Thrift

MEANS OF SAVING.

Earnings of operatives--Colliers and iron-workers--Earnings of colliers--The revellers--Lord Elcho and the colliers--High wages and heavy losses--High wages and drink--Sensual indulgence--Indifference to well-being--Hugh Miller's experience--Mr. Roebuck's advice--Survival of slavery--Extinction of slavery--Power unexercised--Earnings and character--Ignorance is power--Results of ignorance--Increase of knowledge--Education not enough--Words of Sir Arthur Helps--Divine uses of knowledge--Public school education--Words of William Felkin. Pages 41--64

EXAMPLES OF THRIFT.

Spirit of order--Examples of economy--David Hume--Rev. Robert Walker--Self-application--Distinguished miners--Geo. Stephenson--James Watt--Working for independence--Working for higher things--Work and culture--Richardson and Gregory--Results of application--Distinguished artists--Canova and Lough--John Lough--Lough's success--Words of Lord Derby--James Nasmyth--Bridgewater foundry--Advice to young men. Pages 65--88

METHODS OF ECONOMY.

Keeping regular account--Generosity and forethought--Prudent economy--A dignity in saving--Self-improvement--Causes of failure--The price of success--Power of combining--Principle of association--Savings of capital--Loss by strikes--Money thrown away--Industrial societies--Co-operative companies--Equitable pioneers--Darwen co-operatives--Spread of co-operation--Thrift conservative--Uses of investments in building societies. Pages 89--109

ECONOMY IN LIFE ASSURANCE.

Co-operation in assurance--Improvidence cruel--Compensation of assurance--Benefit societies--French and Belgian thrift--Workmen's societies--Manchester Unity--Duty and Dinners--Low rates of contribution--Failure of friendly societies--Improvement by experience--Defects will disappear. Pages 110--122

SAVINGS BANKS.

Direct saving--Uses of saved money--Beginnings of savings banks--Dr. Duncan of Ruthwell--Establishment of savings banks--Classes of Depositors--Magic of drill--Military savings banks--Savings of soldiers--Soldiers abroad--Deposits in savings banks--Savings at Bilston--Savings of working men--Penny banks--Charles W. Sikes--Mechanics' institute banks--The poor man's purse--Depositors in penny banks--They cultivate prudent habits--Influence of women--Early lessons in thrift--Belgian Schools--Facilities for saving--Extension of savings banks--Money order offices--Post office savings banks--Charles W. Sikes--Lessons of thrift--Mechanics' savings banks--Savings of artizans--Savings in Preston. Pages 123--158

LITTLE THINGS.

Luck and labour--Neglect of little things--"It will do!"--Spending of pennies--The thrifty woman--A helpful wife--A man's daily life--The two workmen--Rights and habits--Influence of the wife--A penny a day--The power of a penny--Joseph Baxendale--Pickford and Co.--Roads and Railways--Business maxims. Pages 159--178

MASTERS AND MEN.

Want of sympathy--Masters and servants--Christian sympathy--Competition--What capital represents--Workmen and employers--The Ashworths--New Eagley Mills--Improved workpeople--Public spirit of manufacturers--Mr. Lister of Bradford--Mr. Foster's speech--Great men wise savers--Sir Titus Salt--Saltaire--Its institutions--Music and sobriety--Mr. Akroyd, Halifax--Yorkshire penny bank--Origin of the bank--How to help the poor--Saving helps sobriety--Drunkenness put down--"Childish work"--Penny banks. Pages 179--204

THE CROSSLEYS--MASTERS AND MEN (CONTINUED).

John Crossley--Martha Crossley--A courtship begun--A courtship concluded--John Crossley begins business--Dean Clough Mill--The Crossley family--Sir Francis Crossley--Martha Crossley's vow--Halifax People's Park--Martha's vow fulfilled--Co-operation of colliers--Partnership of industry--Other co-operative schemes--Jeremiah Head--Newport rolling mills--Bonuses to workmen--Mr. Carlyle's letter--A contrast--A hundred years ago--Popular amusements--Improvement of manners--English mechanics and workmen--English engineers and miners--Swiftness of machinery--Foreign workmen--Provident habits of foreigners. Pages 205--232

LIVING BEYOND THE MEANS.

Hypocrisy and debt--Conventionalism--Keeping up appearances--Exclusive circles--Women and exclusiveness--Women and extravagance--Running into debt--The temptation of shopkeepers--Temptations to crime--How crime is committed--Love of dress--Gents--Reckless expenditure--Knowledge of Arithmetic--Marriage--Happy tempers--Responsibilities of marriage--Marriage not a lottery--The man who couldn't say "No"--The courage to say "No"--"Respectable" funerals--Funeral extravagance--John Wesley's will--Funeral reform. Pages 233--258

GREAT DEBTORS.

Greatness and debt--Seedy side of debt--Running up bills--Loan clubs--Genius and debt--Fox and Sheridan--Sheridan's debts--Lamartine--Webster--Debts of men of science--Debts of artists--Italian artists--Haydon--The old poets--Savage and Johnson--Steele and Goldsmith--Goldsmith's debts--Goldsmith's advice--Byron's debts--The burden of debt--Burns and Sydney Smith--De Foe and Southey--Southey and Scott--Scott's debts and labours--Great poor men--Johnson's advice--Genius and debt--Literary men. Pages 259--285

RICHES AND CHARITY.

Helping the helpless--Dr. Donne--Rich people--Love of gold--Eagerness to be rich--Riches and poverty--Riches in old age--Riches no claim to distinction--Democrats and riches--Saladin the great--Don Jose de Salamanca--Compensations of poverty--Honest poverty--Poverty and happiness--Charity--Evils of money-giving--Philanthropy and charity--Rich people's wills--Stephen Girard--Thomas Guy--Educational charities--Peabody's benefaction--Benefactors of the poor--The Navvy's Home. Pages 286--314

HEALTHY HOMES.

Healthy existence--Necessity for pure air--The fever tax--The Arcadians--The rural poor--Influence of the home--Unhealthy homes--Health and drunkenness--Wholesome dwellings--Edwin Chadwick--Expectancy of life--The poor laws--The sanitary idea--The sanitary inquiry--Sanitary commission--Sanitary science--Results of uncleanness--Losses by ill-health--That terrible Nobody!--Home reform--Domestic improvement--Cleanliness--Dirt and immorality--Worship in washing--Knowledge of physiology--Domestic economy--English cookery--Morals and cookery--Work for ladies--Joseph Corbet's story. Pages 315--353

THE ART OF LIVING.

Art of living exemplified--Taste an economist--Contrasts in cottage life--Difference in workmen--Living at home--Home and comfort--Comfortable people--Beneficence of house thrift--Organization and method--Industry and punctuality--Management of temper--Good manners--Habitual politeness--French manners--Happiness in good manners--Amusement--Relaxation--Influence of music--Household elegance--Elegance of flowers--Common enjoyments--Portraits of great men--Art at home--Final art of living. Pages 358--378

INDEX 379

A FABLE.

A grasshopper, half starved with cold and hunger, came to a well-stored beehive at the approach of winter, and humbly begged the bees to relieve his wants with a few drops of honey.

One of the bees asked him how he had spent his time all the summer, and why he had not laid up a store of food like them.

"Truly." said he, "I spent my time very merrily, in drinking, dancing, and singing, and never once thought of winter."

"Our plan is very different," said the bee; "we work hard in the summer, to lay by a store of food against the season when we foresee we shall want it; but those who do nothing but drink, and dance, and sing in the summer, must expect to starve in the winter."

THRIFT.

INDUSTRY.

"Not what I have, but what I do, is my kingdom."--_Carlyle_.

"Productive industry is the only capital which enriches a people, and spreads national prosperity and well-being. In all labour there is profit, says Solomon. What is the science of Political Economy, but a dull sermon on this text?"--_Samuel Laing_.

"God provides the good things of the world to serve the needs of nature, by the labours of the ploughman, the skill and pains of the artizan, and the dangers and traffic of the merchant.... The idle person is like one that is dead, unconcerned in the changes and necessities of the world; and he only lives to spend his time, and eat the fruits of the earth: like a vermin or a wolf, when their time comes they die and perish, and in the meantime do no good."--_Jeremy Taylor_.

"For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; Our to-days and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build."--_Longfellow_.

* * * * *

Thrift began with civilization. It began when men found it necessary to provide for to-morrow, as well as for to-day. It began long before money was invented.

Thrift means private economy. It includes domestic economy, as well as the order and management of a family.

While it is the object of Private Economy to create and promote the well-being of individuals, it is the object of Political Economy to create and increase the wealth of nations.

Private and public wealth have the same origin. Wealth is obtained by labour; it is preserved by savings and accumulations; and it is increased by diligence and perseverance.

It is the savings of individuals which compose the wealth--in other words, the well-being--of every nation. On the other hand, it is the wastefulness of individuals which occasions the impoverishment of states. So that every thrifty person may be regarded as a public benefactor, and every thriftless person as a public enemy.

There is no dispute as to the necessity for Private Economy. Everybody admits it, and recommends it. But with respect to Political Economy, there are numerous discussions,--for instance, as to the distribution of capital, the accumulations of property, the incidence of taxation, the Poor Laws, and other subjects,--into which we do not propose to enter. The subject of Private Economy, of Thrift, is quite sufficient by itself to occupy the pages of this book.

Economy is not a natural instinct, but the growth of experience, example, and forethought. It is also the result of education and intelligence. It is only when men become wise and thoughtful that they become frugal. Hence the best means of making men and women provident is to make them wise.

Prodigality is much more natural to man than thrift. The savage is the greatest of spendthrifts, for he has no forethought, no to-morrow. The prehistoric man saved nothing. He lived in caves, or in hollows of the ground covered with branches. He subsisted on shellfish which he picked up on the seashore, or on hips and haws which he gathered in the woods. He killed animals with stones. He lay in wait for them, or ran them down on foot. Then he learnt to use stones as tools; making stone arrow-heads and spear-points, thereby utilizing his labour, and killing birds and animals more quickly.

The original savage knew nothing of agriculture. It was only in comparatively recent times that men gathered seeds for food, and saved a portion of them for next year's crop. When minerals were discovered, and fire was applied to them, and the minerals were smelted into metal, man made an immense stride. He could then fabricate hard tools, chisel stone, build houses, and proceed by unwearying industry to devise the manifold means and agencies of civilization.

The dweller by the ocean burnt a hollow in a felled tree, launched it, went to sea in it, and fished for food. The hollowed tree became a boat, held together with iron nails. The boat became a galley, a ship, a paddle-boat, a screw steamer, and the world was opened up for colonization and civilization.

Man would have continued uncivilized, but for the results of the useful labours of those who preceded him. The soil was reclaimed by his predecessors, and made to grow food for human uses. They invented tools and fabrics, and we reap the useful results. They discovered art and science, and we succeed to the useful effects of their labours.

All nature teaches that no good thing which has once been done passes utterly away. The living are ever reminded of the buried millions who have worked and won before them. The handicraft and skill displayed in the buildings and sculptures of the long-lost cities of Nineveh, Babylon, and Troy, have descended to the present time. In nature's economy, no human labour is altogether lost. Some remnant of useful effect continues to reward the race, if not the individual.

The mere material wealth bequeathed to us by our forefathers forms but an insignificant item in the sum of our inheritance. Our birthright is made up of something far more imperishable. It consists of the sum of the useful effects of human skill and labour. These effects were not transmitted by learning, but by teaching and example. One generation taught another, and thus art and handicraft, the knowledge of mechanical appliances and materials, continued to be preserved. The labours and efforts of former generations were thus transmitted by father to son; and they continue to form the natural heritage of the human race--one of the most important instruments of civilization.

Our birthright, therefore, consists in the useful effects of the labours of our forefathers; but we cannot enjoy them unless we ourselves take part in the work. All must labour, either with hand or head. Without work, life is worthless; it becomes a mere state of moral coma. We do not mean merely physical work. There is a great deal of higher work--the work of action and endurance, of trial and patience, of enterprise and philanthropy, of spreading truth and civilization, of diminishing suffering and relieving the poor, of helping the weak, and enabling them to help themselves.

"A noble heart," says Barrow, "will disdain to subsist, like a drone, on others' labours; like a vermin to filch its food out of the public granary; or, like a shark, to prey on the lesser fry; but it will rather outdo his private obligations to other men's care and toil, by considerable service and beneficence to the public; for there is no calling of any sort, from the sceptre to the spade, the management whereof, with any good success, any credit, any satisfaction, doth not demand much work of the head, or of the hands, or of both."

Labour is not only a necessity, but it is also a pleasure. What would otherwise be a curse, by the constitution of our physical system becomes a blessing. Our life is a conflict with nature in some respects, but it is also a co-operation with nature in others. The sun, the air, and the earth are constantly abstracting from us our vital forces. Hence we eat and drink for nourishment, and clothe ourselves for warmth.

Nature works with us. She provides the earth which we furrow; she grows and ripens the seeds that we sow and gather. She furnishes, with the help of human labour, the wool that we spin and the food that we eat. And it ought never to be forgotten, that however rich or poor we may be, all that we eat, all that we are clothed with, all that shelters us, from the palace to the cottage, is the result of labour.

Men co-operate with each other for the mutual sustenance of all. The husbandman tills the ground and provides food; the manufacturer weaves tissues, which the tailor and seamstress make into clothes; the mason and the bricklayer build the houses in which we enjoy household life. Numbers of workmen thus contribute and help to create the general result.

Labour and skill applied to the vulgarest things invest them at once with precious value. Labour is indeed the life of humanity; take it away, banish it, and the race of Adam were at once stricken with death. "He that will not work," said St. Paul, "neither shall he eat;" and the apostle glorified himself in that he had laboured with his own hands, and had not been chargeable to any man.

There is a well-known story of an old farmer calling his three idle sons around him when on his deathbed, to impart to them an important secret. "My sons," said he, "a great treasure lies hid in the estate which I am about to leave to you." The old man gasped. "Where is it hid?" exclaimed the sons in a breath. "I am about to tell you," said the old man; "you will have to dig for it----" but his breath failed him before he could impart the weighty secret; and he died. Forthwith the sons set to work with spade and mattock on the long neglected fields, and they turned up every sod and clod on the estate. They discovered no treasure, but they learnt to work; and when fields were sown, and the harvests came, lo! the yield was prodigious, in consequence of the thorough tillage which they had undergone. Then it was that they discovered the treasure concealed in the estate, of which their wise old father had advised them.

Labour is at once a burden, a chastisement, an honour, and a pleasure. It may be identified with poverty, but there is also glory in it. It bears witness, at the same time, to our natural wants and to our manifold needs. What were man, what were life, what were civilization, without labour? All that is great in man comes of labour;--greatness in art, in literature, in science. Knowledge--"the wing wherewith we fly to heaven"--is only acquired through labour. Genius is but a capability of labouring intensely: it is the power of making great and sustained efforts. Labour may be a chastisement, but it is indeed a glorious one. It is worship, duty, praise, and immortality,--for those who labour with the highest aims, and for the purest purposes.

There are many who murmur and complain at the law of labour under which we live, without reflecting that obedience to it is not only in conformity with the Divine will, but also necessary for the development of intelligence, and for the thorough enjoyment of our common nature. Of all wretched men, surely the idle are the most so;--those whose life is barren of utility, who have nothing to do except to gratify their senses. Are not such men the most querulous, miserable, and dissatisfied of all, constantly in a state of _ennui_, alike useless to themselves and to others--mere cumberers of the earth, who when removed are missed by none, and whom none regret? Most wretched and ignoble lot, indeed, is the lot of the idlers.

Who have helped the world onward so much as the workers; men who have had to work for necessity or from choice? All that we call progress--civilization, well-being, and prosperity--depends on industry, diligently applied,--from the culture of a barley-stalk, to the construction of a steamship,--from the stitching of a collar, to the sculpturing of "the statue that enchants the world."

All useful and beautiful thoughts, in like manner, are the issue of labour, of study, of observation, of research, of diligent elaboration. The noblest poem cannot be elaborated, and send down its undying strains into the future, without steady and painstaking labour. No great work has ever been done "at a heat." It is the result of repeated efforts, and often of many failures. One generation begins, and another continues--the present co-operating with the past. Thus, the Parthenon began with a mud-hut; the Last Judgment with a few scratches on the sand. It is the same with individuals of the race; they begin with abortive efforts, which, by means of perseverance, lead to successful issues.

The history of industry is uniform in the character of its illustrations. Industry enables the poorest man to achieve honour, if not distinction. The greatest names in the history of art, literature, and science, are those of labouring men. A working instrument-maker gave us the steam-engine; a barber, the spinning-machine; a weaver, the mule; a pitman perfected the locomotive;--and working men of all grades have, one after another, added to the triumphs of mechanical skill.

By the working man, we do not mean merely the man who labours with his muscles and sinews. A horse can do this. But _he_ is pre-eminently the working man who works with his brain also, and whose whole physical system is under the influence of his higher faculties. The man who paints a picture, who writes a book, who makes a law, who creates a poem, is a working man of the highest order,--not so necessary to the physical sustainment of the community as the ploughman or the shepherd; but not less important as providing for society its highest intellectual nourishment.

Having said so much of the importance and the necessity of industry, let us see what uses are made of the advantages derivable from it. It is clear that man would have continued uncivilized but for the accumulations of savings made by his forefathers,--the savings of skill, of art, of invention, and of intellectual culture.

It is the savings of the world that have made the civilization of the world. Savings are the result of labour; and it is only when labourers begin to save, that the results of civilization accumulate. We have said that thrift began with civilization: we might almost have said that thrift produced civilization. Thrift produces capital; and capital is the conserved result of labour. The capitalist is merely a man who does not spend all that is earned by work.

But thrift is not a natural instinct. It is an acquired principle of conduct. It involves self-denial--the denial of present enjoyment for future, good--the subordination of animal appetite to reason, forethought, and prudence. It works for to-day, but also provides for to-morrow. It invests the capital it has saved, and makes provision for the future.

"Man's right of seeing the future," says Mr. Edward Denison, "which is conferred on him by reason, has attached to it the duty of providing for that future; and our language bears witness to this truth by using, as expressive of active precaution against future want, a word which in its radical meaning implies only a passive foreknowledge of the same. Whenever we speak of the _virtue of providence_, we assume that forewarned is fore-armed, To know the future is no virtue, but it is the greatest of virtues to prepare for it."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Letters of the late Edward Denison._ p. 240.]

But a large proportion of men do not provide for the future. They do not remember the past. They think only of the present. They preserve nothing. They spend all that they earn. They do not provide for themselves: they do not provide for their families. They may make high wages, but eat and drink the whole of what they earn. Such people are constantly poor, and hanging on the verge of destitution.

It is the same with nations. The nations which consume all that they produce, without leaving a store for future production, have no capital. Like thriftless individuals, they live from hand to mouth, and are always poor and miserable. Nations that have no capital, have no commerce. They have no accumulations to dispose of; hence they have no ships, no sailors, no docks, no harbours, no canals, and no railways. Thrifty industry lies at the root of the civilization of the world.

