foundation no further education than that which the children of the middle class have been receiving for years, and which the children of the lower class are now receiving, or may receive, at the Schools in connection with the Board of National Education. So much is an ignorance on these subjects the result of culpable negligence, or groundless and ignorant prejudice that, in the year 1824, a law prohibitory of combinations amongst workmen was found on our statute book; and even amongst the great mass of our legislators, notions, now admittedly erroneous, upon some of the most important of our social relations, prevailed. We hope much from cheap literature, and we shall look with confidence to it, as a great means of spreading these truths, and imparting a familiar, and popular knowledge of these branches of Political Economy, which more directly effect the masses. Considerable as are the benefits which have already been, and are being conferred upon the human race, by the extensive circulation of inexpensive publications, we are satisfied as great, and as wonderful a change will be brought about by them in the condition of the human race, as the steam-engine and the electric telegraph have effected in the material world, and one as little calculated on by its founders. This very spread of knowledge amongst the lower classes, which is, in substance, an extension of their power, will render it the more necessary that they should rightly understand their own position, the relations between them and their employers, the causes which produce amongst them plenty and want, full and constant wages, and half or no work, and that their minds should be disabused of those erroneous but most popular, and therefore most dangerous notions which they entertain on those points. A knowledge on these subjects cannot be suddenly communicated from the summit to the base of the human pyramid. It must make its way through the middle class, and communicated through them, and so to speak popularized, become uniformly and regularly diffused. Such knowledge, unlike the electric spark in the rapidity of its transit, resembles it in requiring an unbroken and conducting chain of communication.

Happily for the national prosperity of England, and her pre-eminence in trade and manufacturers, it never was much the policy of her governments to interfere with the conduct. of, or place unmeaning and harassing obstructions on, commercial industry, as was the case in other countries. Although

the great principles of Political Economy were until recently unascertained and unpromulged, a certain wisdom and forethought induced her legislators to interfere but little with private. enterprise or the private relations and contracts of individuals, (although there are several instances of interference so trifling, however, as not to interfere materially with trade generally, which show that the laissez faire principle which now in a spirit of enlightened legislation is acted on strictly, was then far from being recognized or even contemplated). Immutable and universal as the laws which govern the motions of the heavenly planets, which cause the tides to ebb and flow, night and rest to succeed day and action, season to succeed season, calm and sunshine, to the thunderstorm and the tornado, like them, the great laws which regulate the support, the order, and the relations of man with man, must excite in the human breast emotions of wonder, and of gratitude to that divine providence which alone was capable of imposing such vast and such accurate rules for the arrangement of the human race.

To the philanthropist of every class, we need only state, that to effect his favorite object of rescuing the humbler classes from that misery to which they are for the most part exposed, to raise them to comfort, and enable them to look upon those higher in the social scale, with other than that distempered gaze which is now fixed upon them, to improve their moral and social condition, it is necessary to shew them the causes from which their misery and degradation spring, and how, as a class, they may elevate themselves,-to ensure his attention to this science, and his anxiety to render its truths expressed in homely language, and explained by homely and popular illustration universally known. To the mere politician and statesman, we would point to the danger likely to ensue, if the humbler classes and their representatives should become a great, if not a predominant party in the state, as sooner or later they must be, (if we educate them,) imbued with the false doctrines of ignorant, or factious, or visionary men, laboring under the popular delusions with regard to capitalists and workmen, and their relations, as to wages and the causes of their inadequacy. Mr. Morrison thus indicates this cloud which hovers upon the political horizon, and which it is in our power to seasonably dissipate by the diffused beams of accurate knowledge, or permit to gather, and burst upon us in its concentrated fury and intensity :

"The growth of the democratic element, whether directly by the lowering of the qualifications for the suffrage, or indirectly, through the moral influence of the masses, means the preponderance of the interests of labour, over the interests of property. If then the working classes, or that portion of them, whose superior intelligence and activity tend to make them the representatives of the rest, very generally believe, that the rate of wages and other arrangements between themselves and the other classes, are unfair and disadvantageous to themselves, and that a better state of things is attainable, it is natural that they will use both their legal right or their actual, though not legally recognized power to attain it. And as their whole condition, and that of their families, and almost their daily bread are at stake upon the results of such an attempt, as any belief of the injustice of social arrangements which they may entertain, will be constantly irritated into indignation by the contrast which their own general poverty and frequent distress present to the immense masses of wealth amidst which they live, and as agitators will never be wanting to fan their smouldering passions into flame, it is to be expected, that they will bring to the struggle a greater intensity of excitement than is seen in the most animated of merely political contests. If then they should entertain erroneous ideas upon such subjects; if they should attribute to the faults of individuals or of social arrangements, those evils of their condition, which are in fact, the result of inevitable natural laws, or of their own conduct; if they should believe that these evils are to be remedied by measures, which are in truth, unjust, impracticable, and pernicious; it is difficult to over-rate the amount of mischief and confusion which they may produce, by acting upon such views before they shall be finally undeceived on all those points."

