thousands. He may have his liveried servants, his splendid hall, his sumptuous entertainments, -and for this he may désert his home. The same may be one of the results of this plan of yours. But if a man wants an excuse to stay away from home, he will find it, whether this Institute exist or not. Moreover, it is not a comfortable, happy home that men will leave, but a home made wretched by a wife's slatternly conduct, the absence of cleanliness, the want of that cheerful, affectionate greeting which a man has a right to expect when he returns harassed and half maddened from the exhaustion of his daily work. Therefore, let there be a generous rivalry between your wives and daughters and this Institute. I tell them they have got now a rival. Let them try which has most attractions-a comfortable reading-room or a happy home.

I turn next to the spirit in which your undertaking has been carried on. I find in it two things, independence and generous reliance. You might have had an institution on a different principle. It is conceivable that some wealthy philanthropist might have provided you all this, at his own cost. You might have had a finer room, more brilliant lights, a better furnished library; but every man who entered that room would have felt his independence destroyed. He would

have felt a kind of mental pauperism, getting his intellectual food at another's expense; and there is nothing that destroys all manhood so effectually as dependence upon the patronage of others. Now you have been independent. You have said, "We are men; we are not children; we will educate ourselves-it is our own duty." You have brought to bear the principle of combination. The subscription of one penny a week would go a very little way for one man. But a penny a week from 1,000 men amounts to more than 2001. at the end of a year. Enough, with a little assistance, for all you want. You have cleansed the building, washed it, papered it, furnished it, all with your own hands. Every man among you by this will in the first place feel independent; in the second place, he will have that elevation of character which arises from the feeling of property. Property calls out all the virtues of forethought, care, respect. The books, the furniture, all are yours. The sense of honest property in them will ensure that they shall be taken care of. Long may this spirit be characteristic of English working men. We can understand and honour the feelings of that man who stands before us with a modest feeling of his own dignity in his countenance, which seems to say, "The shoes that I wear are clouted, but I

paid for the mending of them myself; the house that I live in is small, but every sixpence of the rent is paid for with my own money. It may be that my clothes are shabby and threadbare; but no man can say that the begging petition, except in case of the direst necessity, ever went round the town in my name." The greatest on earth has no right to look down on that man.

But not content with this, you have manifested the spirit of-reliance upon others for their good will. There is one kind of independence which is akin to high excellence; another which is akin to restless, jealous pride. The former has been yours. Guarding yourselves against the idea of receiving charity, you have said to those who are better off than yourselves, "We will accept gratefully the books you choose to give us, we will thank you for your sympathy." Now let me say, with all the conviction of my heart, I believe that you have the sympathy of the upper classes. I stand not here to be the special pleader for the rich, or the defender of the vices of those around me. In other places I have spoken, I trust I ever shall speak, in their presence, in no sycophantic tone in the discharge of my duty. But now, in your presence, not for them, but for you to hear, it is but plain truth to say there is a deep feeling for you amongst them.

In these latter times a convulsion has shaken Europe, before which many a strong man's house built upon the sand has gone down. There has been a sifting of the nations; and every thing that had not the basis of reality to rest on has been shattered into shivers. Through all that terrible trial our own country has stood secure. The waves of revolution that thundered on distant shores, were only a feeble murmur here. The reason, politically speaking, of the difference is, that the upper classes in this country have hitherto been the leaders in reform. There are two ways in which alteration may be effected. If it be done gradually from above, it is a reformation; if suddenly from below, it is a revolution. If the higher do the work God has given them to do, of elevating those below, you have a country working out her own national life securely; if, on the other hand, those below either tear down wantonly, or by the selfishness and blindness of those above are compelled to tear down such as are socially their superiors, then there comes a crisis which no country ever yet has passed through without verging upon ruin.

England's reforms hitherto have begun from above. There was a time when the barons of this country, sword in hand, wrung from the most profligate of our monarchs the Great Charter of

English liberties. That charter imparted a portion of the freedom it won to the oroughs and the tenants, mediately and immediately holding from the Crown. When the insincere Charles I. came to the throne, who stood foremost in the resistance to the exaction of ship-money? An English gentleman by the side of an English peer. When his infatuated successor, with the blind arbitrariness of his race, untaught by all experience, began that system which ended in the expulsion of his family, the blood of freedom which flowed upon the scaffold, was the blood of an English nobleman. When that great measure passed which gave so large an extension of the franchise, it was proposed by a nobleman in his place, with a voice choked with emotion, produced by the magnitude of the change he was effecting. Come down to our own times. Who have busied themselves in insuring for the labouring man better ventilation, personal and domestic cleanliness? Who are they that, session after session, fought the battle of the working man to abridge his hours of labour? Who, after long and patient investigation, brought before the country the hideous particulars of women labouring harnessed in the mines, and children young in years but gray-headed in depravity? A band of English gentlemen, at the head of whom was