Section III.

The review of the past may here be terminated. And how welcome a change

it would be if we might here completely emerge from the gloom which has

overspread it. How happy were it if in proceeding to an estimate of the

people of the present times, we found so rich a practical result of the

means for forming a more enlightened race, that we should have no further

recollection of that sentence from the Prophet, which has hitherto

suggested itself again at every step in prosecution of the survey. But we

are compelled to see how slow is the progress of mankind toward thus

rendering obsolete any of the darker lines of the sacred record. So

completely, so desperately, had the whole popular body and being been

pervaded by the stupifying power of the long reign of ignorance, with

such heavy reluctance, at the best, does the human mind open its eyes to

admit light,--and so incommensurate as yet, even on the supposition of

its having much less of this reluctance, has been in quantity the whole

new supply of means for a happy change,--that a most melancholy spectacle

still abides before us. Time, in sweeping away successive generations,

has preserved, in substance, the sad inheritance to that which is as yet

the latest.

Even that portion of beneficial effect which actually has resulted from

this co-operation of new forces, has served to make a more obvious

exposure of the unhappiness and offensiveness of what is still the

condition of the far greater part of our population; as a dreary waste is

made, to give a more sensible impression how dreary it is, by the little

inroads of cultivation and beauty in its hollows, and the faint advances

of an unwonted green upon its borders. The degradation of the main body of

the lower classes is exposed by a comparison with the small reclaimed

portion within those classes themselves. It is not with the philosophers,

literati, and most accomplished persons in higher life, that we should

think of placing in immediate comparison the untutored rustics and workmen

in stones and timber, for the purpose of showing how much is wanting to

them. These extreme orders of society would seem less related in virtue of

their common nature, than separated by the wide disparity of its

cultivation. They would appear so immeasurably asunder, such antipodes in

the sphere of human existence, that the state of the one could afford no

standard for judging of the defects or wants of the other. It was not in a

speculation which amused itself, as with a curious fact, in seeing that

the same material can be made into scholars, legislators, sages, and

models of elegance--and also into helots; and then went into a fanciful

question of how near they might possibly be brought together: it was in a

speculation which, instead of dwelling on the view of what was impossible

to the common people in a comparative reference to the highest classes of

their fellow-men, considered what was left practicable to them within

their own narrow allotment, that the schemes originated which have

actually imparted to a proportion of them an invaluable share of the

benefits of knowledge. There has thus been formed a small improved order

of people amidst the multitude; and it is the contrast between these and

the general state of that multitude that most directly exposes the popular

debasement. It certainly were ridiculous enough to fix on a laboring man

and his family, and affect to deplore that he is doomed not to behold the

depths and heights of science, not to expatiate over the wide field of

history, not to luxuriate among the delights, refinements, and infinite

diversities of literature; and that his family are not growing up in a

training to every high accomplishment, after the pattern of some family in

the neighborhood, favored by fortune, and high ability and cultivation in

those at their head. But it is a quite different thing to take this man

and his family, hardly able, perhaps, even to read, and therefore sunk in

all the grossness of ignorance,--and compare them with another man and

family in the same sphere of life, but who have received the utmost

improvement within the reach of that situation, and are sensible of its

value; who often employ the leisure hour in reading, (sometimes socially

and with intermingled converse,) some easy work of instruction or innocent

entertainment; are detached, in the greatest degree that depends on their

choice, from society with the absolute vulgar; have learnt much decorum of

manners; can take an intelligent interest in the great events of the

world; and are prevented, by what they read and hear, from forgetting that

there is another world. It is, we repeat, after thus seeing what may, and

in particular instances does exist, in a humble condition, that we are

compelled to regard as really a dreadful spectacle the still prevailing

state of our national population.

We shall endeavor to exhibit, though on a small scale, and perhaps not

with a very strict regularity of proportion and arrangement, a faithful

representation of the most serious of the evils conspicuous in an

uneducated state of the people. Much of the description and reflections

must be equally applicable to other countries; for spite of all their

mutual antipathies and hostilities, and numberless contrarieties of

customs and fashions, they have been wonderfully content to resemble one

another in the worst national feature, a deformed condition of their

people. But it is here at home that this condition is the most painfully

forced on our attention; and here also of all the world it is, that such a

wretched exhibition is the severest reproach to the nation for having

suffered its existence.

The subject is to the last degree unattractive, except to a misanthropic

disposition; or to that, perhaps, of a stern theological polemic, when

tempted to be pleased with every superfluity of evidence for overwhelming

the opposers of the doctrine which asserts the radical corruption of our

nature. As spread over a coarse and repulsive moral and physical scenery,

it is a subject in the extreme of contrast with that susceptibility of

magnificent display, on account of which some of the most cruel evils that

have preyed on mankind have ever been favorite themes with writers

ambitious to shine in description. Nor does it present a wild and varying

spectacle, where a crowd of fantastic shapes (as in a view of the pagan

superstitions,) may stimulate and beguile the imagination though we know

we are looking on a great evil. It is a gloomy monotony; Death without his

dance. Moreover, the representation which exhibits one large class

degraded and unhappy, reflects ungraciously, and therefore repulsively, by

an imputation of neglect of duty, on the other classes who are called upon

to look at the spectacle. There is, besides, but little power of arresting

the attention in a description of familiar matter of fact, plain to every

one's observation. Yet ought it not to be so much the better, when we are

pleading for a certain mode of benevolent exertion, that every one can

see, and that no one can deny, the sad reality of all that forms the

object, and imposes the duty, of that exertion?

Look, then, at the neglected ignorant class in their childhood and youth.

One of the most obvious circumstances is the _perfect non-existence in

their minds of any notion or question what their life is for, taken as a

whole._ Among a crowd of trifling and corrupting ideas that soon find a

place in them, there is never the reflective thought,--For what purpose am

I alive? What is it that I should be, more than the animal that I am? Does

it signify _what_ I may be?--But surely, it is with ill omen that the

human creature advances into life without such a thought. He should in the

opening of his faculties receive intimations, that something more belongs

to his existence than what he is about to-day, and what he may be about

to-morrow. He should be made aware that the course of activity he is

beginning ought to have a leading principle of direction, some predominant

aim, a general and comprehensive purpose, paramount to the divers

particular objects he may pursue. It is not more necessary for him to

understand that he must in some way be employed in order to live, than to

be apprized that life itself, that existence itself, is of no value but as

a mere capacity of something which he should realize, and of which he may

fail. He should be brought to apprehend that there is a something

essential for him to _be_, which he will not _become_ merely by passing

from one day into another, by eating and sleeping, by growing taller and

stronger, seizing what share he can of noisy sport, and performing

appointed portions of work; and that if he do _not_ become that which, he

_cannot_ become without a general and leading purpose, he will be

worthless and unhappy.

We are not entertaining the extravagant fancy that it is possible, except

in some rare instances of premature thoughtfulness, to turn inward into

deep habitual reflection, the spirit that naturally goes outward in these

vivacious, active, careless beings, when we assert that it _is_ possible

to teach many of them with a degree of success, in very juvenile years, to

apprehend and admit somewhat of such a consideration. We have many times

seen this exemplified in fact. We have found some of them appearing

apprized that _life is for something as a whole_; and that, to answer this

general purpose, a mere succession of interests and activities, each gone

into for its own sake, will not suffice. They could comprehend, that the

multiplicity of interests and activities in detail, instead of

constituting of themselves the purpose of life, were to be regarded as

things subordinate and subservient to a general scope, and judged of,

selected, and regulated, in reference and amenableness to it.--By the

presiding comprehensive purpose, we do not specifically and exclusively

mean a direction of the mind to the _religious_ concern, viewed as a

separate affair, and in _contradistinction_ to other interests; but a

purpose formed upon a collective notion of the person's interests, which

shall give one general right bearing to the course of his life; an aim

proceeding in fulfilment of a scheme, that comprehends and combines with

the religious concern all the other concerns for the sake of which it is

worth while to dispose the activities of life into a _plan_ of conduct,

instead of leaving them to custom and casualty. The scheme will look and

guide toward ultimate felicity: but will at the same time take large

account of what must be thought of, and what may be hoped for, in relation

to the present life.

Now, we no more expect to find any such idea of a presiding purpose of

life, than we do the profoundest philosophical reflection, in the minds of

the uneducated children and youth. They think nothing at all about their

existence and life in any moral or abstracted or generalizing reference

whatever. They know not any good that it is to have been endowed with a

rational rather than a brute nature, excepting that it affords more

diversity of action, and gives the privilege of tyrannizing over brutes.

They think nothing about what they shall become, and very little about

what shall become of them. There is nothing that tells them of the

relations for good and evil, of present things with future and remote

ones. The whole energy of their moral and intellectual nature goes out as

in brute instinct on present objects, to make the most they can of them

for the moment, taking the chance for whatever may be next. They are left

totally devoid even of the thought, that what they are doing is the

beginning of a life as an important adventure for good or evil; their

whole faculty is engrossed in the doing of it; and whether it signify

anything to the next ensuing stage of life, or to the last, is as foreign

to any calculation of theirs, as the idea of reading their destiny in the

stars. Not only, therefore, is there an entire preclusion from their minds

of the faintest hint of a monition, that they should live for the grand

final object pointed to by religion, but also, for the most part, of all

consideration of the attainment of a reputable condition and character in

life. The creature endowed with faculties for "large discourse, looking

before and after," capable of so much design, respectability, and

happiness, even in its present short stage, and entering on an endless

career, is seen in the abasement of snatching, as its utmost reach of

purpose, at the low amusements, blended with vices, of each passing day;

and cursing its privations and tasks, and often also the sharers of those

privations, and the exactors of those tasks.

When these are grown up into the mass of mature population, what will it

be, as far as their quality shall go toward constituting the quality of

the whole? Alas! it will be, to that extent, just a continuation of the

ignorance, debasement, and misery, so conspicuous in the bulk of the

people now. And to _what_ extent? Calculate _that_ from the unquestionable

fact that hundreds of thousands of the human beings in our land, between

the ages, say of six and sixteen, are at this hour thus abandoned to go

forward into life at random, as to the use they shall make of it,--if,

indeed, it can be said to be at random, when there is strong tendency and

temptation to evil, and no discipline to good. Looking at this proportion,

does any one think there will be, on the whole, wisdom and virtue enough

in the community to render this black infusion imperceptible or innoxious?

But are we accounting it absolutely inevitable that the sequel must be in

full proportion to this present fact,--_must_ be everything that this fact

threatens, and _can_ lead to,--as we should behold persons carried down in

a mighty torrent, where all interposition is impossible, or as the Turks

look at the progress of a conflagration or an epidemic? It is in order to

"frustrate the tokens" of such melancholy divination, to arrest something

of what a destructive power is in the act of carrying away, to make the

evil spirit find, in the next stages of his march, that all his enlisted

host have not followed him, and to quell somewhat of the triumph of his

boast, "My name is legion, for we are many;"--it is for this that the

friends of improvement, and of mankind, are called upon for efforts

greatly beyond those which are requisite for maintaining in its present

extent of operation the system of expedients for intercepting, before it

be too late, the progress of so large a portion of the youthful tribe

toward destruction.