Look at Spain. There, the richest soil is the least productive. Along the banks of the Guadalquiver, where once twelve thousand villages existed, there are now not eight hundred; and they are full of beggars. A Spanish proverb says, "El cielo y suelo es bueno, el entresuelo malo"--The sky is good, the earth is good; that only is bad which lies between the sky and the earth. Continuous effort, or patient labour, is for the Spaniard an insupportable thing. Half through indolence, half through pride, he cannot bend to work. A Spaniard will blush to work; he will not blush to beg![2]

[Footnote 2: EUGENE POITOU--_Spain and its People._ pp. 184--188.]

It is in this way that society mainly consists of two classes--the savers and the wasters, the provident and the improvident, the thrifty and the thriftless, the Haves and the Have-nots. The men who economize by means of labour become the owners of capital which sets other labour in motion. Capital accumulates in their hands, and they employ other labourers to work for them. Thus trade and commerce begin.

The thrifty build houses, warehouses, and mills. They fit manufactories with tools and machines. They build ships, and send them to various parts of the world. They put their capital together, and build railroads, harbours, and docks. They open up mines of coal, iron, and copper; and erect pumping engines to keep them clear of water. They employ labourers to work the mines, and thus give rise to an immense amount of employment.

All this is the result of thrift. It is the result of economizing money, and employing it for beneficial purposes. The thriftless man has no share in the progress of the world. He spends all that he gets, and can give no help to anybody. No matter how much money he makes, his position is not in any respect raised. He husbands none of his resources. He is always calling for help. He is, in fact, the born thrall and slave of the thrifty.

HABITS OF THRIFT.

"Die Hauptsache ist dass man lerne sich selbst zu beherrschen." [The great matter is to learn to rule oneself.]--_Goethe_.

"Most men work for the present, a few for the future. The wise work for both--for the future in the present, and for the present in the future."--_Guesses at Truth_.

"The secret of all success is to know how to deny yourself.... If you once learn to get the whip-hand of yourself, that is the best educator. Prove to me that you can control yourself, and I'll say you're an educated man; and without this, all other education is good for next to nothing."--_Mrs. Oliphant_.

"All the world cries, 'Where is the man who will save us? We want a man! Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This man--it is you, it is I, it is each one of us!... How to constitute oneself a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not how to _will_ it; nothing easier, if one wills it."--_Alexandre Dumas_.

Competence and comfort lie within the reach of most people, were they to take the adequate means to secure and enjoy them. Men who are paid good wages might also become capitalists, and take their fair share in the improvement and well-being of the world. But it is only by the exercise of labour, energy, honesty, and thrift, that they can advance their own position or that of their class.

Society at present suffers far more from waste of money than from want of money. It is easier to make money than to know how to spend it. It is not what a man gets that constitutes his wealth, but his manner of spending and economizing. And when a man obtains by his labour more than enough for his personal and family wants, and can lay by a little store of savings besides, he unquestionably possesses the elements of social well-being. The savings may amount to little, but they may be sufficient to make him independent.

There is no reason why the highly-paid workman of to-day may not save a store of capital. It is merely a matter of self-denial and private economy. Indeed, the principal industrial leaders of to-day consist, for the most part, of men who have sprung directly from the ranks. It is the accumulation of experience and skill that makes the difference between the workman and the _no_-workman; and it depends on the workman himself whether he will save his capital or waste it. If he save it, he will always find that he has sufficient opportunities for employing it profitably and usefully.

"When I was down in Lancashire the other day," said Mr. Cobden to his fellow-townsmen at Midhurst, "I visited a mill, in company with some other gentlemen, and that mill belonged to a person whose real name I will not mention, but whom for the present purpose I will call Mr. Smith. There could not have been less than three or four thousand persons engaged in this mill when it was at work, and there were seven hundred power-looms under one roof. As we were coming away, one of the friends who accompanied me patted the owner of the mill on the shoulder, and with that frank and manly familiarity which rather distinguishes the Lancashire race, he said, 'Mr. Smith was a working man himself twenty-five years ago, and he owes all this entirely to his own industry and frugality.' To which Mr. a week as a weaver at the power-loom, when she married me.'"

Thrift of Time is equal to thrift of money. Franklin said, "Time is gold." If one wishes to earn money, it may be done by the proper use of time. But time may also be spent in doing many good and noble actions. It may be spent in learning, in study, in art, in science, in literature. Time can be economized by system. System is an arrangement to secure certain ends, so that no time may be lost in accomplishing them. Every business man must be systematic and orderly. So must every housewife. There must be a place for everything, and everything in its place. There must also be a time for everything, and everything must be done in time.

It is not necessary to show that economy is useful. Nobody denies that thrift may be practised. We see numerous examples of it. What many men have already done, all other men _may_ do. Nor is thrift a painful virtue. On the contrary, it enables us to avoid much contempt and many indignities. It requires us to deny ourselves, but not to abstain from any proper enjoyment. It provides many honest pleasures, of which thriftlessness and extravagance deprive us.

Let no man say that he cannot economize. There are few persons who could not contrive to save a few shillings weekly. In twenty years, three shillings saved weekly would amount to two hundred and forty pounds; and in ten years more, by addition of interest, to four hundred and twenty pounds. Some may say that they cannot save nearly so much. Well! begin with two shillings, one shilling, or even sixpence. Begin somewhere; but, at all events, make a beginning. Sixpence a week, deposited in the savings bank, will amount to forty pounds in twenty years, and seventy pounds in thirty years. It is the _habit_ of economizing and denying oneself that needs to be formed.

Thrift does not require superior courage, nor superior intellect, nor any superhuman virtue. It merely requires common sense, and the power of resisting selfish enjoyments. In fact, thrift is merely common sense in every-day working action. It needs no fervent resolution, but only a little patient self-denial. BEGIN is its device! The more the habit of thrift is practised, the easier it becomes; and the sooner it compensates the self-denier for the sacrifices which it has imposed.

The question may be asked,--Is it possible for a man working for small wages to save anything, and lay it by in a savings bank, when he requires every penny for the maintenance of his family? But the fact remains, that it _is_ done by many industrious and sober men; that they do deny themselves, and put their spare earnings into savings banks, and the other receptacles provided for poor men's savings. And if some can do this, all may do it under similar circumstances,--without depriving themselves of any genuine pleasure, or any real enjoyment.

How intensely selfish is it for a person in the receipt of good pay to spend everything on himself,--or, if he has a family, to spend his whole earnings from week to week, and lay nothing by. When we hear that a man, who has been in the receipt of a good salary, has died and left nothing behind him--that he has left his wife and family destitute--left them to chance--to live or perish anywhere,--we cannot but regard it as the most selfish thriftlessness. And yet, comparatively little is thought of such cases. Perhaps the hat goes round. Subscriptions may produce something--perhaps nothing; and the ruined remnants of the unhappy family sink into poverty and destitution.

Yet the merest prudence would, to a great extent, have obviated this result. The curtailment of any sensual and selfish enjoyment--of a glass of beer or a screw of tobacco--would enable a man, in the course of years, to save at least something for others, instead of wasting it on himself. It is, in fact, the absolute duty of the poorest man to provide, in however slight a degree, for the support of himself and his family in the season of sickness and helplessness which often comes on men when they least expect such a visitation.

Comparatively few people can be rich; but most have it in their power to acquire, by industry and economy, sufficient to meet their personal wants. They may even become the possessors of savings sufficient to secure them against penury and poverty in their old age. It is not, however, the want of opportunity, but the want of will, that stands in the way of economy. Men may labour unceasingly with hand or head; but they cannot abstain from spending too freely, and living too highly.

The majority prefer the enjoyment of pleasure to the practice of self-denial. With the mass of men, the animal is paramount. They often spend all that they earn. But it is not merely the working people who are spendthrifts. We hear of men who for years have been earning and spending hundreds a year, who suddenly die,--leaving their children penniless. Everybody knows of such cases. At their death, the very furniture of the house they have lived in belongs to others. It is sold to pay their funeral expenses and debts which they have incurred during their thriftless lifetime.

Money represents a multitude of objects without value, or without real utility; but it also represents something much more precious,--and that is independence. In this light it is of great moral importance.

As a guarantee of independence, the modest and plebeian quality of economy is at once ennobled and raised to the rank of one of the most meritorious of virtues. "Never treat money affairs with levity," said Bulwer; "Money is Character." Some of man's best qualities depend on the right use of money,--such as his generosity, benevolence, justice, honesty, and forethought. Many of his worst qualities also originate in the bad use of money,--such as greed, miserliness, injustice, extravagance, and improvidence.

No class ever accomplished anything that lived from hand to mouth. People who spend all that they earn, are ever hanging on the brink of destitution. They must necessarily be weak and impotent--the slaves of time and circumstance. They keep themselves poor. They lose self-respect, as well as the respect of others. It is impossible that they can be free and independent. To be thriftless, is enough to deprive one of all manly spirit and virtue.

But a man with something saved, no matter how little, is in a different position. The little capital he has stored up, is always a source of power. He is no longer the sport of time and fate. He can boldly look the world in the face. He is, in a manner, his own master. He can dictate his own terms. He can neither be bought nor sold. He can look forward with cheerfulness to an old age of comfort and happiness.

As men become wise and thoughtful, they generally become provident and frugal. A thoughtless man, like a savage, spends as he gets, thinking nothing of to-morrow, of the time of adversity, or of the claims of those whom he has made dependent on him. But a wise man thinks of the future; he prepares in good time for the evil day that may come on him and his family; and he provides carefully for those who are near and dear to him.

What a serious responsibility does the man incur who marries! Not many seriously think, of this responsibility. Perhaps this is wisely ordered. For, much serious thinking might end in the avoidance of married life and its responsibilities. But, once married, a man ought forthwith to determine that, so far as his own efforts are concerned, want shall never enter his household; and that his children shall not, in the event of his being removed from the scene of life and labour, be left a burthen on society.

Economy with this object is an important duty. Without economy, no man can be just--no man can be honest. Improvidence is cruelty to women and children; though the cruelty is born of ignorance. A father spends his surplus means in drink, providing little, and saving nothing; and then he dies, leaving his destitute family his lifelong victims. Can any form of cruelty surpass this? Yet this reckless course is pursued to a large extent among every class. The middle and upper classes are equally guilty with the lower class. They live beyond their means. They live extravagantly. They are ambitious of glare and glitter--frivolity and pleasure. They struggle to be rich, that they may have the means of spending,--of drinking rich wines, and giving good dinners.

When Mr. Hume said in the House of Commons, some years ago, that the tone of living in England was altogether too high, his observation was followed with "loud laughter." Yet his remark was perfectly true. It is far more true now than it was then. Thinking people believe that life is now too fast, and that we are living at high-pressure. In short, we live extravagantly. We live beyond our means. We throw away oar earnings, and often throw our lives after them.

Many persons are diligent enough in making money, but do not know how to economize it,--or how to spend it. They have sufficient skill and industry to do the one, but they want the necessary wisdom to do the other. The temporary passion for enjoyment seizes us, and we give way to it without regard to consequences. And yet it may be merely the result of forgetfulness, and might be easily controlled by firmness of will, and by energetic resolution to avoid the occasional causes of expenditure for the future. The habit of saving arises, for the most part, in the desire to ameliorate our social condition, as well as to ameliorate the condition of those who are dependent on us. It dispenses with everything which is not essential, and avoids all methods of living that are wasteful and extravagant. A purchase made at the lowest price will be dear, if it be a superfluity. Little expenses lead to great.

Buying things that are not wanted, soon accustoms us to prodigality in other respects.

Cicero said, "Not to have a mania for buying, is to possess a revenue." Many are carried away by the habit of bargain-buying. "Here is something wonderfully cheap: let us buy it." "Have you any use for it?" "No, not at present; but it is sure to come in useful, some time." Fashion runs in this habit of buying. Some buy old china--as much as will furnish a china-shop. Others buy old pictures--old furniture--old wines,--all great bargains! There would be little harm in buying these old things, if they were not so often bought at the expense of the connoisseur's creditors. Horace Walpole once said, "I hope that there will not be another sale, for I have not an inch of room nor a farthing left."

Men must prepare in youth and in middle age the means of enjoying old age pleasantly and happily. There can be nothing more distressing than to see an old man who has spent the greater part of his life in well-paid-for-labour, reduced to the necessity of begging for bread, and relying entirely on the commiseration of his neighbours, or on the bounty of strangers. Such a consideration as this should inspire men in early life with a determination to work and to save, for the benefit of themselves and their families in later years.

It is, in fact, in youth that economy should be practised, and in old age that men should dispense liberally, provided they do not exceed their income. The young man has a long future before him, during which he may exercise the principles of economy; while the other is reaching the end of his career, and can carry nothing out of the world with him.

This, however, is not the usual practice. The young man now spends, or desires to spend, quite as liberally, and often much more liberally, than his father, who is about to end his career. He begins life where his father left off. He spends more than his father did at his age, and soon finds himself up to his ears in debt. To satisfy his incessant wants, he resorts to unscrupulous means, and to illicit gains. He tries to make money rapidly; he speculates, over-trades, and is speedily wound up. Thus he obtains experience; but it is the result, not of well-doing, but of ill-doing.

Socrates recommends fathers of families to observe the practice of their thrifty neighbours--of those who spend their means to the best advantage,--and to profit by their example. Thrift is essentially practical, and can best be taught by facts. Two men earn, say, five shillings a day. They are in precisely the same condition as respects family living, and expenditure Yet the one says he cannot save, and does not; while the other says he can save, and regularly deposits part of his savings in a savings bank, and eventually becomes a capitalist.

Samuel Johnson fully knew the straits of poverty. He once signed his name _Impransus_, or _Dinnerless_. He had walked the streets with Savage, not knowing where to lay his head at night. Johnson never forgot the poverty through which he passed in his early life, and he was always counselling his friends and readers to avoid it. Like Cicero, he averred that the best source of wealth or well-being was economy. He called it the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the mother of Liberty. his mind, his character. Self-respect, originating in self-love, instigates the first step of improvement. It stimulates a man to rise, to look upward, to develop his intelligence, to improve his condition. Self-respect is the root of most of the virtues--of cleanliness, chastity, reverence, honesty, sobriety. To think meanly of one's self is to sink; sometimes to descend a precipice at the bottom of which is infamy.

Every man can help himself to some extent. We are not mere straws thrown on the current to mark its course; but possessed of freedom of action, endowed with power to stem the waves and rise above them, each marking out a course for himself. We can each elevate ourselves in the scale of moral being. We can cherish pure thoughts. We can perform good actions. We can live soberly and frugally. We can provide against the evil day. We can read good books, listen to wise teachers, and place ourselves under the divinest influences on earth. We can live for the highest purposes, and with the highest aims in view.

"Self-love and social are the same," says one of our poets. The man who improves himself, improves the world. He adds one more true man to the mass. And the mass being made up of individuals, it is clear that were each to improve himself, the result would be the improvement of the whole. Social advancement is the consequence of individual advancement. The whole cannot be pure, unless the individuals composing it are pure. Society at large is but the reflex of individual conditions. All this is but the repetition of a truism, but truisms have often to be repeated to make their full impression.

Then again, a man, when he has improved himself, is better able to improve those who are brought into contact with him. He has more power. His sphere of vision is enlarged. He sees more clearly the defects in the condition of others that might be remedied. He can lend a more active helping hand to raise them. He has done his duty by himself, and can with more authority urge on others the necessity of doing the like duty to themselves. How can a man be a social elevator, who is himself walking in the mire of self-indulgence? How can he teach sobriety or cleanliness, if he be himself drunken or foul? "Physician, heal thyself," is the answer of his neighbours.

The sum and substance of our remarks is this: In all the individual reforms or improvements that we desire, we must begin with ourselves. We must exhibit our gospel in our own life. We must teach by our own example. If we would have others elevated, we must elevate ourselves. Each man can exhibit the results in his own person. He can begin with self-respect.

The uncertainty of life is a strong inducement to provide against the evil day. To do this is a moral and social, as well as a religious duty. "He that provideth not for his own, and especially for those of his own household, hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."

The uncertainty of life is proverbially true. The strongest and healthiest man may be stricken down in a moment, by accident or disease. If we take human life in the mass, we cannot fail to recognize the uncertainty of life as much as we do the certainty of death.

There is a striking passage in Addison's "Vision of Mirza," in which life is pictured as a passage over a bridge of about a hundred arches. A black cloud hangs over each end of the bridge. At the entrance to it there are hidden pitfalls very thickly set, through which throngs disappear, so soon as they have placed their feet on the bridge. They grow thinner towards the centre; they gradually disappear; until at length only a few persons reach the further side, and these also having dropped through the pitfalls, the bridge at its further extremity becomes entirely clear. The description of Addison corresponds with the results of the observations made as to the duration of human life.

Thus, of a hundred thousand persons born in this country, it has been ascertained that a fourth of them die before they have reached their fifth year; and one-half before they have reached their fiftieth year. One thousand one hundred will reach their ninetieth year. Sixteen will live to a hundred. And only two persons out of the hundred thousand--like the last barks of an innumerable convoy, will reach the advanced and helpless age of a hundred and five years.

Two things are very obvious,--the uncertainty as to the hour of death in individuals, but the regularity and constancy of the circumstances which influence the duration of human life in the aggregate. It is a matter of certainty that the _average_ life of all persons born in this country extends to about forty-five years. This has been proved by a very large number of observations of human life and its duration.

Equally extensive observations have been made as to the average number of persons of various ages who die yearly. It is always the number of the experiments which gives the law of the probability. It is on such observations that the actuary founds his estimates of the mortality that exists at any given period of life. The actuary tells you that he has been guided by the Laws of Mortality. Now the results must be very regular, to justify the actuary in speaking of Mortality as governed by Laws. And yet it is so.

Indeed, there would seem to be no such thing as chance in the world. Man lives and dies in conformity to a law. A sparrow falls to the ground in obedience to a law. Nay, there are matters in the ordinary transactions of life, such as one might suppose were the mere result of chance, which are ascertained to be of remarkable accuracy when taken in the mass. For instance, the number of letters put in the post-office without an address; the number of letters wrongly directed; the number containing money; the number unstamped; continue nearly the same, in relation to the number of letters posted, from one year to another.

Now it is the business of man to understand the laws of health, and to provide against their consequences,--as, for instance, in the matter of sickness, accident, and premature death. We cannot escape the consequences of transgression of the natural laws, though we may have meant well. We must have done well. The Creator does not alter His laws to accommodate them to our ignorance. He has furnished us with intelligence, so that we may understand them and act on them: otherwise we must suffer the consequences in inevitable pain and sorrow.

We often hear the cry raised, "Will nobody help us?" It is a spiritless, hopeless cry. It is sometimes a cry of revolting meanness, especially when it issues from those who with a little self-denial, sobriety, and thrift, might easily help themselves.

Many people have yet to learn, that virtue, knowledge, freedom, and prosperity must spring from themselves. Legislation can do very little for them: it cannot make them sober, intelligent, and well-doing. The prime miseries of most men have their origin in causes far removed from Acts of Parliament.

The spendthrift laughs at legislation. The drunkard defies it, and arrogates the right of dispensing with forethought and self-denial,--throwing on others the blame of his ultimate wretchedness. The mob orators, who gather "the millions" about them, are very wide of the mark, when, instead of seeking to train their crowd of hearers to habits of frugality, temperance, and self-culture, they encourage them to keep up the cry, "Will nobody help us?"

