But there is a general expediency besides. Take the case of machinery. The winter nights of 1830 were bright with blazing rick-yards. No farmer in the southern counties felt his stacks safe. There was a time of terror in England, and of retribution.

"In Kent," says Miss Martineau, "there were gibbets erected in Penenden Heath, and bodies swung there in the December winds, bodies of boys about eighteen or nineteen years old, but looking much younger; brothers who had said to each other on arriving at the gallows, That looks an awful thing!'

Again, take the Luddite riots of 1812 and 1816, where cunning and furious mobs nearly stamped out lace manufacture at Nottingham. The broken frames and the burning ricks were ignorant protests against machinery. Well, intelligence has marched a little, and what is the case now? What do the associated masters-no unduly partial authority -affirm? The accuracy of this statement is manifest from the fact that the operatives are now the earnest advocates for improvements in machinery; whereas twenty years ago it was no uncommon thing for them to strike at the factory where they were introduced. Here, it seems to me, we can put our finger on definite and tangible progress, due solely to increased intelligence.

Take another case which shows the need of it. Wages were probably never so high in England as in 1873. Nine years before, an increasing spirit duty paid £9,692,515 to the Excise. In the last financial year the Excise receipts from spirits amounted to £14,639,562.

I am not one of those who are appalled, certainly not surprised, by this expenditure. But see how it strengthens the argument. A man who has but natural instincts to guide

him comes into a fortune, and at once procures himself an increased quantity of what has been in smaller doses an enjoyment and a solace. Has he been educated to find his amusement elsewhere? If one of us should succeed to a

large fortune to-morrow, we certainly should not spend our inheritance in drink; but the difference, I venture to say, is solely one of culture.

Well, my contention is that in an educated country, among a nation educated not in Shakespeare and the musical glasses, but so instructed as to be able to find amusement outside the skittle-alley and the public-house, a great increase in wages would not have been followed by so enormous an increase in the consumption of spirits; and an enormous consumption of spirits means an enormous amount of crime and pauperism.

I now come to a large division of the subject where we may thankfully remember that much has been effected during the last session of Parliament.

We have considered some of the means, at any rate, of ameliorating, morally and physically, the great mass of the nation; and as we have discussed how, by education, we can ensure the progressive march of intellect among rising and future generations, so it will not be out of place if I dwell here for a moment on another question which relates to the physical preservation and improvement of our race.

We all know to a certain extent the history of factory legislation, how the sacred tradition of the great work was handed down by the first Sir Robert Peel, whose claims to national gratitude have been so beautifully obscured by the greater claims of his illustrious son: to Oastler and Vadler, and Hobhouse and Ashley, and Mundella. In the last session of Parliament the main principles of Mr. Mundella's

Factory Bill, embodied in a government measure, passed through both Houses, so that the hours of labor for women and children are now limited to fifty-six and a half in a week.

But although much has been effected, it may be regarded as serious that so keen and independent a thinker as Mr. Fawcett should have offered determined resistance to the bill. But his argument was founded on the assumption that those whom the bill is taking care of are well able to take care of themselves, which is at least a doubtful proposition; and that legislative interference, to be logical, should be complete, and should extend even to women employed in domestic service.

But no one would deny that if great injury to women were to be apprehended as an effect of domestic service,—that if, for example, every master was a Legree and every mistress a Brownrigg, the legislature would have to interfere for the protection of maids. Nothing of the sort is, however, pretended.

Now we have evidence, and very complete evidence, that injury is done to women, and not merely to women but to their descendants, by their undue employment in factories. Parliament must in consequence determine what limitation must be placed on factory labor, not merely for the protection of weak women now, but in its own imperial interests for the preservation of health in the children of these womenthe future citizens of the country.

Nor is it certain that Mr. Fawcett's other assumption, that the classes affected are well able to take care of themselves, is in any degree correct. It is certain that women, from love of approbation, as well as from those feelings of unselfishness which do honor to them as wives, are only too easily led to work beyond their powers.

The conditions of life in this country are rapidly reversing themselves. Wealth is doubling itself and increasing the population; greater care in management and subtlety in mechanical appliances are diminishing, and must further diminish, the proportion of persons employed, especially in agriculture. Here is the problem: daily a greater population, daily in all probability less work, which means less subsistence.

We are shut up by a sea with our surging myriads,—a source of strength if guided and controlled; if not, an immeasurable volcanic power. Many of them must go forth to people the world. Our race has colonized and colonizes, has influenced and influences; and in future ages seems likely further to colonize and influence a great part of the habitable globe.

So great has been our field of influence that we can only view it with awe. It has been, and is, a great destiny for this country to sway so mightily the destinies of the universe. But the great privilege involves a sacred trust. We must look to it that the fertile race we send forth to the waste places of the earth is a race physically, morally, and intellectually equal to its high duties.

At present we will not compel our children to be educated, however rudely; at present, in one of our cities nearly a quarter of the infants born die before they are one year old. In one of your sections you propose to discuss, "What are the best means of drawing together the interests of the United Kingdom, India, and the Colonies?" I submit that the primary means are to send forth colonists who may be worthy the country they leave and the destiny they seek.

The different agencies I have noticed to-night all tend to this: Whether we keep them in England or they pass from

us, we must look to the nurture of this race of kings. We annually distribute through the world a population nearly as large as that of Birmingham. In the last two years more emigrants have left our shores than there are inhabitants in Glasgow and Dundee put together. After all, whatever our commerce or political influence may be, this is the most gigantic enterprise in which this or any other nation can be engaged; and the responsibility for its success, not merely for the present, but for countless future generations, lies with us.

Will this great stream pass from us a turbid flood, composed of emigrants like some we now send forth, who shake the dust from their feet and swear undying enmity to us; or shall it be a broad and beneficent river of life, fertilizing as the Nile, beloved as the Ganges, sacred as the Jordan, separated from us indeed by the ocean, but, like that fabled fountain, Arethusa, which, passing under the sea from Greece into Sicily, retained its original source in Arcadia?

We do not know what our fate may be. We have no right, perhaps, to hope that we may be an exception to the rule by which nations have their period of growth, and of grandeur, and of decay. It may be that all we most esteem may fade away like the glories of Babylon. But if we have done our duty well, even though our history should pass away, and our country become

" Ian island salt and bare,

The haunt of seals, and orcs, and seamews' clang,"

-she may be remembered, not ungratefully, as the mother of great commonwealths and peaceful empires that shall perpetuate the best qualities of the race.

I have only mentioned one of the topics with which a Social Science Congress is called upon to deal; yet how vast,