Another obvious circumstance in the state of the untaught class is, _that

they are abandoned, in a direct, unqualified manner, to seize recklessly

whatever they can of sensual gratification_. The very narrow scope to

which their condition limits them in the pursuit of this, will not prevent

its being to them the most desirable thing in existence, when there are so

few other modes of gratification which they either are in a capacity to

enjoy, or have the means to obtain. By the very constitution of the human

nature, the mind seems half to belong to the senses, it is so shut within

them, affected by them, dependent on them for pleasure, as well as for

activity, and impotent but through their medium. And while, by this

necessary hold which they have on what would call itself a spiritual

being, they absolutely will engross to themselves, as of clear right, a

large share of its interest and exercise, they will strive to possess

themselves of the other half too. And they will have it, if it has not

been carefully otherwise claimed and pre-occupied. And when the senses

have thus usurped the whole mind for their service, how will you get any

of it back? Try, if you will, whether this be a thing so easy to be done.

Present to the minds so engrossed with the desires of the senses, that

their main action is but in these desires and the contrivances how to

fulfil them,--offer to their view nobler objects, which are appropriate to

the spiritual being, and observe whether that being promptly shows a

sensibility to the worthier objects, as congenial to its nature, and,

obsequious to the new attraction, disengages itself from what has wholly

absorbed it.

Nor would we require that the experiment be made by presenting something

of a precisely religious nature, to which there is an innate aversion on

account of its _divine_ character, separately from its being an

intellectual thing,--an aversion even though the mental faculties _be_

cultivated. It may be made with something that ought to have power to

please the mind as simply a being of intelligence, imagination, and

sentiment,--a pleasure which, in some of its modes, the senses themselves

may intimately partake; as when, for instance, it is to be imparted by

something beautiful or grand in the natural world, or in the works of art.

Let this refined solicitation be addressed to the grossly uncultivated, in

competition with some low indulgence--with the means, for example, of

gluttony and inebriation. See how the subjects of your experiment,

(intellectual and moral natures though they are,) answer to these

respective offered gratifications. Observe how these more dignified

attractives encounter and overpower the meaner, and reclaim the usurped,

debased spirit. Or rather, observe whether they can avail for more than an

instant, so much as to divide its attention. But indeed you can foresee

the result so well, that you may spare the labor. Still less could you

deem it to be of the nature of an experiment, (which implies uncertainty,)

to make the attempt with ideal forms of nobleness or beauty, with

intellectual, poetical, or moral captivations.

Yet this addiction to sensuality, beyond all competition of worthier modes

and means of interest, does not altogether refuse to admit of some

division and diversion of the vulgar feelings, in favor of some things of

a more mental character, provided they be vicious. A man so neglected in

his youth that he cannot spell the names of Alexander, Cæsar, or Napoleon,

or read them if he see them spelt, may feel the strong incitement of

ambition. This, instead of raising him, may only propel him forward on the

level of his debased condition and society; and it is a favorable

supposition that makes him "the best wrestler on the green," or a manful

pugilist; for it is probable his grand delight may be, to indulge himself

in an oppressive, insolent arrogance toward such as are unable to maintain

a strife with him on terms of fair rivalry, making his will the law to all

whom he can force or frighten into submission.

Coarse sensuality admits, again, an occasional competition of the

gratifications of cruelty; a flagrant characteristic, generally, of

uncultivated degraded human creatures, both where the whole community

consists of such, as in barbarian and savage tribes, and where they form a

large portion of it, as in this country.--It is hardly worth while to put

in words the acknowledgment of the obvious and odious fact, that a

considerable share of mental attainment is sometimes inefficient to

extinguish, or even repress, this infernal principle of human nature, by

which it is gratifying to witness and inflict suffering, even separately

from any prompting of revenge. But why do we regard such examples as

peculiarly hateful, and brand them with the most intense reprobation, but

_because_ it is judged the fair and natural tendency of mental cultivation

to repress that principle, insomuch that its failure to do so is

considered as evincing a surpassing virulence of depravity? Every one is

ready with the saying of the ancient poet, that liberal acquirements

suppress ferocious propensities. But if the whole virtue of such

discipline may prove insufficient, think what must be the consequence of

its being almost wholly withheld, so that the execrable propensity may go

into action with its malignity unmitigated, unchecked, by any remonstrance

of feeling or taste, or reason or conscience.

And such a consequence is manifest in the lower ranks of our self-extolled

community; notwithstanding a diminution, which the progress of education

and religion has slowly effected, in certain of the once most favorite and

customary practices of cruelty; what we might denominate the classic games

of the rude populace. These very practices, nevertheless, still keep their

ground in some of the more heathenish parts of the country; and if it were

possible, that the more improved notions and taste of the more respectable

classes could admit of any countenance being given to their revival in the

more civilized parts, it would be found that, even there, a large portion

of the people is to this hour left in a disposition which would welcome

the return of savage exhibitions. It may be, that some of the most

atrocious forms and degrees of cruelty would not please the greater number

of them; there have been instances in which an English populace has shown

indignation at extreme and _unaccustomed_ perpetrations, sometimes to the

extent of cruelly revenging them; very rarely, however, when only brute

creatures have been the sufferers. Not many would be delighted with such

scenes as those which, in the _Place de Grève_, used to be a gratification

to a multitude of all ranks of the Parisians. But how many odious facts,

characteristic of our people, have come under every one's observation.

Who has not seen numerous instances of the delight with which advantage is

taken of weakness or simplicity, to practise upon them some sly mischief,

or inflict some open mortification; and of the unrepressed glee with which

the rude spectators can witness or abet the malice? And if, in such a

case, an indignant observer has hazarded a remark or expostulation, the

full stare, and the quickly succeeding laugh and retort of brutal scorn,

have thrown open to his revolting sight the state of the recess within,

where the moral sentiments are; and shown how much the perceptions and

notions had been indebted to the cares of the instructor. Could he help

thinking what was deserved somewhere, by individuals or by the local

community collectively, for suffering a being to grow up to quite or

nearly the complete dimensions and features of manhood, with so vile a

thing within it in substitution for what a soul should be? We need not

remark, what every one has noticed, how much the vulgar are amused by

seeing vexatious or injurious incidents, (if only not quite disastrous or

tragical,) befalling persons against whom they can have no resentment; how

ferocious often their temper and means of revenge when they _have_ causes

of resentment; or how intensely delighted, (in company, it is true, with

many that are called their betters,) in beholding several of their

fellow-mortals, whether in anger or athletic competition, covering each

other with bruises, deformity, and blood.

Our institutions, however, protect, in some considerable degree, man

against man, as being framed in a knowledge of what would else become of

the community. But observe a moment what are the dispositions of the

vulgar as indulged, and with no preventive interference of those

institutions, on the inferior animals. To a large proportion of this class

it is, in their youth, one of the most vivid exhilarations to witness the

terrors and anguish of living beings. In many parts of the country it

would be no improbable conjecture in explanation of a savage yell heard at

a distance, that a company of rationals may be witnessing the writhings,

agonies, and cries, of some animal struggling for escape or for life,

while it is suffering the infliction, perhaps, of stones, and kicks, or

wounds by more directly fatal means of violence. If you hear in the clamor

a sudden burst of fiercer exultation, you may surmise that just then a

deadly blow has been given. There is hardly an animal on the whole face of

the country, of size enough, and enough within reach to be a marked object

of attention, that would not be persecuted to death if no consideration of

ownership interposed. The children of the uncultivated families are

allowed, without a check, to exercise and improve the hateful disposition,

on flies, young birds, and other feeble and harmless creatures; and they

are actually encouraged to do it on what, under the denomination of

vermin, are represented in the formal character of enemies, almost in such

a sense as if a moral responsibility belonged to them, and they were

therefore not only to be destroyed as a nuisance, but deserving to be

punished as offenders.

The hardening against sympathy, with the consequent carelessness of

inflicting pain, combined as this will probably be, with the _love_ of

inflicting it, must be confirmed by the horrid spectacle of slaughter; a

spectacle sought for gratification by the children and youth of the lower

order; and in many places so publicly exhibited that they cannot well

avoid seeing it, and its often savage preliminary circumstances, sometimes

directly wanton aggravations; perhaps in revenge of a struggle to resist

or escape, perhaps in a rage at the awkward manner in which the victim

adjusts itself to a convenient position for suffering. Horrid, we call the

prevailing practice, because it is the infliction, on millions of sentient

and innocent creatures every year, in what calls itself a humane and

Christian nation, of anguish unnecessary to the purpose. Unnecessary--what

proof is there to the contrary?--To _what_ is the present practice

necessary?--Some readers will remember the benevolent (we were going to

say _humane_, but that is an equivocal epithet,) attempt made a number of

years since by Lord Somerville to introduce, but he failed, a mode of

slaughter, without suffering; a mode in use in a foreign nation with which

we should deem it very far from a compliment to be placed on a level in

point of civilization. And it is a flagrant dishonor to such a country,

and to the class that virtually, by rank, and formally, by official

station, have presided over its economy, one generation after another,

that so hideous a fact should never, as far as we know, have been deemed

by the highest state authorities worth even a question whether a

mitigation might not be practicable. An inconceivable daily amount of

suffering, inflicted on unknown thousands of creatures, dying in slow

anguish, when their death might be without pain as being instantaneous, is

accounted no deformity in the social system, no incongruity with the

national profession of religion of which the essence is charity and mercy,

nothing to sully the polish, or offend the refinement, of what demands to

be accounted, in its higher portions, a pre-eminently civilized and

humanized community. Precious and well protected polish and refinement,

and humanity, and Christian civilization! to which it is a matter of easy

indifference to know that, in the neighborhood of their abode, those

tortures of butchery are unnecessarily inflicted, which could not be

actually witnessed by persons in whom the pretension to these fine

qualities is anything better than affectation, without sensations of

horror; which it would ruin the character of a fine gentleman or lady to

have voluntarily witnessed in a single instance.

They are known to be inflicted, and yet this is a trifle not worth an

effort toward innovation on inveterate custom, on the part of the

influential classes; who may be far more worthily intent on a change in

the fashion of a dress, or possibly some new refinement in the cookery of

the dead bodies of the victims. Or the _living_ bodies; as we are told

that the most delicious preparation of an eel for exquisite palates is to

thrust the fish alive into the fire: while lobsters are put into water

_gradually_ heated to boiling. The latter, indeed, is an old practice,

like that of _crimping_ another fish. Such things are allowed or required

to be done by persons pretending to the highest refinement. It is a matter

far below legislative attention; while the powers of definition are

exhausted under the stupendous accumulation of regulations and

interdictions for the good order of society. So hardened may the moral

sense of a community be by universal and continual custom, that we are

perfectly aware these very remarks will provoke the ridicule of many

persons, including, it is possible enough, some who may think it quite

consistent to be ostentatiously talking at the very same time of Christian

charity and benevolent zeal. [Footnote: This was actually done in a

religious periodical publication.] Nor will that ridicule be repressed by

the notoriety of the fact, that the manner of the practice referred to

steels and depraves, to a dreadful degree, a vast number of human beings

immediately employed about it; and, as a spectacle, powerfully contributes

to confirm, in a greater number, exactly that which it is, by eminence,

the object of moral tuition to counteract--men's disposition to make-light

of all suffering but their own. This one thing, this not caring for what

may be endured by other beings made liable to suffering, is the very

essence of the depravity which is so fatal to our race in their social

constitution. This selfish hardness is moral plague enough even in an

inactive state, as a mere carelessness what other beings may suffer; but

there lurks in it a malignity which is easily stimulated to delight in

seeing or causing their suffering. And yet, we repeat it, a civilized and

Christian nation feels not the slightest self-displacency for its allowing

a certain unhappy but necessary part in the economy of the world to be

executed, (by preference to a harmless method,) in a manner which probably

does as much to corroborate in the vulgar class this essential principle

of depravity, as all the expedients of melioration yet applied are doing

to expel it.

