'I always thought,' she in turn interrupted, with apparent languor, but real energy,' that, after all, commerce and trade were synonymous terms. I appeal to Mr. N.

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Why, really, Lady Sonkin,' I replied, you might puzzle a better philologist than myself by such a question; but, without entering into definitions, I certainly always imagined that trade on an extensive scale was considered to be commerce, and that commerce on a limited scale was generally considered to be trade. As for instance, we call those currents of air trade winds, such as the monsoon in the Indian ocean, which waft in one direct course the vessel freighted with the produce of one country to the shores of another, and thence in due season back again with the exchange procured for the commodities exported; and this I presume to be an illustration of what is called commerce. When Sir John spoke of trade, he did not, I imagine, allude to the petty transactions of a chandler's shop, but to that commanding influence which traffic between remote nations has given especially to the fortunate islands of which we are natives.'

'A chandler's shop!' exclaimed the lady, with a sort of hysterical laugh- a chandler's shop! We never kept a CHANDLER'S SHOP, I assure you! Did we, my dear?'

'Woman!' cried the husband, with a red face, and most impressively angry tone, you are a fool! Do hold your tongue!'

That, my love,' she replied,' I shall do of course, when you desire me; but before I do so, I will say, that Mr. N's notion of a chandler's shop is almost an affront to a man whose extensive speculation in hops, and remarkably fine taste in Cheshire cheese, has procured him so fine a fortune, and-and-ah me !-I faint with exhaustion! Pray, ring the bell, and order Jeanneton to attend me!'

Here she relapsed on the sofa, and having rung the bell, we immediately retired.

The honest knight took me into another apartment, and continued,'You now know,' said he,' what I have made no mystery of and had no wish to conceal, that my wealth has been acquired in trade, which, though carried on upon a large scale, I have never dignified by the name of commerce, though intrinsically it might be called so. Lady Sonkin is a little fanciful on these matters; but we all have our weaknesses. I do not quarrel with hers, because they arise from a laudable pride in her husband, and as natural an ambition for her children. In plain fact, though we never actually kept a shop, I have been upon a large scale a factor and speculator in hops,-in the same way a large farmer, and wholesale dealer in the sterling English commodity of Cheshire cheeses. I have made a fine fortune, Mr. N; what is more, I have made it honestly; and, though I am not insensible to the dignity which it has pleased my gracious Sovereign to confer upon me, I am neither vain of my title nor spoiled by my wealth. One thing only I would conceal, and would not admit, had you not witnessed it, the harmless weakness of my little wife. She is an excellent woman, Mr. N―; an excellent wife, and an admirable mother; and, though only the daughter of a half-pay captain in the army, she has proved herself entitled to every indulgence I can so amply afford her. But I will not on this single point of name, and the assumption of family pride which does not belong to me, in

dulge a folly which, as it becomes ridiculous, may cease to be harmless.'

I honestly confess that my own reason responded to every word my bulky friend uttered; but not choosing to take any part, pro or con, I was glad to recollect that the hour was luckily arrived when I could take my leave without offence, and I rose, though with warmer feelings than usual towards my new acquaintance, yet not without some sort of irritated emotions towards my London friend, who had fixed upon me this unsorted set,' and exclaiming to myself, 'So, my new associate, after all, is a cheesemonger!'

As I returned home, however, I recalled many admirable anecdotes of splendid institutions founded by, and munificent gifts recorded of, citizens of London who were merchants in a general sense, and equally, perhaps, in hops and cheese; and before I stepped into bed, I found an honest blush upon my cheek for having, even for a moment, felt degraded by my temporary connection with one of these most useful and most influential members of society. I say I blushed: and the man or the woman who blushes when alone, may rest satisfied that they possess something within which is allied to honour, and not destitute of virtue.

It is not my intention at present to follow the fortunes of this family during their residence abroad; but they had not resided in Paris more than five months before the listless vigour and energetic languor of Lady Sonkin had made her and her children, especially her daughters, so conspicuously remarkable, that they were introduced upon the stage in a piquant little vaudeville, entitled, ‘ Les Angloises pour rire.'

The good-humoured satire, and inimitable acting of Pèrlet in this piece, drew crowds nightly to the theatre, and it was noticed that the English residents enjoyed the burlesque with even greater zest than the Parisians themselves.

