The Universal Right.-Every man is entitled, so far as the general stock will suffice, not only to the means of being, but of well-being. It is unjust, if one man labour to the destruction of his health that another may abound in luxuries; it is unjust, if one man be deprived of leisure to cultivate his rational powers, while another man contributes not a single effort to add to the common stock. The faculties of one man are like the faculties of another. Justice directs that each, unless, perhaps, he be employed more beneficially to the public, should contribute to the cultivation of the common harvest, of which each consumes a share. This reciprocity is the very essence of justice.-Godwin.

Where riches are in a few hands, these must enjoy all the power; and will readily conspire to lay all the burden on the poor, and oppress them still further, to the discouragement of all industry.-Hume.

The Nature of Capital.—The claims now made by landlords and farmers, to be allowed to tax the rest of the community for the capital vested in the soil, are neither more nor less than claims to make us pay them for the labour they have extracted from the parish-fed peasant. There is no other CAPITAL vested in the ground, nor can there be any other, than the LABOUR of the labourer; and his task-master, having already grown rich on it, now tries to exact a further reward for his oppression.-Hodgskin.

The Cry of the Poor.-In this country there is a crying sin-there is a loud complaint going up daily to Heaven, that the property of the poor is held captive in injustice; that their rights are withheld, though their title is known and recognized by all, save those who could enforce it for them; that they daily die of want, whilst their expiring glance rests on the gorgeous, the ungodly display of ecclesiastical pride and pomp; whilst their last sigh can scarcely fail to bring down a heavy curse on that wealth which was left for their support, but which so cruelly and so long has been wrested and withheld from them.-Dr. Doyle.

The badness of the times frequently depends more on those who govern the ship, than on the weather.-Zimmerman.

The last argument of the poor, whenever they have recourse to it, will carry more, perhaps, than persuasion to parliament, or supplication to the throne.-Junius.

A Precedent. When Richard the Second was tried and convicted by his Parliament, thirty-one articles of impeachment were alleged against him, two of which were very remarkable, but not very uncommon ones, "that he had borrowed money without paying it;" and, "that he had declared before witnesses, that he was master of the lives and property of his subjects."

Thieves.-If the law to hang thieves must continue, I wish it may take hold of the great ones first, lest we renew the practice once in Athens, where they hanged none but little thieves, and the great thieves pronounced sentence. I am more afraid of those that rob by power of the law, than of those that endeavour to take my purse on the highway.

A Rod for the Lawyers, by W. Cole, 1659.

Want of Union.-The more numerous men are, the more difficult it is for them to agree in any thing, and so they are governed. There is no doubt that if the poor should reason,-"we'll be poor no longer, we'll make the rich take their turn," they could easily do it, were it not that they can't agree; so the common soldiers, though much more numerous than their officers, are governed by them for the same reason.-Dr. Johnson.

Division of Labour.-In the hive of human society, to preserve order and justice, and to banish vice and corruption, it is necessary that all the individuals be equally employed, and obliged to concur equally in the general good, and that the labour be equally divided among them. If there be any whose riches and birth exempt them from all employment, there will be divisions and unhappiness in the hive. Their idleness is destructive of the general

welfare.-Helvetius.

Equalization. All accumulation of personal property, beyond what a a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes, on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came. This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely, it will be found, that accumulation of personal property is in many instances the effects of paying too little for the labour that produced it; the consequence of which is, that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence. It is, perhaps, impossible to proportion exactly the price of labour to the profits it produces; and it will also be said, as an apology for injustice, that were the workman to receive an increase of wages daily, he would not save it against old age, nor be much the better for it in the interim. Make, then, society the treasurer to guard it for him in a common fund; for it is no reason, because he might not make a good use of it for himself, that another shall take it.-Paine.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Wordsworth.

For minds of mortal men are muckle marr'd,
And moved amiss by massy muck's unmeet regard.

Spenser.

WEALTH.