Were it not vain and absurd to muse on supposable new principles in the

constitution of the moral system, there is one that we might have been

tempted to wish for, namely, that, of all suffering _unnecessarily_ and

wilfully inflicted by man on any class of sentient existence, a bitter

intimation and participation might be conveyed to him through a mysterious

law of nature, enforcing an avenging sympathy in severe proportion to that

suffering, on all the men who are really accountable for its being

inflicted.

After children and youth are trained to behold with something worse than

hardened indifference, with a gratifying excitement, the sufferings of

creatures dying for the service of man, it is no wonder if they are

barbarous in their treatment of those that serve him by their life. And

in fact nothing is more obvious as a prevailing disgrace to our nation,

than the cruel habits of the lower class toward the laboring animals

committed to their power. These animals have no security in their best

condition and most efficient services; but generally the hateful

disposition is the most fully exercised on those that have been already

the greatest sufferers. Meeting, wherever we go, with some of these

starved, abused, exhausted figures, we shall not unfrequently meet with

also another figure accompanying them--that of a ruffian, young or old,

who with a visage of rage, and accents of hell, is wreaking his utmost

malevolence on a wretched victim for being slow in performing, or quite

failing to perform, what the excess of loading, and perhaps the

feebleness of old age, have rendered difficult or absolutely

impracticable; or for shrinking from an effort to be made by a pressure

on bleeding sores, or for losing the right direction through blindness,

and that itself perhaps occasioned by hardship or savage violence. Many

of the exacters of animal labor really seem to resent it as a kind of

presumption and insult in the slave, that it would be anything else than

a machine, that the living being should betray under its toils that it

suffers, that it is pained, weary, or reluctant. And if, by outrageous

abuse, it should be excited to some manifestation of resentment, that is

a crime for which the sufferer would be likely to incur such a fury and

repetition of blows and lacerations as to die on the spot, but for an

interfering admonition of interest against destroying such a piece of

property, and losing so much service. When that service has utterly

exhausted, often before the term of old age, the strength of those

wretched animals, there awaits many of them a last short stage of still

more remorseless cruelty; that in which it is become a doubtful thing

whether the utmost efforts to which the emaciated, diseased, sinking

frame can be forced by violence, be worth the trouble of that violence,

the delays and accidents, and the expense of the scanty supply of

subsistence. As they must at all events very soon perish, it has ceased

to be of any material consequence, on the score of interest, how grossly

they may be abused; and their tormentors seem delighted with this release

from all restraint on their dispositions. Those dispositions, as indulged

in some instances, when the miserable creatures are formally consigned to

be destroyed, cannot be much exceeded by anything we can attribute to

fiends. Some horrid exemplifications were adduced, not as single casual

circumstances, but as usual practices, by a patriotic senator some years

since, in endeavoring to obtain a legislative enactment in mitigation of

the sufferings of the brute tribes. The design vanished to nothing in the

House of Commons, under the effect of argument and ridicule from a person

distinguished for intellectual cultivation; whose resistance was not only

against that specific measure, but avowedly against the principle itself

on which _any_ measure of the same tendency could ever be founded.

[Footnote: Lord Erskine's memorable Bill, triumphantly scouted by the

late Mr. Windham.--Undoubtedly there are considerable difficulties in the

way of legislation on the subject; but an equal share of difficulty

attending some other subjects--an affair of revenue, for instance, or a

measure for the suppression (at that time) of political opinion--would

soon have been overcome.] Nor could any victory have pleased him better,

probably, than one which contributed to prolong the barbarism of the

people, as the best security, he deemed, for their continuing fit to

labor at home and fight abroad. It might have added to this gratification

to hear (as was the fact) his name pronounced with delight by ruffians of

all classes, who regarded him as their patron saint.

If any one should be inclined to interpose here with a remark, that after

_such_ a reference, we have little right to ascribe to those classes, as

if it were peculiarly one of their characteristics, the insensibility to

the sufferings of the brute creation, and to number it formally among the

results of the "lack of knowledge," we can only reply, that however those

of higher order may explode any attempt to make the most efficient

authority of the nation bear repressively upon the evil, and however it

may in other ways be abetted by them, it is, at any rate, in those

inferior classes chiefly that the actual perpetrators of it are found. It

is something to say in favor of cultivation, that it does, generally

speaking, render those who have the benefit of it incapable of practising,

_themselves_, the most palpably flagrant of these cruelties which they may

be virtually countenancing, by some things which they do, and some things

which they omit or refuse to do. Mr. Windham would not himself have

practised a wanton barbarity on a poor horse or ass, though he scouted any

legislative attempt to prevent it among his inferiors.

* * * * *

The proper place would perhaps have been nearer the beginning of this

description of the characteristics of our uneducated people, for one so

notorious, and one entering so much into the essence of the evils already

named, as that we mention next; _a rude, contracted, unsteady, and often

perverted sense of right and wrong in general_.

It is curious to look into a large volume of religious casuistry, the work

of some divine of a former age, (for instance Bishop Taylor's _Ductor

Dubitantium,_) with the reflection what a conscience disciplined in the

highest degree might be; and then to observe what this regulator of the

soul actually is where there has been no sound discipline of the reason,

and where there is no deep religious sentiment to rectify the perceptions

in the absence of an accurate intellectual discrimination of things. This

sentiment being wanting, dispositions and conduct cannot be taken account

of according to the distinction between holiness and sin; and in the

absence of a cultivated understanding, they cannot be brought to the test

of the distinguishing law between propriety and turpitude; nor estimated

upon any comprehensive notion of utility. The evidence of all this is

thick and close around us; so that every serious observer has been struck

and almost shocked to observe, in what a very small degree conscience is a

_necessary_ attribute of the human creature; and how nearly a nonentity

the whole system of moral principles may be, as to any recognition of it

by an unadapted spirit. While that system is of a substance veritable and

eternal, and stands forth in its exceeding breadth, marked with the

strongest characters and prominences, it has to these persons hardly the

reality or definiteness of a shadow, except in a few matters, if we may so

express it, of the grossest bulk. There must be glaring evidence of

something bad in what is done, or questioned whether to be done, before

conscience will come to its duty, or give proof of its existence. There

must be a violent alarm of mischief or danger before this drowsy and

ignorant magistrate will interfere. And since occasions thus involving

flagrant evil cannot be of very frequent occurrence in the life of the

generality of the people, it is probable that many of them have

considerably protracted exemptions from any interference of conscience at

all; it is certain that they experience no such pertinacious attendance of

it, as to feel habitually a monitory intimation, that without great

thought and care they will inevitably do something wrong. But what may we

judge and presage of the moral fortunes of a sojourner, of naturally

corrupt propensity, in this bad world, who is not haunted, sometimes to a

degree of alarm, by this monitory sense, through the whole course of his

life? What is likely to become of him, if he shall go hither and thither

on the scene exempt from all sensible obstruction of the many

interdictions, of a nature too refined for any sense but the vital

tenderness of conscience to perceive?

Obstructions of a more gross and tangible nature he is continually

meeting. A large portion of what he is accustomed to see presents itself

to him in the character of boundary and prohibition; on every hand there

is something to warn him what he must not do. There are high walls, and

gates, and fences, and brinks of torrents and precipices; in short, an

order of things on all sides signifying to him, with more or less of

menace,--Thus far and no further. And he is in a general way obsequious to

this arrangement. We do not ordinarily expect to see him carelessly

transgressing the most decided of the artificial boundaries, or daring

across those dreadful ones of nature. But, nearly destitute of the faculty

to perceive, (as in coming in contact with something charged with the

element of lightning,) the awful interceptive lines of that other

arrangement which he is in the midst of as a subject of the laws of God,

we see with what insensibility he can pass through those prohibitory

significations of the Almighty will, which are to devout men as lines

streaming with an infinitely more formidable than material fire. And if we

look on to his future course, proceeding under so fatal a deficiency, the

consequence foreseen is, that those lines of divine interdiction which he

has not conscience to perceive as meant to deter him, he will seem as if

he had acquired, through a perverted will, a recognition of in another

quality--as temptations to attract him.

But to leave these terms of generality and advert to a few particulars of

illustration:--Recollect how commonly persons of the class described are

found utterly violating truth, not in hard emergencies only, but as an

habitual practice, and apparently without the slightest reluctance or

compunction, their moral sense quite at rest under the accumulation of a

thousand deliberate falsehoods. It is seen that by far the greater number

of them think it no harm to take little unjust advantages in their

dealings, by deceptive management; and very many would take the greatest

but for fear of temporal consequences; would do it, that is to say,

without inquietude of conscience, in the proper sense. It is the testimony

of experience from persons who have had the most to transact with them,

that the indispensable rule of proceeding is to assume generally their

want of principle, and leave it to time and prolonged trial to establish,

rather slowly, the individual exceptions. Those unknowing admirers of

human nature, or of English character, who are disposed to exclaim against

this as an illiberal rule, may be recommended to act on what they will

therefore deem a liberal one--at their cost.

That power of established custom, which is so great, as we had occasion to

show, on the moral sense of even better instructed persons, has its

dominion complete over that of the vulgar; insomuch that the most

unequivocal iniquity of a practice long suffered to exist, shall hardly

bring to their mere recollection the common acknowledged rule not to do as

we would wish not done to us. From recent accounts it appears, that the

entire coast of our island is not yet clear of those people called

_wreckers_, who felt not a scruple to appropriate whatever they could

seize of the lading of vessels cast ashore, and even whatever was worth

tearing from the personal possession of the unfortunate beings who might

be escaping but just alive from the most dreadful peril. The cruelty we

have so largely attributed to our English vulgar, never recoils on them in

self-reproach. The habitual indulgence of the irascible, vexatious, and

malicious tempers, to the plague or terror of all within reach, scarcely

ever becomes a subject of judicial estimate, as a character hateful in the

abstract, with them a reflection of that estimate on the man's own self.

He reflects but just enough to say to himself that it is all right and

deserved, and unavoidable, too, for he is unpardonably crossed and

provoked; nor will he be driven from this self-approval, when it may be

evident to every one else that the provocations are comparatively slight,

and are only taken as offences by a disposition habitually seeking

occasions to vent its spite. The inconvenience and vexation incident to

low vice, may make the offenders fret at themselves for having been so

foolish, but it is in general with an extremely trifling degree of the

sense of guilt. Suggestions of reprehension, in even the discreetest

terms, and from persons confessedly the best authorized to make them,

would not seldom be answered by a grinning, defying carelessness, in some

instances by abusive retort; instead of any betrayed signs of an internal

acknowledgment of deserving reproof.

