It is evident without much argument, that intellectual and moral qualities in the laborer are necessary to the most productive labor. This is as essential in manufacturing establishments as in every other. If a clerk or apprentice who has a good character is the more valuable on that account, so it is with the girl who tends a loom, or the overseer who directs the labor. It would seem from the conduct of some corporations, that thriftless, dissipated and unprincipled operatives are, in their estimation, as profitable as those who are high-minded, sober and careful. At any rate, they act as if it were of no matter of consequence what kind of laborers they employ. But this is a very great mistake. The best qualities of mind and heart are necessary to the highest productiveness in any department of labor. And from the nature of the case it must be so. In order to the most effective industry, the laborer must be educated to self-respect, and a lively sense of character. The slave is every where, in comparison with the free laborer, a most miserable producer, and that because he has not the highest and noblest feelings of a man. Next to him is the debauched, dissipated and reckless free laborer. And next in order follow, one after another, the long list of individuals who are in various degrees removed from a high standard of character. It is the testimony of one whom we have consulted on this subject, that "those individuals who are in the constant habit of attending public worship upon the Sabbath, and who are connected with Sabbath schools and Bible classes, are far more profitable to their employers than those who entirely neglect these privileges." And this testimony is only the confirmation which experience gives to the view which arises from the very nature of things. Corporations, therefore, should endeavor, for their own interests, to provide for a high standard of character in their villages. What they expend for this purpose will more than return to them, not perhaps in tangible results at once, but in the stability and gradually increasing value of their entire investment. The influence of a high tone of intelligence and morals in the community that grows up around their establishment, will be like the dew, gentle and unnoticed in its action, yet, with wonderful power, ministering life and growth to all the sources of profit.

To tend a loom, or oversee a number of operatives, may seem to some a work of the simplest kind; but the different wages paid to different individuals for such work testify that there is a very great difference of skill in even the simplest departments of labor. Some girls can earn eight dollars a week, while others can earn only two or three. But the most skillful laborer, notwithstanding his high wages, is by far the most profitable to the employer. Of course it follows that the money expended in a manufacturing village for the purpose of sharpening the faculties, and educating the intellect of the population, is not lost, but will return, "after many days," to increase the wealth of the company.

There is another point of no little consequence in this connection: the greater security and value of property in a well trained community. Among a thriftless, idle, vagabond population, which a manufacturing village is likely to attract if left to grow up uncared for, great losses are constantly occurring from fires and theft, and general waste, which are greatly diminished in a village nurtured into a high moral character by the judicious care and aid of the corporation or corporations whose investments have created it. No prudent business man would invest his capital in a disgracefully immoral place; how then can he build up such a place around capital which he has already invested.

In a place where moral influences are deficient or pernicious, manufacturing proprietors lose much by the frequent changes in the working population. Good workmen may come to such a place, but they will not stay long, for in such a place they can not feel themselves at home; and poor workmen are always noted for their unsettled, uneasy dispositions. Hence there must be a constant changing of operatives. But this is always attended with loss. It takes much time to learn how to labor to the best advantage in any mill; and while learning, the labor can not be so valuable. Thus, where the operatives are constantly going and coming, the profits of the concern must be materially diminished.

The damage which a corporation may suffer simply by the loss of time consequent on the employment of idle, dissolute operatives, or overseers, ought not to be overlooked. The stopping of a single loom on account of "a spree," may be a serious affair to the company. In a great manufactory, all the fragments of time are valuable, and it is important that every loom should be constantly in motion. To one of the companies in Lowell, the loss of a single hour makes a difference of between three and four thousand yards of cloth in the product of their mills. We have known villages where looms have stood idle for several days on account of the drunken frolic of him who had the charge of them. This item of loss was never reported to the corporation. It was a leakage, that made so little show as to seem unimportant. And yet the aggregate loss from such things to that corporation must have been very great.

The slighting of the work is another source of loss; operatives of inferior moral character produce inferior fabrics. There is often as great a loss in the quality of the article, as in the amount produced. In a rude, immoral village, where the operatives have, many of them, little sense of character, working simply for the pay, with no feeling of obligation, the service rendered to the proprietors will be mere "eye service," and the product will be of corresponding value.

Another important item of loss arises from petty peculations. Where hundreds or thousands of hands are employed, small stealings" amount in the aggregate to large amounts. In a small factory, which employs a hundred persons, if each should take a yard of goods manufactured per day, the company has a hundred yards to subtract from the day's profits; and if the goods be valued at twelve cents, they experience a loss of twelve dollars, which in a year amounts to thirty-six hundred dollars. Now, when it is remembered that these peculations are very difficult of detection, the value of operatives who can be depended on will be seen at a glance. And then, too, will be seen whether it is good economy in a corporation to provide liberally for the moral wants of the village which grows up around its factory.

But it is not in items that the extent of the losses which corporations suffer on account of immoral influences around them, can be estimated. There is a general wastefulness and want of care, which cuts in upon the profits of the concern yet deeper than can be explained by these items. In truth, the losses thus arising are, many of them, hidden from view, and can not be represented in any definite statement.

