good part of the world besides; and that, consequently, the labour market of the country is overstocked to such a degree that distress and want must be the necessary portion of a considerable number; but (mark the absurdity) never even so much as hinting the while that the 600,000,000 of steam rival operatives which have been created within the last century have in any way tended to produce the overstocking of the said labour market, nor venturing to propose that capitalists should be taught to restrain their passions (for wealth) and made to refrain from annually bringing so many steam labourers into existence. That there are too many steamengines and mechanical labourers is proved by the repeated gluts in the Manchester and other markets-such gluts being admitted on all hands to be the necessary consequences of over-production. Manchester manufacturers, however, while they admit the overproduction, attribute the glut rather to under-consumption, saying that it is impossible there can be too much calico till every man and woman in the kingdom has a superabundance of under-clothing. But how is it possible for working men and women to avail themselves of the superabundance of materials for shirts, shifts, and petticoats, when the only thing they have to give in exchange for such articles is their labour? and of this, by the invention of machinery, the division of labour, and the large system of production, we are daily depriving them-or, in other words, seeking how to produce more wealth with fewer labourers. When the economy of labour is the ruling principle of the science of manufacture, how can we wonder at the superabundance of labourers? Or, knowing these things, how can we, without laughing in our sleeve the while, seek to prove that such superabundance of labourers is due solely to the unrestrained sensuality of the working classes? With 600,000,000 of steam men to help to do the work of the nation, no wonder that a considerable portion of the 4,000,000 of human creatures can get little or no work to do! Wages depend, not only upon the proportion between the number of labourers and amount of money expended in the direct purchase of their labour, but also on-matters equally important for the right understanding of the subject, but as yet wholly omitted from all 'economical' consideration-the duration of the daily labour as well as on the rate of labouring; and, consequently, that anything which tends to increase either the number of labourersthe duration of their labour-or the rate of labouring, tends, in precisely the same proportion, not only to decrease the amount of money coming to the operatives, but (provided the prices to consumers remain the same) likewise to increase the amount of profits accruing to their employers. The Messrs. Nicol, of Regent-street,

are said to have amassed 80,000l. each, in a few years, simply by reducing the wages of the 1,000 workmen they employ to one-third below that of the honourable' trade."-London Labour and the London Poor.

NOTE C., page 32.

For this note and a portion of those which follow, I am indebted to Mr. Kay's work on "The Condition of the People in England and Europe." Mr. K. visited the continent as travelling bachelor of the University of Cambridge, and the strong testimony he has borne in favour of the peasant proprietorship of the continent is one of the marked signs of the times.

"Besides the depressing and demoralizing effect of our system of monopoly of land upon the peasants, another great evil which results from our English system of great and few farms, and great and few estates, is, that it drives vast numbers of the young peasants, and of the younger sons of farmers, into the manufacturing towns, and by overstocking the labour markets, renders it more and more difficult every year for the small shopkeepers and labourers of these towns to make a livelihood amid the ever increasing competition around them."-Kay, i. p. 372.

"I know not what others may think, but to me it is a sad and grievous spectacle, to see the enormous amount of vice and degraded misery which our towns exhibit, and then to think that we are doing all we can to foster and stimulate the growth and extension of this state of things, by that system of laws, which drives so many of the peasants both of England and Ireland to the towns, and increases the already vast mass of misery by so doing.

I speak with deliberation when I say, that I know no spectacle so degraded, and, if I may be allowed to use a strong word, so horrible, as the back streets and suburbs of English and Irish towns, with their filthy inhabitants; with their crowds of half-clad, filthy, and degraded children, playing in the dirty kennels; with the numerous gin-palaces, filled with people, whose hands and faces show how their flesh is, so to speak, impregnated with spirituous liquors-the only solaces, poor creatures, that they have!—and with poor young girls, whom a want of a religious training in their infancy and misery has driven to the most degraded and pitiful of all pursuits."

"Greater evils never threatened civilization and religion, than the great cities which have been springing into existence within the last one hundred years. If we would save civilization, religion, morality, and the happiness of the people, we must reform our

towns. And one great step towards that end will be, to do away with those causes which drive so many of our agricultural population into them."-Ib. pp. 373, 374.

NOTE D., page 33.

"The labourer has no longer any connexion with the land which he cultivates; he has no stake in the country; he has nothing to lose, nothing to defend, and nothing to hope for. The word 'cottage' has ceased to mean what it once meant-a small house surrounded by its little plot of land, which the inmate might cultivate as he pleased, for the support and gratification of himself and his family. The small freeholds have long since been bought up and merged in the great estates. Copyholds have become almost extinct, or have been purchased by the great landowners. The commons, upon which the villagers once had the right of pasturing cattle for their own use, and on which, too, the games and pastimes of the villagers were held, have followed the same course; they are enclosed, and now form part of the possession of the great landowners. Small holdings of every kind have, in like manner, almost entirely disappeared. Farms have gradually become larger and larger, and are now, in most parts of the country, far out of the peasant's reach, on account of their size and of the amount of capital requisite to cultivate them. The gulf betwixt the peasant and the next step in the social scale-the farmer-is widening and increasing day by day. The labourer is thus left without any chance of improving his condition. His position is one of hopeless and irremediable dependence. The workhouse stands near him, pointing out his dismal fate if he falls one step lower, and, like a grim scarecrow, warning him to betake himself to some more hospitable region, where he will find no middle-age institutions opposing his industrious efforts."Kay, i. pp. 362, 363.

