in his tours of 1768 and 1770. Young estimates the population of England and Wales, in 1770, at 8,500,000: of these he gives 2,800,000 as the number engaged in agriculture-the landlords, with their families and dependants, amounting to 800,000; and the number engaged in manufactures, 3,000,000. This, on a rude estimate, would give the numbers of the population dependent upon the wages of labour for subsistence, of that time, at less than four millions. He estimates the non-industrious poor at 500,000.

The information given by Mr Jellinger Symons in his "Arts and Artisans at Home and Abroad," published in 1839, enables us to contrast with Young's statements the capability of earning possessed by the labouring classes of England in our own day. Men. In Manchester, a spinner can earn from 20s. to 25s. a-week; a man in the card-room, 14s. 6d. to 17s. ; a weaver by power, from 13s. to 16s.; by hand, from 7s. to 13s.; dressers earn from 28s. to 30s. ; and mechanics, from 248. to 26s. The wages at Sheffield vary from 25s, to 35s., and often amount to 40s., for workmen in the skilled departments; in the iron-works of the Birmingham district, wages average from 20s. to 30s. for the common labourers; in the Leeds flax-mills, men earn from 17s. to 19s. a-week; in the Gloucestershire cloth-factories, from 12s. to 14s. In other trades, the average wages per week throughout England are-iron-founders, 28s. to 30s.; machine-makers, 26s. to 30s.; sawyers, 24s. to 28s.; carpenters, 20s. to 25s.; stone-masons, 18s to 22s.; bricklayers, 17s. to 20s. ; spadesmen, 10s. to 15s.; porters, 14s. to 16s.; colliers, 3s. 6d. a-day; stocking weavers in Leicester, 8s. 3d. per week, Women earn per week, at Manchester, as spinners, 10s. to 15s. ; in the card-room, 9s. to 9s. 6d. ; weavers by power, 8s. to 128.; by hand, 6s. to 12s. ; in the Leeds flax-mills, 5s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. ; in the Gloucestershire cloth-factories, 4s. to 5s. Children can earn in the Manchester factories, from 1s. 6d. (scavengers) to 7s. a-week; in the Leeds flax-mills (when nine or ten years old), 3s 6d. to 48. "Agricultural wages," says Mr Symons, " in England vary so little, and are so well known, that I need hardly do more than state, that in the Coteswold districts, for instance, a shepherd receives 10s. weekly; a carter, the same; day-labourers, 8s. in summer, and 6s. in winter; in addition to which, they earn 3 guineas at harvest time, which will pay their rent. Women receive 6d. a-day in winter, and 8d. in summer, and 1s. in time of hay and harvest. Perhaps these are the lowest wages paid in any district in England. From 8s. 6d. to 10s. 6d. will be throughout the average wages of the great bulk of adult male agricultural labourers of England. These rates of wages are taken at a period when the remuneration of labour is retrograding in a marked manner. Even under this state of affairs, how ever, they show that the increase of national wealth has at least given individuals of the labouring class the command of a greater money income.

The labourer's power of commanding the comforts of life can only be partially known from a statement of his earnings: attention must be paid to what these earnings can purchase. The principal expenditure of the labourer, as already stated, is in house-rent, clothing, and articles of domestic consumption. By the improvements of machinery, all classes are enabled to procure better clothing at a lower price than they formerly paid for an inferior article. The extent to which this change has been carried, may be inferred from one or two facts regarding our manufactures. In 1787, when the mule-jenny first came into common use in Bolton, Paisley, and Glasgow, the manufacturers paid for their fine yarn at the rate of 20 guineas per lb. ; the same quality of yarn has of late been sold at from 148. to 16s. a lb. The cotton twist, which sold in 1786 for £1, 18s. per lb., is sold now for 3s. The process of reduction in the price of manufactured goods is still going on, and in the linen as well as in the cotton trade. Canvass, No. 27, an article, the quality and dimensions hich do not vary, which sold in 1814 at 30s. a-piece, en in 1833 to 18s. In the woollen manufac