THERE is no real wealth but the labour of man. Were the mountains of gold and the vallies of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race. In consequence of our consideration for the precious metals, one man is enabled to heap to himself luxuries at the expense of the necessaries of his neighbour; a system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of disease and crime, which never fail to characterise the two extremes of opulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself as the promoter of his country's prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the manufacture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or subservient only to the unhallowed cravings of luxury and ostentation. The nobleman, who employs the peasants of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, until "already the regal piles leave but few acres for the plough," flatters himself that he has gained the title of a patriot, by yielding to the impulses of vanity. The show and pomp of courts adduces the same apology for its continuance; and many a fête has been given, many a woman has eclipsed her beauty by her dress, to benefit the labouring poor and to encourage trade. Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates, whilst it palliates, the countless diseases of society? The poor are set to labour-for what? Not the food for which they famish; not the blankets for want of which their babes are frozen by the cold in their miserable hovels; not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far more miserable than the meanest savage-oppressed as he is by all its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited before him: no!-for the pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth part of society. No greater evidence is afforded of the widely-extended and radical mistakes of civilized man than this fact: those arts essential to his very being are held in the greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their usefulness: the jeweller, the toyman, gains fame and wealth by the exercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the earth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through contempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which, but for his unceasing exertions, would annihilate the rest of mankind.

I will not insult common sense, by insisting on the doctrine of the natural equality of man. The question is not concerning its desirableness, but its practicability so far as it is practicable, it is desirable. That state of human society, which approaches nearest to an equal partition of its benefits and evils, should be preferred: but so long as we conceive that a wanton expenditure of human labour, not for the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass of society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its members, is defensible on the ground of public justice, so long we neglect to approximate to the redemption of the human race.

Labour is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement: from the former of these advantages the rich, and from the latter the poor, by the inevitable conditions of their respective situations, are precluded. A state which should combine the advantages of both would be subjected to the evils of neither. He that is deficient in firm health, or vigorous intellect, is but half a man: hence it follows, that, to subject the labouring-classes to unnecessary labour, is wantonly depriving them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement; and that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the disease, lassitude and ennui by which their existence is rendered an intolerable burthen.

English reformers exclaim against sinecures; but THE TRUE PENSION-LIST IS THE RENT-ROLL OF THE LANDED PROPRIETORS: wealth is a power usurped by the few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit. The laws which support this system derive their force from the ignorance and credulity of

its victims; they are the result of a conspiracy of the few against the many, who (the few) are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by the loss of all real comfort.

The commodities that substantially contribute to the subsistence of the human species form a very short catalogue; they demand from us but a slender portion of industry. If these only were produced, and sufficiently produced, the species of man would be continued. If the labour necessarily required to produce them were equitably divided among the poor; and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all; each man's share of labour would be light, and his portion of leisure would be ample. There was a time when this leisure would have been of small comparative value: it is to be hoped that the time will come when it will be applied to the most important purposes. Those hours which are not required for the production of the necessaries of life may be devoted to the cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock of knowledge, the refining our taste, and thus opening to us new and exquisite sources of enjoyment.-Godwin's Enquirer.

It is a calculation of the same author, that all the conveniences of civilized life might be produced, if society would divide the labour equally among its members, by each individual being employed in labour TWO HOURS during the day.

WALTER MASON is a "man of the world." I only repeat what every body says. Every body can't be wrong. The world is complimented.-Walter Mason is the younger son of a clergyman of the established Church, a man who subscribed to all the thirty-nine articles and never avowed his disbelief of any of them. Walter Mason received an excellent education. He was confided during his infant years (that time in which a child only acquires the foundation of its life's character) to the care of an excellent nurse-maid, who had received an excellent character for sobriety and "honesty" from her last place; and the little Walter profited wonderfully by her fostering. He would hardly have been better nursed or tended by his own mother. Walter's father kept a school (clergymen ought to be the best instructors of youth); and Walter was at an early age in the play-ground, almost as early in the school-room. In the former he learnt the use of his limbs; in the latter he tried his memory. Children seldom are taught more; though they manage much greater acquisitions. Selfishness, tyranny, and abject slavishness, are soon inculcated. The dogmatic insolence of the pedagogue who thinks it superfluous to reason with a child, the crouching obedience of the fearful pupil, the hypocrisy which ever waits upon fear, the preceptor's brutal passion following the detection of misbehaviour, the hateful rivalry and jealousy which are ever the concomitants of that usual inciter of youthful ability, emulation-the desire of excelling rather than of excellence-all these exerted their uncurbed influence over the young mind of Walter Mason, under the