Before entering upon some of the principal questions which at present are chiefly in agitation, let it not be supposed that we wish all those bounties and charities, in which the humane delight to relieve suffering and want, should be relinquished, either for writing or publishing tracts on social, political, or any other kind of economics. Far be it from our intention, that people in caring for the masses, should overlook individual misery. What we would impress is, that to effect any permanent improvement in the laboring population as a class, to raise the condition, not of an individual, a family,

or even a trade, but the most extended section of our population, the great mass of God's creatures, it will be necessary to communicate to them the knowledge of the principal laws of demand and supply, of competition, of population, and consequently of wages. It may be sneeringly remarked by the careless observer, will your teaching the people those matters, give them bread and meat, or raise their wages, so as that they may live in some kind of comfort? Certainly not, if they do not act on their knowledge. If, however, their course is pointed out to them, a perfectly feasible one, though not without those difficulties and self-denials, from which few in this world are free, if their reason tells them it is possible, and that their self-elevation will be the result, if they neglect those rules they will be the sufferers, for it is upon themselves they must depend; but those who are superior to them in education and position, whose duty and inclination alike direct to exert every possible effort to ameliorate the condition of their humbler fellow-men, will have performed their part, and all that is in their power.

Wages, on which the laboring class must entirely rely for their support, and on which are based all schemes for elevating their condition, form the most important branch of political economy, and are, at the same time, regulated by a few simple and great fixed rules. Independent of the loss to the laboring class occasioned by strikes, from which there has been lately considerable misery, the country at large suffers very evidently from the stoppage of trade, and the loss to both the employers and the employed is most ruinous. If those principles which regulate the laws of wages, and their rise and fall, were more generally known and understood, the evil which, now that we are suffering from it, presses on our attention, would be considerably mitigated if not entirely removed. Wages, taking the laboring population as a mass, is the sum applicable to their payment for their daily work. The fact that from skilled mechanics and tradesmen, down to farm laborers, there are different rates of payment, cannot be brought into the consideration of the general rate of wages of the class. It is clear that the sum to be received by each individual will depend on the extent of the total sum applicable for that purpose, (which may be called labor capital,) and the number amongst whom it has to be divided. Small figures will most easily illustrate the proposition. If there are in a

raw

community 100 of the laboring class, and that amongst those there is a labor capital of £3,000 to be expended annually, each man receives, cæteris paribus, £30. If the sum be reduced to £2,000, each man will have but £20, and if with that sum of £2,000 as capital, the members of the laboring class should be increased to 150, each person will receive but £15. No capitalist keeps his money fruitlessly lying in a chest. He invests it in the funds, in land, in manufactures, or in trade. In all there can be sunk but a particular sum varying occasionally in amount, as money is scarce, or otherwise. If the capitalist buys into the funds, he forces the same amount out to be employed in some way or other, so if he buys land or house property. What remains unsunk, (we wish to make use of the most popular phrases,) must be employed in order to remunerate its owner. His capital is engaged either in trade or manufacture directly by himself, or by its finding its way there in loans. In some method it must come to either one or the other. In order to carry on trade or manufacture, it is necessary to have a building suitable for the purpose, machinery, tools, implements of trade, &c., and the materials to be worked on as well as the labor of the workmen. Now to these all unsunk capital must come. The holder considers how far his capital will clearly enable him to go, and to what extent, and as far as it can, he will of course push it for his own advantage. He then necessarily invests part of his capital in the building, machinery, &c., another part in the purchase of the material to be manufactured, or worked upon, whether it be cotton to be spun, or copper, or iron in a mine, the remainder he invests in labor, i.e., pays away in wages. This sum will bear a certain proportion to his entire capital, and the greater that capital, the larger the sum to be thus expended. Now it is evident that the larger this sum, the better for the laboring class; and that in order to secure good wages their only care must be to guard against the supply exceeding the demand, or in other words, to keep their numbers from increasing to such an extent, as to diminish unduly the share of each person. In order to have good wages there are but two requisites, general prosperity, and brisk trade, which will give a large labor capital often turned; and some of that prudence which is observed by the other classes of society, in not entering upon the responsibilities of the married state, without making some