And while thus the censure of a fellow-mortal meets no internal testimony

to own its justice, this insensate self-complacency is undisturbed also on

the side toward heaven. A mere philosopher, that should make little

account of religion, otherwise than as capable of being applied to enforce

and aggravate the sense of obligation with respect to rules of conduct,

and would not, provided it may have this effect, care much about its truth

or falsehood,--might be disposed to assert that the ignorant and debased

part of the population, of this Christian and Protestant country, are but

so much the worse for the riddance of some parts of the superstitions of

former ages. He might allege, with plausibility, that the system which

imposed so many falsehoods, vain observances, and perversions of moral

principles, acknowledging nevertheless _some_ correct rules of morality,

as an external practical concern, had the advantage of enjoining them, as

far as it chose to do so, with the force of superstition, a stronger

authority with a rude conscience than that of plain simple religion. That

system exercised a mighty complexity and accumulation of authority, all

avowedly divine; by which it could artificially augment, or rather

supersede, the mere divine prescription of such rules, making _itself_ the

authority and prescriber; and thus could infix them in the moral sense of

the people with something more, or something else, than the simple divine

sanction. Whereas, now when those superstitions which held the people so

powerfully in awe, are gone, and have taken away with them that spurious

sanction, there remains nothing to exert the same power of moral

enforcement; since the people have not, in their exemption from the

superstitions of their ancestors, come under any solemn and commanding

effect of the true idea of the Divine Majesty. And it is undeniable that

this is the state of conscience among them. The vague, faint notion, as

they conceive it, of a being who is said to be the creator, governor,

lawgiver, and judge, and who dwells perhaps somewhere in the sky, has not,

to many of them, the smallest force of intimidation from evil, at least

when they are in health and daylight. One of the large sting-armed insects

of the air does not alarm them less. A certain transitory fearfulness that

occasionally comes upon them, points more to the Devil, and perhaps (in

times now nearly gone by) to the ghosts of the dead, than to the Almighty.

It may be, indeed, that this feeling is in its ultimate principle, if it

were ever followed up so far, an acknowledgment of justice and power in

God, reaching to wicked men through these mysterious agents; who though

intending no service to him, but actuated by dispositions of their own,

malignant in the greatest of them, and supposed inauspicious in the

others, are yet carrying into effect his hostility. But it is little

beyond such proximate objects of apprehension that many minds extend their

awe of invisible spiritual existence. Even the notion really entertained

by them of the greatness of God, may be entertained in such a manner as to

have but slight power to restrain the inclinations to sin, or to impress

the sense of guilt after it is committed. He is too great, they readily

say, to mind the little matters that such creatures as we may do amiss;

they can do _him_ no harm. The idea, too, of his bounty, is of such

unworthy consistency as to be a protection against all conscious reproach

of ingratitude and neglect of service toward him;--he has made us to need

all this that it is said he does for us; and it costs him nothing, it is

no labor, and he is not the less rich; and besides, we have toil, and

want, and plague enough, notwithstanding anything that he gives.

It is probable this unhappiness of their condition, oftener than any other

cause, brings God into their thoughts, and that as a being against whom

they have a complaint approaching to a quarrel on account of it. And this

strongly assists the reaction against whatever would enforce the sense of

guilt on the conscience. When he has done so little for us, (something

like this is the sentiment,) he cannot think it any such great matter if

we _do_ sometimes come a little short of his commands. There is no doubt

that their recollections of him as a being to murmur against for their

allotment, are more frequent, more dwelt upon, and with more of an excited

feeling, than their recollections of him as a being whom they ought to

have loved and served, but have offended against. The very idea of such

offence, as the chief and essential constituent of wickedness, is so

slightly conceived, (because he is invisible, and has his own felicity,

and is secure against all injury,) that if the thoughts of one of these

persons _should_, by some rare occasion, be forced into the direction of

unwillingly seeing his own faults, it is probable his impiety would appear

the most inconsiderable thing in the account; that he would easily forgive

himself the negation of all acts and feelings of devotion towards the

Supreme Being, and the countless multiplications of insults to him by

profane language.

To conclude this part of the melancholy statement; it may be observed of

the class in question, that they have but very little notion of guilt, or

possible guilt, in anything but external practice. That busy interior

existence, which is the moral person, genuine and complete; the thoughts,

imaginations, volitions; the motives, projects, deliberations, devices,

the indulgence of the ideas of what they cannot or dare not practically

realize,--all this, we have reason to believe, passes nearly exempted from

jurisdiction, even of that feeble and undecisive kind which _may_

occasionally attempt an interference with their actions. They do indeed

take such notice of the quality of these things within, as to be aware

that some of them are not to be disclosed in their communications; which

prudential caution has of course little to do with conscience, when the

things so withheld are internally cherished in perfect disregard of the

Omniscient Observer, and with hardly the faintest monition that the

essence of the guilt is the same, with only a difference in degree, in

intending or deliberately desiring an evil, and in acting it.

It is not natural obtuseness of mental faculty that we are attributing,

all this while, to the uneducated class of our people, in thus exposing

the defectiveness of their discernment between right and wrong. If it

were, there might arise somewhat of the consolation afforded in

contemplating some of the very lowest of the savage tribes of mankind, by

the idea that such outcasts of the rational nature must stand very nearly

exempt from accountableness, through absolute natural want of mind. But in

the barbarians of our country we shall often observe a very competent, and

now and then an abundant, share of native sense. We may see it evinced in

respect to the very questions of morality, in cases where they are quite

compelled, as will occasionally happen, to feel themselves brought within

the cognizance of one or other of its plainest rules. In such cases we

have witnessed a sharpness and activity of intellect claiming almost our

admiration. What contrivance of deception and artful evasion. What

dexterity of quibble, and captious objection, and petty sophistry. What

vigilance to observe how the plea in justification or excuse takes effect,

and, if they perceive it does not succeed, what address in sliding into a

different one. What quickness to avail themselves of any mistake, or

apparent concession, in the examiner or reprover. What copious rhetoric in

exaggeration of the cause which tempted to do wrong, or of the great good

hoped to be effected by the little deviation from the right,--a good

surely enough to excuse so trifling an impropriety. What facility of

placing between themselves and the censure, the recollected example of

some good man who has been "overtaken in a fault."

Here _is_ mind, after all, we have been prompted to exclaim; mind

educating itself to evil, in default of that discipline which should have

educated it to good. How much of the wisdom of evil, (if we may be allowed

the expression,) there is faculty enough in the neglected corrupt popular

mass of this nation to attain, by the exercise into which the individual's

mind is carried by its own impulse, and in which he may everywhere and

every hour find ample co-operation. Each of these self-improvers in

depraved sense has the advantage of finding himself among a great tribe of

similar improvers, forming an immense school, as if for the promotion of

this very purpose; where they all teach by a competition in learning;

where the rude faculty which is not expanded into intelligence is,

however, sharpened into cunning; where the spirit which cannot grow into

an eagle, may take the form and action of a snake. This advantage,--that

there should not be a diminution of the superabundant plenty of associates

always at hand, to assist each man in making the most of his native

intellect for its least worthy use,--has been from age to age secured to

our populace, as if it had been the most valuable birthright of

Englishmen. Whatever else the person born to the inheritance of low life

was destined to find in it, the national state had made as sure to him as

it had before made the same privilege to his ancestors, that the

generality of his equals should be found fit and ready to work with him in

the acquirement of a depraved shrewdness.

But while the bulk of the people have been, in every period, abandoned to

such a process of educating themselves and one another, where has been

that character of parental guardianship, which seems to be ascribed when

poets, orators, and patriots, are inspired with tropes, and talk of

England and her children? This imperial matron of their rhetoric seems to

have little cared how much she might be disgraced in the larger portion of

her progeny, or how little cause they might have to all eternity to

remember her with gratitude. She has had far other concern about them, and

employment for them, than that of their being taught the value of their

spiritual nature, and carefully trained to be enlightened, good, and

happy. Laws against crime, it is true, she has enacted for them in liberal

quantity; appointed her quorums of magistrates; and not been sparing of

punishments. She has also maintained public sabbath observances to remind

them of religion, of which observances she cared not that they little

understood the very terms; except when the reading of a Book of Sports was

appointed an indispensable part at one time long after her adoption of the

Reformation. But she might plainly see what such provisions did _not_

accomplish. It was a glaring fact before her eyes, that the majority of

her children had far more of the mental character of a colony from some

barbarian nation, than of that which an enlightened and Christian state

might have been expected to impart. She had most ample resources indeed

for supplying the remedy; but, provided that the productions of the soil

and the workshop were duly forthcoming, she thought it of no consequence,

it should seem, that the operative hands belonged to degraded minds. And

then, too, as at all times, her lofty ambition destined a good proportion

of them to the consumption of martial service, she perhaps judged that the

less they were trained to think, the more fit they might be to be actuated

mechanically, as an instrument of blind impetuous force. Or perhaps she

thought it would be rather an inconsistency, to be making much of the

inner existence of a thing which was to be, in frequent wholesale lots,

sent off to be cut or dashed to pieces. [Footnote: "Killed off," was the

sentimental phrase emitted in parliament, in easy unconsciousness of

offence, by the accomplished senator named in a former page. He probably

was really unaware that the creatures were made for anything better.] And

besides, a certain measure of instruction to think, especially if

consisting, in a considerable part, of the inculcation of religion, might

have done something to disturb that notion, (so worthy to have been

transferred from the Mohammedan creed,) which she was by no means desirous

to expel from her fleets and armies, that death for "king and country"

clears off all accounts for sin.

Let our attention be directed a little while to the effects of the

privation of knowledge, as they may be seen conspicuous in the several

parts of the economy of life, in the uneducated part of the community.

Observe those people in their daily occupations. None of us need be told

that, of the prodigious diversity of manual employments, some consist of,

or include, operations of such minuteness or complexity, and so much

demanding nicety, arrangement, or combination, as to necessitate the

constant and almost entire attention of the mind; nor that all of them

must require its full attention at times, at particular stages, changes,

and adjustments, of the work. We allow this its full weight, to forbid any

extravagant notion of how much it is possible to think of other things

during the working time. It is however to be recollected, that persons of

a class superior to the numerous one we have in view, take the chief share

of those portions of the arts and manufactures which require the most of

mental effort,--those which demand extreme precision, or inventive

contrivance, or taste, or scientific skill. We may also take into the

account of the allotment of employments to the uncultivated multitude, how

much facility is acquired by habit, how much use there is of instrumental

mechanism, (a grand exempter from the responsibility that would lie on the

mind,) and how merely general and very slight an attention is exacted in

the ordinary course of some of the occupations. These things considered,

we may venture perhaps to assume, on an average of those employments, that

the persons engaged in them might be, as much at least as one third part

of the time, without detriment to the manual performance, giving the

thoughts to other things with attention enough for such interest as would

involve improvement. This is particularly true of the more ordinary parts

of the labors of agriculture, when not under any critical circumstances,

or special pressure owing to the season.

