be futile. It is one thing to refuse relief,—it is another and a very different thing to cure pauperism. The fallacy of the new poor law legislation consisted in confounding these two things so essentially different. No efforts were spared to frighten pauperism, but pauperism was not to be frightened Vast as were the powers of the commissioners, they could not cow hungry bellies into silence. All the varied talent and extensive experience which they possessed themselves, or could command thro the means placed at their disposal, have been baffled, and pauperism is nearly as rife to day, as it was when England was poorer by hundreds of millions of pounds. With the unfortunate dogma that it was not desirable to interfere with the relation of capital and labor, men by nature and education inclined to be humane, were compelled, in order to drive the pauper laborer *to rely on his own resources,' to have recourse to refinements of cruelty which made the shooting and pickling plan of Thomas Carlyle, the child-eating recommended by Dean Swift, and the painless extinction doctrine of Marcus, no such very extravagant expedients. We need not ask whether the plan of intimidating poverty has proved a failure. At the present moment the rates are as high, and press more heavily than in the worst days of pauper mismanagement. The excuse cannot be pleaded, that the funds are dispensed extravagantly; for the pittance given as out door relief, will scarcely keep body and soul together. It does little beyond avoiding the odium, without removing the guilt, of killing them off by slow starvation. Even the sum now bestowed as out door relief would provide a far larger amount of comfort, if it were a combined expenditure, as in the workhouses, than spent by driblets in the purchase of infinitesimal quantities of the various articles of food.

Nor has the poor law diminished begging and vagrancy. Groups of able-bodied men perambulate the streets, singing some doleful ditty, or attend from door to door with lucifer matches or other articles, as pretexts for asking charity. Hundreds, again, are passed thrö the vagrant office, after having received a single night's lodging, and are turned out of the town, to visit some new place, again to partake of the vagrant's fare, again to be turned out, until habit has made it familiar, and the transition to depredations and theft is easily accomplished.

Vain indeed are the efforts of philanthropists to cure the evils arising from poverty, till the remedy for poverty itself be found. In vain to appeal to the starving prostitute to quit the paths of vice, she cannot afford to be virtuousshe wants bread! The other day, the benevolent Lord Ashley collected the thieves together. Among various questions asked them, was this, "Are you all willing to give up thieving and go to work?" The whole 138 who were present replied in the affirmative. As the Manchester Examiner truly said,

"One hundred and thirty-eight of our fellow-creatures, in the prime of manhood, thieves by trade, self-acknowleged felons, ready to abandon their unlawful pursuits, and in this Christian, moral, liberal, and enlightened age, actually incapable of discovering how to be honest and live! Out of 372, 278 had received no education, and their times of imprisonment varied from one to twenty-seven times, while two forgot how many times they had been incarcerated, What was to be said to the 207 confessed and convicted rogues then there? Mutual aid' was what his lordship most recommended-self-reliance, selfsacrifice, a relinquishing of their old practices, and new resolves for the future. 'But

how,' said they, are we to live till our next meeting? We must steal or die.' One of the party arose and said, 'My lord, and gentlemen of the jury, prayer is very good, but it will not fill an empty stomach,' There was a general response of 'Hear, hear!' and the directors of the meeting, we are told, 'were in considerable difficulty","

No doubt! They ask for bread, and we give them a stone. Even let-alone-ism may find, that it is not 'buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market,' to pay for judges, gaols, and hangmen, instead of providing good education and the means of employment.

Under a well organized system of employment, mendicancy would be an impossibility. The removal of beggars by the police would be rendered unnecessary, because the public would feel that proper relief existed. Their sympathies would be on the side of the law, instead of being against it, from the feeling that the relief is inadequate, and in many instances unattainable.

It is a disgrace to the good sense of the English nation, that such a vast number of unemployed laborers, capable of at least maintaining themselves, capable of adding to the wealth of the country, and becoming worthy and reputable members of society, should be doing nothing, worse than nothing, work which is not work, but a make-believe and a sham, work by which they get demoralized in character, and drag down the independent laborer on whose wages they subsist to a position little better than their own.