One English family alone was sought for there in vain ;-in fact, that one English family had been present on the first night the piece was performed, and had enjoyed it like everybody else, until they found their loge the centre of attraction to all eyes, and at last, as the piece concluded, that the inmates were the marked objects of the whole parterre, who with a burst of thundering applause simultaneously shouted, Vivent les Angloises! vivent les Angloises!' &c.

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While all Paris, therefore, was ringing the fame of Les Angloises pour rire,' the one family' were busily employed chez eux in purchasing incog., in packing, and preparing for their precipitate depart ure; and ten days after the first enacting of the memorable vaudeville, I accompanied the party as far as Lyons, where I parted, not without feelings of regret, from my friend Sir John and his really agreeable family, and saw them start once more on their road to Italy.

N

MORAL ECONOMY OF LARGE TOWNS.

BY DR. W. C. TAYLOR.

LIVERPOOL.

MARTINUS SCRIBLERUS, in his Essay on the Art of Sinking in Poetry, quotes, as an instance of excessive absurdity, the modest wish of an amorous pair,—

Ye Gods! annihilate but time and space,
And make two lovers happy!

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It is possible that the poet's eye in fine frenzy rolling,' may have caught an anticipatory glimpse of railroads, steam, and locomotives; his train of thought may have suggested a train of carriages; and the lovers may have deemed it wise to profit by hot water before marriage, as they were likely to be kept in it afterwards. To be sure, railing does not often form a part of courtship, neither have etymologists discovered any connection between steam and esteem; but such trifles as these should not stand in the way of a theory; so let us suppose that the lovers personified Liverpool and Manchester, and we shall have the satisfaction to find that the lovers were reasonable, and that their wishes have been gratified. In rather less time than it takes a Londoner to walk from his suburban residence to his counting-house, the visiter of Manchester may be transported to Liverpool, and deposited in the very heart of the town. Though this wonder has existed several years, it is still an object of curiosity to the strangers who are constantly arriving in this great seaport ; and it is sometimes amusing to hear the comments made on the machinery by the crowd surrounding the gates in Lime Street. 'By Japers!' said an Irish squire, fresh from Connaught, after a long examination of the locomotive, 'I should not be astonished to find myself some fine morning out hunting on my tay-kettle!' Mon Dieu!' exclaimed a Frenchman, voilà un cheval à vapeur !'

Americans guessed and calculated; Portuguese swore and crossed themselves alternately; a stately Osmanlee was so far startled from his propriety as to utter Allah Acbar!' and a shivering Hindoo made poojah before the engine, as if it had been an incarnation of Bramah or Vishnoo. Here was an important fact in the moral economy of Liverpool brought before the visiter at the very moment of his arrival; namely, that there is a large fluctuating population, composed of persons from almost every quarter of the globe, here to-day and gone to morrow. It follows that Liverpool must possess a greater number of lodging-houses than the manufacturing town we had quitted, and that much of the morality of the town must depend on the nature of the accommodations provided for this everchanging population. If in Manchester the rapid increase of a settled and resident population had so far outstripped the means of accommodation as to become the pregnant source of great moral evil, it was manifestly probable that Liverpool, which had to provide for

an immense increase both in its fixed, and in its fluctuating population, must exhibit still more lamentable deficiencies.

This anticipation was far surpassed by the reality; the lodgingroom, crowded with three or four families, was an abomination; but the lodging-cellar, the under-ground cave, in which drainage, light, and ventilation, were utterly unattainable-where every drop of moisture that sunk into the earthen floor fermented into contagion -and where every exhalation fron animate to inanimate bodies rolled in volumes of pestilential mist round the apology for a ceiling, without being able to find a vent, presented an accumulation of horrors, such as no one, without personal examination, could believe to exist in a civilized community. It has often been said that sailors will sleep anywhere;' but it was scarcely known that they would make their bed in a cesspool. Some of them were interrogated on the subject; and it was found to be one on which they felt bitterly. Several declared that they had visited in their voyages every region of the earth, and that Jack ashore' was nowhere so miserably lodged as in Liverpool.

