and employ his capital have we yet arrived at an equally permanent and prosperous state? I fear not. How to reconcile the entire freedom of commercial enterprise, which is of unspeakable importance to the advancement of such a country as ours in wealth intelligence and the arts of life, with the encouragement of domestic industry, which is a paternal duty that every citizen has a right to demand from the government under which he lives, is a grave and difficult problem. It is obvious that we have not yet solved it. But I dare not touch upon the higher questions to which such a discussion would lead. There are too many interested in it, and too much at stake to allow it to slumber for a month or even a day. I may, however, be permitted to turn my attention to those who have not perhaps so many to advocate their cause-I mean what are called the working classes. I do not like or approve the appellation, for it suggests a distinction between the members of a community, which does not in reality exist. The merchant who exerts the thought and plies the pen of a busy correspondence, labors as hard as the farmer at the plough; and the professional man, and the man of study, works as painfully, and for as many hours as the humblest mechanic. I adopt the term however in compliance with custom. Now how shall the working classes

in a community be stimulated to industry?

There is but one way. Promote all measures that are calculated to secure to them high and certain wages. I confess that I most sincerely rejoice, when I hear of measures or events, the effect of which is, to raise the price of any labor whatever, provided always that illegal and irresponsible combinations and meetings are uniformly to be deprecated by the friends of justice and good order. The raising the amount of wages in any country by a judicious and equitable process, is the most feasible, the most natural, the most unexceptionable mode of removing the painful distinctions created by wealth. When the portion of a community employed in manual labor is well paid, of course it will be well fed, conveniently lodged and comfortably clothed. It is then prepared to become constantly more intelligent. It will abstain from low habits and sensual recreations. Its demand will be for purer and more refined pleasures. It will learn prudence and forecast, and will see that industry and economy in health, and in early life, will secure comfort and independence in sickness and in old age. And it will be taught by frequent and striking examples, that the rich and the poor are travelling one common road, and are constantly passing and repassing each other, the one often ascending the hill with painful and slow

steps, the other going down with a rapid and headlong descent, and that the barriers and obstacles we meet with in our upward progress, are frequently placed there by our own fault or folly. The working classes in a community thus enjoying all the substantial comforts of life, experiencing the rewards of industry and the excitement of accumulation, relishing intellectual pleasures and the pure satisfaction of virtuous conduct, will they not sensibly feel that they have a deep pledge in the political fabric, and will they not be prepared to guard it with jealous care, and will they not be far superior to the romantic follies and insidious devices of those who would tear away its very foundation, security of property ? Yes, most assuredly. And therefore every man in the community has a solemn interest in increasing the gains, and thus elevating the condition of the working classes. Whatever be his occupation, or the employment of his capital, he should feel even a personal interest in giving efficiency to such measures. Should it be the case, which is not however at all likely, that his own profits are somewhat diminished, let him nevertheless remember, that if a small stream is diverted, it renders the great reservoir more secure. But if those who think they own all the waters, and can control all the privileges, will resist with a determined and jealous care the form

ing of any outlet, let them not vainly imagine that their embankments will stand for ever. If they do not burst by the superincumbent weight, the hand of violence will undermine them, and they will one day rush down in precipitous ruin. But how are wages to be kept up without protection from competition with foreign, tax-ground and pauper-eaten nations? And if you protect against the introduction of their fabrics, how can you protect against the influx of their ignorant, needy and worthless population, coming in to compete with the earnings of your own lawful born children, and of course taking the bread from their mouths? But I touch on dangerous and shaking ground, and feel that I have not knowledge of the sound places for the feet to stand on, or skill or strength to force my way through the dark and tangled forest, that broods over this as yet impervious swamp. I entertain the fullest confidence however, in the principle itself, and would follow fearlessly to where it leads. INDUS

TRY SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED BY MAINTAINING WAGES OF ALL KINDS AT A LIBERAL STANDARD.

But then on the other hand, men must be left to their own energies, and must understand and feel that they must rely upon their own exertions for support, and that there is nowhere any generous hand or well endowed institution, to pamper them

in idleness and vice. No one thing has tended more to aggravate the evils caused by the existing distinction between the rich and the poor, than the well meant efforts made by the one to alleviate the miseries of the other. By an unenlightened and perverted liberality, the extent of pauperism has been increased and its miseries aggravated. It is now time for us to make a broad distinction between the means by which real and inevitable distress is to be relieved, and those injudicious attempts which operate as a bounty to encourage the idle and dissolute. It is the duty of all who wish to exercise a genuine philanthropy, to examine rigidly the tendency of every institution for whose support they are called upon to contribute, and to question very closely every single applicant for charity. Every sum given to the idle and dissolute beggar, is so much lost to the purposes of true benevolence, and in addition to this, it is so much given to increase the evils of mendicity. So with charitable institutions, if their tendency be, as is sometimes the case, to afford an anticipated asylum to those, who by indolence and vice have reduced themselves to distress, then all that goes to support such institutions increases the very evils they were designed to remedy. This indeed is a very perplexing as well as important subject to treat of, and we have hardly