HISTORY. By a Lady. 
 New Edition. By WRjciir. l2mo, 4s. Cd. 
 
 goldsmith** grammar of geography. 
 
 HUTTON'S MATE1KMATICAL RECREA- 
 
 JOYCK’S COMMERCIAL Altl TIIMETIO. liv 
 JOYCE’S INTRODUCTION TO THE ARTS 
 
 NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA. 2 
 
 NOVUM TKSTAMKNTUM GRyECF. 32mo, 5*. 
 PARLEY'S UNIVERSAL HISTORY. 45. «rf. 
 PARLEY’S GRAMMAR OF GEOGRAPHY, 
 
 PARLEY’S TALES ABOUT GREECE. 45. fit*. 
 
 PARLEY’S MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. 45. 6rf. 
 PERRIN'S ELEMENTS OF FRENCH CON- 
 
 PERRIN'S FRENCH SPELLING-BOOK. By 
 
 PINIUUI CARMINA. IIevne. 32010.45. 
 PINNOJK’S ENGLAND. New Edit. l‘2mo, 55. G d. 
 POT TER’S ANTIQUITIES OF GREECE. By 
 
 QUESTIONS ON ADAM’S ROMAN ANT1QUI- 
 RAMSHORN’S DICTIONARY OF LATIN 
 SEPTUAGINT (The GREEK). 2 vols. 32mo, 12*.. 
 
 TOM TELESCOPE’S NEWTONIAN PI1ILOSO- 
 TOOKE'S (HOUSE) DIVERSIONS OF PUR- 
 
 | WANOSTROCHT’S ^RECUKIL CUOISI, New 
 
 WRIGHT’S GREEK AND ENGLISH LEXICON. 
 
 DICTIONARIES, 
 
 FINDLAY'S BROOK KS’S0ENERAL GA- I 
 FINDLAY'S BRODKKS’S GENERAL GA- 
 BKOWVS (KKV. JOHN) DICTIONARY I 
 BUCK’S THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY. | 
 CALMET’S DICTIONARY Of THE HOLY j 
 CARPENTERS DICTIONARY OF SY- I 
 
 NOSYMKS. 3nt Kdiliun. Kino. 2». 11,1. i 
 
 CRAMPS DICTIONARY OF GENERAL I 
 
 KNOWLEDGE. 4th Edition. 75. ! 
 
 CRl’DKVS CONCOKDAXCK of tub OLD I 
 ANDNEW TES TAMENT. Imperial 8*o. is*, i 
 (XNXIXOHAM’S (A.) PtLKINGTON’rf ! 
 
 DA VKNPOUT'S WALKER'S PRONOUN- ! 
 DOLBY’S SHAKSPEARIAN DICTION- ! 
 
 AR\. an Index to aliak'peare, Izino, is. M. 
 
 DUNCAN’S (REV. DR.) HEBREW LEXI- i 
 
 D Y M < »C K ’S A1 NS W (> RTH’S L AT IN i 
 
 AS!) ENGLISH DICTIONARY. |Hmo.7*. ! 
 
 HORTON'S TOl’OfiRAPHiCAL DIO- i 
 
 CURNFY’S DIAMOND DICTIONARY i 
 
 LEXICONS, &c 
 
 GUTHRIE’S GEOGRAPHY IN MINIA. 
 JOHNSON’S DIAMOND DICTIONARY 
 JOHNSON’S ’ DICTIONARY 'OF THE 
 JONES’V (STEPtlEN)’BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 DICTIONARY, l8mo. I>J. 
 
 JONES'S BIBLICAL CYCLOPAEDIA, 16s. 
 LEMPRIERE’S CLASSICAL D1CTI0N- 
 
 MEADOWs'lTALIAS AND ENGLISH 
 
 .MEADOWS’S FRENCH AND ENGLISH 
 PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY, l8mo.7.. 
 MEADOWS’S SPANISH AND ENGLISH 
 DICTIONARY, 18mo. 7s. 
 
 MITCHELL’S PORTABLE CYCLOPJE- 
 
 NUTTALL’S CLASSICAL AND ARCIIAE- 
 
 ROBINSON’S* GREEK AND ENGLISH 
 LEXICON OK THE TESTAMENT, lira. 15s. 
 TEGG’S DICTIONARY OF CHBONO- 
 LOGY. 12mo. (is. 
 
 WALKER’S CRITICAL PRONOUNCING 
 WALKER’S PRONOUNCING DICTION-