the social frame work discussing, and pointing out the means by which these privations and this wretchedness may be avoided, and a great and natural amelioration of the vast human family may be effected. In offering these observations we do not lose sight of the immense number of tracts and essays, purporting to have this object in view, produced by the French Revolution; we look upon these however, (as all who have considered them with care and as experience has proved them,) as the lucubrations, in most instances, of designing knaves, for political or selfish purposes, and in the few cases, of hot-headed fanatics and visionaries, actuated more by a desire of putting some private scheme into practice and of experimentalizing, than by motives of pure humanity and christian charity.
There is one prejudice in the public mind which must be removed, one general misconception which must be set rightthat with regard to what is called Political Economy. It is generally supposed to be one of those abstruse sciences, the difficulties of which are enhanced by the use of peculiar terms with arbitrary meanings, much more difficult and uninteresting and much less important to the public at large, than cubic equations, the differential calculus, or the theory regarding the polarization of light. Not alone the humbler classes know nothing of it, but with the exception of those who have received a University education, but very few of the middle or upper classes are at all acquainted even with its more general principles. That with several of its branches there is some accuracy in these notions, as to its difficulty, is true; but with regard to those great and immutable laws which regulate the prices of human food, and raiment, and all other articles necessary for man's support or comfort, which fix the rate of wages, and the remuneration which the workman shall receive from his employer, whether domestic servant, farm laborer, manufacturing operative, or skilled tradesman and mechanic, those great truths which elucidate the problems as to the causes of want and plenty, of brisk employment and consequent prosperity to the middle class, and comfort to the masses, and of stagnation of trade, and consequent bankruptcy and suffering to one class, and of actual famine to the other, to acquire a general knowledge, nay more to understand the reasons and universality of these rules, is within the grasp of the ordinary intelligence of mankind, and requires for a