age. Every man who has the least moral life, in some form or other asks it in deep earnest, and with an anxious heart; and whenever it is once raised by an individual or a community, it will not down at the bidding. We may seek to hush the matter up; we may denounce those who boldly challenge its discussion; but it has taken so strong a hold on the more advanced nations of Christendom, that it is useless for us to attempt to blink the question; nothing remains for us but to meet it, seriously, solemnly, in a spirit corresponding to its importance, and to give it such answer as best we may. The present social condition of mankind cannot last for ever; something better is reserved for man on earth, than he ever yet has found. How shall he obtain it? Various answers have been given, from time to time, which it may be well in passing briefly to notice.

1. The first of these answers worthy of our attention is the CLERICAL answer, usually given in the words of Jesus," Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." This answer is true from the point of view from which it was originally given; but as commonly interpreted in these days, it is not sufficiently practical. What is the "kingdom of heaven?" What is it to "seek" it? Where and how is it to be sought? In what consists its righteousness? How is that righteousness to be obtained? Unquestionably we are to seek the kingdom of heaven, and its righteousness; but is there any difference between doing this, and seeking the moral and physical well-being of mankind on earth? That we are also to seek the kingdom of heaven by seeking to make all men obey the new commandment which Jesus gave us, namely, that we love one another as he loved us, is unquestionably true; but how are we to make all men love one another, and be willing to die for one another, as Jesus did for us? The Clerical answer is rather an exhortation to seek an answer to the question raised, than the answer itself.

2. A second answer may be termed the ETHICAL, insisted upon mainly by moralists, philanthropists, and especially by those who follow theories rather than experience. It is variously

given, but in our times most frequently in the words self-trust, self-reliance, self-control, SELF-CULTURE. Its essential feature is man's sufficiency for himself, and, therefore, that he must work out, by his own isolated, unaided efforts, his own salvation, whether temporal or eternal. It implies Idealism in philosophy, Egoism in morals, Individualism in politics, and Naturalism in religion; and is, therefore, necessarily atheistical in its spirit and tendency. But man is not sufficient for himself. He cannot perform any act, even the slightest, external or internal, save in conjunction with what is not himself. He is the subject that acts, and, therefore, cannot be the object on which he acts. He that cultivates must be other than he who is cultivated. We never cultivate ourselves by direct efforts at self-culture; we cultivate one another,―ourselves only in seeking to cultivate others. This is what is implied in the fact that we are social beings; that we can live and grow only in the bosom of society.

The whole of this answer proceeds on a false assumption. We form only to a limited extent our own characters. They are in a great measure the result of circumstances over which, as isolated individuals, we have and can have no control. Much depends on who were our parents and ancestors; on the community in which we are born and brought up; on the early training we receive; the early bias given to our minds and affections; and the habits we are suffered to contract before we are old enough to reflect and judge for ourselves. Evil communications corrupt good manners; and good communications purify corrupt manners. When so much depends on that over which we can exercise at best only a feeble control, and in general no control at all, what is the use of talking about self-culture? We are all members of one body; the whole body must suffer with each of its members, and each member with the body. In this isolation, presupposed by the doctrine of self-culture, no man lives or can live. The lot of each man is, for time and eternity, bound up with that of all men.

The advocates of self-culture, as the medium of social regeneration, proceed on the hypothesis that the evils mankind endure are merely an aggregate

of individual evils, the result, in all cases, of individual ignorance and vice. But this hypothesis, in the sense they affirm it, is without any foundation. Mankind is not a mere aggregation of individuals. The race is older than individuals, and is the parent of individuals: for individuals are nothing but the various phenomena through which, or by means of which, the race manifests itself. Society also is older than individuals, and by virtue of the one life which runs through all men, making them all one in the unity of the race, has its unity, and a sort of entity of its own, by which it is superior to individuals, and does and can survive them. There are very few evils that spring from the depravity of isolated wills, or that mere private morality, stopping with the isolated individual, can cure. What we complain of in the actual condition of mankind is the result of no one cause; has been produced by nobody in particular; but is the growth of ages, the product of causes as old and as wide as the race, and as diversified as its members. It is idle, then, to suppose that any one individual can, even in his own individual case, throw off the burthen which all humanity has been through all its existence engaged in placing upon his shoulders. Individuals, be they never so enlightened and virtuous, must suffer, the world being as it is. The wickedness of one man carries mourning and desolation to hundreds, nay, thousands of hearts. A single bad law, touching social and political economies, enforced by the supreme authority of the state, makes the great mass of the people poor and wretched for hundreds of generations. Who can estimate the amount of public and private wrong, individual vice, crime, poverty, and suffering, occasioned by the combined influence of our banking and so-called protective systems? Ages will not undo the mischief they have done. Their deteriorating effects will be felt on this country, and, therefore, on the whole human race, in a degree, as long as we are a people. Private virtues are no doubt the great matter, the one thing needful; but it is only when they are directed to the removal of the depravities of the social state that they become efficient agents in the amelioration of mankind.