We may get the best idea of this whole subject by comparing any two villages conducted respectively upon the opposite principles of duty and selfishness. There are many visible contrasts of this kind which are of the nature of demonstration. Such an one rises to our thoughts at this moment. In a certain part of New England, upon the same bending stream, not many miles distant from each other, there are two manufacturing villages. One of them is neat, tasteful, beautiful, and inviting as a place of residence. The church was built by the corporation, almost as soon as the factory, a church, whose very appearance is an auxiliary to good order and virtue. All good objects received the fostering care of the company. The villagers were thus stimulated to exertion, and inspired with a sense of character and true dignity. By the judicious aid of the company, an academy was founded, and good schools were established. Roads were leveled, grounds well laid out, a beautiful green thrown open to the public; and every thing was done to provide for the taste and morals of the population. The consequence has been that the village is a model. Vice hides itself from view; losses from drunkenness and idleness are rare; and the general character of the people there bears a stamp of dignity and genial manliness.

The other place was founded upon different principles. Nothing was laid out except by absolute necessity. The people who desired to worship, were obliged for years to meet in a room only large enough to hold the adults. No children attended the house of God; and thus a whole generation grew up without the advantages of the sanctuary. The schools were miserable. Houses

were built almost any where. The village was dirty and uninviting. The factories instead of looking out upon you with a sunshiny look, scowled grimly through their dinginess, as if they were the castles of Giant Despair. Not a tree had been set out in the place It was the image of what a village ought not to be. The morals of the place were such as one might expect from such influences. Drunkenness was common. The looms frequently stood idle for weeks, because of the "sprees" of the workmen. Profaneness was fearfully prevalent. As for the children, such a generation has been seldom seen. It will be easy for the reader to fill up the picture; the contrast is too painful for us to follow further. It brings up before us scenes which caused us great sorrow years ago, when we witnessed them, and upon which we do not care to dwell.

We have before our mind's eye, two other villages,-one neat, inviting, moral, orderly, prosperous; the other, filthy, repulsive, immoral, disorderly, bankrupt. The secret of the difference be tween the two, is that the first is conducted on high and generous principles; the other, upon those of the most narrowsighted selfishness. Another contrast occurs to us in one village under two successive administrations. The first was close-fisted, leaving the people to themselves, taking the holy day to repair machinery, making no outlays for the religious and moral welfare of the place; the consequence was, that the whole business ran out, the owners became bankrupt, and the property passed into other hands. The new administration went to work on the opposite plan; built a church, settled a minister, gave an impulse to schools, adorned the place with tasteful care, and now it is one of the most flourishing villages of the kind in New England. And thus we might continue to cite examples almost indefinitely. But we need not.

One more thought on this part of our subject, and we have done. Manufacturers will find it to their interest to pursue a liberal policy in their villages, in order to check the spread of that opposition to corporations which is now of no inconsiderable disadvantage to them, and which, if manufacturing villages become the abodes of a low and degraded population, will sweep every thing before it, in the indignation of the people. Then charters will not be renewed,-companies will not be allowed to increase their capital, new burdens will be laid upon them, and in a thousand ways they will find themselves hampered and troubled. The only way to avoid this result is for companies to pursue a high and liberal policy, making their villages the open proofs and testimonies to the value of such enterprises.

ART. VI.-MR. NOEL AND THE CHURCH OF

ENGLAND.

Essay on the Union of Church and State; by BAPTIST WRIOTHESLEY NOEL, M. A. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849.

FOR three centuries past, there has existed in England a corporation of vast wealth and power, known as the CHURCH OF ENGLAND. At times during this period, this corporation has virtually held the power of life and death. The pillory, the prison, the gallows and the stake have been at its command, and have been freely used for the assertion of its authority over conscience in matters of faith. At other times, its own existence has been in peril, and it has been ready to crave for itself that toleration which it had denied to others; till by the turning tide of revolution it was re-instated in its arrogance and intolerance. But now for these many years, with pretensions no less lofty than in the days of Laud, and with wealth and political supremacy unimpaired, the power of this great corporation has been relaxed, and dissentient bodies, throwing off one by one their oppressive disabilities, have grown up by its side till they have become too formidable to be molested or even treated with neglect. Occasionally also a secession from the Establishment takes place with entire safety to the life and members of the seceder.

By what rule of nomenclature, or under what classification, this corporation is called a church, we can not discover. Such an application of the term is certainly not in accordance with any of its uses in the New Testament. These uses are stated by

Mr. Noel as follows:

“Exxλŋoía being the word commonly used to express an assembly of citizens, it was thence adopted by the apostles to express an assembly of Christians; the Christian sense of the word growing naturally out of its civil sense. Each Christian congregation is, therefore, in the New Testament called an exxλnciaan assembly, a church. . . . Thus we read of the churches of Judea, the churches of Galatia, and the churches of Macedonia; but never of the church of Judea, the church of Galatia, the church of Macedonia: because the Christians of a single town formed an assembly, but the Christians of a country many assemblies.'

"From meaning a local and visible assembly of persons gathered into one spot," the word church, by a customary extension of the signification of words, from the corporeal to the spiritual, " came to mean the whole company of believers in Christ gathered into one community by receiving the same truths; and so become one city, one temple, one body, one flock, one tree, one household, one family, though corporeally scattered over the whole earth.”—pp. 17, 19.

The term "church," therefore, in New Testament usage, denotes "either a congregation of professed disciples of Jesus Christ in any place, or, secondly, the whole company of his true disciples throughout the world ;" and it has no other signification.