and plunge, red-eyed and foaming, at stone walls; and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order: very, very like.-DICKENS'' Bleak House.'

"MAN lives by labour." In the savage state he lives, as the saying is, from hand to mouth; his numbers must be small, and his existence precarious. In the Polar Regions, the Desert of Arabia, and other inhospitable parts, there seem not to be the means to enable man to emerge from a state of barbarism. The first use that the natives of such regions could be supposed to make of their dawning intelligence, would be to transport their energies to more inviting localities. In the more favoured regions of the globe, the earth is not incessantly yielding food for man-there is generally one principal harvest in the year, upon which man must contrive to subsist till the return of the next harvest.

Although, therefore, man lives by labour, he does not in reality subsist by his present labour: he subsists by the labour which he has performed, and will subsist by the labour which he is performing. However severe, skilful, and profitable his present labour may be, he and his fellow-labourers collectively must subsist upon the produce of previous labour. The produce of previous labour is the wealth of a country-the food, clothing and fuel, the houses and public buildings, the roads and bridges, the ships and carriages, the docks and canals, the implements and machinery, the printing presses, works of art and literature. Commodity is a name frequently given to what has been produced. Commodities then are wealth. Destroy this wealth, and labour as we may, we perish. Accordingly, it is plain that the well-being of the inhabitants of a country must depend, not only upon their character and knowledge, but also upon the quality and abundance of their wealth as compared with their numbers. It is also plain that of this wealth, part may be considered as set aside for mere enjoyment, and part to be employed in the business of production, the stopping of which would lead to the future extinction of our race. This last-mentioned portion of wealth is called Capital.

The capital of a country consists of food and clothing to

maintain those who are engaged in the business of production, as well as of the machinery, tools, materials, &c., devoted to that business. In short, capital may be defined to be, that portion of the produce of previous labour which is devoted to the business of future production. The inhabitants of every country that has made much progress in civilization have felt the importance of accumulating capital. While capital is small they have seen that the population must be small and scattered, that there be but little division of labour, little power of cooperation: they have also seen that, to create this capital, this result of saving and self-denial, there must be security of possession. Hence laws, guaranteeing to every man a property in the produce of his labour, are universal throughout civilized society. In fact, security of property is essential not only to capital, to power, to skill, to combination and division of labour, but also to self-preservation.

In what manner the capital of a country will be distributed among its inhabitants depends upon a variety of circumstances. Some are more skilful, some more industrious, some more enterprising, some more saving and provident than others. The arrangements of society may be more or less happily contrived for encouraging the most beneficial distribution of capital; but individual character must have great influence in determining the share of each. It is to be expected, therefore, that some will possess more than their proportional share of the general capital of the country, and will consequently have a command over a proportionally larger share of the forthcoming produce of capital and labour.

What is to be lamented, however, is, that there should be some who possess no capital-who depend entirely for present maintenance upon the capital of others. Such persons, in order to obtain a maintenance out of the produce of the labour that has been performed, are obliged to sell the labour that they are willing to perform. These are the mere labourers of society. They who possess the capital are called capitalists.

It must be self-evident that the more advanced any community is in civilization, the smaller will be the number of those who are mere labourers living upon the capital of others, and of those who are mere capitalists living free from the necessity of labour; the larger will be the number of those who are entitled to be classed as both capitalists and labourers.

For

To be civilized, a people must be possessed of capital. capital to abound, there must be a prevalence of industry, knowledge, and economy; and those qualities can only flourish where person and property are in security. But with security of property

comes inequality of possession. How is inequality of possession to be made compatible with such a distribution of property as that destitution may nowhere be found?-as that barbarism may not continue to dwell in the midst of civilization? This is a question which not only deserves consideration, but admits, as will be seen, of being satisfactorily answered.-ELLIS's Outlines of Social Economy.'

THE Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1835 to inquire into the state of the education of the people in England and Wales, contains an amount of information concerning the increased and increasing decency of deportment within the present age, which is of the highest value. Among the many witnesses examined was Mr. Francis Place, who for more than half a century has been an attentive observer of the condition and conduct of the working people in London, and to a considerable extent throughout the kingdom generally. Scenes and events which he relates as being of common everyday occurrence when he was an apprentice, are such as would be unbearable now and have wholly ceased.