The cry sickens the soul. It shows gross ignorance of the first elements of personal welfare. Help is in men themselves. They were born to help and to elevate themselves. They must work out their own salvation. The poorest men have done it; why should not every man do it? The brave, upward spirit ever conquers.

The number of well-paid workmen in this country has become very large, who might easily save and economize, to the improvement of their moral well-being, of their respectability and independence, and of their status in society as men and citizens. They are improvident and thriftless to an extent which proves not less hurtful to their personal happiness and domestic comfort, than it is injurious to the society of which they form so important a part.

In "prosperous times" they spend their gains recklessly, and when adverse times come, they are at once plunged in misery. Money is not used, but abused; and when wage-earning people should be providing against old age, or for the wants of a growing family, they are, in too many cases, feeding folly, dissipation, and vice. Let no one say that this is an exaggerated picture. It is enough to look round in any neighbourhood, and see how much is spent and how little is saved; what a large proportion of earnings goes to the beershop, and how little to the savings bank or the benefit society.

"Prosperous times" are very often the least prosperous of all times. In prosperous times, mills are working full time; men, women, and children are paid high wages; warehouses are emptied and filled; goods are manufactured and exported; wherries full of produce pass along the streets; immense luggage trains run along the railways, and heavily-laden ships leave our shores daily for foreign ports, full of the products of our industry. Everybody seems to be becoming richer and more prosperous. But we do not think of whether men and women are becoming wiser, better trained, less self-indulgent, more religiously disposed, or living for any higher purpose than the satisfaction of the animal appetite.

If this apparent prosperity be closely examined, it will be found that expenditure is increasing in all directions. There are demands for higher wages; and the higher wages, when obtained, are spent as soon as earned. Intemperate habits are formed, and, once formed, the habit of intemperance continues. Increased wages, instead of being saved, are for the most part spent in drink.

Thus, when a population is thoughtless and improvident, no kind of material prosperity will benefit them. Unless they exercise forethought and economy, they will alternately be in a state of "hunger and burst." When trade falls off, as it usually does after exceptional prosperity, they will not be comforted by the thought of what they _might_ have saved, had it ever occurred to them that the "prosperous times" might not have proved permanent.

During prosperous times, Saint Monday is regularly observed. The Bank Holiday is repeated weekly. " said a master to his foreman on going the rounds among his builders,--this work must be pushed on and covered in while the fine weather lasts." "Why, sir," said the foreman, "this is Monday; and they have not spent all their money yet." Dean Boyd, preaching at Exeter on behalf of the Devonshire hospitals, expressed his belief that the annual loss to the workpeople engaged in the woollen manufacture, the cotton trade, the bricklaying and building trade, by Idle Monday, amounted to over seven millions sterling. If man's chief end were to manufacture cloth, silk, cotton, hardware, toys, and china; to buy in the cheapest market, and to sell in the dearest; to cultivate land, grow corn, and graze cattle; to live for mere money profit, and hoard or spend, as the case might be, we might then congratulate ourselves on our National Prosperity.

But is this the chief end of man? Has he not faculties, affections, and sympathies, besides muscular organs? Has not his mind and heart certain claims, as well as his mouth and his back? Has he not a soul as well as a stomach? And ought not "prosperity" to include the improvement and well-being of his morals and intellect as well as of his bones and muscles?

Mere money is no indication of prosperity. A man's nature may remain the same. It may even grow more stunted and deformed, while he is doubling his expenditure, or adding cent, per cent, to his hoards yearly. It is the same with the mass. The increase of their gains may merely furnish them with increased means for gratifying animal indulgences, unless their moral character keeps pace with their physical advancement. Double the gains of an uneducated, overworked man, in a time of prosperity, and what is the result? Simply that you have furnished him with the means of eating and drinking more! Thus, not even the material well-being of the population is secured by that condition of things which is defined by political economists as "National Prosperity." And so long as the moral elements of the question are ignored, this kind of "prosperity" is, we believe, calculated to produce far more mischievous results than good.

It is knowledge and virtue alone that can confer dignity on a man's life; and the growth of such qualities in a nation are the only true marks of its real prosperity; not the infinite manufacture and sale of cotton prints, toys, hardware, and crockery. The Bishop of Manchester, when preaching at a harvest thanksgiving near Preston, referred to a letter which he had received from a clergyman in the south of England, who, after expressing his pleasure at the fact that the agricultural labourers were receiving higher wages, lamented "that at present the only result he could discover from their higher wages was that a great deal _more beer_ was consumed. If this was the use we were making of this prosperity, we could hardly call it a blessing for which we had a right or ground to thank God.

The true prosperity of the nation consisted not so much in the fact that the nation was growing in wealth--though wealth was a necessary attribute of prosperity--but that it was growing in virtue; and that there was a more equable distribution of comfort, contentment, and the things of this lower world."

In making the preceding observations we do not in the least advocate the formation of miserly, penurious habits; for we hate the scrub, the screw, the miser. All that we contend for is, that man should provide for the future,--that they should provide during good times for the bad times which almost invariably follow them,--that they should lay by a store of savings as a breakwater against want, and make sure of a little fund which may maintain them in old age, secure their self-respect, and add to their personal comfort and social well-being. Thrift is not in any way connected with avarice, usury, greed, or selfishness. It is, in fact, the very reverse of these disgusting dispositions.

It means economy for the purpose of securing independence. Thrift requires that money should be used and not abused--that it should be honestly earned and economically employed--

"Not for to put it in a hedge, Not for a train attendent,-- But for the glorious privilege Of being Independent."

IMPROVIDENCE.

"The man who has a wife and children has given hostages to fortune."--_Lord Bacon._

"In all conditions and circumstances, well-being is in the power of those who have power over themselves."--_J.J. Gurney_.

"Where is their common sense? Alas, what imprudence! Early marriages; many children; poor-rates, and the workhouse.... They are born; they are wretched; they die.... In no foreign country of far less civilization than England, is there the same improvidence."--_Lord Lytton_.

"No man oppresses thee, O free and independent franchiser; but does not this stupid pewter pot oppress thee? No son of Adam can bid thee come or go, but this absurd pot of heavy-wet can and does, Thou art the thrall, not of Cedric the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites, and this accursed dish of liquor. And thou pratest of thy 'liberty,' thou entire blockhead!"--_Carlyle_.

"Never did any publike misery Rise of it selfe; God's plagues still grounded are On common staines of our Humanity: And to the flame, which ruineth Mankind, Man gives the matter, or at least gives winde."--_Daniell_.

England is one of the richest countries in the world. Our merchants are enterprising, our manufacturers are industrious, our labourers are hard-working. There is an accumulation of wealth in the country to which past times can offer no parallel. The Bank is gorged with gold. There never was more food in the empire; there never was more money. There is no end to our manufacturing productions, for the steam-engine never tires. And yet notwithstanding all this wealth, there is an enormous mass of poverty. Close alongside the Wealth of Nations, there gloomily stalks the Misery of Nations,--luxurious ease resting on a dark background of wretchedness.

Parliamentary reports have again and again revealed to us the miseries endured by certain portions of our working population. They have described the people employed in factories, workshops, mines, and brickfields, as well as in the pursuits of country life. We have tried to grapple with the evils of their condition by legislation, but it seems to mock us. Those who sink into poverty are fed, but they remain paupers. Those who feed them, feel no compassion; and those who are fed, return no gratitude. There is no bond of sympathy between the givers and the receivers. Thus the Haves and the Have-nots, the opulent and the indigent, stand at the two extremes of the social scale, and a wide gulf is fixed between them.

Among rude and savage people, the condition of poverty is uniform. Provided the bare appetites are satisfied, suffering is scarcely felt. Where slavery exists, indigence is little known; for it is the master's interest to keep the slave in a condition fit for labour, and the employer generally takes care to supply the animal wants of the employed. It is only when society becomes civilized and free, and man enters into competition with his fellows, that he becomes exposed to indigence, and experiences social misery. Where civilization, as in this country, has reached its highest point, and where large accumulations of wealth have been made, the misery of the indigent classes is only rendered more acute by the comfort and luxury with which it is placed in immediate contrast.

Much of the existing misery is caused by selfishness--by the greed to accumulate wealth on the one hand, and by improvidence on the other. Accumulation of money has become the great desire and passion of the age. The wealth of nations, and not the happiness of nations, is the principal aim. We study political economy, and let social economy shift for itself. Regard for "Number One" is the prevailing maxim.

High profits are regarded as the _summum bonum_,--no matter how obtained, or at what sacrifice. Money is our god: "Devil take the hindmost" our motto. The spirits of darkness rule supreme--

"Mammon has led them on, Mammon, the least erect of all the spirits That fell from Heaven."

With respect to the poorer classes,--what has become of them in the midst of our so-called civilization? An immense proportion of them remain entirely uncivilized. Though living in a Christian country, Christianity has never reached them. They are as uncivilized and unchristianized as the Trinobantes were at the landing of Julius Caesar, about nineteen hundred years ago. Yet these uncivilized people live in our midst. St. James's and St. Giles's lie close together. In the Parks of London, you may see how gold is worshipped; in the East End of London, you may see to what depths human misery may fall.

They work, eat, drink, and sleep: that constitutes their life. They think nothing of providing for to-morrow, or for next week, or for next year. They abandon themselves to their sensual appetites; and make no provision whatever for the future. The thought of adversity, or of coming sorrow, or of the helplessness that comes with years and sickness, never crosses their minds. In these respects, they resemble the savage tribes, who know no better, and do no worse. Like the North American Indians, they debase themselves by the vices which accompany civilization, but make no use whatever of its benefits and advantages.

Captain Parry found the Esquimaux near the North Pole as uncivilized as the miserable creatures who inhabit the dens of our great cities. They were, of course, improvident; for, like savages generally, they never save. They were always either feasting or famished.

When they found a quantity of whale's blubber, they would eat as much of it as they could, and hide the rest. Yet their improvidence gave them no concern. Even when they had been without food or fuel for days together, they would be as gay and good-humoured as usual. They never thought of how they should be provided for to-morrow. Saving for the future forms no part of the savage economy.

Among civilized peoples, cold is said to be the parent of frugality. Thus the northern nations of Europe owe a portion of their prosperity to the rigour of their climate. Cold makes them save during summer, to provide food, coal, and clothing during winter. It encourages house-building and housekeeping. Hence Germany is more industrious than Sicily; Holland and Belgium than Andalusia; North America and Canada than Mexico.

for Newark, with unexampled self-denial, gave up a large portion of his time and labour to reclaim the comparatively uncivilized population of the East End of London, the first thing he did was to erect an iron church of two stories, the lower part of which was used as a school and lecture room, and also as a club where men and boys might read, play games, and do anything else that might keep them out of the drinking-houses. "What is so bad in this quarter," said Mr. The Mission Clergyman," he goes on to say, "is a sensible, energetic man, in whose hands the work of _civilizing the people_ is making as much progress as can be expected. But most of his energy is taken up in serving tables, nor can any great advance be made while every nerve has to be strained to keep the people from absolute starvation.

What a monstrous thing it is that in the richest country in the world, large masses of the population should be condemned annually, by a natural operation of nature, to starvation and death. It is all very well to say, how can it be helped? Why, it was not so in our grandfathers' time. Behind us they were in many ways, but they were not met every winter with the spectacle of starving thousands. The fact is, we have accepted the marvellous prosperity which has in the last twenty years been granted us, without reflecting on the conditions attached to it, and without nerving ourselves to the exertion and the sacrifices which their fulfilment demands."

And yet Mr. Denison clearly saw that if the people were sufficiently educated, and taught to practise the virtue of Thrift, much of this misery might be prevented. "The people," he elsewhere says, "_create_ their destitution and their disease. Probably there are hardly any of the most needy who, if they had been only moderately frugal and provident, could not have placed themselves in a position to tide over the occasional months of want of work, or of sickness, which there always must be.... I do not underrate the difficulty of laying by out of weekly earnings, but I say it _can_ be done. A dock-labourer, while a young, strong, unmarried man, could lay by half his weekly wages, and such men are almost sure of constant employment."

After showing how married men might also save, Mr. Denison goes on to say, "Saving is within the reach of nearly every man, even if quite at the bottom of the tree; but if it were of anything like _common_ occurrence, the destitution and disease of this city would be kept within quite manageable limits. And this will take place. I may not live to see it, but it will be within two generations. For, unfortunately, this amount of change may be effected without the least improvement in the spiritual condition of the people. Good laws, energetically enforced, with compulsory education, supplemented by gratuitous individual exertion (which will then have a much reduced field and much fairer prospects), will certainly succeed in giving the mass of the people so much light as will generally guide them into so much industry and morality as is clearly conducive to their bodily ease and advancement in life."

The difference in thriftiness between the English workpeople and the inhabitants of Guernsey is thus referred to by Mr. Denison: "The difference between poverty and pauperism is brought home to us very strongly by what I see here. In England, we have people faring sumptuously while they are getting good wages, and coming on the parish paupers the moment those wages are suspended. Here, people are never dependent on any support but their own; but they live, of their own free will, in a style of frugality which a landlord would be hooted at for suggesting to his cottagers. We pity Hodge, reduced to bacon and greens, and to meat only once a week. The principal meal of a Guernsey farmer consists of _soupe à la graisse_, which is, being interpreted, cabbage and peas stewed with a little dripping. This is the daily dinner of men who _own_ perhaps three or four cows, a pig or two, and poultry. "[1]

[Footnote 1: _Letters and other writings of the late Edward Denison, M.P._, pp. 141, 142.]

Mr. Dension died before he could accomplish much. He was only able to make a beginning. The misery, arising from improvidence, which he so deeply deplored, still exists, and is even more widely spread. It is not merely the artizan who spends all that he earns, but the classes above him, who cannot plead the same excuse of ignorance. Many of what are called the "upper" classes are no more excusable than the "lower." They waste their means on keeping up appearances, and in feeding folly, dissipation, and vice.

No one can reproach the English workman with want of industry. He works harder and more skilfully than the workman of any other country; and he might be more comfortable and independent in his circumstances, were he as prudent as he is laborious. But improvidence is unhappily the defect of the class. Even the best-paid English workmen, though earning more money than the average of professional men, still for the most part belong to the poorer classes because of their thoughtlessness. In prosperous times they are not accustomed to make provision for adverse times; and when a period of social pressure occurs, they are rarely found more than a few weeks ahead of positive want.

Hence, the skilled workman, unless trained in good habits, may exhibit no higher a life than that of the mere animal; and the earning of increased wages will only furnish him with increased means for indulging in the gratification of his grosser appetites. Mr. Chadwick says, that during the Cotton Famine, "families trooped into the relief rooms in the most abject condition, whose previous aggregate wages exceeded the income of many curates,--as had the wages of many of the individual workmen."[1] In a time of prosperity, working-people feast, and in a time of adversity they "clem." Their earnings, to use their own phrase, "come in at the spigot and go out at the bunghole." When prosperity comes to an end, and they are paid off, they rely on chance and providence--the providence of the Improvident!

[Footnote 1: _Address on Economy and Trade._ By EDWIN CHADWICK, C.B., p. 22.]

Though trade has invariably its cycles of good and bad years, like the lean and fat kine in Pharaoh's dream--its bursts of prosperity, followed by glut, panic, and distress--the thoughtless and spendthrift take no heed of experience, and make no better provision for the future. Improvidence seems to be one of the most incorrigible of faults. "There are whole neighbourhoods in the manufacturing districts," says Mr. Baker in a recent Report, "where not only are there no savings worth mentioning, but where, within a fortnight of being out of work, the workers themselves are starving for want of the merest necessaries." Not a strike takes place, but immediately the workmen are plunged in destitution; their furniture and watches are sent to the pawnshop, while deplorable appeals are made to the charitable, and numerous families are cast on the poor-rates.

This habitual improvidence--though of course there are many admirable exceptions--is the real cause of the social degradation of the artizan. This too is the prolific source of social misery. But the misery is entirely the result of human ignorance and self-indulgence. For though the Creator has ordained poverty, the poor are not necessarily, nor as a matter of fact, the miserable. Misery is the result of moral causes,--most commonly of individual vice and improvidence.

The Rev. Mr. Norris, in speaking of the habits of the highly paid miners and iron-workers of South Staffordshire, says, "Improvidence is too tame a word for it--it is recklessness; here young and old, married and unmarried, are uniformly and almost avowedly self-indulgent spendthrifts. One sees this reckless character marring and vitiating the nobler traits of their nature. Their gallantry in the face of danger is akin to foolhardiness; their power of intense labour is seldom exerted except to compensate for time lost in idleness and revelry; their readiness to make 'gatherings' for their sick and married comrades seems only to obviate the necessity of previous saving; their very creed--and, after their sort, they are a curiously devotional people, holding frequent prayer-meetings in the pits--often degenerates into fanatical fatalism.

But it is seen far more painfully and unmistakably in the alternate plethora and destitution between which, from year's end to year's end, the whole population seems to oscillate. The prodigal revelry of the _reckoning night_, the drunkenness of Sunday, the refusal to work on Monday and perhaps Tuesday, and then the untidiness of their home towards the latter part of the two or three weeks which intervene before the next pay-day; their children kept from school, their wives and daughters on the pit-bank, their furniture in the pawnshop; the crowded and miry lanes in which they live, their houses often cracked from top to bottom by the 'crowning in' of the ground, without drainage, or ventilation, or due supply of water;--such a state of things as this, co-existing with earnings which might ensure comfort and even prosperity, seems to prove that no legislation can cure the evil."

We have certainly had numerous "Reforms." We have had household suffrage, and vote by ballot. We have relieved the working classes of the taxes on corn, cattle, coffee, sugar, and provisions generally; and imposed a considerable proportion of the taxes from which they have been relieved on the middle and upper ranks. Yet these measures have produced but little improvement in the condition of the working people. They have not applied the principle of Reform to themselves. They have not begun at home. Yet the end of all Reform is the improvement of the individual. Everything that is wrong in Society results from that which is wrong in the Individual. When men are bad, society is bad.

Franklin, with his shrewd common sense, observed, "The taxes are indeed very heavy; and if those laid on by the Government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed quite as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement."

Lord John Russell once made a similar statement to a body of working men who waited on him for the purpose of asking relief from taxation. "You complain of the taxes," he said; "but think of how you tax yourselves. You consume about fifty millions yearly in drink. Is there any Government that would dare to tax you to that extent? You have it in your own power greatly to reduce the taxes, and that without in any way appealing to us."

Complaining that the laws are bad, and that the taxes are heavy, will not mend matters. Aristocratic government, and the tyranny of masters, are nothing like so injurious as the tyranny of vicious appetites. Men are easily led away by the parade of their miseries, which are for the most part voluntary and self-imposed,--the results of idleness, thriftlessness, intemperance, and misconduct. To blame others for what we suffer, is always more agreeable to our self-pride, than to blame ourselves. But it is perfectly clear that people who live from day to day without plan, without rule, without forethought--who spend all their earnings, without saving anything for the future--are preparing beforehand for inevitable distress. To provide only for the present, is the sure means to sacrificing the future. What hope can there be for a people whose only maxim seems to be, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die"?

