the contrast which the real world presented; he could not bear to see the purpose missed. The easy, good-natured folk looked on the world as something to eat in-drink in-sleep in-gossip in ; and as long as these ends were attained, the world was a very good world. They were satisfied, happy, sleek-minded ;—were not misanthropic.

The man who looked upon humanity as a high, holy thing, was a misanthrope; the men who were content with the grovellings that adhered to it, and fattened thereupon, were the reverse.

The man who felt how vast were the stores of wisdom, science, beauty, virtue, that might be evolved from the microcosm man; who felt that in that microcosm alone the universe could find an expression, and that humanity ought to be impressed, nay imbued with the importance of its mission,-such a man sighed over misplaced energics, and mistaken happiness, and was called a misanthrope.

He who considered man as a possible angel was a misanthrope; he who was content with him as an animal of a depraved kind was the reverse.

This is a strange condition of affairs! It is within an ace of formulizing itself into this definition : "A misanthrope is one who reveres the ideal of humanity." How the word reels and swerves from its etymology!

True, but then those sneers, those sarcasms, those utterances of discontent, that mark the misanthrope, do they not in some measure fit the origin? My friends, these very bitternesses show that the utterer has some high notion of humanity within his bosom. Why should he grumble at interestedness and servility, unless he perceived a capability in man to be disinterested and unservile? We do not grumble at a cow because she has no taste for music.

There is a sort of misanthrope, who rejoices over the weak parts of humanity, because he sees in them so many gates and wickets to his own advantage. He too utters his jibes and his jeers, and flaunts about in his disbelief of good. But him we exclude from our category. It is the mourning, repining, solitudeseeking misanthrope of whom we speak,-in whose laugh may be heard the sound of mournfulness.

It was a profound remark of Rousseau's, when he said that the "Misanthrope" of Molière was the only honest man in the play. But the misanthrope is not faultless,

no more than the

no

*

morbidness of whereof we spoke lately is all right. He solely compares erring individuals with the ideal, but he compares not age with age, so as to see that the present are nearer the ideal than many that preceded. His nobility consists in the loftiness of his standard; his uncharitableness in the absoluteness of its application.

The word,

The misanthrope loves man, but he loves not men. after all, may veer back to its etymology. Oh, my friends, believe in progress, - believe that mankind advances from bad to good,-believe that evil is a night-phantom that will vanish before the light of a better day,-nay, believe more, believe that it has its uses as a foil, as a stimulant, as a touchstone, till the end arrives. Believe in progress, if it be true -believe in it if it be not true. As Cicero preferred wrong with Plato, to right with any one else; so prefer being mistaken with your faith in progress, to being correct without such faith. ButI forget,—the faith in progress cannot be wrong,—if we believe in it really, truly, heartily-we effect it.

AN OPTIMIST.

THE TOWN-POOR OF SCOTLAND.

THERE is a rhetorical figure very rife among the writers of leading articles,-" The Public Mind." The monster intelligence which these words are meant to designate is very much influenced, as to the subjects which shall occupy it, by the public press. Hence, it may be regarded as a great joint-stock, of which the newspaper people are the directors, and in which the rest of the community are share-holders. Its chief employment is speechifying and boiling over with indignation against wrong. Wrongs, however, to be warmly denounced by it, must have a touch of romance in them; for the Public Mind is a sentimental mind. To commonplace, every-day woes and sufferings, the journalist finds it extremely difficult to direct its attention. The wronged, to obtain speedy consideration, must be a long way off;-up the Niger,

*Vol.. Page 489.

beyond the Rocky Mountains, or in South Africa. Victims of poverty and partial legislation, who starve at home, at our own back-doors, may be attended to at any time. Meanwhile the Public Mind is busy sending out tracts and missionaries to Ashantee, or ploughs, flax-seed, and theoretical farmers to Eboe-land; and the time for snatching its next-door neighbours from starvation and the grave is either long protracted or never comes. Thus it was that the South-Sea Islanders were converted, and two of the South African tribes made quite comfortable years ago; whilst any show of enlarged desire to ameliorate the condition of destitute Britons only began to be earnestly entertained during the winter of 1842. Even now, the Public Mind is very superficially informed on the subject.

For instance, no further off than Scotland, an amount of destitution has for the last dozen years existed which may be safely described as harrowing; and it is only till within the last month or two that we, on this side of the Cheviots, knew anything about it. A parliamentary inquiry was, it is true, instituted; but this had no effect on the Public Mind; for it could not wade through three uncommonly thick blue books of evidence. The most it could do was to glance over the thin report which accompanied them; and in that they found it decided, that the poor of Scotland are so well taken care of, that little or no legal interference in their favour is necessary. This was the decision of the six Scotch commissioners of inquiry; and although the seventh, and only English commissioner, was so convinced that the deductions in the report from the evidence were unwarrantable, that he refused to sign it, yet the Public Mind was not roused. It thought, perhaps, that the testimony of the six unanimous Scots ought to outweigh that of the single dissentient Englishman; forgetting, that, amongst themselves, the Scotch are an outrageously unanimous people. But the most harmonious community will have its little disagreements; and to one such fall-out the Public Mind is indebted for enlightenment on some very dark shadows in the picture of Scottish

institutions.