Speaking of the habits of tradesmen and masters, he says,— "The conduct of such persons was exceedingly gross as compared with the same class of the present time. Decency was a very different thing from what it is now; their manners were such as scarcely to be credited. I remember, when a boy of ten years of age, being at a party of twenty, entertained at a respectable tradesman's, who kept a good house in the Strand, where songs were sung which cannot now be more than generally described from their nastiness, such as no meeting of journeymen in London would allow to be sung in the presence of their families."

"There were then few rational employments at home; the men were seldom at home in the evening, except there were card-playing and drinking; they spent their time in a very useless and but too generally a mischievous manner. I made inquiries a few years ago, and found that between Temple-bar and Fleet-market there were many houses in each of which there were more books than all the tradesmen's houses in the

street contained when I was a youth. The ballads sung about the streets and the books openly sold, cannot be adequately described. All that time the songs were of the most indecent kind; no one would mention them in any society now; they were publicly sung and sold in the streets and markets. Books were openly sold in shops of booksellers in leading streets which can only be procured clandestinely now. I have seen the Prayer Book, the Racing Calendar, and these books, bound alike, side by side in very respectable shop windows in the leading streets."

"Between Blackfriars and Westminster-hall there were fourteen clubs under the name of Cock-and-hen clubs. I attended several of them when I was an apprentice. There was one in the Savoy, the amusements were smoking, drinking, swearing, and singing obscene songs. I do not believe there has been a club of the sort for many years past within the same space. There are a few of them still in London, but very few they are held in very obscure places, and frequented by the very worst of the community. The places of public resort, the tea-gardens, were formerly as notorious as they were infamous; the Dog and Duck, for instance. I have been there when almost a mere boy, and seen the idle women come out to take leave of the thieves at dusk and wish them success. The Apollo-gardens was another of these infamous places; it was opened under the pretence of musical entertainments; and there was the Temple of Flora; it was a long gallery fitted up in a superb manner, and when lighted was a very fascinating place; there were boxes where boys and girls and men and women assembled."

"Another of these places was the Bull-in-the-Pound in Spafields, frequented by thieves and dissolute people. In Gray's Inn-lane was the Blue Lion, commonly called the Blue Cat: I have seen the landlord of this place come into the long room with a lump of silver in his hand, which he had melted for the thieves, and pay them for it. There was no disguise about it; it was done openly; there is no such place now. The amusements of the people were all of a gross nature. We hear much talk of the desecration of the Sabbath, but it was much more desecrated formerly. At the time I am speaking of there was scarcely any houses on the eastern side of the Tottenham Courtroad; there and in the Long-fields were several large ponds; the amusements here were duck-hunting and badger-baiting; they would throw a cat into the water and set dogs at her great cruelty was constantly practised, and the most abominable scenes used to take place. It is almost impossible for any person to believe the atrocities of low life at that time, which

were not, as now, confined to the worst paid and most ignorant of the populace. I am not aware of any new vice having sprung up among the people: there has been a decrease of vice in every respect, and a great increase of decency and respectability."

The foregoing passages, which for the sake of brevity have been put into the narrative form, are faithfully extracted from the answers made by Mr. Place when under examination by the committee. The only liberty that has been taken is the suppres sion of some of the more revolting circumstances brought forward by Mr. Place in illustration of his opinions.

When asked, "To what do you principally attribute those improvements?" Mr. Place answered-"To information! you will find, as the working people get more information they get better habits." He added, "Every class above another teaches that below it; the journeyman tradesman is above the common labourer, and manners descend from class to class."

The whole of the evidence given by Mr. Place on this occasion is of the deepest interest to all who wish to study with the aim of remedying the moral evils of society by rational and therefore by practicable means.- PORTER's Progress of the Nution."

1. As Mr. Porter took some liberties with the document he was transcribing, so we have omitted one or two things

that he retained. The object of our work required as much.

SCHOOLMASTERS and teachers should raise no difficulties to their scholars; but, on the contrary, should smooth their way, and readily help them forwards, where they find them stop. Children's minds are narrow and weak, and usually susceptible but of one thought at once. Whatever is in a child's head fills it for a time, especially if set on with any passion. It should therefore

be the skill and art of the teacher to clear their heads of all other thoughts whilst they are learning of anything,' the better to make room for what he would instil into them, that it may be received with attention and application, without which it leaves no impression. The natural temper of children disposes their minds to wander. Novelty alone takes them; whatever that presents, they are presently eager to have a taste of, and are as soon satisfied with it. They quickly grow weary of the same