All this may seem very hopeless; yet it is not entirely so. The large earnings of the working classes is an important point to start with. The gradual diffusion of education will help them to use, and not abuse, their means of comfortable living. The more extended knowledge of the uses of economy, frugality, and thrift, will help them to spend their lives more soberly, virtuously, and religiously. Mr. Denison was of opinion that much of this might be accomplished "within two generations." Social improvement is always very slow. How extremely tardy has been the progress of civilization! How gradually have its humanizing influences operated in elevating the mass of the people! It requires the lapse of generations before its effects can be so much as discerned: for a generation is but as a day in the history of civilization. It has cost most nations ages of wars, before they could conquer their right of existence as nations.

It took four centuries of persecutions and martyrdoms to establish Christianity, and two centuries of civil wars to establish the Reformation. The emancipation of the bondsmen from feudal slavery was only reached through long ages of misery. From the days in which our British progenitors rushed to battle in their war-paint,--or those more recent times when the whole of the labouring people were villeins and serfs, bought and sold with the soil which they tilled,--to the times in which we now live,--how wide the difference, how gratifying the contrast. Surely it ought not to be so difficult to put an end to the Satanic influences of thriftlessness, drunkenness, and improvidence!

MEANS OF SAVING.

"Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of his own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn and labour truly to get his own living, and carefully to save and expend the good things committed to his trust."--_Lord Bacon._

"Love, therefore, labour: if thou should'st not want it for food, thou may'st for physic. It is wholesome for the body, and good for the mind; it prevents the fruit of idleness."--_William Penn._

"The parent who does not teach his child a trade, teaches him to be a thief."--_Brahminical Scriptures._

Those who say that "It cannot be done," are probably not aware that many of the working classes are in the receipt of incomes considerably larger than those of professional men.

That this is the case, is not, by any means, a secret. It is published in blue-books, it is given in evidence before parliamentary committees, it is reported in newspapers. Any coal-owner, or iron-master, or cotton-spinner, will tell you of the high wages that he pays to his workpeople.

Families employed in the cotton manufacture are able to earn over three pounds a week, according to the number of the children employed.[1] Their annual incomes will thus amount to about a hundred and fifty pounds a year,--which is considerably larger than the incomes of many professional men--higher than the average of country surgeons, higher than the average of the clergy and ministers of all denominations, higher than the average of the teachers of common schools, and probably higher than the average income of the middle classes of the United Kingdom generally.

[Footnote 1: A return of seven families employed by Henry Ashworth, New Cayley Mills, Lancashire, is given in the Blue Book, entitled, "Report of the Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867, containing the Returns relative to the New Order of Reward," p. 163. Of the seven families, the lowest earnings per family amounted to £2 14s. 6d.; and the highest to £3 19s. a week.]

An employer at Blackburn informs us that many persons earn upwards of five pounds a week,--or equal to an average income of two hundred and sixty pounds a year. Such families, he says, "ought not to expend more than three pounds weekly. The rest should be saved. But most of them, after feeding and clothing themselves, spend the rest in drink and dissipation."

The wages are similar in the Burnley district, where food, drink, and dress absorb the greater part of the workpeople's earnings. In this, as in other factory districts, "the practice of young persons (mill-workers) boarding with their parents is prevalent, and is very detrimental to parental authority." Another reporter says, "Wages are increasing: as there is more money, and more time to spend it in, sobriety is not on the increase, especially among females."

The operatives employed in the woollen manufacture receive about forty shillings a week, and some as much as sixty,[1] besides the amount earned by their children.

A good mechanic in an engine shop makes from thirty-five to forty-five shillings a week, and some mechanics make much larger wages. Multiply these figures, and it will be found that they amount to an annual income of from a hundred to a hundred and twenty pounds a year.

[Footnote 1: See the above Blue Book, p. 57, certifying the wages paid by Bliss and Son, of Chipping Norton Woollen Factory.]

But the colliers and iron-workers are paid much higher wages. One of the largest iron-masters recently published in the newspapers the names of certain colliers in his employment who were receiving from four to five pounds a week,--or equal to an annual income of from two hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds a year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Richard Fothergill, Esq., M.P. He published a subsequent letter, from which we extract the following:--

"No doubt such earnings seem large to clerks, and educated men, who after receiving a costly education have often to struggle hard for bread; but they are nevertheless the rightful earnings of steady manual labour; and I have the pleasure of adding that, while all steady, well-disposed colliers, in good health, could make equally good wages, many hundreds in South Wales are quietly doing as much or more: witness a steady collier in my employment, with his two sons living at home, whose monthly pay ticket has averaged £30 for the past twelvemonth.

"Another steady collier within my information, aided by his son, h as earned during the past five months upwards of £20 a month on the average, and from his manual labour as an ordinary collier--for it is of the working colliers and firemen I am speaking all along--he has built fifteen good houses, and, disregarding all menaces, he continues his habits of steady industry, whereby he hopes to accumulate an independence for his family in all events."]

Iron-workers are paid a still higher rate of wages. A plate-roller easily makes three hundred a year.[2] The rollers in rail mills often make much more. In busy times they have made as much as from seven to ten guineas a week, or equal to from three to five hundred a year.[3] But, like the workers in cotton mills, the iron workers are often helped by their sons, who are also paid high wages. Thus, the under-hands are usually boys from fourteen years of age and upwards, who earn about nineteen shillings a week, and the helpers are boys of under fourteen, who earn about nine shillings a week.

[Footnote 2: See Messrs. Fox, Head, and Co.'s return, in the Blue Book above referred to. This was the rate of wages at Middlesborough, in Yorkshire. In South Wales, the wages of the principal operatives engaged in the iron manufacture, recently, were--Puddlers. 9_s_. a day; first heaters on the rail mills. 8_s_. 9_d_. a day: second heaters, 11_s_. 7_d_.: roughers, 10_s_. 9_d_.: rollers, 13_s_. 2_d_., or equal to that amount.]

[Footnote 3: Even at the present time, when business is so much depressed, the mill-rollers make an average wage of £5 10_s_. a week.]

These earnings are far above the average incomes of the professional classes. The rail rollers are able to earn a rate of pay equal to that of Lieutenant-Colonels in Her Majesty's Foot Guards; plate-rollers equal to that of Majors of Foot; and roughers equal to that of Lieutenants and Adjutants.

Goldsmith spoke of the country curate as "passing rich with forty pounds a year." The incomes of curates have certainly increased since the time when Goldsmith wrote, but nothing like the incomes of skilled and unskilled workmen. If curates merely worked for money, they would certainly change their vocation, and become colliers and iron-workers.

When the author visited Renfrewshire a few years ago, the colliers were earning from ten to fourteen shillings a day. According to the common saying, they were "making money like a minting machine." To take an instance, a father and three sons were earning sixty pounds a month,--or equal to a united income of more than seven hundred pounds a year. The father was a sober, steady, "eident" man. While the high wages lasted, he was the first to enter the pit in the morning, and the last to leave it at night. He only lost five days in one year (1873-4),--the loss being occasioned by fast-days and holidays. Believing that the period of high wages could not last long, he and his sons worked as hard as they could. They saved a good deal of money, and bought several houses; besides educating themselves to occupy higher positions.

In the same neighbourhood, another collier, with four sons, was earning money at about the same rate per man, that is about seventy-five-pounds a mouth, or nine hundred pounds a year. This family bought five houses within a year, and saved a considerable sum besides. The last information we had respecting them was that the father had become a contractor,--that he employed about sixty colliers and "reddsmen,"[1] and was allowed so much for every ton of coals brought to bank. The sons were looking after their father's interests. They were all sober, diligent, sensible men; and took a great deal of interest in the education and improvement of the people in their neighbourhood.

[Footnote 1: "Reddsmen" are the men who clear the way for the colliers. They "redd up" the _debris_, and build up the roof (in the long wall system) as the colliery advances.]

At the same time that these two families of colliers were doing so well, it was very different with the majority of their fellow-workmen. These only worked about three days in every week. Some spent their earnings at the public-house; others took a whisky "ploy" at the seaside. For that purpose they hired all the gigs, droskies, cabs, or "machines," about a fortnight beforehand. The results were seen, as the successive Monday mornings come round. The magistrate sat in the neighbouring town, where a number of men and women, with black eyes and broken heads, were brought before him for judgment. Before the time of high wages, the Court-house business was got through in an hour: sometimes there was no business at all. But when the wages were doubled, the magistrate could scarcely get through the business in a day. It seemed as if high wages meant more idleness, more whisky, and more broken heads and faces.

These were doubtless "roaring times" for the colliers, who, had they possessed the requisite self-denial, might have made little fortunes. Many of the men who worked out the coal remained idle three or four days in the week; while those who burnt the coal, were famished and frozen for want of it. The working people who were _not_ colliers, will long remember that period as the time of the _coal famine_. While it lasted, Lord Elcho went over to Tranent--a village in East Lothian--to address the colliers on their thriftlessness, their idleness, and their attempted combinations to keep up the price of coal.

He had the moral courage--a quality much wanted in these days--to tell his constituents some hard but honest truths. He argued with them about the coal famine, and their desire to prolong it. They were working three days a week, and idling the other days. Some of them did not do a stroke of work during a week or a fortnight; others were taking about a hundred Bank holidays yearly. But what were they doing with the money they earned? Were they saving it for a rainy day; or, when the "roaring times" no longer existed, were they preparing to fall back on the poor-rates? He found that in one case a man, with his two sons, was earning seven pounds in a fortnight.

"I should like," he said, "to see those Scotchmen who are in the mining business taking advantage of these happy times, and endeavouring by their industry to rise from their present position--to exercise self-help, to acquire property, and possibly to become coal masters themselves."

It had been said in a newspaper, that a miner was earning wages equal to that of a Captain, and that a mining boy was earning wages equal to that of a Lieutenant in Her Majesty's service. "I only know," said Lord Elcho, "that I have a boy who, when he first joined Her Majesty's service, was an Ensign, and that his wage--to earn which, remember, he had, under the purchase system, to pay five hundred pounds,--was not the wage you are now receiving, but the wage which you were receiving in bad times,--and that was only five shillings a day." It might be said that the collier risks his life in earning his wages; but so does the soldier; and the gallant boy to whom Lord Elcho referred, afterwards lost his life in the Ashantee campaign.

The times of high wages did not leave a very good impression on the public mind. Prices became higher, morals became lower, and the work done was badly done. There was a considerable deterioration in the character of British workmanship. "We began to rely too much on the foreigner. Trade was to a large extent destroyed, and an enormous loss of capital was sustained, both by the workmen and by the masters. Lord Aberdare was of opinion that three millions sterling were lost by _the workmen alone_, during the recent strike in South Wales. One hundred and twenty thousand workmen were in enforced idleness at once, and one hundred and fifty thousand pounds were lost every week in wages during the time that they remained idle.

What the employers think of the recent flash of "prosperity," can easily be imagined. But it may not be unnecessary to quote some of the statements of correspondents. A large employer of labour in South Lancashire says: "Drunkenness increases, and personal violence is not sufficiently discouraged. High wages and household suffrage came on the people before education had prepared them for the change."

In a large iron-work near Newcastle, where the men were paid the highest wages for rolling plates and rails--and where they were earning between three and four hundred pounds a year--the proprietors observe: "Except in a few instances, we are afraid that workmen and their families spend most of their earnings." Another employer in South Staffordshire says: In the majority of cases, the men employed in the iron-work spend the whole of their wages before the end of the following week. There are, of course, some exceptions; but they are, unhappily, very few." Another, in South Wales, says: "As to the thrifty habits of the men, a small minority are careful and saving; they generally invest their money in cottage property. But the great majority of the men spend their money often before they earn it, and that in the most reckless way.

Large sums are spent in drink: this leads to idleness; and, owing to drinking and idling, the works are kept short of men until about Wednesday in each week, when the greater part of the most idly disposed have become sobered down. Of course, when wages are low, the men work more regularly. There is less drinking, and altogether the condition of the place is healthier in every respect both in a moral and physical sense."

Another observer remarks, that the miners of Bilston are about six thousand in number, and they spend more than fifty thousand pounds annually in the purchase of ale and liquors. Their improvidence may be studied with advantage in the Bilston Market. No other market is supplied with finer poultry, or comparatively to the population, in greater abundance; and this is chiefly, if not entirely, for, the consumption of the labouring classes,--for the resident inhabitants, not directly associated with those classes are few in number. Sordid and ill-favoured men may there be seen buying on Saturday, chickens, ducks, and geese, which they eat for supper; and in some instances, bottled porter and wine. Yet, so little have they beforehand in the world, that if the works were to stop, they would begin within a fortnight to pawn the little furniture of their cottages, and their clothes, for subsistence and for drink.

Mr. Chambers, of Edinburgh, in his description of the working classes of Sunderland makes these remarks: "With deep sorrow I mention that everywhere one tale was told. Intemperance prevails to a large extent; good wages are squandered on mean indulgences; there is little care for the morrow, and the workhouse is the ultimate refuge. One man, a skilled worker in an iron-foundry, was pointed out as having for years received a wage of one guinea a day, or six guineas a week; he had spent all, mostly in drink, and was now reduced to a lower department at a pound a week."

Another illustration occurs. A clerk at Blackburn took a house for twenty pounds a year, and sublet the cellars underneath to a factory operative at a rental of five pounds a year. The clerk had a wife, four children, and a servant; the operative had a wife and five children. The clerk and his family were well dressed, their children went to school, and all went to church on Sundays. The operative's family went, some to the factory, others to the gutter, but none to school; they were ill-dressed, excepting on Sundays, when they obtained their clothes from the pawnshop. As the Saturdays came round, the frying-pan in the cellar was almost constantly at work until Monday night; and as regularly as Thursday arrived, the bundle of clothes was sent to the pawnshop.

Yet the income of the upper-class family in the higher part of the house was a hundred a year; and the income of the lower class family in the cellar was fifty pounds more--that is, a hundred and fifty pounds a year!

An employer in the same neighbourhood used to say, "I cannot afford lamb, salmon, young ducks and green peas, new potatoes, strawberries and such-like, until after my hands have been consuming these delicacies of the season for some three or four weeks."

The intense selfishness, thriftlessness, and folly of these highly paid operatives, is scarcely credible. Exceptions are frequently taken to calling the working classes "the lower orders;" but "the lower orders" they always will be, so long as they indicate such sensual indulgence and improvidence. In cases such as these, improvidence is not only a great sin, and a feeder of sin, but it is a great _cruelty_. In the case of the father of a family, who has been instrumental in bringing a number of helpless beings into the world, it is heartless and selfish in the highest degree to spend money on personal indulgences such as drink, which do the parent no good, and the mother and the children, through the hereditary bad example, an irreparable amount of mischief. The father takes sick, is thrown out of work, and his children are at once deprived of the means of subsistence.

The reckless parent has not even taken the precaution to enter a Provident or a Benefit Society; and while he is sick, his wife and children are suffering the pangs of hunger. Or, he dies; and the poor creatures are thrown on the charity of strangers, or on the miserable pittance wrung from the poor-rates.

It would seem to be of little use preaching up an extension of rights to a people who are so supinely indifferent to their own well-being,--who are really unconcerned about their own elevation. The friends of the industrious should faithfully tell them that they must exercise prudence, economy, and self-denial, if they would really be raised from selfish debasement, and become elevated to the dignity of thinking beings. It is only by practising the principles of self-dependence that they can achieve dignity, stability, and consideration in society; or that they can acquire such influence and power as to raise them in the scale of social well-being.

Brown, the Oxford shoemaker, was of opinion that "a good mechanic is the most independent man in the world." At least he ought to be such. He has always a market for his skill; and if he be ordinarily diligent, sober, and intelligent, he may be useful, healthy, and happy. With a thrifty use of his means, he may, if he earns from thirty to forty shillings a week, dress well, live well, and educate his children creditably.

Hugh Miller never had more than twenty-four shillings a week while working as a journeyman stonemason, and here is the result of his fifteen years' experience:--

"Let me state, for it seems to be very much the fashion to draw dolorous pictures of the condition of the labouring classes, that from the close of the first year in which I worked as a journeyman until I took final leave of the mallet and chisel, I never knew what it was to want a shilling; that my two uncles, my grandfather, and the mason with whom I served my apprenticeship--all working men--had had a similar experience; and that it was the experience of my father also. I cannot doubt that deserving mechanics may, in exceptional cases, be exposed to want; but I can as little doubt that the cases _are_ exceptional, and that much of the suffering of the class is a consequence either of improvidence on the part of the competently skilled, or of a course of trifling during the term of apprenticeship, quite as common as trifling at school, that always lands those who indulge in it in the hapless position of the inferior workman."

It is most disheartening to find that so many of the highest paid workmen in the kingdom should spend so large a portion of their earnings in their own personal and sensual gratification. Many spend a third, and others half their entire earnings, in drink. It would be considered monstrous, on the part of any man whose lot has been cast among the educated classes to exhibit such a degree of selfish indulgence; and to spend even one-fourth of his income on objects in which his wife and children have no share.

Mr. Roolmck recently asked, at a public meeting,[1] "Why should the mail who makes £200 or £300 a year by his mechanical labour, be a rude, coarse, brutal fellow? There is no reason why he should be so.

[Footnote 1: Meeting of the Mechanics' Institutes at Dewsbury, Yorkshire.]

Why should he not be like a gentleman? Why should not his house be like my house? When I go home from my labour, what do I find? I find a cheerful wife--I find an elegant, educated woman. I have a daughter; she is the same. Why should not you find the same happy influences at home? We all know that many working men, earning good wages, spend their money in the beerhouse and in drunkenness, instead of in clothing their wives and families. Why should not these men spend their wages as I spend my small stipend, in intellectual pleasures, in joining with my family in intellectual pursuits? Why should not working men, after enjoying their dinners and thanking God for what they have got, turn their attention to intellectual enjoyments, instead of going out to get drunk in the nearest pothouse!

Depend on it these things ought to go to the heart of a working man; and he is not a friend to the working man who talks to him and makes him believe that he is a great man in the State, and who don't tell him what are the duties of his position."

It is difficult to account for the waste and extravagance of working people. It must be the hereditary remnant of the original savage. It must be a survival. The savage feasts and drinks until everything is gone; and then he hunts or goes to war. Or it may be the survival of slavery in the State. Slavery was one of the first of human institutions. The strong man made the weak man work for him. The warlike race subdued the less warlike race, and made them their slaves. Thus slavery existed from the earliest times. In Greece and Rome the righting was done by freemen, the labour by helots and bondsmen. But slavery also existed in the family. The wife was the slave of her husband as much as the slave whom he bought in the public market.

Slavery long existed among ourselves. It existed when Caesar lauded. It existed in Saxon times, when the household work was done by slaves. The Saxons were notorious slave-dealers, and the Irish were their best customers. The principal mart was at Bristol, from whence the Saxons exported large numbers of slaves into Ireland so that, according to Irish historians, there was scarcely a house in Ireland without a British slave in it.

When the Normans took possession of England, they continued slavery. They made slaves of the Saxons themselves whom they decreed villeins and bondsmen. Domesday Book shows that the toll of the market at Lewes in Sussex was a penny for a cow, and fourpence for a slave--not a serf (_adscriptus glebae_), but an unconditional bondsman. From that time slavery continued in various forms. It is recorded of "the good old times," that it was not till the reign of Henry IV. [1] The Kings of England, in their contests with the feudal aristocracy, gradually relaxed the slave laws. They granted charters founding Royal Burghs; and when the slaves fled into them, and were able to conceal themselves for a year and a day, they then became freemen of the burgh, and were declared by law to be free.