tures, a great reduction of price, compared with quality, has also taken place. The consequence is apparent the style of dress adopted by the working-classes of Great Britain, so different from what prevails on the continent, and did formerly prevail here. As to houses, every person who has attained to middle age must have remarked the improvement in many districts of the accommodation for the labouring classes in this respect; and yet the money rental seems to have remained nearly stationary. Young states the house-rent of the working man to have been in his time-at Leeds, £2; Wakefield, £2, 5s.; Newcastle, £2, 12s. 6d.; Hatfield, £2, 158; North Mines in Middlesex, £3, 10s; Kensington as high as £5. In 1839, the average rental of a labourer's cottage in the country near Penzance was about £3; in the town, £5; in the county of Rutland, £1, £1, 10s., and £2. In Suffolk, in 1838, the house-rent of 539 labourers' families averaged £3, 11a per family; in Northumberland, the average rent of a labourer's cottage was estimated at £2, 108. Even the price of provisions, which is generally supposed to have been so much lower in former times, has not increased, if it has increased, so much as is supposed. The ave rage prices of butcher meat, beer, cheese, milk, and butter, throughout the kingdom, do not materially differ now from what they were in 1760; bread is dearer, but improved in quality, and potatoes are much cheaper. Tea, coffee, sugar, and pepper, have been much reduced in price; and now, instead of scarcely ever appearing in the weekly bills of the labourer, are standing articles of his expenditure.

This improvement in the quality of the accommodations procurable by a moderate income must always be kept in view, when comparing what a man can earn now with what he could earn formerly.

It would, however, convey a false impression of the amount of social advantage at any time derived in Great Britain from the great increase in the productive powers of industry, were we to leave unnoticed the large and increasing class which has never yet been reached by these benefits. Even in the most busy marts of industry, numbers are to be found, and these not always entirely unable or unwilling to work, who are in a state bordering upon destitution. We have a remarkable example of this class in the city of Limerick, where a large district is in a manner given up to them. In England, it is to be observed, the mean valu of life among the more comfortable portion of the working-classes is now as high as that of the midd.e classes in last century: this appears from comparing the experience of the Amicable Insurance Office, es tablished in 1706 for the benefit of the middle classes, with the table of mortality collected by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, which embraces the history, as to mortality, of 24,323 years of life among the labouring classes from all parts of England, from 1823 to 1828. In Limerick, on the contrary, whe the deaths in the three tontine societies there founded in 1807, 1811, and 1814, and with lives injudiciously selected, show respectively one death annually in 106, 81, and 182 persons, the annual mortality among the poor is 1 in 19. This is not all. "The frightful excess of epidemic and endemic diseases among the poor of Limerick may be gathered from the following fact, that while the per-centage proportion of this class to the whole number of deaths in England and Wales in 1838, was under 20 (19-8); in the metropolis and Leeds, 26-1 and 26 respectively; in Manchester, 232; Birmingham, 20; and in' Liverpool, 198; it is in Limerick not less than 40, or nearly five times as great as the proportion of deaths from diseases of the respi ratory system, to which, among a healthy population, it ought to be nearly equal." Among the families of

*"Wherever the absolute mortality is low, the number of deaths in the epidemic class is less than the number in the ra monary class; and, on the contrary, wherever the deaths in th first class exceed or equal those, it may be affirmed that the a solute mortality is high."-Appendix to First Report of Regular General, 8th edition, p. 111.

classes by the advancement of knowledge, at a time of increased diffusion of knowledge, have been favourable to a general healthy condition of the individual system, alike calculated to ward off the attacks of disease and to baffle them when they are incurred. Any person whose memory can carry him back for forty years, and who has had opportunities of observing, may remember the deficient ventilation, the small rooms, and the number of inmates in each room, which characterised even the houses of the landed gentry. In towns, the evil was still greater. But it would require to carry the retrospect still farther back-to the time when Rousseau in France, and Davy and Edgeworth in England, commenced their crusades against unhealthy absurdities in the dress and manner of living of the wealthier classes-to imagine the whole amount of the improvement which has been effected in this respect. The improved taste of the wealthier classes has contributed to improve their morals; and, in return, the better regulation of their conduct has tended to improve their general health. The practice of deep drinking, which universally prevailed, has almost ceased to exist among the affluent classes. Literary and scientific pursuits, if they do not always guard against low debauchery, save many from it, and enable still more to recover, after yielding for a time to temptation. An interesting paper, published by M. Benoiston de Chateauneuf, entitled "On the Duration of Life in the Rich and in the Poor," corroborates these views. The author has made, on the one hand, an abstract of the deaths of 1600 persons of the highest rank, among whom are 157 sovereigns and princes; on the other hand, he has taken, from the civil registers of Paris, the deaths of 2000 persons in the 12th arrondissement, which contains a population of workmen of all kinds-ragmen, sweepers, delvers, day-labourers, &c., a class subjected to pain, anxiety, and hard labour, who live in want and die in hospitals. Out of these materials he has constructed a table showing the per centage of mortality among the two classes at different ages, and has added a column indicating the per centage among the middle or easy classes. He found that, between 25 and 30, the deaths per cent. were among the rich, 0; among the common class, 1·41; among the poor, 2-22: from 50 to 55among the rich, 181; among the common class, 2-68; among the poor, 2:58: from 75 to 80-among the rich, 809; among the common class, 10:32; among the poor, 14:59. At this last age the column showing the deaths among the poor stops for want of materials they had all died off; the column showing the deaths of the common class extends to the age of 90; that of the rich to 95. The same conclusion is indicated by contrasting the annual mortality shown by the annual average of deaths among the English middle classes who have insured their lives with the Equitable Society, and the annual average among the negro slaves. Among the former, it was only 1 in 81.5 from 1800 to 1820; whereas it has been calculated that one negro slave dies annually out of 5 or 6.

