ducing the average rent of 77. 10s. each. One young woman, originally a destitute orphan, had saved and laid out on mortgage upwards of 1007. One man, who had not received high wages, and whose wife was so infirm as to be carried to bed for more than twenty years, and who had also brought up seven children, has from his savings become possessed of seven houses, producing fifty guineas a-year. The houses constructed by the men for themselves are generally larger and more substantial than those built by the master. They were generally clean and well furnished. The operatives are benevolent to each other; are fond of music; a Bible or Testament was found in every house, and in most cases some political or religious books. An infant and day school are established under competent masters, and are well conducted. Vacant situations in the factory are filled almost invariably by aspirants on the spot. It was hoped, that this example of the effects, which have resulted from restraining influence and judicious kindness, might excite large manufacturers to similar exertions, and that their success would be proved by the best of all possible tests, the absence of pauperism."

It is a probable tendency of the Factory system to increase this healthy and moral relation between the capitalist and the operative, because it is the immediate interest of both parties, but more especially of the master, that such a relation should exist. "No tyrant ever made money" is a common aphorism in the manufacturing districts, and with persons disposed to tyranny, such an aphorism will have more weight than all the reasoning of Aristotle, backed by all the eloquence of Cicero.

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Among the operatives there is continually manifested a growing sense of the superiority of moral force to physical strength. Mischievous as strikes and turns out are, they exhibit features which must afford some consolation to the philanthropist and the moralist. There is a firmness of purpose displayed on these occasions, an iron spirit of endurance, which it would be the worst of all mistakes to confound with sulky obstinacy: it is the repose of conscious strength; it is founded on a mistaken notion of right, but in spite of the mistake, the notion of rectitude whenever present, cannot but be influential, and hence it is an invariable rule, that whenever a strike has led to an act of violence, the whole matter is at once ended—the moral cohesion which held the workmen together is melted and solved by crime; each man is anxious to disclaim any participation in outrage, and quietly returns to his employment.

It is scarcely possible to speak of the vast accumulation of masses of human beings in the manufacturing districts, "the crowded hives" as they have been called, without something like anxiety and apprehension. Our conceptions of them clothe themselves in terms that have something portentous and fearful. We speak not of them indeed as of sudden convulsions, tempestuous seas, or furious hurricanes, but as of the slow rising and gradually swelling of an ocean, which must at some future and not distant time bear all the elements of society aloft upon its bosom. We cannot disguise from ourselves, that in the development of such potent elements, there is much to fear, but there is also much to hope. The principles of safety are not far to seek,

and when they are secured, the principles of prosperity will develope themselves. That many will dissent from these views is highly probable: no new element of society was ever developed that did not excite alarm and produce peril; but that peril has ever been aggravated by the alarmists endeavouring to destroy the element instead of regulating its courses. To destroy the Factory system is not practicable, if it were desirable, nor quite desirable if practicable. But though we cannot destroy, we may use and regulate; we may so mould the course of its development as to render it the source of increased morality, increased prosperity, and increased social happiness to the British empire, and to every individual that empire contains.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIETY, ILLUSTRATED IN THE EFFORTS MADE FOR THE RELIEF AND IMPROVEMENT OF HUMANITY, BY PUBLIC AND PRIVATE BENEVOLENCE.

IN nothing is the superiority of the modern systems of civilization over the ancient more manifest and striking, than in the institutions which have been established in every Christian country for the relief of suffering humanity. "The poor you have always with you," said the Founder of our faith, not to discourage us from exertion, by describing poverty as an evil without remedy, but to stimulate benevolence, by shewing that there would always be objects for its exercise. In our own days, however, when the elements of society are so numerous, so fully developed, and in such active operation, a doubt has been raised whether the interference of benevolence does not occasion derangements of the social machinery, more mischievous than the evils it undertook to remove; and persons the most conspicuous for their philanthropic feelings, have laid before the world indisputable proof that many of the efforts of public and private benevolence have added incalculably to the amount of misery.

Proposals have been made to subject benevolence to limitations and restraint, and these have been met, as we mentioned in a previous chapter, by denunciations

of cold-blooded philosophy, by assertions that "the head had absorbed the heart,"* and almost express declarations that science is the enemy of the poor. There has been a little violence, and not a little exaggeration displayed by the opposite parties, which might have been avoided if the terms of the dispute had been settled previous to the commencement of the discussion. The proper aim and object of civilization is to remove the evils and elevate the condition of society; the expressed purpose of benevolence is to accomplish this object for one class of society, the poor; and no one ever denied that, to a certain extent, it may attain that end. Benevolence then appears to be an element of civilization, and may therefore reasonably be expected to be subject to the same laws as the other elements which we have previously examined.

Now we have found that every social element which we have examined became false and mischievous from the moment it became absolute and exclusive; it is, therefore, a presumption, that a benevolence which excluded every extrinsic consideration-which looked merely to the gratification of feeling in the giver, and immediate relief in the receiver-may possibly become false and pernicious. It is scarcely possible to avoid this discussion; poverty meets us in every view that we take of civilization, in every question that is raised respecting social order. It is an element of the highest importance in every thing connected with the tranquillity of states and the destiny of nations.

Poverty or misery is the result of a failure to fulfil

*This expression occurs in one of the many pamphlets written against Malthus, but I have lost the reference.