[Footnote 1: _Henry's History of England_,

, chap. 4

]

The last serfs in England were emancipated in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but the last serfs in Scotland, were not emancipated until the reign of George III, at the end of last century. Before then, the colliers and salters belonged to the soil. They were bought and sold with it. They had no power to determine what their wages should be. Like the slaves in the Southern States of America, they merely accepted such sustenance as was sufficient to maintain their muscles and sinews in working order.

They were never required to save for any purpose, for they had no right to their own savings. They did not need to provide for to-morrow; their masters provided for them. The habit of improvidence was thus formed; and it still continues. The Scotch colliers, who were recently earning from ten to fourteen shillings a day, are the grandsons of men who were slaves down to the end of last century. The preamble of an Act passed in 1799 (39th Geo. , c. 56), runs as follows: "Whereas, before the passing of an Act of the fifteenth of his present Majesty, many colliers, coal-bearers, and salters _were bound for life to, and transferable with, the collieries and salt-works where they worked_, but by the said Act their bondage was taken off and they were declared to be free, notwithstanding which many colliers and coalbearers and salters still continue in a state of bondage from not having complied with the provisions, or from having become subject to the penalties of that Act," etc.

The new Act then proceeds to declare them free from servitude. The slaves formerly earned only enough to keep them, and laid by nothing whatever for the future. Hence we say that the improvidence of the colliers, as of the iron-workers, is but a survival of the system of slavery in our political constitution.

Matters have now become entirely different. The workman, no matter what his trade, is comparatively free. The only slavery from which he suffers, is his passion for drink. In this respect he still resembles the Esquimaux and the North American Indians. Would he be really free? Then he must exercise the powers of a free, responsible man. He must exercise self-control and self-constraint,--and sacrifice present personal gratifications for prospective enjoyments of a much higher kind. It is only by self-respect and self-control that the position of the workman can be really elevated.

The working man is now more of a citizen than he ever was before. He is a recognized power, and has been admitted within the pale of the constitution. For him mechanics' institutes, newspapers, benefit societies, and all the modern agencies of civilization, exist in abundance. He is admitted to the domain of intellect; and, from time to time, great thinkers, artists, engineers, philosophers, and poets, rise up from his order, to proclaim that intellect is of no rank, and nobility of no exclusive order. The influences of civilization are rousing society to its depths; and daily evidences are furnished of the rise of the industrious classes to a position of social power. Discontent may, and does, exhibit itself; but discontent is only the necessary condition of improvement; for a man will not be stimulated to rise up into a higher condition unless he be first made dissatisfied with the lower condition out of which he has to rise.

To be satisfied is to repose; while, to be rationally dissatisfied, is to contrive, to work, and to act, with an eye to future advancement.

The working classes very much under-estimate themselves. Though they receive salaries or wages beyond the average earnings of professional men, yet many of them have no other thought than that of living in mean houses, and spending their surplus time and money in drink. They seem wanting in respect for themselves as well as for their class. They encourage the notion that there is something degrading in labour,--than which nothing can be more false. Labour of all kinds is dignifying and honourable; it is the idler, above all others, who is undignified and dishonourable.

"Let the working man," says Mr. Sterling, "try to connect his daily task, however mean, with the highest thoughts he can apprehend, and he thereby secures the rightfulness of his lot, and is raising his existence to his utmost good. It is because the working man has failed to do this, and because others have failed to help him as they ought, that the lot of labour has hitherto been associated with what is mean and degrading."

With respect to remuneration, the average of skilled mechanics and artisans, as we have already said, are better paid than the average of working curates. The working engineer is better paid than the ensign in a marching regiment. The foreman in any of our large engineering establishments is better paid than an army surgeon. The rail-roller receives over a guinea a day, while an assistant navy surgeon receives fourteen shillings, and after three years' service, twenty-one shillings, with rations. The majority of dissenting ministers are much worse paid than the better classes of skilled mechanics and artizans; and the average of clerks employed in counting-houses and warehouses receive wages very much lower.

Skilled workmen might--and, if they had the will, they would--occupy a social position as high as the educated classes we refer to. What prevents them rising? Merely because they will not use their leisure to cultivate their minds. They have sufficient money; it is culture that they want. They ought to know that the position of men in society does not depend so much on their earnings, as on their character and intelligence. And it is because they neglect their abundant opportunities,--because they are thriftless and spend their earnings in animal enjoyments,--because they refuse to cultivate the highest parts of their nature,--that they are excluded, or rather self-excluded, from those social and other privileges in which they are entitled to take part.

Notwithstanding their high wages, they for the most part cling to the dress, the language, and the manners of their class. They appear, during their leisure hours, in filthy dresses, and unwashed hands. No matter how skilled the workman may be, he is ready to sink his mind and character to the lowest level of his co-workers. Even the extra money which he earns by his greater skill, often contributes to demoralize and degrade him. And yet he might dress as well, live as well, and be surrounded by the physical comforts and intellectual luxuries of professional men. But no! From week to week his earnings are wasted. He does not save a farthing; he is a public-house victim; and when work becomes slack, and his body becomes diseased, his only refuge is the workhouse.

How are these enormous evils to be cured? Some say by better education; others by moral and religious instruction; others by better homes, and better wives and mothers. All these influences will doubtless contribute much towards the improvement of the people. One thing is perfectly clear, that an immense amount of ignorance prevails, and that such ignorance must be dissipated before the lower classes can be elevated. Their whole character must be changed, and they must be taught in early life habits of forecast and self-control.

We often hear that "Knowledge is Power;" but we never hear that Ignorance is Power. And yet Ignorance has always had more power in the world than Knowledge. Ignorance dominates. It is because of the evil propensities of men that the costly repressive institutions of modern governments exist.

Ignorance arms men against each other; provides gaols and penitentiaries; police and constabulary. All the physical force of the State is provided by Ignorance; is required by Ignorance; is very often wielded by Ignorance. We may well avow, then, that Ignorance is Power.

Ignorance is powerful, because Knowledge, as yet, has obtained access only to the minds of the few. Let Knowledge become more generally diffused; let the multitude become educated, thoughtful, and wise; and then Knowledge may obtain the ascendancy over Ignorance. But that time has not yet arrived.

Look into the records of crime, and you will find that, for one man possessed of wisdom or knowledge who commits a crime, there are a hundred ignorant. Or, into the statistics of drunkenness and improvidence of all sorts; still Ignorance is predominant. Or, into the annals of pauperism; there, again, Ignorance is Power.

The principal causes of anxiety in this country, are the social suffering and disease which proceed from Ignorance. To mitigate these, we form associations, organize societies, spend money, and labour in committees. But the power of Ignorance is too great for us. We almost despair while we work. We feel that much of our effort is wasted. We are often ready to give up in dismay, and recoil from our encounter with the powers of evil.

"How forcible are right words!" exclaimed Job. Yes! But, with equal justice, he might have said, "How forcible are wrong words!" The wrong words have more power with ignorant minds than the right words. They fit themselves into wrong heads, and prejudiced heads, and empty heads; and have power over them. The right words have often no meaning for them, any more than if they were the words of some dead language. The wise man's thoughts do not reach the multitude, but fly over their heads. Only the few as yet apprehend them.

The physiologist may discuss the laws of health, and the Board of Health may write tracts for circulation among the people; but half the people cannot so much as read; and of the remaining half, but a very small proportion are in the habit of _thinking_. Thus the laws of health are disregarded; and when fever comes, it finds a wide field to work on: in undrained and filthy streets and back-yards,--noisome, pestilential districts,--foul, uncleansed dwellings,--large populations ill-supplied with clean water and with pure air. There death makes fell havoc; many destitute widows and children have to be maintained out of the poor's-rates; and then we reluctantly confess to ourselves that Ignorance is Power.

The only method of abating this power of Ignorance, is by increasing that of Knowledge. As the sun goes up the sky, the darkness disappears; and the owl, the bat, and the beasts of prey, slink out of sight. Give the people knowledge,--give them better education,--and thus, crime will be abated,--drunkenness, improvidence, lawlessness, and all the powers of evil, will, to a certain extent, disappear.[1]

[Footnote 1: The recent reports of Mr. Tremenheere to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with respect to the condition of the population in the iron and coal districts, show that he places considerable reliance on the effect of Education. --that the obstinate refusal of the men to exert more than two-thirds of their fair powers of work, by which the cost of production is largely enhanced, capital crippled, and the public mulcted, was due to the same cause,--that their readiness to become the prey of unionists and agitators is traceable to their want of the most elementary principles of thought,--that most of the accidents, which are of weekly occurrence, are occasioned by their stupidity and ignorance,--that wherever they have advanced in intelligence, they have become more skilful, more subordinate, and more industrious.

These facts have convinced the more thoughtful and far-sighted masters, that the only sure means of maintaining their ground under increasing foreign competition, and averting a social crisis, is to reform the character of the rising generation of operatives by _education_,]

It must, however, be admitted that education is not enough. The clever man may be a clever rogue; and the cleverer he is, the cleverer rogue he will be. Education, therefore, must be based on religion and morality; for education by itself will not eradicate vicious propensities. Culture of intellect has but little effect on moral conduct. You may see clever, educated, literary men, with no conduct whatever,--wasteful, improvident, drunken, and vicious. It follows, therefore, that education must be based on the principles of religion and morality.

Nor has the poverty of the people so much to do with their social degradation as is commonly supposed. The question is essentially a moral one. If the income of the labouring community could be suddenly doubled, their happiness will not necessarily be increased; for happiness does not consist in money. In fact, the increased wages might probably prove a curse instead of a blessing. In the case of many, there would be an increased consumption of drink, with the usual results,--an increase of drunken violence, and probably an increase of crime.

The late Mr. Clay, chaplain of the Preston House of Correction, after characterizing drunkenness as the GREAT SIN, proceeds: "It still rises in savage hostility, against everything allied to order and religion; it still barricades every avenue by which truth and peace seek to enter the poor man's home and heart.... Whatever may be the predominant cause of crime, it is very clear that ignorance, religious ignorance, is the chief ingredient in the character of the criminal. This combines with the passion for liquor, and offences numberless are engendered by the union."

The late Sir Arthur Helps, when speaking of high and low wages, and of the means of getting and spending money, thus expresses himself on the subject, in his "Friends in Council":"My own conviction is, that throughout England every year there is sufficient wages given, even at the present low rate, to make the condition of the labouring poor quite different from what it is. But then these wages must be well spent. I do not mean that the poor could of themselves alone effect this change; but were they seconded by the advice, the instruction, and the aid (not given in money, or only in money lent to produce the current interest of the day) of the classes above them, the rest the poor might accomplish for themselves.

And, indeed, all that the rich could do to elevate the poor could hardly equal the advantage that would be gained by the poor themselves, if they could thoroughly subdue that one vice of drunkenness, the most wasteful of all the vices.

"In the living of the poor (as indeed of all of us) there are two things to be considered; how to get money, and how to spend it. Now, I believe, the experience of employers will bear me out in saying, that it is frequently found that the man with 20s. a week does not live more comfortably, or save more, than the man with 14s.,--the families of the two men being the same in number and general circumstances. It is probable that unless he have a good deal of prudence and thought, the man who gets at all more than the average of his class does not know what to do with it, or only finds in it a means superior to that which his fellows possess of satisfying his appetite for drinking."

Notwithstanding, however, the discouraging circumstances to which we have referred, we must believe that in course of time, as men's nature becomes improved by education--secular, moral, and religious--they may be induced to make a better use of their means, by considerations of prudence, forethought, and parental responsibility. A German writer speaks of the education given to a child as _a capital_--equivalent to a store of money--placed at its disposal by the parent. The child, when grown to manhood, may employ the education, as he might employ the money, badly; but that is no argument against the possession of either. Of course, the value of education, as of money, chiefly consists in its proper use. And one of the advantages of knowledge is, that the very acquisition of it tends to increase the capability of using it aright; which is certainly not the case with the accumulation of money.

Education, however obtained, is always an advantage to a man. Even as a means of material advancement, it is worthy of being sought after,--not to speak of its moral uses as an elevator of character and intelligence. And if, as Dr. Lyon Playfair insists, the composition between industrial nations must before long become a competition mainly of intelligence, it is obvious that England must make better provision for the education of its industrial classes, or be prepared to fall behind in the industrial progress of nations.

"It would be of little avail," said Dr. Brewster of Edinburgh, "to the peace and happiness of society, if the great truths of the material world were confined to the educated and the wise. The organization of science thus limited would cease to be a blessing. Knowledge secular, and knowledge divine, the double current of the intellectual life-blood of man, must not merely descend through the great arteries of the social frame; it must be taken up by the minutest capillaries before it can nourish and purify society. Knowledge is at once the manna and the medicine of our moral being. Where crime is the bane, knowledge is the antidote. Society may escape from the pestilence and may survive the famine; but the demon of ignorance, with his grim adjutants of vice and riot, will pursue her into her most peaceful haunts, destroying our institutions, and converting into a wilderness the paradise of social and domestic life.

The State has, therefore, a great duty to perform. As it punishes crime, it is bound to prevent it. As it subjects us to laws, it must teach us to read them; and while it thus teaches, it must teach also the ennobling truths which display the power and the wisdom of the great Lawgiver, thus diffusing knowledge while it is extending education; and thus making men contented, and happy, and humble, while it makes them quiet and obedient subjects."

A beginning has already been made with public school education. Much still remains to be done to establish the system throughout the empire. At present we are unable to judge of the effects of what has been done. But if general education accomplish as much for England as it has already accomplished for Germany, the character of this country will be immensely improved during the next twenty years. Education has almost banished drunkenness from Germany; and had England no drunkenness, no thriftlessness, no reckless multiplication, our social miseries would be comparatively trivial.

We must therefore believe that as intelligence extends among the working class, and as a better moral tone pervades them, there will be a rapid improvement in their sober, thrifty and provident habits; for these form the firmest and surest foundations for social advancement. There is a growing desire, on the part of the more advanced minds in society, to see the working men take up their right position. They who do society's work,--who produce, under the direction of the most intelligent of their number, the wealth of the nation,--are entitled to a much higher place than they have yet assumed.

We believe in this "good time coming," for working men and women,--when an atmosphere of intelligence shall pervade them--when they will prove themselves as enlightened, polite, and independent as the other classes of society; and, as the first and surest step towards this consummation, we counsel them to PROVIDE--to provide for the future as well as for the present--to provide, in times of youth and plenty, against the times of adversity, misfortune, and old age.

"If any one intends to improve his condition," said the late William Felkin, Mayor of Nottingham, himself originally a working man, "he must earn all he can, spend as little as he can, and make what he does spend, bring him and his family all the real enjoyment he can. The first saving which a working man makes out of his earnings is the first step,--and because it is the first, the most important step towards true independence. Now independence is as practicable in the case of an industrious and economic, though originally poor, workman, as in that of the tradesman or merchant,--and is as great and estimable a blessing. The same process must be attended to,--that is, the entire expenditure being kept below the clear income, all contingent claims being carefully considered and provided for, and the surplus held sacred, to be employed for those purposes, and those only, which duty or conscience may point out as important or desirable.

This requires a course of laborious exertion and strict economy, a little foresight, and possibly some privation. But this is only what is common to all desirable objects. And inasmuch as I know what it is to labour with the hands long hours, and for small wages, as well as any workman to whom I address myself, and to practise self-denial withal, I am emboldened to declare from experience that the gain of independence, or rather self-dependence, for which I plead, is worth infinitely more than all the cost of its attainment; and, moreover, that to attain it in a greater or less degree, according to circumstances, is within the power of by far the greater number of skilled workmen engaged in our manufactories."

EXAMPLES OF THRIFT.

"Examples demonstrate the possibility of success."--_Cotton._

_"The force of his own merit, makes his way."--_Shakespeare._

"Reader, attend, whether thy soul Soars Fancy's flight beyond the Pole, Or darkling grubs this earthly hole In low pursuit-- Know, prudent, cautious self-control, Is wisdom's root."--_Burns._

"In the family, as in the State, the best source of wealth is Economy."--_Cicero._

"Right action is the result of right faith; but a true and right faith cannot be sustained, deepened, extended, save in a course of right action."--_M'Combie._

Thrift is the spirit of order applied to domestic management and organization. Its object is to manage frugally the resources of the family; to prevent waste; and avoid useless expenditure. Thrift is under the influence of reason and forethought, and never works by chance or by fits. It endeavours to make the most and the best of everything. It does not save money for saving's sake. It makes cheerful sacrifices for the present benefit of others; or it submits to voluntary privation for some future good.

Mrs. Inchbald, author of the "Simple Story," was, by dint of thrift, able to set apart the half of her small income for the benefit of her infirm sister. There was thus about two pounds a week for the maintenance of each. "Many times," she says, "during the winter, when I was crying with cold, have I said to myself, 'Thank God, my dear sister need not leave her chamber; she will find her fire ready for her each morning; for she is now far less able than I am to endure privation.'" Mrs. Inchbald's family were, for the most part very poor; and she felt it right to support them during their numerous afflictions. There is one thing that may be say of Benevolence,--that it has never ruined anyone; though selfishness and dissipation have ruined thousands.

The words "Waste not, want not," carved in stone over Sir Walter Scott's kitchen fireplace at Abbotsford, expresses in a few words the secret of Order in the midst of abundance. Order is most useful in the management of everything,--of a household, of a business, of a manufactory, of an army. Its maxim is--A place for everything, and everything in its place. Order is wealth; for, whoever properly regulates the use of his income, almost doubles his resources. Disorderly persons are rarely rich; and orderly persons are rarely poor.

Order is the best manager of time; for unless work is properly arranged, Time is lost; and, once lost, it is gone for ever. Order illustrates many important subjects. Thus, obedience to the moral and natural law, is order. Respect for ourselves and our neighbours, is order. Regard for the rights and obligations of all, is order. Virtue is order. The world began with order. Chaos prevailed, before the establishment of order.

Thrift is the spirit of order in human life. It is the prime agent in private economy. It preserves the happiness of many a household. And as it is usually woman who regulates the order of the household, it is mainly on her that the well-doing of society depends. It is therefore all the more necessary that she should early be educated in the habit and the virtue of orderliness.

The peer, the merchant, the clerk, the artizan, and the labourer, are all of the same nature, born with the same propensities and subject to similar influences. They are, it is true, born in different positions, but it rests with themselves whether they shall live their lives nobly or vilely. They may not have their choice of riches or poverty; but they have their choice of being good or evil,--of being worthy or worthless.

People of the highest position, in point of culture and education, have often as great privations to endure as the average of working people. They have often to make their incomes go much further. They have to keep up a social standing. They have to dress better; and live sufficiently well for the purpose of health. Though their income may be less than that of colliers and iron-workers, they are under the moral necessity of educating their sons and bringing them up as gentlemen, so that they may take their fair share of the world's work.

Thus, the tenth Earl of Buchan brought up a numerous family of children, one of whom afterwards rose to be Lord Chancellor of England, on an income not exceeding two hundred a year. It is not the amount of income, so much as the good use of it, that marks the true man; and viewed in this light, good sense, good taste, and sound mental culture, are among the best of all economists.