But as the case at present is, what does become, during such portion of

the time, of the ethereal essence which inhabits the corporeal laborer,

this spirit created, it is commonly said and without contradiction, for

thought, knowledge, religion, and immortality? If we be really to believe

this doctrine of its nature and destiny, (for we are not sure that

politicians think so,) can we know without regret, that in very many of

the persons in the situations supposed, it suffers a dull absorption,

subsides into the mere physical nature, is sunk and sleeping in the animal

warmth and functions, and lulled and rocked, as it were, in its lethargy,

by the bodily movements, in the works which it is not necessary for it to

keep habitually awake to direct? And its obligation to keep just enough

awake to see to the right performance of the work, seems to give a

licensed exemption from any other stirring of its faculties. The

employment _is something to be minded_, in a general way, though but now

and then requiring a pointed attention; and therefore this said

intellectual being, if uninformed and unexercised, will feel no call to

mind anything else: as a person retained for some service which demands

but occasionally an active exercise, will justify the indolence which

declines taking in hand any other business in the intervals, under the

pretext that he has his appointment; and so, when not under the immediate

calls of that appointment, he will trifle or go to sleep, even in the full

light of day, with an easy conscience.

But here we are to beware of falling into the inadvertency of appearing to

say, that the laboring classes, in this country and age, have actually

this full exemption, during their employments, from all exercise of

thought beyond that which is immediately requisite for the right

performance of their work. It is true that there is little enough of any

such mental activity directed to the instructive uses we were supposing.

But while such partial occupation of the thoughts (of course it is

admitted, in an irregular and discontinuous, but still a beneficial

manner) with topics and facts of what may be called intellectual and moral

interest as we are assuming to be compatible with divers of the manual

operations, is a thing to which most among the laboring classes are

strangers, many of them are equally strangers to an easy vacancy of mind;

experiencing amidst their employments a severe arrest of those thoughts

which the mere employment itself may leave free. During the little more

than mechanical action of their hands and eyes, the circumstances of their

condition press hard into their minds. The lot of many of those classes is

placed in a melancholy disproportion between what _must_ be given to the

cares and toils for a bare subsistence, and what _can_, at most, be given

to the interests of the nobler part of their nature, either during their

work or in its intervals. It is a sad spectacle to behold so many myriads

of spiritual beings, (proviso, again, that we may call them so without

being suspected to forget that their proper calling is to work with their

hands,) doomed to consume a proportion so little short of the whole of

their vigor and time, in just merely supporting so many bodies in the

struggle to live.

When it is in special relation to the present times that we speak of this

struggle to live, we of course mean by it something more than that

circumstance of the general lot of humanity which is expressed in the

sentence, "In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread," We put the

emphasis on the peculiar aggravation of that circumstance in this part of

the world in this and recent times, by the adventitious effect of some

dreadful disorder of the social economy, in consequence of which the

utmost exertions of the body and mind together but barely suffice in so

many cases, in some hardly do suffice, for the mere protraction of life;

comfortable life being altogether out of the question. The course of the

administration of the civilized states, and the recent dire combustion

into which they have almost unanimously rushed, as in emulation which of

them should with the least reserve, and with the most desperate rapidity,

annihilate the resources that should have been for the subsistence and

competence of their people, have resulted in such destitution and misery

in this country as were never known before, except as immediately

inflicted by the local visitation of some awful calamity. The state of

very many of our people, at this hour, is nearly what might be conceived

as the consequence of a failure of the accustomed produce of the earth.

[Footnote: No exaggeration at the time when it was written. The condition

of the working classes during the subsequent years does not admit of any

comprehensive uniform description. It has suffered successive harassing

fluctuations, and been probably at all times severely distressing in one

part of the country or another.]

There is no wish to deny or underrate the additions made to the evil by

the intervention of causes, whose operation admits of being traced in some

measure distinctly from the effect of this grand one. They may be traced

in an operation which is _distinguishable_; and referable to each

respectively; but it were most absurd to represent them as working out of

connection, or otherwise than subordinately concurring, with that cause

which has invaded with its pernicious effects everything that has an

existence or a name in the social system. And it were simply monstrous to

attribute the main substance of so wide and oppressive an evil to causes

of any debateable quality, while there is glaring in sight a cause of

stupendous magnitude, which _could not possibly do otherwise than_ produce

immense and calamitous effects. It would be as if a man were prying about

for this and the other cause of damage, to account for the aspect of a

region which has recently been devastated by inundations or earthquakes.

It has become much a fashion to explain the distresses of a country on any

principles rather than those that are taught by all history, and

prominently manifest in the nature of things. And airs of superior

intelligence shall be assumed on hearing a plain man fix the main charge

of national exhaustion and distress on the nation's consuming its own

strength in an unquenchable fury to destroy that of others; just as if

such madness had never been known to result in poverty and distress, and

it were perfectly inexplicable how it should. This is partly an

affectation of science, accompanied, it is likely, by somewhat of that

sincere extravagance with which some newly developed principle is apt to

be accounted the comprehension of all wisdom, a nostrum that will explain

everything. But we suspect that in many instances this substitution of

subordinate causes for a great substantial one, proceeds from something

much worse than such affectation or self-duped extravagance. It is from a

resolute determination that ambition shall be the noblest virtue of a

state; that martial glory shall maintain its ground in human idolatry and

that wars and their promoters shall be justified at all hazards.

We were wishing to show how the laboring people's thoughts might be partly

employed, during their daily task, and consistently with industry and good

workmanship. But what a state of things is exhibited where the very name

of industry, the virtue universally honored, the topic of so many human

and divine inculcations, cannot be spoken without offering a bitter

insult; where the heavy toil, denounced on man for his transgression, in

the same sentence as death, is in vain implored as the greatest privilege;

or thought of in despair, as a blessing too great to be attainable; and

when the reply of the artisan to an unwitting admonition, that even amidst

his work he might have some freedom for useful thinking, may be,

"Thinking! I have no work to confine my thinking; I may, for that, employ

it all on other subjects; but those subjects are, whether I please or not,

the plenty and luxury in which many creatures of the same kind as myself

are rioting, and the starvation which I and my family are suffering."

We hope in Providence, more than in any wisdom or disposition shown by

men, that this melancholy state of things will be alleviated, otherwise

than by a reduction of number through the diseases generated by utter

penury. [Footnote: It _has_ been alleviated; but not till after a

considerable duration. In England it has; but look at Ireland?] We trust

the time will come when the Christian monitor shall no longer be silenced

by the apprehension of such a reply to the suggestion he wishes to make to

the humble class, that they should strive against being reduced to mere

machines amidst their manual employments; that it is miserable to have the

whole mental existence shrunk and shrivelled as it were to the breadth of

the material they are working upon; that the noble interior agent, which

lends itself to maintain the external activity, and direct the operations

required of the bodily powers for the body's welfare, has eminently a

right and claim to have employments on its own account, during such parts

of those operations as do not of necessity monopolize its attention. It

may claim, in the superintendence of these, a privilege analogous to that

possessed in the general direction of subordinate agents by a man of

science, who will interfere as often as it is necessary, but will not give

up all other thought and employment to be a constant mere looker-on,

during such parts of the operations as are of so ordinary a nature that he

could not really fix his attention on them.

But how is the mind of the laborer or artisan to be delivered from the

blank and stupified state, during the parts of his employment that do not

necessarily engross his thoughts? How, but by its having within some store

of subjects for thought; something for memory, imagination, reflection; in

a word, by the possession of knowledge? How can it be sensibly alive and

active, when it is placed fully and decidedly out of communication with

all things that are friendly to intellectual life, all things that apply a

beneficial stimulus to the faculties, all things, of this world or

another, that are the most inviting or commanding to thought and emotion?

We can imagine this ill-fated spirit, especially if by nature of the

somewhat finer temperament, thus detached from all vital connection,

secluded from the whole universe, and inclosed as by a prison wall,--we

can imagine it sometimes moved with an indistinct longing for its

appropriate interests; and going round and round by this dark, dead wall,

to seek for any spot where there might be a chance of escape, or any

crevice where a living element for the soul transpires; and then, as

feeling it all in vain, dejectedly resigning itself again to its doom.

Some ignorant minds have instinctive impulses of this kind; though far

more of them are so deeply stupified as to be habitually safe from any

such inquietude. But let them have received, in their youth and

progressively afterwards, a considerable measure of interesting

information, respecting, for instance, the many striking objects on the

globe they inhabit, the memorable events of past ages, the origin and uses

of remarkable works within their view, remaining from ancient times; the

causes of effects and phenomena familiar to their observation as now

unintelligible facts; the prospects of man, from the relation he stands in

to time, and eternity, and God, explained by the great principles and

facts of religion. Let there be fixed in their knowledge so many ideas of

these kinds, as might be imparted by a comparatively humble education,

(one quite compatible with the destination to a life of ordinary

employment,) and even involuntarily the thoughts would often recur to

these subjects, in those moments and hours when the manual occupation can,

and actually will, be prosecuted with but little of exclusive attention.

Slight incidents, casual expressions, would sometimes suggest these

subjects; by association they would suggest one another. The mere reaction

of a somewhat cultivated spirit against invading dulness, might recall

some of the more amusing and elating ones; and they would fall like a

gleam of sunshine on the imagination. An emotion of conscience, a

self-reflection, an occurring question of duty, a monitory sensation of

defective health, would sometimes point to the serious and solemn ones.

The mind might thus go a considerable way, to recreate or profit itself,

and, on coming back again, find all safe in the processes of the field or

the loom. The man would thus come from these processes with more than the

bare earnings to set against the fatigue. There would thus be scattered

some appearances to entertain, and some sources and productions to

refresh, over what were else a dead and barren flat of existence.

There is no romancing in all this; we have known instances of its

verification to a very pleasing and exemplary extent. We have heard

persons of the class in question tell of the exhilarating imaginations, or

solemn reflections, which, through the reminiscences of what they had read

in youth or more advanced years, had visited their minds; and put them, as

it were, in communication for a while with diversified, remote, and

elevated objects, while in their humble employments under the open sky or

the domestic roof. And is not this, (if it be true, after all, that the

intellectual, immortal nature is by emphasis the man,) is not this vastly

better than that this mind should lie nearly as dormant, during the

laborer's hours of business, as his attendant of the canine species shall

be sometimes seen to do in the corner of the field where he is at work?

But perhaps it will be said, that the minds of the uncultivated order are

not generally in this state of utter inanity during their common

employments; but are often awake and busy enough in recollections,

fancies, projects, and the tempers appropriate; and that they abundantly

show this when they stop sometimes in their work to talk, or talk as they

are proceeding in it. So much the stronger, we answer, the argument for

supplying them with useful knowledge; for it were better their mental

being _were_ sunk in lethargy, than busy among the reported, recollected,

or imagined transactions, the wishes, and the schemings, which will be the

most likely to occupy the minds of persons abandoned to ignorance,

vulgarity, and therefore probably to low vice.