Though Manchester and Liverpool are so close to each other, and so intimately connected; yet the difference between the two towns is very striking, and the contrast is, probably, the cause of the jealousy which subsists between their inhabitants. The most prominent distinction is, that the population of Liverpool is more diversified, and more obviously divisible into classes, than that of Manches. ter; there is more splendour among its rich, and more squalour among its poor. The connections between the employer and the employed in Liverpool are not so intimate or so permanent as in a manufacturing district; the seaport requires a much greater proportion of rude labour and uninstructed industry; there is less demand for trained skill, the acquisition of which is in itself a species of moral culture, and there is a greater need for mere brute strength, -the capacity of raising weights, and carrying burthens. In Liverpool, also, there is a far greater proportion of casual to settled employment than in Manchester, as must necessarily be the case when the demand for a very large amount of labour depends upon the wind and tide. The manufacturer must feel some sympathy with the operative whom he sees every day in his mill; but the same opportunity is not afforded to the ship agent, who hires day labourers to load a vessel, or to discharge a cargo.

It is not meant that the merchants of Liverpool have no regard for the physical and moral welfare of the labourers they employ ; the very contrary is the fact; no place on the globe possesses a greater number, in proportion to the population, of the energetically benevolent than the town of Liverpool. Nowhere are schemes of philanthropy more zealously encouraged, or more ardently supported; but, from the very nature of the relations which exist between the rich and the poor, the former are irresistibly compelled to look on the latter in the mass, and not to take each case individually. The merchant does not, and cannot know every labourer whom he employs; personal communication between them is nearly impossible; he is anxious to do good, and to prevent evil; but he is driven to provide for classes of cases, instead of single cases; hence his bounty assumes to the recipient somewhat of the form of cold calculation, and he is accused of forgetting the physio

logical fact, that the poor have hearts as well as stomachs. When we assert that the distinction between the employers and the employed is far more broad and rigid in Liverpool than in Manchester, we do not mean to say that the merchant is more proud than the manufacturer, or the labourer more subservient than the operative; but we mean that the circumstances of position render the distance between the factor and the labourer wider and more obvious than it is between the manufacturer and the operative.

The demand for untrained labour, and what may be called unskilful industry, renders the immigration into Liverpool much lower, both morally and intellectually, than that into Manchester. No one can visit the streets in the vicinity of the docks without feeling that he has seen something very like savage life in close contact with civilisation. The Welsh and the Irish seem to supply the greater part of the labourers, and, it must be added, to send some of the worst specimens of their respective populations. But it must be borne in mind, that the nature of the demand regulates the supply; brute force, and capacity of endurance, are the only requisites regarded by an employer; and, therefore, he receives men rarely possessing any other qualifications. If the conditions of employment were fixed by a higher standard, Wales and Ireland would supply the better class just as they now do the inferior. The distinction of classes in Liverpool is, therefore, not only the result of circumstances, but some of these circumstances, and particularly the nature of the demand for labour, collect in Liverpool a Pariah caste, whose inferiority is obvious and undeniable.

The great object of the writer of these papers is to show that much, if not most, of the vice and misery usually attributed either to the pravity of human nature, to defects in our political institutions, or to errors in our social regulations, may be traced to circumstances in the physical condition of the working-classes, of which many can be removed, most modified, and all alleviated. Preventive legislation is both cheaper and more effective than remedial legislation; but to render it available we must carefully examine where the checks are to be placed. If sometimes in the discussion a lighter tone has been assumed than graver moralists deem appropriate, they should not too hastily believe that a smile at absurdity betrays any want of sympathy for the suffering, or pity for the errors, of humanity. These few words of explanation may be pardoned; and now let us resume the consideration of the circumstances which most seriously affect the moral condition of Liverpool.

It would be a serious error to suppose that the evils and horrors of cellarage affect only, or even chiefly, the floating population of Liverpool; they press still more forcibly on the permanent part of it, that supplies the labour of the docks. These labourers are accumulated in unsuspected masses in the streets near the docks; and it really is a perplexing problem to discover how so many persons as are found to reside in one of the cellars, can find space to lie down. It would far transcend the power of words to describe the horrors of these dens; and it can scarcely be necessary to dwell upon the fact that malignant disease is perpetually generated in them; but their moral results have not hitherto received much attention; and to these we shall confine ourselves for the present.

We have said that the crowded state of the lodging-rooms in