The late Dr. Aiton said that his father brought up a still larger family on only half the income of the Earl of Buchan. The following dedication, prefixed to his work on "Clerical Economics," is worthy of being remembered: "This work is respectfully dedicated to a Father, now in the eighty-third year of his age, who, on an income which never exceeded a hundred pounds yearly, educated, out of a family of twelve children, four sons to liberal professions, and who has often sent his last shilling to each of them, in their turn, when they were at college."

The author might even cite his own case as an illustration of the advantages of thrift. His mother was left a widow, when her youngest child--the youngest of eleven--was only three weeks old. Notwithstanding a considerable debt on account of a suretyship, which was paid, she bravely met the difficulties of her position, and perseveringly overcame them. Though her income was less than that of many highly paid working men, she educated her children well, and brought them up religiously and virtuously. She put her sons in the way of doing well, and if they have not done so, it was through no fault of hers.

Hume, the historian, was a man of good family; but being a younger brother, his means were very small. His father died while he was an infant; he was brought up by his mother, who devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her children. At twenty-three, young Hume went to France to prosecute his studies. "There," says he, in his Autobiography, "I laid down that plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature." The first book he published was a complete failure. But he went on again; composed and published another book, which was a success. But he made no money by it. He became secretary to the military embassy at Vienna and Turin; and at thirty-six he thought himself rich.

These are his own words: "My appointments, with my frugality, had made me reach a fortune which I called independent, though most of my friends were inclined to smile when I said so: in short, I was now master of near a thousand pounds." , means fifty pounds a year; and Hume considered himself independent with that income. His friend Adam Smith said of him: "Even in the lowest state of his fortune, his great and necessary frugality never hindered him from exercising, on proper occasions, acts both of charity and generosity. It was a frugality founded not on avarice, but on the love of independency."

But one of the most remarkable illustrations of Thrift is to be found in the history of the Rev. Robert Walker--the _Wonderful_ Robert Walker, as he is still called in the district of Cumberland where he resided. He was curate of Leathwaite during the greater part of last century. The income of the curacy, at the time of his appointment (1735), was only five pounds a year. His wife brought him a fortune of forty pounds. Is it possible that he could contrive to live on his five pounds a year, the interest of his wife's fortune, and the result of his labours as a clergyman? Yes, he contrived to do all this; and he not only lived well, though plainly, but he saved money, which he left for the benefit of his family. He accomplished all this by means of industry, frugality, and temperance.

First, about his industry. He thoroughly did the work connected with his curacy. The Sabbath was in all respects regarded by him as a holy day. After morning and evening service, he devoted the evening to reading the Scriptures and family prayer. On weekdays, he taught the children of the parish, charging nothing for the education, but only taking so much as the people chose to give him. The parish church was his school; and while the children were repeating their lessons by his side, he was, like Shenstone's schoolmistress, engaged in spinning wool. He had the right of pasturage on the mountains for a few sheep and a couple of cows, which required his attendance. With this pastoral occupation he joined the labours of husbandry, for he rented two or three acres of land in addition to his own acre of glebe, and he also possessed a garden,--the whole of which was tilled by his own hand.

The fuel of the house consisted of peat, procured by his labour from the neighbouring mosses. He also assisted his parishioners in haymaking and shearing their flocks,--in which latter art he was eminently dexterous. In return, the neighbours would present him with a haycock, or a fleece, as a general acknowledgment of his services.

After officiating as curate of Leathwaite for about twenty years, the annual value of the living was increased to seventeen pounds ten shillings. His character being already well known and highly appreciated, the Bishop of Carlisle offered Mr. Walker the appointment of the adjoining curacy of Ulpha; but he conscientiously refused it, on the ground that the annexation "would be apt to cause a general discontent among the inhabitants of both places, by either thinking themselves slighted, being only served alternately, or neglected in the duty, or attributing it to covetousness in me; all which occasions of murmuring I would willingly avoid." Yet at this time Mr. Walker had a family of eight children. He afterwards maintained one of his sons at Trinity College Dublin, until he was ready for taking Holy Orders.

The parish pastor was, of course, a most economical man. Yet no act of his life savoured in the least degree of meanness or avarice. On the other hand, his conduct throughout life displayed the greatest disinterestedness and generosity. He knew very little of luxuries, and he cared less. Tea was only used in his house for visitors. The family used milk, which was indeed far better. Excepting milk, the only other drink used in the house was water--clear water drawn from the mountain spring. The clothing of the family was comely and decent; but it was all home-made: it was simple, like their diet. Occasionally one of the mountain sheep was killed for purposes of food; and towards the end of the year, a cow was killed and salted down for provision during winter. The hide was tanned, and the leather furnished shoes for the family. "[1]

Many men, in order to advance themselves in the world, and to raise themselves in society, have "scorned delights and lived laborious days." They have lived humbly and frugally, in order to accomplish greater things. They have supported themselves by their hand labour, until they could support themselves by their head labour. Some may allege that this is not justifiable--that it is a sin against the proletariat to attempt to rise in the world,--that "once a cobbler always a cobbler." But, until a better system has been established, the self-application of individuals is the only method by which science and knowledge can be conquered, and the world permanently advanced.

Goethe says, "It is perfectly indifferent within what circle an honest man acts, provided he do but know how to understand and completely fill out that circle;" and again, "An honest and vigorous will could make itself a path and employ its activity to advantage under every form of society." "What is the best government?" he asks: "That which teaches us to govern ourselves!" All that we need, in his opinion, is individual liberty, and self-culture. "Let every one," he says, "only do the right in his place, without troubling himself about the turmoil of the world."

[Footnote 1: The best account of Mr. Walker is to be found in the Appendix to the Poems of Wordsworth. The poet greatly appreciated the clergyman's character, and noticed him in his "Excursion," as well as in the Notes to the Sonnets entitled "The River Duddon."]

At all events, it is not by socialism, but by individualism, that anything has been done towards the achievement of knowledge, and the advancement of society. It is the will and determination of individual men that impels the world forward in art, in science, and in all the means and methods of civilization.

Individual men are willing to deny themselves, but associated communities will not. The masses are too selfish, and fear that advantage will be taken of any sacrifices which they may be called on to make. Hence it is among the noble band of resolute spirits that we look for those who raise and elevate the world, as well as themselves. The recollection of what they have done, acts as a stimulus to others. It braces the mind of man, reanimates his will, and encourages him to further exertions.

When Lord Elcho addressed the East Lothian colliers, he named several men who had raised themselves from the coalpit; and first of all he referred to Mr. Macdonald, member for Stafford. "The beginning of my acquaintance with Mr. Macdonald," he said, "was, when I was told that a miner wanted to see me in the lobby of the House of Commons. I went out and saw Mr. Macdonald, who gave me a petition from this district, which he asked me to present. I entered into conversation with him, and was much struck by his intelligence. He told me that he had begun life as a boy in the pit in Lanarkshire, and that the money he saved as a youth in the summer, he spent at Glasgow University in the winter; and that is where he got whatever book-learning or power of writing he possesses. I say that is an instance that does honour to the miners of Scotland. Another instance was that of Dr.

Hogg, who began as a pitman in this county; worked in the morning, attended school in the afternoon; then went to the University for four years and to the Theological Hall for five years; and afterwards, in consequence of his health failing, he went abroad, and is now engaged as a missionary in Upper Egypt. Or take the case of Mr. (now Sir George) Elliot, member for North Durham, who has spoken up for the miners all the better, for having had practical knowledge of their work. He began as a miner in the pit, and he worked his way up till he has in his employment many thousand men. He has risen to his great wealth and station from the humblest position; as every man who now hears me is capable of doing, to a greater or less degree, if he will only be thrifty and industrious."

Lord Elcho might also have mentioned Dr. Hutton, the geologist, a man of a much higher order of genius; who was the son of a coal-viewer. Bewick, the wood engraver, is also said to have been the son of a coal-miner. Dr. Campbell was the son of a Loanhead collier: he was the forerunner of Moffat and Livingstone, in their missionary journeys among the Bechuanas in South Africa. Allan Ramsay, the poet, was also the son of a miner.

George Stephenson worked his way from the pithead to the highest position as an engineer. George began his life with industry, and when he had saved a little money, he spent it in getting a little learning. What a happy man he was, when his wages were increased to twelve shillings a week. He declared on that occasion that he was "made a man for life!" He was not only enabled to maintain himself on his earnings, but to help his poor parents, and to pay for his own education. When his skill had increased, and his wages were advanced to a pound a week, he immediately began, like a thoughtful, intelligent workman, to lay by his surplus money; and when he had saved his first guinea, he proudly declared to one of his colleagues that he "was now a rich man!"

And he was right. For the man who, after satisfying his wants, has something to spare, is no longer poor. It is certain that from that day Stephenson never looked back; his advance as a self-improving man was as steady as the light of sunrise. A person of large experience has indeed stated that he never knew, among working people, a single instance of a man having out of his small earnings laid by a pound, who had in the end become a pauper.

When Stephenson proposed to erect his first locomotive, he had not sufficient means to defray its cost. But in the course of his life as a workman, he had established a character. He was trusted. He was faithful. He was a man who could be depended on. Accordingly, when the Earl of Havensworth was informed of Stephenson's desire to erect a locomotive, he at once furnished him with the means for enabling him to carry his wishes into effect.

Watt, also, when inventing the condensing steam-engine, maintained himself by making and selling mathematical instruments. He made flutes, organs, compasses,--anything that would maintain him, until he had completed his invention. At the same time he was perfecting his own education--learning French, German, mathematics, and the principles of natural philosophy. This lasted for many years; and by the time that Watt developed his steam-engine and discovered Mathew Boulton, he had, by his own efforts, become an accomplished and scientific man.

These great workers did not feel ashamed of labouring with their hands for a living; but they also felt within themselves the power of doing head-work as well as hand-work. And while thus labouring with their hands, they went on with their inventions, the perfecting of which has proved of so much advantage to the world. Hugh Miller furnished, in his own life, an excellent instance of that practical common sense in the business of life which he so strongly recommended to others. When he began to write poetry, and felt within him the growing powers of a literary man, he diligently continued his labour as a stone-cutter.

Horace Walpole has said that Queen Caroline's patronage of Stephen Duck, the thresher poet, ruined twenty men, who all turned poets. It was not so with the early success of Hugh Miller. "There is no more fatal error," he says, "into which a working man of a literary turn can fall, than the mistake of deeming himself too good for his humble employments; and yet it is a mistake as common as it is fatal. I had already seen several poor wrecked mechanics, who, believing themselves to be poets, and regarding the manual occupation by which they could alone live in independence as beneath them, and become in consequence little better than mendicants,--too good to work for their bread, but not too good virtually to beg it; and looking on them as beacons of warning, I determined that, with God's help, I should give their error a wide offing, and never associate the idea of meanness with an honest calling, or deem myself too good to be independent."

At the same time, a man who feels that he has some good work in him, which study and labour might yet bring out, is fully justified in denying himself, and in applying his energies to the culture of his intellect. And it is astonishing how much carefulness, thrift, the reading of books, and diligent application, will help such men onward.

The author in his boyhood knew three men who worked in an agricultural implement maker's shop. They worked in wood and iron, and made carts, ploughs, harrows, drilling-machines, and such-like articles. Somehow or other, the idea got into their heads that they might be able to do something better than making carts and harrows. They did not despise the lot of hand-labour, but they desired to use it as a step towards something better. Their wages at that time could not have exceeded from eighteen to twenty shillings a week.

Two of the young men, who worked at the same bench, contrived to save enough money to enable them to attend college during the winter. At the end of each session they went back to their hand-labour, and earned enough wages during the summer to enable them to return to their classes during the winter. The third did not adopt this course. He joined a mechanics' institute which had just been started in the town in which he lived. By attending the lectures and reading the books in the library, he acquired some knowledge of chemistry, of the principles of mechanics, and of natural philosophy. He applied himself closely, studied hard in his evening hours, and became an accomplished man.

It is not necessary to trace their history; but what they eventually arrived at, may be mentioned. Of the first two, one became the teacher and proprietor of a large public school; the other became a well-known dissenting minister; while the third, working his way strenuously and bravely, became the principal engineer and manager of the largest steamship company in the world.

Although mechanics' institutes are old institutions, they have scarcely been supported by working men. The public-house is more attractive and more frequented. And yet mechanics' institutes--even though they are scarcely known south of Yorkshire and Lancashire--have been the means of doing a great deal of good. By placing sound mechanical knowledge within the reach of even the few persons who have been disposed to take advantage of them, they have elevated many persons into positions of great social influence. "We have heard a distinguished man say publicly, that a mechanics' institution had _made him_; that but for the access which it had afforded him to knowledge of all kinds, he would have occupied a very different position. In short, the mechanics' institution had elevated him from the position of a licensed victualler to that of an engineer.

We have referred to the wise practice of men in humble position maintaining themselves by their trade until they saw a way towards maintaining themselves by a higher calling. Thus Herschell maintained himself by music, while pursuing his discoveries in astronomy. When playing the oboe in the pump-room at Bath, he would retire while the dancers were lounging round the room, go out and take a peep at the heavens through his telescope, and quietly return to his instrument. It was while he was thus maintaining himself by music, that he discovered the Georgium Sidus. When the Royal Society recognized his discovery, the oboe-player suddenly found himself famous.

Franklin long maintained himself by his trade of printing. He was a hard-working man,--thrifty, frugal and a great saver of time. He worked for character as much as for wages; and when it was found that he could be relied on, he prospered. At length he was publicly recognized as a great statesman, and as one of the most scientific men of his time.

Ferguson, the astronomer, lived by portrait painting, until his merits as a scientific man were recognized. John Dollond maintained himself as a silk weaver in Spitalfields. In the course of his studies he made great improvements in the refracting telescope; and the achromatic telescope, which he invented, gave him a high rank among the philosophers of his age. But during the greater part of his life, while he was carrying on his investigations, he continued, until the age of forty-six, to carry on his original trade. At length he confined himself entirely to making telescopes; and then he gave up his trade of a silk weaver. Winckelmann, the distinguished writer on classical antiquities and the fine arts, was the son of a shoemaker. His father endeavoured, as long as he could, to give his hoy a learned education; but becoming ill and worn-out, he had eventually to retire to the hospital.

Winckelmann and his father were once accustomed to sing at night in the streets to raise fees to enable the boy to attend the grammar school. The younger Winckelmann then undertook, by hard labour, to support his father; and afterwards, by means of teaching, to keep himself at college. Every one knows how distinguished he eventually became.

Samuel Richardson, while writing his novels, stuck to his trade of a bookseller. He sold his books in the front shop, while he wrote them in the back. He would not give himself up to authorship, because he loved his independence. "You know," he said to his friend Defreval, "how my business engages me. You know by what snatches of time I write, that I may not neglect that, and that I may preserve that independency which is the comfort of my life. I never sought out of myself for patrons. My own industry and God's providence have been my whole reliance. The great are not great to me unless they are good, and it is a glorious privilege that a middling man enjoys, who has preserved his independency, and can occasionally (though not stoically) tell the world what he thinks of that world, in hopes to contribute, though by his mite, to mend it."

The late Dr. Olynthus Gregory, in addressing the Deptford Mechanics' Institution at their first anniversary, took the opportunity of mentioning various men in humble circumstances (some of whom he had been able to assist), who, by means of energy, application, and self-denial, had been able to accomplish great things in the acquisition of knowledge. Thus he described the case of a Labourer on the turnpike road, who had become an able Greek scholar; of a Fifer, and a Private Soldier, in a regiment of militia, both self-taught mathematicians, one of whom became a successful schoolmaster, the other a lecturer on natural philosophy; of a journeyman Tin-plate worker, who invented rules for the solution of cubic equations; of a country Sexton, who became a teacher of music, and who, by his love of the study of musical science, was transformed from a drunken sot to an exemplary husband and father; of a Coal Miner (a correspondent of Dr.

Gregory's), who was an able writer on topics of the higher mathematics; of another correspondent, a labouring Whitesmith, who was also well acquainted with the course of pure mathematics, as taught at Cambridge, Dublin, and the military colleges; of a Tailor, who was an excellent geometrician, and had discovered curves which escaped the notice of Newton, and who laboured industriously and contentedly at his trade until sixty years of age, when, by the recommendation of his scientific friends, he was appointed Nautical Examiner at the Trinity House; of a ploughman in Lincolnshire, who, without aid of men or books, discovered the rotation of the earth, the principles of spherical astronomy, and invented a planetary system akin to the Tychonic; of a country Shoemaker, who became distinguished as one of the ablest metaphysical writers in Britain, and who, at more than fifty years of age, was removed by the influence of his talents and their worth, from his native country to London, where he was employed to edit some useful publications devoted to the diffusion of knowledge and the best interests of mankind.

Students of Art have had to practise self-denial in many ways. Quentin Matsys, having fallen in love with a painter's daughter, and determined to win her. Though but a blacksmith and a farrier, he studied art so diligently, and acquired so much distinction, that his mistress afterwards accepted the painter whom she had before rejected as the blacksmith. Flaxman, however, married his wife before he had acquired any distinction whatever as an artist. He was merely a skilful and promising pupil. When Sir Joshua Reynolds heard of his marriage, he exclaimed, "Flaxman is ruined for an artist!" But it was not so. When Flaxman's wife heard of the remark, she said, "Let us work and economize; I will never have it said that Ann Denbam ruined John Flaxman as an artist." They economized accordingly.

To earn money, Flaxman undertook to collect the local rates; and what with art and industry, the patient, hard-working, thrifty couple, after five years of careful saving, set out for Rome together. There Flaxman studied and worked; there he improved his knowledge of art; and there he acquired the reputation of being the first of English sculptors.

The greater number of artists have sprung from humble life. If they had been born rich, they would probably never have been artists. They have had to work their way from one position to another; and to strengthen their nature by conquering difficulty. Hogarth began his career by engraving shop-bills. William Sharp began by engraving door-plates. Tassie the sculptor and medallist, began life as a stone-cutter. Having accidentally seen a collection of pictures, he aspired to become an artist and entered an academy to learn the elements of drawing. He continued to work at his old trade until he was able to maintain himself by his new one. He used his labour as the means of cultivating his skill in his more refined and elevated profession.

Chantry of Sheffield, was an economist both of time and money. He saved fifty pounds out of his earnings as a carver and gilder; paid the money to his master, and cancelled his indentures. Then he came up to London, and found employment as a journeyman carver; he proceeded to paint portraits and model busts, and at length worked his way to the first position as a sculptor.

Canova was a stone-cutter, like his father and his grandfather; and through stone-cutting he worked his way to sculpture. After leaving the quarry, he went to Venice, and gave his services to an artist, from whom he received but little recompense for his work. "I laboured," said he, "for a mere pittance, but it was sufficient. It was the fruit of my own resolution; and, as I then flattered myself, the foretaste of more honourable rewards,--for I never thought of wealth." He pursued his studies,--in drawing and modelling; in languages, poetry, history, antiquity, and the Greek and Roman classics. A long time elapsed before his talents were recognised, and then he suddenly became famous.

Lough, the English sculptor, is another instance of self-denial and hard work. When a boy, he was fond of drawing. At school, he made drawings of horses, dogs, cows, and men, for pins: that was his first pay; and he used to go home with his jacket sleeve stuck full of them. He and his brothers next made figures in clay. Pope's Homer lay on his father's window. The boys were so delighted with it, that they made thousands of models--one taking the Greeks, and the other the Trojans. An odd volume of Gibbon gave an account of the Coliseum. After the family were in bed, the brothers made a model of the Coliseum, and filled it with fighting gladiators. As the boys grew up, they were sent to their usual outdoor work, following the plough and doing the usual agricultural labour; but still adhering to their modelling at leisure hours. At Christmas-time, Lough was very much in demand.