Another mistake is involved in this theory of self-culture. Its advocates allege that knowledge is power, and infer that a man can always take care of himself if he only be enlightened. This is only another phase of the same notion, that all the causes of evil are purely individual, and may be easily removed by each individual, so far as himself is concerned. Knowledge is no doubt power; and I, if I am the only enlightened man in the community, can make all the rest labor for me; it is power also, if all the community are enlightened and direct their efforts to organic amelioration. But knowledge cannot prevent a man from being hungry, from having the heart-ache, nor his coat from becoming rusty or threadbare. Suppose all your operatives in Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and Lowell, should become as knowing as Locke or Newton, the factory system remaining all the time unchanged, and they continuing to be operatives still, how much would their material condition be improved? Their sufferings would be increased a hundred-fold. The nearer the condition of brutes you can keep men and women, if they are to be treated as brutes, the greater the service you do them. Individuals undoubtedly rise by means of knowledge from a very low estate; but it is usually only by making their knowledge the means of laying under contribution the labors of others.

Nor is this all. It is impossible to practise, however enlightened or well disposed we may be, all the Christian virtues in society as it is now organized. Consider two men about to make a bargain, endeavoring to do by each as each would be done by, while each is doing his best to observe the maxim, buy cheap and sell dear, without which, trade on which so much now depends could not prosper at all! Do I observe the Christian law of love, and treat a man as I would be treated, treat him as my brother, when I make him my servant,-my hired servant if you will,-my drudge, whom I must needs consider unfit to sit with me at my table, or mingle with my friends in the drawing-room? Yet I can live in society as it is, only on condition that I so treat him. There is not a luxury I enjoy, scarcely a necessary of life I obtain, but has cost the tears, the groans, the agony, the

blood, or-which is worse-the brutalization, of some brother for whom Christ died, who was made with a rich undying nature. Think of this, ye who recline on your soft couches, tread the rich carpets of Turkey, and receive the light through purple silks of India !

After all, our main inquiry is as to the means of ameliorating the condition of the poorest and most numerous class. These have no time nor opportunity for self-culture, even admitting self-culture to be all its advocates assume. I know what they who have always had leisure, and have always been in easy circumstances, may allege; but I know also, how extremely difficult it is for a man to work twelve or fourteen hours out of twenty-four, or even ten, and have any power for intellectual pursuits. Here and there one may do the labor and study too; but in most cases, only by the loss of health and almost of reason itself. Tired nature demands rest, and the working-man, when his work for the day is over, especially when he works with as much intensity as he does in most Protestant countries, must lie down and sleep, or keep himself awake by artificial stimulants. The history of the laboring classes in all ages and all countries, proves this beyond all question. Cultivation to any considerable extent is compatible only with leisure and easy circumstances. Instead, then, of enjoining culture as the means of social amelioration, we should effect the amelioration as the condition of the culture.

3. The third answer worth considering, is that of the POLITICIANS. This implies in this country the complete establishment of what may be termed democracy, or more definitely, political democracy. This consists in making every man, who has not by crime or misdemeanor forfeited his manhood, an equal member of the state or body politic-that is to say, in the establishment of universal suffrage and eligibility. But these we already have established so far as they can practically affect the question under consideration; yet they do not prove to be the sovereign remedy it was hoped they would. The evils complained of exist here as well as in Europe, and every day become more wide-spread and intense. New England and the northern Middle States, in their factory

system, are rapidly reproducing Old England; and thus far experience proves that the more extended the suffrage, the greater will be the influence and the more certain the triumph of wealth, or rather of the business classes. The great mass of our operatives are every day losing somewhat of their independence, and sinking into the servile condition of the operatives of the old world. Every day does something to prepare them to be the mere tools of those who have the disposition and the skill to use them. We may deny this; we may flatter the people; talk of their intelligence, virtue, firmness, and incorruptibleness; but we shall do well to remember the election of 1840,-an election which is a lucid commentary on many popular theories, full of instruction to those who are not past learning. That elec tion demonstrates this much, that when the leading business interests of the country unite, though for purposes glaringly selfish and base, the result at the polls is never problematical.

