using now respecting brotherhood and the equality of our human nature, is language that passes into cant. It has been defiled by cruelty; it has been polluted by selfishness; but we will not be ashamed of it for all that. In an age in which it has become suspicious, we will dare to believe in it and love it. It is buried deep in the eternal truth of things. That truth can no more pass away from the things that are, than heaven and earth can pass away. Sooner or later it must be realized in a more substantial form that it has yet ever assumed. All gradual improvements, all violent convulsions in the world are only doing their part in bringing this about. The thunder storm is terrible to look upon; but it leaves behind it a purer air and a serener sky. Let us hear the Ayrshire ploughman in his high prophetic strain :

"For a' that, and a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That man to man the world o'er

Shall brothers be for a' that."

Therefore it is that passing by all those abortive attempts which would fain produce a feeling of union by the false idea of similarity of class, I have fastened my attention on the real equality of our common nature, and called you" brother men."

In my address to-night, I propose to let its topics be suggested by the expressions of your own

sentiments contained in the paper which your Committee put into my hand. That paper specifies the objects of your institution, and the spirit in which it has been established.

The objects of the Institution are two: it is intended to provide the working men of this town with the means of mental, and besides that, with the means of moral, improvement. Farther down I find mental improvement separated by you into two divisions. Mental improvement, you say, is the information of the intellect, and the elevation of the taste. You wish to inform the intellect. I confine myself to-night to one branch of this improvement, political information. I do it for several reasons. First of all, the means of acquiring knowledge which your Institution places in your hands are in a very preponderating degree of a political character. By works of history and the newspapers of the day, you will have that which will inform you of the constitution of your country.

My second reason for dwelling chiefly upon this branch of mental improvement is, that political science is the highest education that can be given to the human mind. Let me explain myself. When we in popular phraseology speak of politics, we ascribe to that word a narrow meaning. When we say that two men are talking

politics, we often mean that they are wrangling about some mere party question. When I use the term "politics" this evening, I use it in the sense in which it was used by all the great and noble authors of the ancient world, who meant by the science of politics the intelligent comprehension of a man's position and relations as a member of a great nation. You will observe that in this sense politics subordinate to themselves every department of earthly science. A man who understands nothing of agriculture, nothing of trade, nothing of human nature, nothing of past history, nothing of the principles of law, cannot pretend to be more than a mere empiric in political legislation. Every thing that man can know is subservient to this noble science. Understood in this sense, the working men of this country have an interest in politics. For, in the first place, political ignorance is not a safe thing for this or any other country. The past is a proof of that. What was it but political ignorance which dictated a few years ago the letters signed "Swing," when the labouring men burned the hay rick and the corn stack in the wise expectation of bettering their own condition by that?

It needed very little political economy to teach them that all the wages in the world would not make a country rich, when its real resources are

destroyed; that gold is but the symbol of another and a more real wealth for which it stands as the convenient expression; that the increase of their money would not give any increase in their comforts; and that when the country's means of subsistence are diminished all the coin in the country could not enrich them. What was it but political ignorance that suggested the workman's strike for wages? A very little political information would have told him that it is to a small extent that the master can regulate the wages he gives, that they depend on many things over which he has no control, as for instance, on the supply of labour in the market and on the demand for the commodity. Besides this, if there be a man in the country to whom politics are of personal consequence, it is the labouring man. A man in the higher classes may turn his attention to them, if he likes; nothing forces him to do so. It is to him a matter of amusement, a speculation—a theoretical curiosity -not necessarily any thing more. The difference of a penny in the price of a loaf makes no perceptible change on his table; but it may make the poor man's grate empty for a fortnight. If an unfair tax be imposed, a man in the upper ranks will scarcely be compelled to retrench a luxury in his establishment; but to the poor man it is almost a matter of life and death. Therefore a

labouring man will be, must be a politician; he cannot help it; and the only question is, whether he shall be an informed one or an uninformed one. To him politics are a thing of daily feeling; but the man who feels a wrong most severely is not generally the man who is in the best state for calmly ascertaining the causes of the wrong. The child which feels the pin that pricks, knows better than any one can tell it that there is something wrong; but it is not exactly the one to judge when it strikes at random, whether it be the nurse's fault or the fault of circumstances. The uneducated man is precisely in the same position; he feels politically the sharpness and the torture of his position; but he is just as likely in his exasperation to raise his hand against an innocent government as against a guilty one. Therefore it was that in past times, when a pestilence came, the poorer classes, believing that it was caused by the medical men of the country for their own benefit, visited their fury upon them. They felt keenly, they struck wrongly. Tell us, then, whether it be safe and whether it be wise that the poor man, or that any class, should be profoundly ignorant of politics?

There is another reason, one more important still, for extending political knowledge. In this free country the labouring man has already a