Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

objection, think of the sacrifice of a human being, that your work may be done or your food made!

Progress means-1. Not to be free from work; envy of ladies and gentlemen false and foolish, if by that is meant persons who have nothing to do but to amuse themselves.-Laws of Humanity. Only through toil is muscular strength and health gained. Mental force is got by struggle with difficulty.

Greatness.Goodness.

2. Not the obliteration of differences in rank. There can be no doubt that the growth in importance of the labouring classes will alter ranks, making them less exclusive, less bitter to otherswill raise some who are now degraded, &c.

But it betrays an ignorance of human nature to suppose that ranks will ever be obliterated. Superior tastes, capacities, &c. will unite some into a class, and distinguish them from others.

Gradation of ranks bring out various manifestations of our Humanity.-Gratitude.Aspiration.Dignity.Respect.

3. Not the obliteration of difference in condition.

Of the many errors entertained by those who have advocated the cause of the Working Man,

there are few to be more regretted than the exaggerated importance attached to inequality of condition.

Inequality of condition, so far as it stints the faculties, or cuts off from opportunities of information, it is well to desire should be removed, but in itself it is a trifle. And all this foolish exaggeration fixes the attention on what is external in the condition, as if the equality to be arrived at were the superficial external equality. It is not this that makes real inequality. False vulgar thoughts that because you cannot keep a horse or drive a carriage, therefore you have not your rights.

4. But progress means increased opportunities of developing the heart, the conscience, and the intellect, It is not each man's born right to be as rich as his neighbour, or to possess the soil. But it is his inalienable right to be permitted to develope all the powers that God gave.

If the labourer live so that the death of a child is welcomed by the thought that there is one mouth the less to feed, he cannot develope his heart-affections.

If he lives in a cottage where brothers and sisters sleep in one room, he cannot develope his conscience.

276 LECTURES, &c. BY REV. F. W. ROBERTSON.

If he comes home overworn, so that he has no time to read, then he cannot develope his intellect.

Clearly, therefore, define such a social position for the labouring man as shall give him scope enough to be in every sense of the word a MAN. A Man whose respect is not servility; whose religion is not superstition; and whose obedience is not the drudgery of dumb driven cattle.

Until that time come, the Working Classes are not free.

A SPEECH

Delivered at the Town Hall, Brighton, April 24, 1849, at a Meeting of the Inhabitants, called by the Early Closing Association, presided over by the Bishop of Chichester.

THE Resolution which has been put into my hands is," That this meeting, believing that an earlier and more uniform hour of suspension of business would give time to all engaged therein for moral and intellectual improvement, would recommend to all tradesmen the hour of eight o'clock as the hour of closing throughout the year; and pledges itself to make purchases before eight o'clock in the evenings, and to request their servants to do the same."

There is a vast difference between that which is theoretically desirable, and that which is practically possible. Our enthusiasm is frequently corrected by experience. It throws too wild, too sanguine, a hope on the future. But difficulties

arise; and that which at first seemed easy, turns out to be at last an impossibility. It is in almost every undertaking as it is in life. The lesson we have to learn in life is the same lesson which we have to learn in travelling through a mountainous country. The first lesson is, to estimate distances. The traveller sees the mountain summit sparkling in the evening sun, apparently close above his head; and he resolves that the next morning he will ascend that mountain, and come down again before breakfast. But he finds next day a long three miles between himself and the mountain foot; and that when he has arrived there it takes five or six hours to ascend, and half that time to come back again; and it is well if he returns before nightfall. It is precisely the same with every human undertaking. Our first idea is very different from that which attainment teaches us. We set out with brilliant expectations; we find them very slow in realizing themselves. And so life assumes, by degrees, a soberer and a sadder hue. We find that between our ideal and its attainment there is an immense interval. That which seemed to be the work of days we find to be the work of months; that which seemed to be the work of years turns out to be the work of centuries. And so, step by step, man is disenchanted-led on by hopes of a

« AnkstesnisTęsti »