Some have seen this; nay, the friends of the people very generally see this, and deplore it. They seek to remedy it by UNIVERSAL EDUCATION. The people, say they, are honest, but they are deceived; they mean right, but they are misled by ambitious and designing politicians, by corrupt and selfish men of business. We must enlighten them. We must educate them, so that they shall know what are their rights and their interests. Well, and what then? Do you suppose that the evil lies no deeper than the people's ignorance of their rights and interests? The people are as a mass no doubt tolerably honest and well-meaning; but they are not free to act according to their own convictions. The result of an election is rarely determined by the wisdom, the virtue, or the intelligence of the great mass of the electors. It is time for us to cease this mischievous nonsense we have been for so long a time in the habit of uttering about the wisdom, virtue, and intelligence, of the people. Were we in Europe, and did we understand by the people, the unprivileged many, in distinction from the privileged few, there would be some meaning in what we say; for it would imply that these unprivileged many are as competent to the manage ment of their own affairs, as the few

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universal education, for both of which I have contended when to do so was less popular than it is now. Every man, who can substantiate his claim to be a man, should be admitted an equal member of the body-politic under the dominion of which he was born; and that community which neglects to bestow the best education in its power on all its children, of what ever condition, and of both sexes, forfeits its right to punish the offender. What I mean is simply that universal suffrage, and universal education, do not give us the power we need to introduce the moral and physical equality demanded. We must change our political and domestic economies before they can effect anything; and they who suppose universal suffrage and education able to effect the change needed in these economies, overlook the laws which grow out of them, and which override all the other laws of the commonwealth, and in a majority of cases of individual action. These economies must be changed by other agents than suffrage and education.

4. The fourth answer is that of the POLITICAL ECONOMISTS, and is sometimes expressed by the term FREE TRADE. So far as it concerns trade in its strict technical sense, I certainly am an advocate for its entire freedom. Nothing can exceed the absurdity, unless it be the wickedness, of the so called protective or American system. But the principle of free trade is sometimes extended beyond the province of trade proper, to man's whole intercourse with man. Its advocates contend that government is a necessary evil, and therefore the less of it the better. Its sole province is to maintain an open field and fair play to individual enterprise. This is the laissezfaire doctrine, and was maintained with great force and consistency by the lamented William Leggett. It presupposes that in all the concerns of life FREE COMPETITION between individuals will regulate everything, produce just ice, harmony, universal well-being. To the Gospel principle of Love, it op poses the principle of COMPETITION, and bids each look out for himself. If all men were born with equal powers and capacities, moral, intellectual, and physical, and could all, from the first mo ment of existence, be placed in circumstances precisely equal, so that no one

should have any natural or artificial advantage over another, this doctrine would have some degree of plausibility, although even then it would be fatal to all social as to all political order; but diverse and unequal as men are by nature and condition, no greater calamity could befall a people than the serious attempt to carry it out in practice. It is nothing but the doctrine of pure Individualism, which is the principle of anarchy, confusion, war. Government is not a necessary evil, finding its excuse only in man's depravity; but is a great good, and a necessary organ of society for the maintenance of its own rights, and the performance of its own duties. It has more to do than merely to protect individuals; it has a positive work to perform for the common weal. The saying that "the world has been governed too much," I am far from accepting. There has not been too much government, but wrong government, government falsely instituted, and maladministered. Freedom does not consist in the absence of government, but in the presence of a government that ordains and secures it. Liberty is always the result of authority, the crea ture of civil society, and impossible without it. No doubt much should be left to the individual; but all true gov ernment consists in such a constitution of society as leaves each individual to move on freely without obstruction so long as he keeps in the right line of duty, but compels him to feel, the moment he attempts to depart from that line, that the way is hedged up, and that he cannot proceed a single step. But without insisting on these views of government, which are not precisely those of any party in this country, the doctrine of free trade, meaning thereby anything beyond the opposite of the restrictive and monopoly system,-the doctrine, as it is sometimes called, of free competition, we must all admit cannot introduce or preserve the equality we are in pursuit of, unless we can secure to all equal chances. Equal chances imply equal starting points. Do we all start equal? Has he who is born to no inheritance but the gutter, an equal chance with him who is born to a good education, an honorable name, and a competent estate?

5. The fifth answer is that of the SOCIALISTS. This is subdivided into the agrarian, the no-property, and