"The social condition of the peasants in England and Wales has considerably deteriorated in the last half-century. Fifty years ago, the farms were very much smaller and much more numerous than at present; they did not require nearly so much capital to work them. They were not, therefore, removed nearly so far out of the reach of the peasants as at present. Any peasant, who was industrious and careful enough to lay by sufficient to stock a small farm, might reasonably hope to become a tenant of one."Ib. p. 364.

NOTE E., page 41.

"We see on every hand stately palaces to which no country in the world offers any parallel. The houses of the rich are more

gorgeous and more luxurious than those of any other land. Every clime is ransacked to adorn or furnish them. The soft carpets, the heavy rich curtains, the luxuriously easy couches, the beds of down, the services of plate, the numerous servants, the splendid equipages, and all the expensive objects of literature, science, and the arts, which crowd the palaces of England, form but items in an en semble of refinement and magnificence, which was never imagined or approached in all the splendour of the ancient empires.

"But look beneath all this display and luxury, and what do we see? A pauperized and suffering people.

"To maintain a show, we have degraded the masses, until we have created an evil so vast, that we now despair of ever finding a remedy. The Irish poor have drunk the dregs of the cup of misery, and are hardly kept from revolution by the strong arm of the soldiers and police; while the English poor are only saved from despair and its dread consequences by the annual expenditure of MANY MILLIONS in relief, which our own neglect and misgovernment have rendered necessary."-Kay, i. pp. 452, 453.

"An idle man is a public nuisance, and ought to be chased out of the hive of men. He fosters almost invariably immorality and vice. What shall we say, then, of a system which supports a crowd of idle men, and puts these idle men into the most influential places of the land?"-lb. p. 46.

NOTE F., page 62.

"In Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, the Tyrol, France, North Italy, Denmark, and Norway, the majority of the estates vary from 300 acres to 1 acre in size.”—Kay, i. p. 56.

"Holland has the honour of having been one of the first among European nations which recognised the truth that an uncivilized and degraded peasantry are always more immoral and wretched than one whose minds have been disenthralled, and whose tastes have been raised by a religious, moral, and intellectual education; and she has the still greater honour of having been one of the first to throw off the shackles of uncharitable and unchristian sectarianism, and to assert, and to act on the assertion, that the doctrines in which all Christian sects agree, are immeasurably more important than the doctrines in which they differ."-Kay, ii. p. 441.

'Nothing can exceed the cleanliness, the personal propriety, and the apparent comfort of the people of Holland. I did not see a house or fence out of repair, or a garden that was not carefully cultivated. We met no ragged or dirty persons, nor any drunken

men; neither did I see any indication that drunkenness is the vice of any portion of the people. I was assured that bastardy was almost unknown; and although we were, during all hours of the day, much in public thoroughfares, we saw only two beggars, and they in manners and appearance scarcely came within the designation.

"The Dutch people appear to be strongly attached to their government, and few countries possess a population in which the domestic and social duties are discharged with such constancy. A scrupulous economy and cautious foresight seem to be the characteristic virtues of every class. To spend their full annual income is accounted a species of crime. The same systematic prudence pervades every part of the community, agricultural and commercial, and thus the Dutch people are enabled to bear up against the most formidable physical difficulties, and to secure a larger amount of individual comfort than probably exists in any other country."Nicholl's Report on the Condition of the Labouring Poor.

Mr. H.D. Inglis gives the following account of the Engandine, a valley amongst the High Alps :-" In the whole of the Engandine the land belongs to the peasantry. . . . . Generally speaking, an Engandine peasant lives entirely upon the produce of his land, with the exception of the few articles of foreign growth required in his family, such as coffee, sugar, and wine. Flax is grown, prepared, spun, and woven, without leaving the house. He has also his own wool, which is converted into a blue coat, without passing through the hands of either the dyer or the tailor. The country is incapable of greater cultivation than it has received. There is not a foot of waste land in the Engandine, the lowest part of which is not much lower than the top of Snowdon. Wherever grass will grow, there it is; wherever a rock will bear a blade, verdure is seen upon it; wherever an ear of rye will ripen, there it is to be found. In no country in Europe will be found so few poor as in the Engandine. In the village of Suss, which contains about six hundred inhabitants, there is not a single individual who has not wherewithal to live comfortably; not a single individual who is indebted to others for one morsel that he eats."

Speaking of the Palatinate (Germany), Mr. Howitt says:-" The peasants are not, as with us, for the most part totally cut off from property in the soil they cultivate. They are the proprietors. It is, perhaps, from this that they are probably the most industrious peasantry in the world. They labour busily early and late, because they feel that they are labouring for themselves. Every man has his house, his orchard, his road-side trees, commonly so heavily laden with fruit, that he is obliged to prop and secure them

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