It is shocking to reflect that the worth of a man was greater in those feudal days when the Saxon Serf wore the brass collar of his Norman Master, than is the value of that man who at the test-heap lazily earns his few pence per day. There is a frightful absurdity in the thought, that a Southern Slave-holder will go to an immense expense in the purchasing of a slave, that this slave must be dragged from the interior of Africa, must escape the cruisers employed in the suppression of the traffic, must be transported at an immense expense before he reaches the slave mart, seeing that half or two-thirds perish by the way, and yet his labor will repay all this outlay, and the expense of feeding and maintaining him, to the planter-while a pauper Englishman is not only not worth his keep, but is actually a burden in the way.

"A full formed horse," says Thomas Carlyle, "will, in any market, bring from twenty to as high as two hundred Friedrich's d'or: such is his worth to the world. A full-formed man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. Nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly devised article, even as an Engine? Good Heaven! A white European Man, standing on his two legs, with his two five fingered Hands at his shackle bones, and miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth I should say from fifty to a hundred horses.”

Even where the laborer's own misconduct has brought him to poverty, it may generally be traced to society having permitted him to grow up without culture; a savage amid civilization. But, admitting that his poverty is a crime, and a crime of his own creating, it has yet to be shown that the principle of Coercion will remedy the evil. We are fast giving up the theory of revenge as part of our criminal jurisprudence. Why retain it in our poor laws? All the circumstances which usually call forth the better principles of man's nature,-kindly treatment,

intelligent training, the desire of securing and increasing his advantages,-are withheld. Even brutes must have some kind treatment, something more than the whip. Thus, this accursed theory of leaving capital and labor to a so-called free-conflict, has driven Christians to consider as the appropriate usage of a large portion of humanity, treatment which could not succeed if tried upon a dog! But even if this treatment were applied to the wilful pauper alone, it would be intelligible, if unwise. Against him the fiat might go forth-"He that will not work, neither shall he eat." But to him who would work, if he could get it, what apology can be made for thus felonizing him? By what right do you claim to punish him with coarse diet, imprisonment, and disgusting or useless labor? It is impertinent to reply that population exceeds the means of subsistence. What is meant by means? Does it signify that portion of capital which capitalists are able or willing to use in the employment of laborers? True, but what then? It by no means follows that the capabilities of creating wealth for those who are without, are wanting. In this sense, 'means' do exist in plenty, and it demands but human will, using appropriate skill and energy, to render them available. To the consideration of those means we propose to devote the next lecture. Let us however no more tolerate the dogma of 'over-population,' and the cruel consequences drawn from it, for it is a libel on the Goodness of Deity. As well attribute the death of a miser, caused by his penurious habits, to poverty instead of avarice. It is to confound similarity of effect with identity of cause. Let the name be 'deficient wages fund'-deficient because the natural means of its creation are artificially limited, and the fault will then be brought home to its true source, namely, HUMAN MISMANAGEMENT.

TRUE VIRTUE.

ITH the truly religious man, hopes and fears of any kind have small concern. He is securely fixed on a central point, and is not at all moved by the frigid or torrid influences.

He knows, indeed, that vice is evil, and leads to suffering; that virtue is good, and from it flows exhaustless enjoyment.

This, he perceives, lies in the unchangeable nature of things; but they are not the reason of his faith. His life is hid with God. His moral outgoings take their rise in Love and Duty. They are what they are, regardless of any gulf of Darkness, or land of Light and Beauty. Whither they go, light and beauty must be. His soul, like the holy city in the Apocalypse, needs not the light of the sun, nor of the moon-for it is the glory of God that lighteth it.

Not but that some have past, as by a reverse process, thrö craven fear or expectation (which is, in truth, the same face looking the other way,) to the true centre-but in whatsoever human soul these are the ground and resting point of outward profession,-true Religion has no home-it cannot live in an habitation so low, or in an atmosphere thus corrupt.

