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through all the volumes of a work conceived in a spirit so charitable, making extracts as we proceed; but we must forbear, and merely indicate an outline of his topics.

The first volume treats of the religious view of indigence; the inequality of men; theories of civilization; of progress; of the principle of population; celibacy of priesthood; of labour; of the production, distribution, and consumption of riches; profits and wages; agricultural industry; manufacturing industry; machinery; the new feudal system; commercial industry; St. Simonism; taxes; luxury; ignorance and immorality of the working classes; political revolutions. The second volume treats of the condition and number of the indigent and of beggars in Europe; of charity and its application, private and public; of legislation in regard to the indigent.

The third volume is devoted to charitable institutions; the revision of the poor-laws; and to agriculture, considered as a means of relieving and preventing indigence.

He takes leave of his readers on the last page by saying, whilst lamenting the deficiencies of his work,

"Our intentions, however, will be understood and our efforts appreciated by those who have studied the moral causes and effects of misery, and reflected upon the means of prevention. Besides, our ambition will be satisfied if we shall awaken the attention of any of the governments of Europe to questions so vital to the present epoch; if we shall have aided in disseminating useful truths; and above all, if we shall have excited a spirit of charity in some Christian hearts."

"May that which we have been able merely to indicate, be completed and perfected by abler hands. The age is ripe to comprehend that social order must be based on laws, and confined within limits traced by an Almighty hand. To acknowledge this eternal truth, to return to our obedience to its dictates, that is the progress which ought to characterize our day, and for which we shall not cease to pray whilst we desire to promote human happiness."— Vol. iii. p. 584.

We should gladly extend our notices to other French works upon charity which are lying round us, making such extracts as might characterize them, but it would far exceed our limits.

There is another class of productions of great interest which we must pass over, devoted exclusively to the topics of pauperism, the poor, the wretched, the dangerous, the disinherited classes, the misery of the working classes, &c.: the titles of many of these, of great merit and breathing the very soul of humanity, and not unfrequently, also, the very spirit of Christianity, will be found in the preceding catalogue.

We must not, however, omit all mention of those which go to show that, while humanity and Christian sympathies are so intelligently excited in France in favor of the suffering, efforts are not wanting in the direction of a more enlarged treatment of the whole subject, and in the way of prevention of evils, as well as their cure. A discussion has been actively proceeding in France for many years, which, until very recently, could not be touched, much less endured, in England nor in the United States. The fact that the labouring classes-the great mass of producers, to whose industry we are chiefly indebted for our material comforts-do not receive a just remuneration of their labour, and do not enjoy their proper share of the blessings which social institutions should afford, is freely admitted in France, and the best minds of that country are devoting their energies and acumen to the solution of the great problem involved in the just reward of labour. They no longer meet this great question with the estoppels, that the poor will always be with us, and that inequalities of condition are inevitable: they feel the necessity, having granted the truth of these propositions, of inquiring, nevertheless, what can be done to diminish the number of the poor, and to render inevitable inequalities as tolerable as possible. They admit the necessity of seeking the clue to the true and just organization of labour, so that he who toils to earn a subsistence by the sweat of his brow may have some assurance that an undue portion of the avails of his labour shall not go to those who do not labour at all. It would require large space to bring before our readers even a slight indication of what has been written on this subject. It is well known that French authors have led the way in a change of historical writing, which is not only highly popular, but eminently philosophical and instructive-that of giving the history of people and their condition in past times, as well as the history of wars, of kings, of nobles, and of generals. This historical research has been applied specially to the subject of labour and labourers, with a constant view to the best interests of humanity. We might show what has been done by Thierry, Michelet, Guizot, and others, but their productions are sufficiently known and appreciated. We shall mention a few less known, but whose efforts have been exclusively applied to the subject. We refer with pleasure, among them, to one of signal ability and learning-The History of the Working Classes and the Town's People, by Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac, published in 1837. It was apparently intended as an introduction to a more extended work, but we have met with no continuation. It forms in its present state, a

very appropriate introduction to the history of the world, especially of the European world, and those countries of antiquity from which European civilization and institutions were derived. After pointing out the deficiencies of history in regard to the masses, the author enters upon his task of a brief, strong, and bold outline of the changes of condition which these masses have passed through in various stages of the progress of humanity. His sketch includes, of course, the history of slavery before the advent of Christianity, before which time, he says, the justice of the relation was never seriously questioned; and also after Christianity, the progress of which for several centuries was marked by the emancipation of immense multitudes of slaves, although neither Christ nor his apostles denounced it as inconsistent with their teachings. These enfranchisements, made with more kindness than prudence, he shows to have been the fruitful source of crime, misery, and degradation, among those who were freed from compulsory service, but not admitted to the full level of freemen, nor placed in a position where their labour would command a just remuneration. He shows that the worst of the European population are descendants of emancipated slaves, who, as a body, have sunk below the level of slavery, and have never been able to emerge into a better situation under European institutions. The crimes of slaves in the Roman Empire were far fewer than in the same number of the lower classes of modern Europe. Freedom from personal servitude in Christian Europe does not raise the masses to the level of slaves in the Roman Empire. This is illustrated and shown by a vast number of references and proofs, which make a strong impression of his correctness. We must add, as the result of our own investigations, that the feudal slaves liberated in England in the 15th and 16th centuries, sank after their liberation to the condition of paupers, from which, as a body, they have never emerged. Something more than liberty is due from the master to the slave, from the community to its poor, and from man to his neighbour. Our author dwells upon the rise of the commune, the isolated castles of the nobles, the cities, villages, and walled towns of the people, the history of property, and the history of the peasantry, so completely forgotten by historians. But we cannot enumerate the topics of a work so condensed. It is rich in alfusion to the Bible, of which the author had an enlightened comprehension, rich in classical allusion, in Greek and Roman antiquities, in knowledge of the civil law, in church history, and in the history of European civilization.