We may add to the representation, the manner in which they spend the part

of their time not demanded for the regular, or the occasional, exercise of

their industry. It is not to be denied that many of them have too much

truth in their pleading that, with the exception of Sunday, they have

little remission of their toils till they are so weary that the remainder

of the time is needed for complete repose. This is particularly the case

of the females, especially those who have the chief cares and the actual

work of a family. Nevertheless, it is within our constant observation that

a considerable proportion of the men, a large one of the younger men, in

the less heavily oppressed divisions of our population, do in fact

include, for substance, their manual employments within such limits of

time, as often to leave several hours in the day to be spent nearly as

they please. And in what manner, for the most part, is this precious time

expended by those of no mental cultivation? It is true, again, that in

many departments of labor, a diligent exertion during even this limited

space of the day, occasions such a degree of lassitude and heaviness as to

render it almost inevitable, especially in certain seasons of the year, to

surrender some moments of the spare time, beyond what is necessary for the

humble repast, to a kind of listless subsidence of all the powers of both

body and mind. But after all these allowances fully conceded, a great

number in the class under consideration have in some days several hours,

and in the whole six days of the week, on an average of the year, very

many hours, to be given, as they choose, to useful purposes or to waste;

and again we ask, where the mind itself has been left waste how _is_ that

time mostly expended?

If the persons are of a phlegmatic temperament, we shall often see them

just simply annihilating those portions of time. They will for an hour,

or for hours together, if not disturbed by some cause from without, sit

on a bench, or lie down on a bank or hillock, or lean on a wall, or fill

the fire-side chair; yielded up to utter vacancy and torpor, not asleep

perhaps, but more lost to mental existence than if they were; since the

dreams, that would probably visit their slumbers, would be a more lively

train of ideas than any they have awake. Of a piece with this is the

habit, among many of this order of people, of giving formally to sleep as

much as one-third part, sometimes considerably more, of the twenty-four

hours. Certainly there are innumerable cases in which infirmity, care,

fatigue, and the comfortlessness and penury of the humble dwelling,

effectually plead for a large allowance of this balm of oblivion. But

very many surrender themselves to this excess from destitution of

anything to keep their minds awake, especially in the evenings of the

winter. What a contrast is here suggested to the imagination of those who

have read Dr. Henderson's, and other recent descriptions, of the habits

of the people of Iceland!

These, however, are their most harmless modes of wasting the time. For,

while we might think of the many hours merged by them in apathy and

needless sleep, with a wish that those hours could be recovered to the

account of their existence, we might well wish that the hours could be

struck out of it which they may sometimes give, instead, to conversation;

in parties where ignorance, coarse vulgarity, and profaneness, are to

support the dialogue, on topics the most to their taste; always including,

as the most welcome to that taste, the depravities and scandals of the

neighborhood; while all the reproach and ridicule, expended with good-will

on those depravities, have the strange result of making the censors the

less disinclined themselves to practise them, and only a little better

instructed how to do it with impunity. In many instances there is the

additional mischief, that these assemblings for corrupt communication find

their resort at the public-house, where intemperance and ribaldry may

season each other, if the pecuniary means for the former ingredient can be

afforded, even at the cost of distress at home.--But without including

depravity of this degree, the worthlessness of the communications of a

number of grossly ignorant associates is easy to be imagined; besides that

most of us have been made judges of their quality by numberless occasions

of unavoidably hearing samples of them.

In the finer seasons of the year, much of these leisure spaces of time can

be expended out of doors; and we have still only to refer to every one's

own observation of the account to which they are turned, in the lives of

beings whose lot allows but so contracted a portion of time to be, at the

best, applied directly to the highest purposes of life.--Here the hater of

all such schemes of improvement, as would threaten to turn the lower order

into what that hater may probably call Methodists, (a term we venture to

interpret for him as meaning thoughtful beings and Christians,) comes in

with a ready cant of humanity and commiseration. And why, he says, with an

affected indignation of philanthropy, why should not the poor creatures

enjoy a little fresh air and cheerful sunshine, and have a chance of

keeping their health, confined as many of them are, for the greatest part

of the time, in narrow, squalid rooms, unwholesome workshops, and every

sort of disagreeable places and employments? Very true, we answer; and why

should not numbers of them be collected in groups by the road-side, in

readiness to find in whatever passes there occasions for gross jocularity;

practising some impertinence, or uttering some jeering scurrility, at the

expense of persons going by; shouting with laughter at the success of the

annoyance, or to _make_ it successful; and all this blended with language

of profaneness and imprecation, as the very life of the hilarity? Or why

should not the boldest spirits among them form a little conventicle for

cursing, blaspheming, and blackguard obstreperousness in the street, about

the entrance of one of the haunts of intoxication; where they are

perfectly safe from that worse mischief of a gloomy fanaticism, with which

they might have been smitten if seduced to frequent the meeting-house

twenty paces off? Or why should not the children, growing into the stage

called youth, be turned loose through the lanes, roads, and fields, to

form a brawling, impudent rabble, trained by their association to every

low vice, and ambitiously emulating, in voice, visage, and manners, the

ruffians and drabs of maturer growth? Or why should not the young men and

women collect in clusters, or range about or beyond the neighborhood in

bands, for revel, frolic, and all kinds of coarse mirth; to come back late

at night to quarrel with their wretched elders, who perhaps envy them

their capacity for such wild gaieties and strollings, while rating them

for their disorderly habits? We say where can be the harm of all this?

What reasonable and benevolent man would think of making any objection to

it? Reasonable and benevolent,--for these have been among the qualities

boasted for the occasion by the opposers of any materially improved

education of the people; while in such opposition they virtually avowed

their willing tolerance of all that is here described.

We have allowed most fully the plea of how little time, _comparatively_,

could be afforded to the concern of mental improvement by the lower

classes from their indispensable employments; and also that of the

consequent fatigue, causing a temporary incapacity of effort in any other

way. But this latter plea cannot be admitted without great abatement in

the case of our neglected _young_ people of the working classes; for when

we advert to their actual habits, we see that, nevertheless, time,

strength, and wakefulness, and spring and spirit for exertion, _are_ found

for a vast deal of busy diversion, much of it blended with such folly as

tends to vice.

If such is the manner in which the spare time of the week-days goes to

waste and worse, the Sunday is welcomed as giving scope for the same

things on a larger scale. It is very striking to consider, that several

millions, we may safely assert, of our English people, arrived at what

should be years of discretion, are almost completely destitute of any

manner of conscience respecting this seventh part of time; not merely as

to any required consecration of it to religion, but as to its being under

any claim or of any worth at all, otherwise than for amusement. It is

actually regarded by them as a section of time far less under obligation

than any other. They take it as so absolutely at their free disposal, by a

right so exclusively vested in their taste and will, that a demand made

even in behalf of their own most important interests, is contemptuously

repelled as a sanctimonious impertinence. If the idea occurs at all (with

multitudes it never does) of claims which they have heard that God should

make on the hours, it is dismissed with the thought that it really cannot

signify to him how creatures, condemned by his appointment to toil all the

rest of the week, may wish to spend this one day, on which the secular

taskmaster manumits them, and He, the spiritual one, might surely do as

much. An immense number pay no attention whatever to any sort of religious

worship; and many of those that do give an hour or two to such an

observance, do so, some of them as merely a diversification of amusement,

and the others by way of taking a license of exemption from any further

accountableness for the manner in which they may spend the day. It is the

natural consequence of all this, that there is more folly, if not more

crime, committed on this than on all the other six days together.

Thus man, at least _ignorant_ man, is unfit to be trusted with anything

under heaven; since a remarkable appointment for raising the general tenor

of moral existence, has with these persons the effect of sinking it. There

is interposed, at frequent regular intervals throughout the series of

their days, a richer vein, as it were, of time. The improvement of this,

in a manner by no means strained to the austerity of exercise prescribed

in the Puritan rules, might diffuse a worth and a grace over all the time

between, and assist them against the tendency there may be in its

necessary habits and employments, to depress the intelligent nature into

meanness or debasement. The space which they are passing over is marked,

at near intervals, with broad lines of a benignant light, which might

spread an appearance of mild lustre over the whole extent as contemplated

in retrospect; but how many, in looking back when near the end of their

progress, have to perceive its general shade rendered darker by the very

spaces where that light had been shed from heaven.

The Sundays of those who do not improve them to a good purpose, will

infallibly be perverted to a bad one. But it were still a melancholy

account if we could regard them as merely standing for nothing, as a blank

in the life of this class of the people. It is a deeply unhappy spectacle

and reflection, to see a man of perhaps more than seventy, sunk in the

grossness and apathy of an almost total ignorance of all the most

momentous subjects, and then to consider, that, since he came to an age of

some natural capacity for the exercise of his mind, there have been more

than three thousand Sundays. In their long succession they were _his

time_. That is to say, he had the property in them which every man has in

duration; they were present to him, he had them, he spent them. Perhaps

some compassionate friend may have been pleading in his behalf,--Alas!

what opportunity, what time, has the poor mortal ever had? His lot has

been to labor hard through the week throughout almost his whole life. Yes,

we answer, but he has had three thousand Sundays; what would not even the

most moderate improvement of so vast a sum of hours have done for him? But

the ill-fated man, (perhaps rejoins the commiserating pleader,) grew up

from his childhood in utter ignorance of any use he ought to make of time

which his necessary employment would allow him to waste. There, we reply,

you strike the mark. Sundays are of no value, nor Bibles, nor the enlarged

knowledge of the age, nor heaven nor earth, to beings brought up in

estrangement from all right discipline. And therefore we are pleading for

the schemes and institutions which will not _let_ human beings be thus

brought up.

In so pleading, we happily can appeal to one fact in evidence that the

intellectual and religious culture, in the introductory stages of life,

tends to secure that the persons so trained shall be, when they are come

to maturity, marked off from the neglected barbarous mass, by at least an

external respect, but accompanied, we trust, in many of them, by a still

better sentiment, to the means for keeping truth and duty constantly in

their view. Observe the numbers now attending, with a becoming deportment,

public worship and instruction, as compared with what the proportion is

remembered or recorded to have been half a century since, or any time

previous to the great exertions of benevolence to save the children of the

inferior classes from preserving the whole mental likeness of their

forefathers.

It can be testified also, by persons whose observation has been the

longest in the habit of following children and youth from the instruction

of the school institutions into mature life, that, in a gratifying number

of instances, they have been seen permanently retaining too much love of

improvement, and too much of the habit of a useful employment of their

minds, to sink, in their ordinary daily occupations, into that wretched

inanity we were representing; or to consume the free intervals of time in

the listlessness, or worthless gabble, or vain sports, of which their

neighbors furnished plenty of example and temptation.

* * * * *

These representations have partly included, what we may yet specify

distinctly as one of the unhappy effects of gross ignorance--_a degraded

state of domestic society_.