Everybody wanted him to make models in pastry for Christmas pies,--the neighbouring farmers especially, "It was capital practice," he afterwards said.

At length Lough went from Newcastle to London, to push his way in the world of art. He obtained a passage in a collier, the skipper of which he knew. When he reached London, he slept on board the collier as long as it remained in the Thames. He was so great a favourite with the men, that they all urged him to go back. He had no friends, no patronage, no money; What could he do with everything against him? But, having already gone so far, he determined to proceed. He would not go back--at least, not yet. The men all wept when he took farewell of them. He was alone in London; under the shadow of St. Paul's.

His next step was to take a lodging in an obscure first floor in Burleigh Street, over a greengrocer's shop; and there he began to model his grand statue of Milo. He had to take the roof off to let Milo's head out. There Haydon found him, and was delighted with his genius. "I went," he says, "to young Lough, the sculptor, who has just burst out, and has produced a great effect. His Milo is really the most extraordinary thing, considering all the circumstances, in modern sculpture. " [1] That Lough must have been poor enough at this time, is evident from the fact that, during the execution of his Milo, he did not eat meat for three months; and when Peter Coxe found him out, he was tearing up his shirt to make wet rags for his figure, to keep the clay moist.

He had a bushel and a half of coals during the whole winter; and he used to lie down by the side of his clay model of the immortal figure, damp as it was, and shiver for hours till he fell asleep.

[Footnote 1: Haydon's _Autobiography_, vol. ii., p, 155.]

Chantrey once said to Haydon, "When I have made money enough, I will devote myself to high art." But busts engrossed Chantrey's time. He was munificently paid for them, and never raised himself above the money-making part of his profession. When Haydon next saw Chantrey at Brighton, he said to him, "Here is a young man from the country, who has come to London; and he is doing precisely what you have so long been dreaming of doing."

The exhibition of Milo was a great success. The Duke of Wellington went to see it, and ordered a statue. Sir Matthew White Eidley was much struck by the genius of young Lough, and became one of his greatest patrons. The sculptor determined to strike out a new path for himself. He thought the Greeks had exhausted the Pantheistic, and that heathen gods had been overdone. Lough began and pursued the study of lyric sculpture: he would illustrate the great English poets. But there was the obvious difficulty of telling the story of a figure by a single attitude. It was like a flash of thought. "The true artist," he said, "must plant his feet firmly on the earth, and sweep the heavens with his pencil. I mean," he added, "that the soul must be combined with the body, the ideal with the real, the heavens with the earth."

It is not necessary to describe the success of Mr. Lough as a sculptor. His statue of "The Mourners" is known all over the world. He has illustrated Shakespeare and Milton. His Puck, Titania, and other great works, are extensively known, and their genius universally admired. But it may be mentioned that his noble statue of Milo was not cast in bronze until 1862, when it was exhibited at the International Exhibition of that year.

The Earl of Derby, in recently distributing the prizes to the successful pupils of the Liverpool College[1], made the following observations:--

"The vast majority of men, in all ages and countries, must work before they can eat. And though it may be, in a community like this, considered by some to be a heterodox view, I will say that it often appears to me, in the present day, that we are a little too apt in all classes to look on ourselves as mere machines for what is called 'getting on,' and to forget that there are in every human being many faculties which cannot be employed, and many wants which cannot be satisfied, by that occupation. I have not a word to utter against strenuous devotion to business while you are at it. But one of the wisest and most thoroughly cultivated men whom I ever knew, retired before the age of fifty, from a profession in which he was making an enormous income, because, he said, he had got as much as he or any one belonging to him could want, and he did not see why he should sacrifice the rest of his life to money-getting.

Some people thought him very foolish. I did not. And I believe that the gentleman of whom I speak never once repented his decision."

[Footnote 1: A collection ought to be made and published of Lord Derby's admirable Addresses to Young Men.]

The gentleman to whom Lord Derby referred was Mr. Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer. And as he has himself permitted the story of his life to be published, there is no necessity for concealing his name. His life is besides calculated to furnish one of the best illustrations of our subject. When a boy, he was of a bright, active, cheerful disposition. To a certain extent he inherited his mechanical powers from his father, who, besides being an excellent painter, was a thorough mechanic. It was in his workshop that the boy made his first acquaintance with tools. He also had for his companion the son of an iron-founder, and he often went to the founder's shop to watch the moulding, iron-melting, casting, forging, pattern-making, and smith's work that was going on.

"I look back," Mr. Nasmyth says, "to the hours of Saturday afternoons spent in having the run of the workshops of this small foundry as the true and only apprenticeship of my life. I did not trust to reading about such things. I saw, handled, and helped when I could; and all the ideas in connection with them became in all details, ever after, permanent in my mind,--to say nothing of the no small acquaintance obtained at the same time of the nature of workmen."

In course of time, young Nasmyth, with the aid of his father's tools, could do little jobs for himself. He made steels for tinder-boxes, which he sold to his schoolfellows. He made model steam-engines, and sectional models, for use at popular lectures and in schools; and by selling such models, he raised sufficient money to enable him to attend the lectures on Natural Philosophy and Chemistry at the Edinburgh University. Among his works at that time, was a working model of a steam carriage for use on common roads. It worked so well that he was induced to make another on a larger scale. After having been successfully used, he sold the engine for the purpose of driving a small factory.

Nasmyth was now twenty years old, and wished to turn his practical faculties to account. His object was to find employment in one of the great engineering establishments of the day. The first, in his opinion, was that of Henry Maudslay, of London. To attain his object, he made a small steam-engine, every part of which was his own handiwork, including the casting and forging. He proceeded to London; introduced himself to the great engineer; submitted his drawings; showed his models; and was finally engaged as Mr. Maudslay's private workman.

Then came the question of wages. When Nasmyth finally left home to begin the world on his own account, he determined _not to cost his father another farthing_. Being the youngest of eleven children, he thought that he could maintain himself, without trenching farther on the family means. And he nobly fulfilled his determination. He felt that the wages sufficient to maintain other workmen, would surely be sufficient to maintain him. He might have to exercise self-control and self-denial; but of course he could do that. Though but a youth, he had wisdom enough and self-respect enough to deny himself everything that was unnecessary, in order to preserve the valuable situation which he had obtained.

Well, about the wages. When Mr. Maudslay referred his young workman to the chief cashier as to his weekly wages, it was arranged that Nasmyth was to receive ten shillings a week. He knew that, by strict economy, he could live within this amount. He contrived a small cooking apparatus, of which we possess the drawings. It is not necessary to describe his method of cooking, nor his method of living; it is sufficient to say that his little cooking apparatus (in which he still takes great pride) enabled him fully to accomplish his purpose. He lived within his means, and did not cost his father another farthing.

Next year his wages were increased to fifteen shillings. He then began to save money. He did not put it in a bank, but used his savings for the purpose of making the tools with which he afterwards commenced business. In the third year of his service, his wages were again increased, on account, doubtless, of the value of his services. "I don't know," he has since said, "that any future period of my life abounded in such high enjoyment of existence as the three years I spent at Maudslay's. It was a glorious situation for one like myself,--so earnest as I was in all that related to mechanism--in the study of men as well as of machinery. I wish many a young man would do as I then did.

I am sure they would find their reward in that feeling of constant improvement, of daily advancement, and true independence, which will ever have a charm for those who are earnest in their endeavours to make right progress in life and in the regard of all good men."

After three years spent at Maudslay's, Mr. Nasmyth returned to Edinburgh to construct a small stock of engineering tools suitable for starting him in business on his own account. He hired a workshop and did various engineering jobs, in order to increase his little store of money and to execute his little stock of tools. This occupied him for two years; and in 1834 he removed the whole of his tools and machinery to Manchester. He began business there in a very humble way, but it increased so rapidly that he was induced to remove to a choice piece of land on the banks of the Bridgewater Canal at Patricroft, and there make a beginning--at first in wooden sheds--of the now famous Bridgewater Foundry.

"There," says he, "I toiled right heartily until December 31st, 1856, when I retired to enjoy, in _active_ leisure, the result of many an anxious and interesting day. I had there, with the blessing of God, devoted the best years of my life to the pursuit of a business of which I was proud. And I trust that, without undue vanity, I may be allowed to say that I have left my mark on several useful inventions, which probably have had no small share in the mechanical works of the age. There is scarcely a steamship or locomotive that is not indebted to my steam hammer; and without it, Armstrong and Whitworth guns and iron-plated men-of-war could scarcely have existed."

But though Nasmyth retired from business at the age of forty-eight, he did not seek repose in idleness. He continues to be as busy as the busiest; but in an altogether different direction. Instead of being tied to the earth, he enjoys himself among the stars. By means of telescopes of his own making, he has investigated the sun, and discovered its "willow leaves;" he has examined and photographed the moon, and in the monograph of it which he has published, he has made us fully acquainted with its geography. He is also a thorough artist, and spends a considerable portion of his time in painting,--though he is too modest to exhibit. The last time we visited his beautiful home at Hammerfield, he was busy polishing glasses for one of his new telescopes,--the motive power being a windmill erected on one of his outhouses.

Another word before we have done. "If," said Nasmyth, "I were to try to compress into one sentence the whole of the experience I have had during an active and successful life, and offer it to young men as a rule and certain receipt for success in any station, it would be composed in these words--'Duty _first!_ Pleasure _second!_' From what I have seen of young men and their after-progress, I am satisfied that what is generally termed 'bad fortune,' 'ill luck,' and 'misfortune,' is in nine cases out of ten, simply the result of _inverting_ the above simple maxim. Such experience as I have had, convinces me that absence of success arises in the great majority of cases from want of self-denial and want of common sense. The worst of all maxims is 'Pleasure _first!_ Work and Duty _second!_"

METHODS OF ECONOMY.

"It was with profound wisdom that the Romans called by the same name courage and virtue. There is in fact no virtue, properly so called, without victory over ourselves; and what cost us nothing, is worth nothing."--_De Maistre_.

"Almost all the advantages which man possesses above the inferior animals, arise from his power of acting in combination with his fellows; and of accomplishing by the united efforts of numbers what could not be accomplished by the detached efforts of indivduals."--_J.S. Mill_.

"For the future, our main security will be in the wider diffusion of Property, and in all such measures as will facilitate this result. With the possession of property will come Conservative instincts, and disinclination for rash and reckless schemes.... We trust much, therefore, to the rural population becoming Proprietors, and to the urban population becoming Capitalists."--_W.R. Greg_.

The methods of practising economy are very simple. Spend less than you earn. That is the first rule. A portion should always be set apart for the future. The person who spends more than he earns, is a fool. The civil law regards the spendthrift as akin to the lunatic, and frequently takes from him the management of his own affairs.

The next rule is to pay ready money, and never, on any account, to run into debt. The person who runs into debt is apt to get cheated; and if he runs into debt to any extent, he will himself be apt to get dishonest. "Who pays what he owes, enriches himself."

The next is, never to anticipate uncertain profits by expending them before they are secured. The profits may never come, and in that case you will have taken on yourself a load of debt which you may never get rid of. It will sit on your shoulders like the old man in Sinbad.

Another method of economy is, to keep a regular account of all that you earn, and of all that you expend. An orderly man will know beforehand what he requires, and will be provided with the necessary means for obtaining it. Thus his domestic budget will be balanced; and his expenditure kept within his income.

John Wesley regularly adopted this course. Although he possessed a small income, he always kept his eyes on the state of his affairs. A year before his death, he wrote with a trembling hand, in his Journal of Expenses; "For more than eighty-six years I have kept my accounts exactly. I do not care to continue to do so any longer, having the conviction that I economize all that I obtain, and give all that I can,--that is to say, all that I have."[1]

[Footnote 1: Southey's _Life of Wesley_, vol. ii., p. 560.]

Besides these methods of economy, the eye of the master or the mistress is always necessary to see that nothing is lost, that everything is put to its proper use and kept in its proper place, and that all things are done decently and in order. It does no dishonour to even the highest individuals to take a personal interest in their own affairs. And with persons of moderate means, the necessity for the eye of the master overlooking everything, is absolutely necessary for the proper conduct of business.

It is difficult to fix the precise limits of economy. Bacon says that if a man would live well within his income, he ought not to expend more than one-half, and save the rest. This is perhaps too exacting; and Bacon himself did not follow his own advice. What proportion of one's income should be expended on rent? That depends on circumstances. In the country about one-tenth; in London about one-sixth. It is at all events better to save too much, than spend too much. One may remedy the first defect, but not so easily the latter. Wherever there is a large family, the more money that is put to one side and saved, the better.

Economy is necessary to the moderately rich, as well as to the comparatively poor man. Without economy, a man cannot be generous. He cannot take part in the charitable work of the world. If he spends all that he earns, he can help nobody. He cannot properly educate his children, nor put them in the way of starting fairly in the business of life. Even the example of Bacon shows that the loftiest intelligence cannot neglect thrift without peril. But thousands of witnesses daily testify, that men even of the most moderate intelligence, can practise the virtue with success.

Although Englishmen are a diligent, hard-working, and generally self-reliant race, trusting to themselves and their own efforts for their sustenance and advancement in the world, they are yet liable to overlook and neglect some of the best practical methods of improving their position, and securing their social well-being. They are not yet sufficiently educated to be temperate, provident, and foreseeing. They live for the present, and are too regardless of the coming time. Men who are husbands and parents, generally think they do their duty if they provide for the hour that is, neglectful of the hour that is to come. Though industrious, they are improvident; though money-making, they are spendthrift. They do not exercise forethought enough, and are defective in the virtue of prudent economy.

Men of all classes are, as yet, too little influenced by these considerations. They are apt to live beyond their incomes,--at all events, to live up to them, The upper classes live too much for display; they must keep up their "position in society;" they must have fine houses, horses, and carriages; give good dinners, and drink rich wines, their ladies must wear costly and gay dresses. Thus the march of improvidence goes on over broken hearts, ruined hopes, and wasted ambitions.

The vice descends in society,--the middle classes strive to ape the patrician orders; they flourish crests, liveries, and hammercloths; their daughters must learn "accomplishments"--see "society"--ride and drive--frequent operas and theatres. Display is the rage, ambition rivalling ambition; and thus the vicious folly rolls on like a tide. The vice again descends. The working classes, too, live up to their means--much smaller means, it is true; but even when they are able, they are not sufficiently careful to provide against the evil day; and then only the poorhouse offers its scanty aid to protect them against want.

To save money for avaricious purposes is altogether different from saving it for economical purposes. The saving may be accomplished in the same manner--by wasting nothing, and saving everything. But here the comparison ends. The miser's only pleasure is in saving. The prudent economist spends what he can afford for comfort and enjoyment, and saves a surplus for some future time. The avaricious person makes gold his idol: it is his molten calf, before which he constantly bows down; whereas the thrifty person regards it as a useful instrument, and as a means of promoting his own happiness and the happiness of those who are dependent on him. The miser is never satisfied. He amasses wealth that he can never consume, but leaves it to be squandered by others, probably by spendthrifts; whereas the economist aims at securing a fair share of the world's wealth and comfort, without any thought of amassing a fortune.

It is the duty of all persons to economize their means,--of the young as well as of the old. The Duke of Sully mentions, in his Memoirs, that nothing contributed more to his fortune than the prudent economy which he practised, even in his youth, of always preserving some ready money in hand for the purpose of meeting circumstances of emergency. Is a man married? Then the duty of economy is still more binding. His wife and children plead to him most eloquently. Are they, in the event of his early death, to be left to buffet with the world unaided? The hand of charity is cold, the gifts of charity are valueless, compared with the gains of industry, and the honest savings of frugal labour, which carry with them blessings and comforts, without inflicting any wound on the feelings of the helpless and bereaved.

Let every man, therefore, who can, endeavour to economize and to save; not to hoard, but to nurse his little savings, for the sake of promoting the welfare and happiness of himself while here, and of others when he has departed.

There is a dignity in the very effort to save with a worthy purpose, even though the attempt should not be crowned with eventual success. It produces a well-regulated mind; it gives prudence a triumph over extravagance; it gives virtue the mastery over vice; it puts the passions under control; it drives away care; it secures comfort. Saved money, however little, will serve to dry up many a tear--will ward off many sorrows and heartburnings, which otherwise might prey on us. Possessed of a little store of capital, a man walks with a lighter step--his heart beats more cheerily. When interruption of work or adversity happens, he can meet them; he can recline on his capital, which will either break his fall, or prevent it altogether. By prudential economy, we can realize the dignity of man; life will be a blessing, and old age an honour.

We can ultimately, under a kind Providence, surrender life, conscious that we have been no burden on society, but rather, perhaps, an acquisition and ornament to it; conscious, also, that as we have been independent, our children after us, by following our example, and availing themselves of the means we have left behind us, will walk in like manner through the world in happiness and independence.

Every man's first duty is, to improve, to educate, and elevate himself--helping forward his brethren at the same time by all reasonable methods. Each has within himself the capability of free will and free action to a large extent; and the fact is proved by the multitude of men who have successfully battled with and overcome the adverse circumstances of life in which they have been placed; and who have risen from the lowest depths of poverty and social debasement, as if to prove what energetic man, resolute of purpose, can do for his own elevation, progress, and advancement in the world. Is it not a fact that the greatness of humanity, the glory of communities, the power of nations, are the result of trials and difficulties encountered and overcome?

Let a man resolve and determine that he will advance, and the first step of advancement is already made. The first step is half the battle. In the very fact of advancing himself, he is in the most effectual possible way advancing others. He is giving them the most eloquent of all lessons--that of example; which teaches far more emphatically than words can teach. He is doing, what others are by imitation incited to do. Beginning with himself, he is in the most emphatic manner teaching the duty of self-reform and of self-improvement; and if the majority of men acted as he did, how much wiser, how much happier, how much more prosperous as a whole, would society become. For, society being made up of units, will be happy and prosperous, or the reverse, exactly in the same degree as the respective individuals who compose it.

Complaints about the inequality of conditions are as old as the world. In the "Economy" of Xenophon, Socrates asks, "How is it that some men live in abundance, and have something to spare, while others can scarcely obtain the necessaries of life, and at the same time run into debt?" "The reason is," replied Isomachus, "because the former occupy themselves with their business, while the latter neglect it."

The difference between men consists for the most part in intelligence, conduct, and energy. The best character never works by chance, but is under the influence of virtue, prudence, and forethought.

There are, of course, many failures in the world. The man who looks to others for help, instead of relying on himself, will fail. The man who is undergoing the process of perpetual waste, will fail. The miser, the scrub, the extravagant, the thriftless, will necessarily fail. Indeed, most people fail because they do not deserve to succeed. They set about their work in the wrong way, and no amount of experience seems to improve them. There is not so much in luck as some people profess to believe. Luck is only another word for good management in practical affairs. Richelieu used to say that he would not continue to employ an unlucky man,--in other words, a man wanting in practical qualities, and unable to profit by experience; for failures in the past are very often the auguries of failures in the future.