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eye of his reverend father in his excellent school-room. Out of school he was inoculated, almost before he could speak plainly, with all the obscenity which infests a boys' school-that pruriency engendered of mystery and prohibition, that child-like mocking of the filthy habits of manly profligacy (and children are taught to be manly), that tongue-lewdness, the memory of which keeps our youth so pure-minded, and in mature life so enhances the delicacy of gentlemanly behaviour. Such was Walter Mason's childhood. Not that the counteracting influences of precept and piety were wanting. Twice every Sunday he was made to go to church, to listen to the outpourings of his father's spiritual eloquence or to cut notches on the pew-desk. Neither, on those days which are not the Lord's, was his religious and moral culture utterly neglected. What an example of truthfulness was there in the daily dinner-thanksgiving (he was not told that it was not good to thank God for breakfasts and suppers) for the "pleasant refreshment" which almost made him sick! how well was he accustomed to principle and consistency by the regularity of evening prayers, never broken save when there was company in the parlour: then, indeed, the peace of God" passed the understandings of the merry school-boys without even the courtesy of a formal amen. When it was considered that sufficient book-learning ("words! words!") had travelled through the mind (or memory) of the boy Walter, he was sent into the world-that is to say, he was instructed to throw off the little of child-like modesty and truth that had outlived his school discipline, and to consider himself "a man"-an animal with a tailed coat. He was placed as a clerk, in a public office; and employed some seven or eight hours every day in filling sheets of paper with a variety of blots, which told in hieroglyphic characters the exact value of labour wasted by the community. For the waste of his own time he was well paid by the public, who were none the better for his sacrifice. He now associated with men, who went to church every Sunday in which they could find nothing worse to do, and who amused themselves during the week in the usual accomplishments of a civilized life. By them he was introduced to the society of certain honest women who were content with being quite as virtuous as men, and who informed him that Nature was very much mistaken as to the period of puberty. Master Walter's passions, prematurely inflamed, were now inordinately indulged, and before he arrived at man's estate, he had full experience of the pleasures and pains of prostitution. The youth was rotten to the core. Bodily disease and mental depravity had progressed at nearly an equal pace. However, mercury and a good constitution triumphed over the one (though the victory was dearly bought), and the hypocrisy of refined manners varnished over the filthiness of the other. Years passed away without any improvement except in his salary. By the time he was worn out, his father and his friends began to think that it was time he should "settle;" and he was at length persuaded, by a handsome bribe, to make an offer of the remains of his person and the unimpaired worthlessness of his mind to a young lady very delicate and modest, and who had not been compelled to believe that "prostitution is essentially requisite to preserve the moral purity and physical health of the superior part of the animal creation." With her he entered into the "holy estate of matrimony," solely for the purpose of rearing children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." "A change came o'er the spirit of his dream." He was a married man. He might no longer be lewd, except after dinner, when the ladies had withdrawn. If a prostitute accosted him, he knew her not. He had become a model of propriety. He slept with one female for months together, and sought no change: this was the more praise-worthy, as he never pretended to have any particular or exclusive affection for her. But his marriage-oath was a sacred thing; and in process of time he acquired a kind of habit of affection, which partially hid the matrimonial fetters. Children climbed upon his knees, and no one told him they were scrofulous. He took them to church when they were old enough. He regularly confesses himself a "miserable sinner;" and occasionally "washes his hands in innocency" at the altar. He is always glad to see a cheerful friend at his