natural and indissoluble relationship between man and his mother earth. This filial piety, is here also, the first commandment with promise: the days of the empire that violates it are numbered.

The fear lest there should be too many people in the British Empire, is, as we have seen, of all fears the most preposterous.

CHAPTER XXII.

"Don't undertake to employ the able-bodied pauper productively."

So say the strictest sect-the Pharisees of Political Economy.

"Set the poor to work," says the statute of Elizabeth.

But the political economists have been some time in power, and what have we seen in England and Ireland?

In both countries have been erected buildings improperly denominated workhouses, but which have been more properly called coops, in which the able-bodied and necessitous poor are, on principle, imprisoned and kept idle.

The public must, and do maintain the able-bodied pauper, but refuse to employ him actively and productively. The public is in the situation of a man who should be bound to pay wages to 1,000 labourers whether they work or not. Every thing which these labourers could produce would, under the circumstances, be a saving of loss; that is, a pure gain to him. But because he calculates that they cannot earn

the whole of their wages, he refuses to allow them to earn anything.

In the meantime, the numbers of unemployed poor, and the annual value they unproductively consume, There stand the idle, starving,

fearfully augment. uneducated paupers, amidst wealth more than fabulous, an exceeding great army."

A depression of manufacturing or agricultural industry fills their ranks, and exasperates their discontent. The unemployed poor have already pulled down government and threatened to destroy property in France, and the danger is not less real here, nor possibly so remote as we may flatter ourselves. Modern civilization is not, like ancient civilization, in peril from Northern Barbarians, but from Barbarians already swarming within its borders, scarcely as yet conscious of their physical power. "A persuasion," says Mr. Carlyle, "is rapidly spreading, that pauperism absolutely must be dealt with in some more conclusive way.” "It must be done, "whether before we have 'RED REPUBLIC,' and uni"versal social dissolution, or after it. That is now "the practical question, and one of the most important "the English nation ever had before it. To see such "a problem fairly in any form begun, would be an "unspeakable relief; like the first emergence of solid "land again, amid these universal deluges of revolu"tion and delirium." *

* We are tempted to extract the whole passage. It is to be found in a letter cited in Mr. Symons' Tactics for the Times. p. 179.

Yet what this original and thoughtful writer proposes, is after all, in substance, nothing more than the remedy already proposed by the statute of Elizabeth. That the power which relieves should employ,-should give relief in exchange for systematic hard work, for really useful and disciplined labour.

This scheme, though it has been abandoned in defer

"A persuasion is rapidly spreading that pauperism absolutely must be dealt with, in some more conclusive way, before long; and the general outlook is towards waste lands and colonies for that object.

"Concurring heartily in these two propositions, both the general and the particular, my own sad conviction is, that before either paupers can be dealt with,' or waste lands and colonies got to turn out other than infatuations and futilities for them, government must do the most original thing proposed to it in these times,-admit that paupers are really slaves, men fallen into disfranchisement, who cannot keep themselves free," and whom it is bitter mockery and miserable folly and cruelty to treat as what they are not, and accordingly must take the command of said paupers applying for the means of existence; and enlist them, and have industrial 'colonels' and 'regiments,' first one, and then ever more; and lead, and order and compel them, under law as just as Rhadamanthus, and as stern too;—and on the whole must prosecute this business, as the vitalist of all. and develope it evermore, year after year, and age after age; and understand any where that its industrial horseguards, and not its red-coated fighting one, is to be the grand institution of institutions for the time coming! What mountains of impediment, what blank, weltering, abominable oceans of unveracity of every kind, the complete achievement of this problem (in the gradual course of centuries) now supposes the annihilation of all this, alas, is too clear to me. But all this, as I compute, must actually be done; whether before we have red republic,' and universal social dissolution, or after it,—that is now the practical question, and one of the most important the English nation ever had before it. To see such a problem fairly in any form begun, would be an unspeakable relief; like the first emergence of solid land again, amid these universal deluges of revolution and delirium.

ence to theorists, must be resumed.* It has been justified by experience. It is now more than ever needed. It is no more than ever practicable, profitable, and unobjectionable.

It is practicable and profitable.

Practicable and profitable even in the immediate neighbourhood of the workhouses or parishes themselves.

Some miserably-managed parish farms have been set up as bugbears to scare from the attempt. But cultivation of poor land by parish and union paupers, has lately been tried with splendid success. Hard ditching is found as good a test of destitution as imprisonment is.

The able-bodied paupers of the Chorlton Union, reclaimed a farm on Chat-Moss. The poor law authorities themselves admit, that the scheme succeeded. The poor were not only usefully, but profitably employed, and it proved an excellent test of destitution. A similar experiment, with similar success, has lately been tried in the neighbourhood of Sheffield.

At Farnley Tyas, near Huddersfield, the able-bodied paupers have been set to reclaim moorland. We are informed that after several years, they had gained ten per cent., and had their relief-fund entire.

Nor is it in England alone that such experiments have been tried and found to answer.

* "The further," says Blackstone, "the further any subsequent plans for maintaining the poor have departed from it, the more impracticable and pernicious these attempts have proved."