The History of the Working Class, from the Slave to the Proletaire of our Day, a work in four super-royal octavo volumes, by ROBERT (DU VAR,) Paris, 1847, is a production evidently dictated by an extreme regard for the best interests of the class of whom it treats. The first words of the author are:

"The increasing diffusion of knowledge, by awakening the sentiment of justice in souls the most withered, is extending daily the discovery of what is painful and grievous in the situation of the labouring classes. God forbid that any should be hereafter astonished that those who produce so much and consume so little should insist, by all possible arguments, upon the amelioration of their condition! This general feeling is to the thinking man a prophecy. It is the solemn guarantee of the early emancipation of labour."

After enlarging upon the importance of the history proposed, he proceeds :

"The very idea raises grave and capital questions: we inquire at once, by what great and terrible deviation from justice, human society has become so disturbed and so badly adjusted as to produce, for some only, wealth, leisure, liberty, and comfort, while leaving to the greater number only labour, misery, and all the ills of slavery? Whence springs this disinherited class ?"

Robert does not accord to slavery so high an antiquity as Granier de Cassagnac, but believes "there was a time when man was not the servant of man; when every one, living for himself, made his own wants his master, and gathered without hindrance the fruits of his own industry;" but he traces the poverty and misery of the masses at this day to ancient slavery.

"We have looked upon the toil of the slave of antiquity, the serf of the middle ages, and the labourers of modern times, and have set forth their reward in each period. We have lifted the veil at each epoch which conceals the misery of the working classes; we have not feared to descend to those minutiæ which, however apparently unimportant, are the real index of their condition; we have inquired, along the progress of ages, how they were nourished, lodged, and clothed, whose industry produced the food, built the houses, and manufactured the clothing."

"But the labourer, although a labourer, is yet a man in the fullest extent of the word, and as such he exists in the presence of the body politic. Citizen or not, the state, by the fact of his existence, is obliged to recognise his presenceto pronounce upon him;-hence the historian must take account of this legislation. From the definition of slavery by pagan laws to the legislation of the present day, by which the working-men are excluded from all voice in the direction of their own interests, and completely exiled from the path of power, we have noticed and numbered the charges which legislation has brought against them, the penalties it has inflicted, and the thousand chains in which it has held them bound."

"Of course, we have followed step by step the intellectua. compression to which they have been so long subjected, their consequent ignorance, and their dangerous prejudices: to give these facts full relief, we have disclosed the different methods of education and training successively applied to the masses."

"Consolation is not wanting as we advance to modern times, humanity, pushed on by the invincible cravings of its nature, appears to comprehend its old error. The revolts of the ancient slaves against their masters, those of the serfs of the middle ages against their lords, had for their chief motive anger, vengeance, and other hateful passions. Modern labourers begin to call to their aid philosophy and science; the organization of industry and the application of the principle of human brotherhood are the ideal which now stimulates the working classes. After having revolved for ages in the fatal circle of individualism, of war and contention, a necessity for harmony begins to be felt where irritation would be most excusable-order and peace begin to be sought in the arena of the interests of all."

These extracts are from the introduction. The field surveyed in this work is so extensive that we cannot even enumerate the topics. His notice of the influence of Christianity in procuring the enfranchisement of slaves is interesting:

"Certainly, that influence was remarkable. To pass from paganism to Christianity was to pass from slavery to liberty."—Vol. i. p. 247.

He examines the effects of slavery upon the habits and history of the enfranchised, and concedes that the blessing of liberty was far from an unmingled benefit. His details upon this head are of great interest, but his views of the whole subject are less broad than those of Granier de Cassagnac.

In the progress of his work he details, with evident satisfaction, the career of the great reformer Wickliffe, who attacked the Romish hierarchy with so much boldness and vigour; he tells us, that reformer disputed the theory of property, which was prevailing then in England, and insisted that the great wealth of the clergy was wholly inconsistent with their character, and that those who would be ministers of Christ must follow his example of poverty and personal kindness to the poor. He claims Wickliffe as an apostle of humanity, holding views in accordance with those of modern reformers, and then proceeds to show at length that John Huss followed him closely in these views. (Vol. iii. p. 356 and 386.)

Our author takes a wide distinction between the Protestant Reformation of Luther and his colleagues, and the reforms proposed by Wickliffe and Huss. The reforms of the former were merely aimed

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