placed under such a coercion as may restrain them from evil, and under such subjection to others as may bind their own interests permanently to the interests of their masters; this, also, is not cruelty and injustice, but the same merciful provision which places the infant in the cradle at the mercy and disposal of its parent, without will or voice of its

own.

But that lines and barriers of birth should be so rigidly drawn as to prevent the seeds of good which God has sown in the hearts of all men from springing up and bearing fruit; to condemn for ever to impotency and ignominy souls as capable of energy and nobility as that of the king upon the throne; to freeze and petrify the free atmosphere of society, so that the purer and healthier elements which are found even nearest the earth cannot find a passage and rise up to their natural elevation above it; this is to reverse the law of Nature, and to extinguish in the human heart that expansive and aspiring spark of hope, which, duly nurtured, is the life of a noble and holy ambition, as it is the antiseptic principle provided against the decay and corruption of all human things.

It is no essential evil to be born a slave, for Nature has made us all slaves at our birth. No slavery can be conceived more complete than that of an infant, dependent for food, for clothing, for ideas, for life, for motion, for every thing, upon the will of another; and compelled in every act to abandon its own will, without understanding the reasonableness, or feeling the enjoyment of the course prescribed for it. Yet in this very subjection lies its discipline for good, and the security for its happiness. But to have no power of becoming free, no opening to escape from its prison, no vent for that spring of power which struggles within it to the last, and cannot be para

lysed this is real slavery, real misery, real iniquity in those who create such a system.

Children, therefore, are trained to assume by degrees a fitting and manly independence; and those whom weakness, or even folly and vice, have placed at the disposal of their fellow-creatures, should be watched over and nurtured as beings capable of recovery, and the means of manumission in due time should be placed within their reach. And so with the poorest peasant; he should be invested with self-respect, with capability of exertion, with encouragements to an honourable ambition, with worldly means, with something of a superfluitysomething beyond that minimum of subsistence which is wholly absorbed in the support of the animal, and nurtures nothing but the animal; that, if it should so please Providence, he may, by honest industry, accumulate the means of raising his position in society. Wherever the poor are reduced to a minimum of subsistence, this advance is wholly impossible; and wherever gambling speculations and mere commercial covetousness prevail, there wages must be lowered to this point; and with so-called freedom of trade and liberty in government we insure the slavery-the most abject and hopeless slavery of the great bulk of the population, even as we are now doing in this country.

What is true of the poor is true also of all classes of the commonalty. To all alike should be open means and opportunities of elevating themselves in the social scale. There should be a power of conferring permanent nobility on those who distinguish themselves as individuals; yet not without a due attention to antiquity of family, and the permanent possession of hereditary property in land. There should be honourable professions open to all, in which personal worth may be exhibited and tried,

and the foundation laid for new houses, to become hereafter the materials for recruiting an exhausted nobility. As this progression mainly depends upon a power of accumulating wealth, and this accumulation upon the possession of a superfluity—(we need not pause at present to shew how this principle must be corrected, that it may not sink into covetousness) -a wise politician will check all those habits of expense and vulgar rivalry which induce families to live up to the full extent of their income, or even beyond it. As no accumulation can be safe or pro

fitable which is not the result and the indication of that patience, frugality, self-denial, integrity, and Christian liberality, without which the possession of wealth is only a snare and a curse, he will also discourage all habits of speculation and gambling; all modes of obtaining wealth by extortion, by oppression, by chance, by mean and paltry gains, by the encouragement of vice, by ministering to luxury, by fraud, by miserly habits. It is not possible to prevent the growth of wealth in some hands more than others. It is not wise to endeavour to suppress such a field and discipline for some of men's greatest virtues. It is equally impossible to prevent wealth from representing and conferring power; or power from assuming an authority in the affairs of State. But it is possible to distinguish between wealth honourably and legitimately acquired, and unhallowed hoards of rapacity and fraud.

CHAPTER XXII.

AND let us pause here to venture a few suggestions; little, I fear, in harmony with prevailing notions of the day.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable features in the organisation of society in this country is the constitution of the great professions of the law, the navy, the army, the medical profession, the great mercantile businesses, the official departments of the Government, and the Church; placed as they are between an hereditary nobility and landed gentry, and the great body of the lower classes. They act as organs of secretion, constantly absorbing into them large portions of the inferior orders, and gradually transmitting them into the higher ranks. They effect this quietly and insensibly; animating and invigorating the energy of the very poorest citizen by prospects of honourable advancement, and by so much consciousness of equality with the nobles as is contained in the possibility of being equalled; and at the same time feeding the permanent aristocracy with fresh supplies of personal merit, and preserving a balance and evenness of temperature, and freedom of circulation, in the whole atmosphere of society. It is impossible to overestimate the value of this constitution, or the importance of these middle classes, considered in this point of view. In them lies the practical exemplification and working of the freedom of the British Constitution; because through them the poorestborn may, by habits of industry and honesty, rise,

snare.

or see his children rise, to the highest position in the state, and become founders of a noble family. And this is a freedom which is not a fallacy and a It is not freedom to live without law, or to be governed by our own caprices: no tyranny can be more terrible. But it is freedom, honourable freedom, freedom encouraged and sanctioned by God Himself, not to be shackled and impeded by man in those honourable exertions which would develop and exercise our faculties in as wide a sphere as Providence may permit us to occupy.

But there are certain cautions to be observed in the regulation of these great professions, and certain errors now prevalent.

Is not this one, that the profession of the clergy is to be admitted as one of these organs for enabling the lower orders to penetrate permanently and to establish themselves among the higher ranks? Amongst the various defences of an Established Church, few have been more frequently and boldly put forward by its political supporters than this. And, in one sense, indeed, the Church is the great organ for this purpose. Perhaps it is, ultimately speaking, the only organ; because, without the spirit which it diffuses, and the lessons which it inculcates, no advancement in external prosperity can be safe or good. And it is also true, that no profession can or ought to absorb so large a proportion of the poor, or can so easily transmute them into an aristocracy of mind. Practically the Church in England has thus acted for years. But it is one thing to infuse that Christian spirit of gentleness, courtesy, self-respect, reverence, and love, which forms the true temper of a gentleman to infuse this into the son of the poorest peasant to draw daily from the village-school children, who, by their talent and goodness, may hereafter be placed as rulers over the Church; and