Hall is crowded to excess: the smallest room suffices for the meetings of the "Children's Friend Society," and for those of similar institutions. In the strife of doctrine the character of " pure and undefiled religion" is forgotten, the abodes of wretchedness neglected, and the causes of poverty in the midst of plenty, and of the increase of crime notwithstanding the vast exertions for diffusing religious knowledge, continue unexplored.

There were occasions, however, on which Mr. Wilberforce recognized one of those deeply seated errors, the pernicious effects of which are felt through all the ramifications of society when solicited to aid the Lancasterian schools, he "wrote William Allen to decline being a committee-man, though it gave me great pain to refuse him; but emulation and vanity are the vital breath of the system." In this sentence is conveyed a severe but just condemnation of a principle encouraged in all our public schools and colleges, and by which practice, the injunctions of Holy Writ and the results of experience are equally defied. Stimulated by the artificial allurement of a glittering prize, to be toiled for with pain and jealousy, to be lost with envy, or won with pride, all of the generous and noble in youth is deadened by invidious distinctions and vain glorious ambition. Children are trained in the way in which they ought

not to go, and yet they are expected to love one another and to exhibit a corresponding disposition in their future conduct; but we can neither "gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles," and hereafter, in times of commercial difficulty, increased distress, among still larger numbers, will produce, in aggravated and more terrific forms, the inevitable evils of this satanic principle of competition.

But if the professors of religion have injured their own cause by denouncing a constitution of society, which, whatever either party may advance, is the offspring of Christianity itself, the advocates of united interests have more fatally erred in discarding the aid of a religion which they have never examined; the value of which they are, of course, unable to appreciate; and the potency of the higher and more enduring motives to action are therefore to them unknown. The consequence is, that their meetings are converted into so many arenas for theological disputation, in which division of opinion is widened by prejudice and hostility, instead of each party seeking for points of agreement, and remembering that truth is one.

PREFACE

ΤΟ

THE SECOND EDITION, 1830.

"INTERIORES plerique frumenta non serunt, sed lacte et carne vivunt, pellibusque sunt vestiti. Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod cæruleum efficit colorem; atque hoc horribiliore sunt in pugna adspectu." Such was the language employed by Cæsar, in describing the rude inhabitants of an island which formed the boundary of his conquests in the west. Ages elapsed before the dawn of civilization could dispel the darkness of a people so deeply sunk in barbarism. At length they emerged from ignorance and entered upon a career of improvement which finally placed them in the highest rank among the nations of the earth. This elevation and power had been won for them by the successive efforts of an illustrious train of heroes, patriots, legislators, and philosophers, whose names adorned the annals of their country.

Coeval with the advance of Britain, was the

rise of a neighbouring and powerful country, which had become a distinguished rival in the cultivation of the arts and in military glory. Gaul, once inhabited by a race of barbarians and reduced to a Roman province, was destined in its turn to form the centre of a mighty empire which numbered Rome itself among its tributary states.

It was after the overthrow of this colossal power, in which Britain mainly contributed, enriched by commerce with every portion of the globe; skilled in the exact sciences; profound in the abstruse branches of philosophy; cultivating with success a taste in literature and the fine arts; and above all, professing a religion the precepts of which were calculated, when observed, to compensate for deficiencies, and smooth the asperities of life-that one of the most singular anomalies that ever was recorded in history excited the astonishment of the world. The cries of distress, arising from poverty and privation, resounded from one extremity of the empire to the other.

Under these extraordinary circumstances, the peers of the realm, and the delegates of the people, assembled to devise a remedy for evils which threatened, unless abated, to involve the downfall of the state Night after night was consumed in fruitless discussion of the various causes to which the distress was ascribed; but as none of any magnitude

were recognized, none but inadequate remedies were suggested.

Can the foregoing be considered an exaggerated representation of the present position of Great Britain?

The real cause of all our difficulties is the rapid advancement in scientific power, from the consequences of which the Emigration Committee hope to escape by expatriating a portion of the population but although this Committee in their Report attribute the redundancy of unemployed labourers in particular instances to the substitution of machinery, and notice the repletion in other occupations; yet have they entirely overlooked the magnitude and important consequences of that more general and overwhelming influence of scientific power, through which the market value of every species of human employment has been directly or indirectly depressed.

:

That portion of labour which is displaced by machinery flows into other channels until all become saturated in reply to the objection, that the superabundance cannot affect other branches of manual employment requiring peculiar skill, it must be observed, that those are the very employments that have been chiefly superseded; while the qualifications essential to other branches, such as countinghouse, and even literary avocations, are now ren