Some facts would almost seem to show, that the education enjoyed by the more affluent classes-the cultivation their minds received, partly from direct tuition, partly from their social circumstances-gave the mind an increased power of vitality. An officer of high rank in the service of a German state made this remark to the writer, when speaking of the disastrous retreat from Moscow, in which he had taken a part. The officers, he said, uniformly stood out longer than the privates, although the previous habits of both parties had led him to expect the reverse. Literary men, and artists who have attained to any thing like a competence, are also a long-lived generation. The remark has been often made, of the greater facility with which young men, belonging to the class vaguely called "gentlemen," generally attain to superior adroitness in athletic exercises. Whenever a party of Etonians are pitted at cricket or running against a party of lads of a lower class, the difference is at once perceptible. Again, the facility with which the young men educated at Oxford

and Cambridge-unapt though the system of education pursued in these two great seminaries be to prepare them for the real business of life-work their way into the routine of legal or diplomatic business, is well known. There is something in the strengthening influence of good and delicate feeding, clothing, and lodg ing, combined with exercise of the physical and mental faculties, sufficient to strengthen, not to exhaust, persevered in for generations, that ennobles the race of the human animal, just as careful grooming and crossing the breed judiciously, ennobles the horse. What is here spoken of, is not the power of such a process to confer genius, or true nobility of disposition; but to bring out in perfection all the average commonplace qualities of the human being. In any country, a supe riority of this kind is discernible in the dominant caste; and as mere human animals, there is no country in the world that can produce a race equal to the young gentry of England.

Limits to the Effects of Wealth.

The limits to this favourable condition of the affluent classes in England, are to be sought partly in deficient knowledge and deficient habits of self-control; partly in a redundancy of numbers compared with property, which affects them in common with all other classes, though not exactly to the same extent. The deficiency of knowledge may be detected in several noxious practices still persevered in, such as tight-lacing on the part of the fair sex. The want of proper habits of self-control is a more deeply rooted evil, inasmuch as it has its root in a physical fact too much overlooked by reasoners upon morals. When named, it will be found to be a very commonplace fact: it is, that every successive generation begins the world with as little expe rience as that which preceded it. Every one of us starts from as mere a state of ignorant barbarism as the child of the savage. We are forewarned of much by the instruction of those who have been taught by their own experience, or the experience of those who went before them; but there is much of which it seems impossible to forewarn us. The passions are fully developed before the reflecting powers; and every individual seems destined to experience a period of his existence in which imagination and passion are strongly and thrillingly awakened, while the guiding power of reason is yet dormant. This is the most dangerous, as it is perhaps the most pleasant, period of life; and it

is one which is most dangerous with regard to that very class which is so highly favoured in other respects. Penury, or the necessity of daily labour, may restrai the less affluent classes at this period of life; but the younger branches of the affluent class have no such substitute for the control of reason; and in proportion as their general healthiness is higher, so their passions are developed, it may be, with greater intensity. It is at this period that many of the more favoured class make shipwreck of their health, incurring diseases which cling to them through life, if they do not bring it to a premature close.

The influence of economical circumstances upon the affluent classes, in regard to their moral and physical welfare, is quite as striking as their influence on the less fortunate classes, though somewhat different in kind. The anxiety occasioned to the upper classes by the prospect or actual pressure of pecuniary embar rassment, is of a much more harassing and exhausting kind than what is suffered by the poor. Pride, and all the other secondary feelings, with ranging imagi nation, add to their torments; and their occupations generally demanding a steady exercise of the faculties of combination and investigation, and keeping their minds continually on the stretch even in the time of prosperity-this addition renders their burden more than they can bear, and the whole man breaks down beneath the weight. Excessive mental exertion, even under the most favourable circumstances, is known to be productive of fatal effects. Even children of affluent and fortunate parents have been sacrificed to the va