Some of the best and ablest of men are wanting in tact. They will neither make allowance for circumstances, nor adapt themselves to circumstances: they will insist on trying to drive their wedge the broad end foremost. They raise walls only to run their own heads against. They make such great preparations, and use such great precautions, that they defeat their own object,--like the Dutchman mentioned by Washington Irving, who, having to leap a ditch, went so far back to have a good run at it, that when he came up he was completely winded, and had to sit down on the wrong side to recover his breath.

In actual life, we want things done, not preparations for doing them; and we naturally prefer the man who has definite aims and purposes, and proceeds in the straightest and shortest way to accomplish his object, to the one who describes the thing to be done, and spins fine phrases about doing it. Without action, words are mere maundering.

The desire for success in the world, and even for the accumulation of money, is not without its uses. It has doubtless been implanted in the human heart for good rather than for evil purposes. Indeed the desire to accumulate, forms one of the most powerful instruments for the regeneration of society. It provides the basis for individual energy and activity. It is the beginning of maritime and commercial enterprise. It is the foundation of industry, as well as of independence. It impels men to labour, to invent, and to excel.

No idle nor thriftless man ever became great. It is among those who never lost a moment, that we find the men who have moved and advanced the world,--by their learning, their science, or their inventions. Labour of some sort is one of the conditions of existence. The thought has come down to us from pagan times, that "Labour is the price which the gods have set on all that is excellent." The thought is also worthy of Christian times.

Everything depends, as we shall afterwards find, on the uses to which accumulations of wealth are applied. On the tombstone of John Donough, of New Orleans, the following maxims are engraved as the merchant's guide to young men on their way through life:--

"Remember always that labour is one of the conditions of our existence.

"Time is gold; throw not one minute away, but place each one to account.

"Do unto all men as you would be done by.

"Never put off till to-morrow what can be done to-day.

"Never bid another do what you can do yourself.

"Never covet what is not your own.

"Never think any matter so trifling as not to deserve notice.

"Never give out what does not come in.

"Do not spend, but produce.

"Let the greatest order regulate the actions of your life.

"Study in your course of life to do the greatest amount of good.

"Deprive yourself of nothing that is necessary to your comfort, but live in honourable simplicity and frugality.

"Labour then to the last moment of your existence."

Most men have it in their power, by prudent arrangements, to defend themselves against adversity, and to throw up a barrier against destitution. They can do this by their own individual efforts, or by acting on the principle of co-operation, which is capable of an almost indefinite extension. People of the most humble condition, by combining their means and associating together, are enabled in many ways to defend themselves against the pressure of poverty, to promote their physical well-being, and even to advance the progress of the nation.

A solitary individual may be able to do very little to advance and improve society; but when he combines with his fellows for the purpose, he can do a very great deal. Civilization itself is but the effect of combining. Mr. Mill has said that "almost all the advantages which man possesses over the inferior animals, arise from his power of acting in combination with his fellows, and of accomplishing, by the united efforts of numbers, what could not be accomplished by the detached efforts of individuals."

The secret of social development is to be found in co-operation; and the great question of improved economical and social life can only receive a satisfactory solution through its means. To effect good on a large scale, men must combine their efforts; and the best social system is that in which the organization for the common good is rendered the most complete in all respects.

The middle classes have largely employed the principle of association. No class has risen so rapidly, or done more by their energy and industry to advance the power and progress of England. And why? Because the most active have always been the most ready to associate, to co-operate, and to combine. They have combined when they were attacked, combined when they had an abuse to destroy, or a great object to accomplish. They have associated together to manufacture articles of commerce, to make canals, to construct railways, to form gas companies, to institute insurance and banking companies, and to do an immense amount of industrial work. By combining their small capitals together, they have been able to accumulate an enormous aggregate capital, and to execute the most gigantic undertakings.

The middle classes have accomplished more by the principle of co-operation than the classes who have so much greater need of it. All the joint stock companies are the result of association. The railways, the telegraphs, the banks, the mines, the manufactories, have for the most part been established and are carried on by means of the savings of the middle classes.

The working classes have only begun to employ the same principle. Yet how much might they accomplish by its means! They might co-operate in saving as well as in producing. They might, by putting their saved earnings together, become, by combination, their own masters. Within a few years past, many millions sterling have been expended in strikes for wages. A hundred millions a year are thrown away on drink and other unnecessary articles. Here is an enormous capital. Men who expend or waste such an amount can easily become capitalists. It requires only will, energy, and self-denial. So much money spent on buildings, plant, and steam-engines, would enable them to manufacture for themselves, instead of for the benefit of individual capitalists. The steam-engine is impartial in its services. It is no respecter of persons; it will work for the benefit of the labourer as well as for the benefit of the millionaire.

It will work for those who make the best use of it, and who have the greatest knowledge of its powers.

The greater number of workmen possess little capital save their labour; and, as we have already seen, many of them uselessly and wastefully spend most of their earnings, instead of saving them and becoming capitalists. By combining in large numbers for the purposes of economical working, they might easily become capitalists, and operate on a large scale. As society is now constituted, every man is not only justified but bound in duty as a citizen, to accumulate his earnings by all fair and honourable methods, with the view of securing a position of ultimate competence and independence.

We do not say that men should save and hoard their gains for the mere sake of saving and hoarding; this would be parsimony and avarice. But we do say that all men ought to aim at accumulating a sufficiency--enough to maintain them in comfort during the helpless years that are to come--to maintain them in times of sickness and of sorrow, and in old age, which, if it does come, ought to find them with a little store of capital in hand, sufficient to secure them from dependence on the charity of others.

Workmen are for the most part disposed to associate; but the association is not always of a healthy kind. It sometimes takes the form of Unions against masters; and displays itself in the Strikes that are so common, and usually so unfortunate. Workmen also strike against men of their own class, for the purpose of excluding them from their special calling. One of the principal objects of trades-unions is to keep up wages at the expense of the lower paid and unassociated working people. They endeavour to prevent poorer men learning their trade, and thus keep the supply of labour below the demand.[1] This system may last for a time, but it becomes ruinous in the end.

[Footnote 1: On the 31st January, 1875, a labourer in the employment of Messrs. Vickers, Sheffield, who had not served an apprenticeship, was put on to turn one of the lathes. This being contrary to the rules of the union, the men in the shop struck work. It is a usual course for men of the union to "strike" in this manner against persons of their own condition, and to exercise a force not resting in law or natural right, but merely on the will of a majority, and directly subversive of the freedom of the individual.]

It is not the want of money that prevents skilled workmen from becoming capitalists, and opening the door for the employment of labouring men who are poorer and less skilled than themselves. The work-people threw away half a million sterling during the Preston strike, after which they went back to work at the old terms. The London building trades threw away over three hundred thousand pounds during their strike; and even had they obtained the terms for which they struck, it would have taken six years to recoup them for their loss. The colliers in the Forest of Dean went back to work at the old terms after eleven weeks' play, at the loss of fifty thousand pounds. The iron-workers of Northumberland and Durham, after spending a third of the year in idleness, and losing two hundred thousand pounds in wages, went back to work at a reduction of ten per cent.

The colliers and iron-workers of South Wales, during the recent strike or lock-out, were idle for four months, and, according to Lord Aberdare, lost, in wages alone, not less than three millions sterling!

Here, then, is abundance of money within the power of working-men,--money which they might utilize, but do not. Think only of a solitary million, out of the three millions sterling which they threw away during the coal strike, being devoted to the starting of collieries, or iron-mills, or manufactories, to be worked by co-operative production for the benefit of the operatives themselves. With frugal habits, says Mr. Greg, the well-conditioned workman might in ten years easily have five hundred pounds in the bank; and, combining his savings with twenty other men similarly disposed, they might have ten thousand pounds for the purpose of starting any manufacture in which they are adepts.[1]

[Footnote 1: "The annual expenditure of the working classes alone, on drink and tobacco, is not less than £60,000,000. Every year, therefore, the working classes have it in their power to become capitalists (_simply by saving wasteful and pernicious expenditure_) to an extent which would enable them to start at least 500 cotton mills, or coal mines, or iron works, _on their own account_, or to purchase at least 500,000 acres, and so set up 50,000 families each with a nice little estate of their own of ten acres, on fee simple. No one can dispute the facts. No one can deny the inference."--_Quarterly Review,_ No. 263.]

That this is not an impracticable scheme, is capable of being easily proved. The practice of co-operation has long been adopted by workpeople throughout England. A large proportion of the fishery industry has been conducted on that principle for hundreds of years. Fishermen join in building, rigging, and manning a boat; the proceeds of the fish they catch at sea is divided among them--so much to the boat, so much to the fishermen. The company of oyster-dredgers of Whitstable "has existed time out of mind,"[2] though it was only in 1793 that they were incorporated by Act of Parliament. The tin-miners of Cornwall have also acted on the same principle. They have mined, washed, and sold the tin, dividing the proceeds among themselves in certain proportions,--most probably from the time that the Phoenicians carried away the produce to their ports in the Mediterranean.

[Footnote 2: Reports on the Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867, vol. vi., p. 252.]

In our own time, co-operation has been practised to a considerable extent. In 1795, the Hull Anti-Mill Industrial Society was founded. The reasons for its association are explained in the petition addressed to the Mayor and Aldermen of Hull by the first members of the society. The petition begins thus: "We, the poor inhabitants of the said town, have lately experienced much trouble and sorrow in ourselves and families, on the occasion of the exorbitant price of flour; and though the price is much reduced at present, yet we judge it needful to take every precaution to preserve ourselves from the invasions of covetous and merciless men in future." They accordingly entered into a subscription to build a mill, in order to supply themselves with flour. The corporation granted their petition, and supported them by liberal donations. The mill was built, and exists to this day.

It now consists of more than four thousand members, each holding a share of twenty-five shillings. The members belong principally to the labouring classes. The millers endeavoured by action at law to put down the society, but the attempt was successfully resisted. The society manufactures flour, and sells it to the members at market price, dividing the profits annually among the shareholders, according to the quantity consumed in each member's family. The society has proved eminently remunerative.

Many years passed before the example of the "poor inhabitants" of Hull was followed. It was only in 1847 that the co-operators of Leeds purchased a flour-mill, and in 1850 that those of Rochdale did the same; since which time they have manufactured flour for the benefit of their members. The corn-millers of Leeds attempted to undersell the Leeds Industrial Society. They soon failed, and the price of flour was permanently reduced. The Leeds mill does business amounting to more than a hundred thousand pounds yearly; its capital amounts to twenty-two thousand pounds; and it paid more than eight thousand pounds of profits and bonuses to its three thousand six hundred members in 1866, besides supplying them with flour of the best quality. The Rochdale District Co-operative Corn-mill Society has also been eminently successful. It supplies flour to consumers residing within a radius of about fifteen miles round Rochdale[1].

It also supplies flour to sixty-two co-operative societies, numbering over twelve thousand members. Its business in 1866 amounted to two hundred and twenty-four thousand pounds, and its profits to over eighteen thousand pounds.

[Footnote 1: Its history is given in the Reports above referred to, p. 269.]

The Rochdale Corn-mill grew out of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society, which formed an epoch in the history of industrial co-operative institutions. The Equitable Pioneers Society was established in the year 1844, at a time when trade was in a very bad condition, and working people generally were heartless and hopeless as to their future state. Some twenty-eight or thirty men, mostly flannel weavers, met and formed themselves into a society for the purpose of economizing their hard-won earnings. It is pretty well known that working-men generally pay at least ten per cent. more for the articles they consume, than they need to do under a sounder system. Professor Fawcett estimates their loss at nearer twenty per cent. than ten per cent. At all events, these working-men wished to save this amount of profit, which before went into the pockets of the distributers of the necessaries,--in other words, into the pockets of the shopkeepers.

The weekly subscription was twopence each; and when about fifty-two calls of twopence each had been made, they found that they were able to buy a sack of oatmeal, which they distributed at cost-price among the members of the society. The number of members grew, and the subscriptions so increased, that the society was enabled to buy tea, sugar, and other articles, and distribute them among the members at cost-price. They superseded the shopkeepers, and became their own tradesmen. They insisted from the first on payments in cash. No credit was given.

The society grew. It established a store for the sale of food, firing, clothes, and other necessaries. In a few years the members set on foot the Co-operative Corn-mill. They increased the capital by the issue of one-pound shares, and began to make and sell clothes and shoes. They also sold drapery. But the principal trade consisted in the purchase and sale of provisions--butchers' meat, groceries, flour, and such-like. Notwithstanding the great distress during the period of the cotton famine, the society continued to prosper. From the first, it set apart a portion of its funds for educational purposes, and established a news-room, and a library, which now contains over six thousand volumes.

The society continued to increase until it possessed eleven branches for the sale of goods and stores in or near Rochdale, besides the original office in Toad Lane. At the end of 1866, it had 6,246 members, and a capital of £99,908. Its income for goods sold and cash received during the year was £249,122; and the gross profit £31,931.

But this was not all. Two and a half per cent. was appropriated from the net profits to support the news-rooms and library; and there are now eleven news and reading rooms at different places in or near the town where the society carries on its business; the sum devoted to this object amounting to over seven hundred pounds per annum. The members play at chess and draughts, and use the stereoscopic views, microscopes, and telescopes placed in the libraries. No special arrangements have been made to promote temperance; but the news-rooms and library exercise a powerful and beneficial influence in promoting sobriety. It has been said that the society has done more to remove drunkenness from Rochdale than all that the advocates of temperance have been able to effect.

The example of the Rochdale Pioneers has exercised a powerful influence on working-men throughout the northern counties of England. There is scarcely a town or village but has a co-operative institution of one kind or another. These societies have promoted habits of saving, of thrift, and of temperance. They have given the people an interest in money matters, and enabled them to lay out their earnings to the best advantage. They have also given the working people some knowledge of business; for the whole of their concerns are managed by committees selected at the general meetings of the members.

One of the most flourishing co-operative societies is that established at Over Darwen. The society has erected a row of handsome buildings in the centre of the town. The shops for the sale of provisions, groceries, clothing, and other necessaries, occupy the lower story. Over the shops are the library, reading rooms, and class rooms, which are open to the members and their families. The third story consists of a large public hall, which is used for lectures, concerts, and dances. There are six branches of the society established in different parts of the town. A large amount of business is done, and the profits are very considerable. These are divided among the members, in proportion to the purchases made by them. The profits are for the most part re-invested in joint-stock paper-mills, cotton-mills, and collieries, in the neighbourhood of Darwen.

One of the most praiseworthy features of the society is the provision made for the free education of the members and their families. of the profits are appropriated for the purpose. While inspecting the institution a few months ago, we were informed that the Science classes were so efficiently conducted, that one of the pupils had just obtained a Government Scholarship of fifty pounds a year, for three years, including free instruction at the School of Mines, Jermyn Street, London, with a free use of the laboratories during that period. There are also two other co-operative institutions in the same place; and we were informed that the working people of Darwen are, for the most part, hard-working, sober, and thrifty.

The example has also spread into Scotland and the south of England. At Northampton, a co-operative society exists for the purpose of buying and selling leather, and also for the manufacture of boots and shoes. At Padiham and other places in Lancashire, co-operative cotton-mills have been established. The Manchester and Salford Equitable Co-operative Society "combine the securities and facilities of a bank with the profits of a trade." But the business by which they mostly thrive, is by the purchase and sale of food, provisions, groceries, draperies, and other articles, with the exception of intoxicating liquors.

The sole secret of their success consists in "ready money." They give no credit. Everything is done for cash; the profit of the trade being divided among the members. Every business man knows that cash payment is the soundest method of conducting business. The Rochdale Pioneers having discovered the secret, have spread it among their class. In their "advice to members of this and other societies," they say: "Look well after money matters. Buy your goods as much as possible in the first markets; or if you have the produce of your industry to sell, contrive, if possible, to sell it in the last. Never depart from the principle of buying and selling for ready money. Beware of long reckonings." In short, the co-operative societies became tradesmen on a large scale; and, besides the pureness of the food sold, their profit consisted in the discount for cash payments, which was divided among the members.

Land and Building Societies constitute another form of co-operation. These are chiefly supported by the minor middle-class men, but also to a considerable extent by the skilled and thrifty working-class men. By their means portions of land are bought, and dwelling-houses are built. By means of a building society, a person who desires to possess a house enters the society as a member, and instead of paying his rent to the landlord, pays his subscriptions and interest to a committee of his friends; and in course of time, when his subscriptions are paid up, the house is purchased, and conveyed to him by the society. The building-society is thus a savings bank, where money accumulates for a certain purpose. But even those who do not purchase a house, receive a dividend and bonus on their shares, which sometimes amounts to a considerable sum.

The accumulation of property has the effect which it always has on thrifty men; it makes them steady, sober, and diligent. It weans them from revolutionary notions, and makes them conservative. When workmen, by their industry and frugality, have secured their own independence, they will cease to regard the sight of others' well-being as a wrong inflicted on themselves; and it will no longer be possible to make political capital out of their imaginary woes.

It has been said that Freehold Land Societies, which were established for political objects, had the effect of weaning men from political reform. They were first started in Birmingham, for the purpose of enabling men to buy land, and divide it into forty-shilling freeholds, so that the owners might become electors and vote against the corn-laws. The corn-laws have been done away with; but the holders of freehold land still exist, though many of them have ceased to be politicians. "Mr. Arthur Ryland informs me," said Mr. Holyoake, in a recent paper on Building Societies, "that in Birmingham, numbers of persons under the influence of these societies have forsaken patriotism for profits.

And I know both co-operators and Chartists who were loud-mouthed for social and political reform, who now care no more for it than a Whig government; and decline to attend a public meeting on a fine night, while they would crawl like the serpent in Eden, through a gutter in a storm, after a good security. They have tasted land, and the gravel has got into their souls."

"Yet to many others," he adds, "these societies have taught a healthy frugality they never else would have known; and enabled many an industrious son to take to his home his poor old father--who expected and dreaded to die in the workhouse--and set him down to smoke his pipe in the sunshine in the garden, of which the land and the house belonged to his child."[1]

[Footnote 1: Paper read at York Meeting of the National Society for Promoting Social Science, 26th Sept. 1864.]

The provident habits and knowledge thus induced are most beneficial to the members. And the result is, that the careless become thoughtful, and, on saving, become orderly, respectable, propertied, and in every way better citizens, neighbours, and more worthy and comfortable. "[1]

[Footnote 1: Letter of Mr. John Holmes, in Reports of Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867 vol. vi., p. 240.]

There are also exceptional towns and villages in Lancashire where large sums of money have been saved by the operatives for buying or building comfortable cottage dwellings. Last year Padiham saved about fifteen thousand pounds for this purpose, although its population is only about 8,000. Burnley has also been very successful. The Building Society there has 6,600 investors, who saved last year £160,000 or an average of twenty-four pounds for each investor. The members consist principally of mill operatives, miners, mechanics, engineers, carpenters, stonemasons, and labourers. They also include women, both married and unmarried. Our informant states that "great numbers of the working classes have purchased houses in which to live. They have likewise bought houses as a means of investment. The building society has assisted in hundreds of these cases, by advancing money on mortgage,--such mortgages being repaid by easy instalments."

Building Societies are, on the whole, among the most excellent methods of illustrating the advantages of Thrift. They induce men to save money for the purpose of buying their own homes; in which, so long as they live, they possess the best of all securities.