Whatever is of nature to render individuals uninteresting or offensive to

one another, has a specially bad effect among them as members of a family;

because there is in that form of community itself a peculiar tendency to

fall below the level of dignified and complacent social life.--A number of

persons cannot be placed in a state of social communication, without

having a certain sense of claiming from one another a conduct meant and

adapted to please. It is expected that a succession of efforts should be

made for this purpose, with a willingness of each individual to forego, in

little things, his own inclination or convenience. This is all very well

when the society is _voluntary_, and the parties can separate when the

cost is felt to be greater than the pleasure. Under this advantage of

being able soon to separate, even a company of strangers casually

assembled will often recognize the claim and conform to the law; with a

certain indistinct sentiment partaking of reciprocal gratitude for the

disposition which is so accommodating. But the members of the domestic

community also have each this same feeling which demands a mutual effort

and self-denial to please, while the condition of their association is

adverse to their _yielding_ what they thus respectively claim. Theirs,

when once it is formed, is not exactly a voluntary companionship, and it

is one of undefinable continuance. The claim therefore seems as if it were

to be of a prolongation interminable, while the grateful feeling for the

concession is the less for the more compulsory bond of the association.

And to be thus required, in a community which must not be dissolved, and

in a series that reaches away beyond calculation, to exercise a

self-restraint on their wills and humors in order to please one another,

goes so hard against the great principle of human feeling--namely, each

one's preference of pleasing himself--that there is an habitual impulse of

reaction against the claim. This shows itself in their deportment, which

has the appearance of a practical expression of so many individuals that

they _will_ maintain each his own freedom. Hence the absence, very

commonly, in domestic society, of the attentiveness, the tone of civility,

the promptitude of compliance, the habit of little accommodations,

voluntary and supernumerary, which are so observable in the intercourse of

friends, acquaintance, and often, as we have said, even of strangers.

And then consider, in so close a kind of community, what near and intimate

witnesses they are of all one another's faults, weaknesses, tempers,

perversities; of whatever is offensive in manner, or unseemly in habit; of

all the irksome, humiliating, or sometimes ludicrous circumstances and

situations. And also, in this close association, the bad moods, the

strifes, and resentments, are pressed into immediate, lasting, corrosive

contact with whatever should be the most vital to social happiness. If

there be, into the account, the wants, anxieties, and vexations of severe

poverty, they will generally aggravate all that is destructive to domestic

complacency and decorum.

Now add gross ignorance to all this, and see what the picture will be. How

many families have been seen where the parents were only the older and

stronger animals than their children, whom they could teach nothing but

the methods and tasks of labor. They naturally could not be the mere

companions, for alternate play and quarrel, of their children, and were

disqualified by mental rudeness to be their respected guardians. There

were about them these young and rising forms, containing the

inextinguishable principle, which was capable of entering on an endless

progression of wisdom, goodness, and happiness! needing numberless

suggestions, explanations, admonitions, brief reasonings, and a training

to attend to the lessons of written instruction. But nothing of all this

from the parent. Their case was as hopeless for receiving these

necessaries of mental life, as the condition, for physical nutriment, of

infants attempting to draw it, (we have heard of so affecting and mournful

a fact,) from the breast of a dead parent. These unhappy heads of families

possessed no resources for engaging youthful attention by mingled

instruction and amusements; no descriptions of the most wonderful objects,

or narratives of the most memorable events, to set, for superior

attraction, against the idle stories of the neighborhood; no assemblage of

admirable examples, from the sacred or other records of human character,

to give a beautiful real form to virtue and religion, and promote an

aversion to base companionship.

Requirement and prohibition must be a part of the domestic economy

habitually in operation of course; and in such families you will have

seen the government exercised, or attempted to be exercised, in the

roughest, barest shape of will and menace, with no aptitude or means of

imparting to injunction and censure, a convincing and persuasive quality.

Not that the seniors should allow their government to be placed on such a

ground that, in everything they enforce or forbid, they may be liable to

have their reasons demanded by the children, as an understood condition

of their compliance. Far from it; they will sometimes have to require a

prescribed conduct for reasons not intelligible, or which it may not be

discreet to explain, to those who are to obey. But their authority

becomes odious, and as a moral force worse than inefficient, when the

natural shrewdness of the children can descry that they really _have_ no

reasons better than an obstinate or capricious will; and infallibly makes

the inference, that there is no obligation to submit, but that necessity

which dependence imposes. But this must often be the unfortunate

condition of such families.

Now imagine a week, month, or year, of the intercourse in such a domestic

society, the course of talk, the mutual manners, and the progress of mind

and character; where there is a sense of drudgery approaching to that of

slavery, in the unremitting necessity of labor; where there is none of the

interest of imparting knowledge or receiving it, or of reciprocating

knowledge that has been imparted and received; where there is not an acre,

if we might express it so, of intellectual space around them, clear of the

thick, universal fog of ignorance; where, especially, the luminaries of

the spiritual heaven, the attributes of the Almighty, the grand phenomenon

of redeeming mediation, the solemn realities of a future state and another

world, are totally obscured in that shade; where the conscience and the

discriminations of duty are dull and indistinct, from the youngest to the

oldest; where there is no genuine respect on the one side, nor affection

unmixed with vulgar petulance and harshness, expressed perhaps in language

of imprecation, on the other; where a mutual coarseness of manners and

words has the effect, without their being aware of it as a cause, of

debasing their worth in one another's esteem, all round; and where,

notwithstanding all, they absolutely must pass a great deal of time

together, to converse, to display their dispositions toward one another,

and exemplify the poverty of the mere primary relations of life, as

divested of the accessories which give them dignity, endearment, and

conduciveness to the highest advantage of existence.

Home has but little to please the young members of such a family, and a

great deal to make them eager to escape out of the house; which is also a

welcome riddance to the elder persons, when it is not in neglect or

refusal to perform allotted tasks. So little is the feeling of a peaceful

cordiality created among them by their seeing one another all within the

habitation, that, not unfrequently, the passer-by may learn the fact of

their collective number being there, from the sound of a low strife of

mingled voices, some of them betraying youth replying in anger or contempt

to maturity or age. It is wretched to see how early this liberty is boldly

taken. As the children perceive nothing in the _minds_ of their parents

that should awe them into deference, the most important difference left

between them is that of physical strength. The children, if of hardy

disposition, to which they are perhaps trained in battles with their

juvenile rivals, soon show a certain degree of daring against their

superior strength. And as the difference lessens, and by the time it has

nearly ceased, what is so natural as that they should assume equality, in

manners and in following their own will? But equality assumed where there

should be subordination, inevitably involves contempt toward the party in

defiance of whom it is asserted.

The relative condition of such parents as they sink in old age, is most

deplorable. And all that has preceded, leads by a natural course to that

consequence which we have sometimes beheld, with feelings emphatically

gloomy,--the almost perfect indifference with which the descendants, and a

few other relations, of a poor old man of this class, could consign him to

the grave. A human being was gone out of the world, a being they had been

with or near all their lives, some of them sustained in their childhood by

his labors, and yet perhaps not one heart, at any moment, felt the

sentiment--I have lost----. They never could regard him with respect, and

their miserable education had not taught them humanity enough to regard

him in his declining days as an object of pity. Some decency of attention

was perhaps shown him, or perhaps hardly that, in his last hours. His

being now a dead, instead of a living man, was a burden taken off; and the

insensibility and levity, somewhat disturbed and repressed at the sight of

his expiring struggle, and of his being lowered into the grave, recovered

by the day after his interment, if not on the very same evening, their

accustomed tone, never more to be interrupted by the effect of any

remembrance of him. Such a closing scene one day to be repeated is

foreshown to us, when we look at an ignorant and thoughtless father

surrounded by his untaught children. In the silence of thought we thus

accost him,--The event which will take you finally from among them,

perhaps after forty or fifty years of intercourse with them, will leave no

more impression on their affections, than the cutting down of a decayed

old tree in the neighborhood of your habitation.

There are instances, of rare occurrence, when such a man becomes, late in

life, far too late for his family to have the benefit of the change, a

subject of the only influence which could awake him to earnest

thoughtfulness and the full sensibility of conscience. When the sun thus

breaks out toward the close of his gloomy day, and when, in the energy of

his new life, he puts forth the best efforts of his untaught spirit for a

little divine knowledge, to be a lamp to him in entering ere long the

shades of death, with what bitter regrets he looks back to the period when

a number of human beings, some perhaps still with him, some now scattered

from him, and here and there pursuing their separate courses in careless

ignorance, were growing up under his roof, within his charge, but in utter

estrangement from all discipline adapted to ensure a happier sequel. His

distressing reflection is often representing to him what they might now

have been if they had grown up under such discipline. And gladly would he

lay down his life to redeem for them but some inferior share of what the

season for imparting to them is gone forever.

Another thing is to be added, to this representation of the evils

attendant on an uncultivated state of the people, namely--that _this

mental rudeness puts them decidedly out of beneficial communication with

the superior and cultivated classes_.

We are assuming (with permission) that a national community should be

constituted for the good of all its parts, not to be obtained by them as

detached, independent portions, but adjusted and compacted into one social

body; an economy in which all the parts shall feel they have the benefit

of an amicable combination; in other words, that they are the better for

one another. But it can be no such constitution when the most palpable

relations between the two main divisions of society consist of such direct

opposites as refinement and barbarism, dignity and gross debasement,

intelligence and ignorance; which are the distinctions asserted by the

higher classes as putting a vast distance between them and the lower. If

so little of the correct understanding, the information, the liberalized

feeling, and the propriety of deportment, which we are to ascribe to the

higher and cultivated portion, goes downward into the lower, it should

seem impossible but there must be more of repulsion than of amicable

disposition and communication between them. We may suspect, perhaps, that

those more privileged classes are not generally desirous that the interval

were much less wide, provided that without cultivation of the lower orders

the nuisance of their annoying and formidable temper could be abated. But

however that may be, it is exceedingly desirable, for the good of both,

that the upper and inferior orders _should_ be on terms of communication

and mutual good-will, and therefore that there should be a diminution of

that rudeness of mind and habits which must contribute to keep them

alienated and hostile.

If it were asked what communication, at all of a nature to be described

by epithets of social and friendly import, we can be supposing by

possibility to subsist between classes so different and distant, we may

exemplify it by such an instance as we have now and then the pleasure of

seeing. Each reader also, of any moderate compass of observation, may

probably recollect an example, in the case of some man in humble station,

but who has had (for his condition) a good education; having been well

instructed in his youth in the elements of useful knowledge; having had

good principles diligently inculcated upon him; having subsequently

instructed himself, to the best of his very confined means and

opportunity, through a habit of reading; and being in his manners

unaffectedly observant of all the decorums of a respectable human being.

It has been seen, that such a man has not found in some of his superiors

in station and attainment any disposition to shun him; and has not felt

in himself or his situation any reason why he should seek to shun them.

He would occasionally fall into conversation with the wealthy and

accomplished proprietor, or the professional man of learning, in the

neighborhood. His intelligent manner of attending to what they said, his

perfect understanding of the language naturally used by cultivated

persons, the considerateness and pertinence of his replies, and the

modest deference, combined with an honest freedom in making his

observations on the matters brought in question, pleased those persons of

superior rank, and induced various friendly and useful attentions, on

their part to him and his family. He and his family thus experienced a

direct benefit of superior sense, civility, and good principle, in a

humble condition; and were put under a new responsibility to preserve a

character for those distinctions.--Now think of the incalculable

advantage to society, if anything approaching to this were the general

state of social relation between the lower and the higher orders.