The manifestations of such professors-and their name is Legion—is regulated by heat— now rising to the boiling point, and now cooling down to zero. When the bottomless lake of fire and brimstone is beheld, blazing and glowing in frightful intensity, they burst out in contagious flames—the conflagration, like most fires, ending in smoke and ashes!

A true religious state is born of Truth, and Order, and Silence. It comes like the voice of far-off melody heard on a quiet summer eve-it comes like the sense of power and beauty on the contemplation of grand old ruins, or amid the fair solitudes of nature— and it grows like the feeling of holy Love in the virgin heart.

God is not in the thunder or the lightning, but in the 'still small voice.'

It unlocks the secret depths of the soul-it discloses the hidden glories of existenceand it is one with all truth, beauty, and goodness. It beholds its essence reflected in all nature-in science, in art, in every gentle feeling, in every true word and action,—or rather, it beholds in these the manifestation of THE ETERNAL GOOD.

P.

THE PRODUCE OF THE VINEYARD IN THE EAST."

By HENRY HOMES, American Missionary at Constantinople.

b

NA country where wine, as in America [or Britain], is known as a great promoter of the crime of drunkenness, and where the vintage is supposed to be gathered chiefly for the purpose of making wine, it is difficult for the mind to do justice to the common language of scripture which extols the vine and its products as one of the staffs of life. The fruits of the vine, designated by ten different words in the Bible, translated wine in our version, are in more than thirty different passages associated with tithes and offerings, or with corn and oil, as emblems of temporal blessings. Along with corn and oil, wine is almost always combined as the third representative of the three chief blessings of the year. Deut. vii. 13; Neh. x. 39.

с

Additional honor is bestowed on the vine, by the number of illustrations of most precious truths drawn from it. Nothing in the material world is so often employed in the Scriptures, as a symbol to convey spiritual truths, as the vine and its fruit.

Wine is supposed to be the chief thing obtained from the vine, and there is no substance now called 'wine' by any one, that is not intoxicating; therefore the mind asks that the propriety and consistency should be shown, of making such a natural source of evil, emblems of the staff of life along with corn and oil. The source of embarrassment seems to arise from the supposition, that the chief produce of the vineyard is and was that which we at this day universally call 'wine,' and that the vineyard was cultivated chiefly for its yielding such wine.

Now, as a resident in the East, we believe sufficient facts can be adduced to render it extremely probable that this supposition is erroneous, and that the fabrication of an intoxicating liquor was never the chief object for which the grape was cultivated among the Jews. If the grape had been abused in Judea to the extent it is now in some countries, merely for procuring an intoxicating liquor,—or if it had been of no more use for general purposes than it is in the more northern countries of Europe,-one may venture to suppose it would never have held in the Bible the prominent place, as a precious product, that it now does. Joined with the bread fruits and the olive tree, the three might well, under the comprehensive words of corn, wine (tirosh), and oil [or rather, corn-fruit, vine-fruit and orchardfruit], be representatives of the productions most essential to them, at the same time that they were those most abundantly provided for the support of life.

The existence of this variety of manufactures from the grape among the Jews, is suggested from the large number of Hebrew words translated by the single word 'wine,' and is distinctly intimated in Numbers vi. 3, 4. The reader may be prepared to make an inference from the statements we are about to make in regard to the varied productions of

Abridged from a larger article in the Bibliotheca Sacra, of May, 1848. We have retained the precise words of the author, and wherever we have introduced any of our own, they are enclosed in brackets. The notes are ours, and have appended the initials-P. M. b The words to which he refers are yayin, asis, hhamer, mesech, tirosh, ashishah, shemarim, sobhe, shechar, hhomets; but shechar is palm-wine,' and hhomets is 'vinegar. Anabhim (grapes) and tsimmukim (dried grapes) are never translated wine.-P.M. The three great classes of fruital produce in Palestine.—P. M.