It is well known that the national unanimity by which Scotland is characterised has been recently interrupted by a split in the church. Last year, a vast body of the people went out from the establishment and erected places of worship of their own, wherever they could. It happened that on applying for sites in some of the

northern counties, they were refused. This was denounced as tyrannical; and the wrongs of the sect whom it affected were set forth from every Free-Kirk pulpit. In, however, discussing their spiritual, their temporal wrongs oozed out. It came to be explained that a very good reason for denying permission to erect more churches in Sutherlandshire existed in a system of political economy that has been carried out in that county for some years past; the object of which is to drive the poor away, to make room for sheep a kind of flock to which churches are of no manner of use. The system has been in full operation for some years, and would not in all probability have been fully imparted to the Public mind, if the Caledonians had kept as unanimous as usual. But the Free-Kirk people made the most of it, and took up one wholesale case with great effect. It was ascertained that on the 12th of last May, no fewer than ninety-one persons were to be removed from their homes in Ross-shire and Sutherlandshire. Public appeals were set on foot, some of them in the form of advertisements inserted in the Free-Kirk and other newspapers, and one was sent to the office of the "Times" in London. It appears that the case of heartlessness and oppression it set forth was too strong for belief, and the wary conductors of that journal refused to insert the appeal till they had instituted special inquiry into its truth. They forthwith despatched the gentleman by whose activity, discrimination, and literary talent so much good was previously effected for Wales. What he saw, and what he communicated, fully bore out the contents of the advertisements, and what seven government commissioners and their three enormous blue books (in which the whole story of the "clearances is-buried), were unable to do, this one intelligent gentleman, backed by the powerful journal he belongs to, promptly effected; the Public Mind was roused. To be sure there was everything in his favour to excite the sentimentality of the mens publica. The Highlands are not too near, and are, moreover, extremely picturesque; then the ninetyone poor creatures who were, as threatened, ruthlessly thrust from their homes on the 12th of May, were obliged to huddle all together in a tent pitched in the churchyard (that of Kincardine), where the bones of their fathers reposed; for none of the tenants who were allowed to remain, dared to shelter them under their roofs, for fear of being thrust from their homes also. All this was pretty and romantic, and the picture simply drawn excited the public mind to a high point of indignation against a system-a national system

We are

which could bring about such unmeasured oppression.* now going to give some idea of it, and then to show that the permanent destitution, starvation, and death which the Scotch poorsystem creates in large towns, is greater than that it brings about in the Highlands :—

First of the system. The poor in Scotland are treated not with regard to their necessities, but as a problem in economics, the terms of which are :-Given, so many poor; how can they be dealt with at the very least possible expense to the rich?

66

This is the way in which the problem is solved :—it is held as an axiom, that to provide for the poor is to demoralise them; to afford sustenance to keep them alive will of necessity ruin their characters. Legal assessments," it is argued, "tend to generate in the lower classes a spirit of servile dependence, and give encouragement to idleness and vice. Remove the sense of shame attached to the reception of charitable donations, and convert it into something like a feeling of right, and one of the strongest barriers to the increase of pauperism is taken away. As long as the poor have such a fund in prospect, their present wants employ their whole attention, and they seldom think of making provision for sickness and old age." In accordance with this assumption, the destitute in Scotland have not, as with us, any right to relief. Everything that is done for them is-they are assiduously made to understand-voluntary, and given as a charity; so that, whenever an individual gets so low in the world as to become a pauper, he is by that misfortune converted literally into a beggar. He either begs for relief at the Kirk sessions of a rural district, of the municipal authorities of a town, or is licensed by them to beg from door to door.

The second axiom is, that if you force the rich, by assessments, to contribute to the wants of the poor, you leave no room for the exercise of that large philanthropy and lavish liberality for which the Scottish nation is so widely celebrated! Let us see to what extent this national liberality goes: the only public fund to which the poor can, by Scotch law, look for relief, is that derived from charitable bequests, voluntary gifts of heritors (proprietors), and collections made on Sundays at the church-doors. Now, these

*The local papers inform us, that in the county of Ross-shire alone, the number of tenants who have received notice to "clear out" this year, is 403. † Analysis of the Statistical Account of Scotland, Part II. p. 160.