On the contrary, there is no medium of complacent communication between

the classes of higher condition and endowment, and an ignorant, coarse

populace. Except on occasion of giving orders or magisterial rebukes, the

gentleman will never think of such a thing as converse with the clowns in

his vicinity. They, on their part, are desirous to avoid him; excepting

when any of them may have a purpose to gain, by arresting his attention,

with an ungainly cringe; or when some of those who have no sort of

present dependence on him, are disposed to cross his way with a look and

strut of rudeness, to show how little they care for him. The servility,

and the impudence, almost equally repress in him all friendly disposition

toward a voluntary intercourse with the class. There is thus as complete

a dissociation between the two orders, as mutual dislike, added to every

imaginable dissimilarity, can create. And this broad ungracious

separation intercepts all modifying influence that might otherwise have

passed, from the intelligence and refinement of the one, upon the

barbarism of the other.

But there is in human nature a pertinacious disposition to work

disadvantages, in one way or other, into privileges. The people, in being

thus consigned to a low and alien ground, in relation to the cultivated

part of society, are put in possession, as it were, of a territory of

their own; where they can give their disposition freer play, and act out

their characters in their own manner; exempt equally from the voluntary

and the involuntary influence of the cultivated superiors; that is to say,

neither insensibly modified by the attraction of what is the most laudable

in them as a pattern, nor swayed through policy to a studied accommodation

to their understood opinion and will. This is a great emancipation enjoyed

by the inferiors. And however injurious it may be, it is one of which they

will not fail to take the full license. For in all things and situations,

it is one of the first objects with human beings, to verify experimentally

the presumed extent of their liberty and privilege. In this dissociation,

the people are rid of the many salutary restraints and incitements which

they would have been made to feel, if on terms of friendly recognition

with the respectable part of the community; they have neither honor nor

disgrace, from that quarter, to take into their account; and this

contributes to extinguish all sense and care of respectability of

character,--a care to which there will be no motive in any consideration

of what they may, as among themselves, think of one another; for, with the

low estimate which they mutually and justly entertain, there is a

conventional feeling among them that, for the ease and privilege of them

all, they are systematically to set aside all high notions and nice

responsibilities of character and conduct. There is a sort of recognized

mutual _right_ to be no better than they are. And an individual among them

affecting a high conscientious principle would be apt to incur ridicule,

as a man foolishly divesting himself of a privilege;--unless, indeed, he

let them understand that hypocrisy was his way of maintaining that

privilege, and turning it to account.

The people are thus, by their ignorance, and what inseparably attends it,

far removed and estranged from the more cultivated part of their

fellow-countrymen; and consequently from every beneficial influence under

which a state of friendly contiguity, if we may so express it, would have

placed them. Let us now see what, in this abandonment to themselves, are

their growing dispositions toward the superior orders and the existing

arrangements of the community; dispositions which are promoted by causes

more definite than this estrangement considered merely as the negation of

benevolent intercourse, but to which it mightily contributes.

Times may have been when the great mass, while placed in such decided

separation from the upper orders, combined such a quietude with their

ignorance, that they had little other than submissive feelings toward

these superiors, whose property, almost, for all service and

obsequiousness, they were accustomed to consider themselves; when no

question would occur to them why there should be so vast a difference of

condition between beings of the same race; when no other proof was

required of the right appointment of their lot, however humble it might

be, than their being, and their forefathers having been, actually in it;

and when they did not presume, hardly in thought, to make any inferences

from the fact of the immense disproportion of numbers and consequent

physical strength between them and their superiors. [Footnote: Here,

however, it should be observed that in the former age, when there was far

less of jealous invidious feeling between the upper and lower classes than

has latterly intervened, there was a more amicable manner of

intercommunication. The settled and perfectly recognized state of

subordination precluded on the one side, all apprehension of encroachment,

and on the other the disposition to it.] But the times of this perfect,

unquestioning, unmurmuring succumbency under the actual allotment have

passed away; except in such regions as the Russian empire, where they have

yet long to continue. In other states of Europe, but especially in our

own, the ignorance of the people has nowhere prevented them from acquiring

a sense of their strength and importance; with a certain ill-conceived,

but stimulant notion, of some change which they think ought to take place

in their condition. How, indeed, should it have been possible for them to

remain unaware of this strength and importance, while the whole civilized

world was shaken with a practical and tremendous controversy between the

two grand opposed orders of society, concerning their respective rights;

or that they should not have taken a strong, and from the rudeness of

their mental condition, a fierce interest, in the principle and progress

of the strife? And how should they have failed to know that, during this

controversy, innumerable persons raised from the lower rank by talent and

spirit, had left no place on earth except in courts (and hardly even

there) for the dotage of fancying some innate difference between the

classes distinguished in the artificial order of society?

The effect of all this is gone deep into the minds of great numbers who

are not excited, in consequence, to any worthy exertion for raising

themselves, individually, from their degraded condition, by the earnest

application and improvement of their means and faculties. The feeling of

many of them seems to be, that they must and will sullenly abide by the

ill-starred fate of their order, till some great comprehensive alteration

in their favor shall absolve them from that bond of hostile sentiment, in

which they make common cause against the superior classes; and shall

create a state of things in which it shall be worth while for the

individual to make an effort to raise himself. We can at best, (they seem

to say,) barely maintain, with the utmost difficulty, a miserable life;

and you talk to us of cultivation, of discipline, of moral respectability,

of efforts to come out from our degraded rank! No, we shall even stay

where we are; till it is seen how the question is to be settled between

the people of our sort, and those who will have it that they are of a far

worthier kind. There may then, perhaps, be some chance for such as we; and

if not, the less we are disturbed about improvement, knowledge, and all

those things, the better, while we are bearing the heavy load a few years,

to die like those before us.

We said they are banded in a hostile sentiment. It is true, that among

such a degraded populace there is very little kindness, or care for one

another's interests. They all know too well what they all are not, to feel

mutual esteem or benevolence.

But it is infinitely easier for any set of human beings to maintain a

community of feeling in hostility to something else, than in benevolence

toward another; for here no sacrifice is required of anyone's

self-interest. And it is certain, that the subordinate portions of society

have come to regard the occupants of the tracts of fertility and sunshine,

the possessors of opulence, splendor, and luxury, with a deep, settled,

systematic aversion; with a disposition to contemplate in any other light

than that of a calamity an extensive downfall of the favorites of fortune,

when a brooding imagination figures such a thing as possible; and with but

very slight monitions from conscience of the iniquity of the most

tumultuary accomplishment of such a catastrophe. In a word, so far from

considering their own welfare as identified with the stability of the

existing social order, they consider it as something that would spring

from the ruin of that order. The greater number of them have lost that

veneration by habit, partaking of the nature of a superstition, which had

been protracted downward, though progressively attenuated with the lapse

of time, from the feudal ages into the last century. They have quite lost,

too, in this disastrous age, that sense of competence and possible

well-being, which might have harmonized their feelings with a social

economy that would have allowed them the enjoyment of such a state, even

as the purchase of great industry and care. Whatever the actual economy

may have of wisdom in its institutions, and of splendor, and fulness of

all good things, in some parts of its apportionment, they feel that what

is allotted to most of _them_ in its arrangements is pressing hardship,

unremitting poverty, growing still more hopeless with the progress of

time, and of what they hear trumpeted as national glory, nay, even

"national prosperity and happiness unrivalled." This bitter experience,

which inevitably becomes associated in their thoughts with that frame of

society under which they suffer it, will naturally have a far stronger

effect on their opinion of that system than all that had ever rendered

them acquiescent or reverential toward it. That it brings no relief, or

promise of relief, is a circumstance preponderating in the estimate,

against all that can be said of its ancient establishment, its theoretical

excellences, or the blessings in which it may be pretended to have once

abounded, or still to abound. What were become of the most essential laws

of human feeling, if such experience _could_ leave those who are

undergoing its discipline still faithfully attached to the social order on

the strength of its consecration by time, and of the former settled

opinions in its favor,--however tenacious the impressions so wrought into

habit are admitted to be? And the minds of the people thus thrown loose

from their former ties, are not arrested and recovered by any

substitutional ones formed while those were decaying. They are not

retained in a temper of patient endurance and adherence, by the bond of

principles which a sedulous and deep instruction alone could have enforced

on them. The growth of sound judgment under such instruction, might have

made them capable of understanding how a proportion of the evil may have

been inevitable, from uncontrollable causes; of perceiving that it could

not fail to be aggravated by a disregard of prudence in the proceedings in

early life among their own class, and that so far it were unjust to impute

it to their superiors or to the order of society; of admitting that

national calamities are visitations of divine judgment, of which they were

to reflect whether they had not deserved a heavy share; of feeling it to

be therefore no impertinent or fanatical admonition that should exhort

them to repentance and reformation, as an expedient for the amendment of

even their temporal condition; and of clearly comprehending that, at all

events, rancor, violence, and disorder, cannot be the way to alleviate any

of the evils, but to aggravate them all. But, we repeat it, there are

millions in this land, and if we include the neighboring island

politically united to it, very many millions, who have received no

instruction adequate, in the smallest degree, to counteract the natural

effect of the distresses of their condition; or to create a class of moral

restraints and mitigations in prevention of a total hostility of feeling

against the established order, after the ancient attachments to it have

been worn down by the innovations of opinion, and the pressure of

continued distress.

Thus uninstructed to apprehend the considerations adapted to impose a

moral restraint, thus unmodified by principles of mitigation, there is a

large proportion of human strength and feeling not in vital combination

with the social system, but aloof from it, looking at it with "gloomy and

malign regard;" in a state progressive towards a fitness to be impelled

against it with a dreadful shock, in the event of any great convulsion,

that should set loose the legion of daring, desperate, and powerful

spirits, to fire and lead the masses to its demolition. There have not

been wanting examples to show with what fearful effect this hostility may

come into action, in the crisis of the fate of a nation's ancient system;

where this alienated portion of its own people, rushing in, have revenged

upon it the neglect of their tuition; that neglect which had abandoned

them to so utter a "lack of knowledge," that they really understood no

better than to expect their own solid advantage in general havoc and

disorder. But how bereft of sense the _State_ too must be, that would thus

_let_ a multitude of its people grow up in a condition of mind to believe,

that the sovereign expedient for their welfare is to be found in

spoliation and destruction! It might easily have comprehended what it was

reasonable to expect from the matured dispositions and strength of such of

its children as it abandoned to be nursed by the wolf.

While this principle of ruin was working on by a steady and natural

process, this supposed infatuated State was, it is extremely possible,

directing its chief care to maintain the splendor of a court, or to extort

the means for prosecuting some object of vain and wicked ambition, some

project of conquest and military glory. And probably nothing could have

appeared to many of its privileged persons more idle and ridiculous, or to

others of them more offensive and ill-intentioned, than a remonstrance

founded on a warning of such a consequence. The despisers would have been

incomparably the greater number; and, "Go (they would have said) with your

mock-tragical fortune-telling, to whoever can believe, too, that one day

or other the quadrupeds of our stalls and meadows may be suddenly

inspirited by some supernatural possession to turn their strength on us in

a mass, or those of our kennels to imitate the dogs of Actæon."