THE innumerable schemes which, from time to time, are making their appearance in this country for the improvement of its Social Condition, is about the most conspicuous feature of our civilization. Corporations are created; capital is invested; presses are established, and, we ought, perhaps, to add, mad-houses filled, in giving expression to this fertile enthusiasm.

These reformers may be divided into the following classes, each of which behold, in their several devices, the most immediate instrumentality for emancipating society from sin and grief:

First, the religious reformer, who looks to spiritual influences entirely for man's political and social regeneration.

Second, the socialist, who fixes his hopes upon an entire re-organization of industry, and the emancipation of the cardinal passions.

Third, the agrarian, who requires a forced and periodical equalization of the landed property of the country among all its inhabitants.

Fourth, the political reformer, who relies upon the equalization of the duties and the rights of all, by the operation of laws which shall secure to every man as much freedom as may comport

with the enjoyment of an equal freedom by all his fellow-citizens.

All the various orders, sects and schools of American meliorists may be included under one or another of these denominations.

We can't have labored thus long at this our post editorial, with however indifferent success, without having defined to which of the above classes we affect to belong. We are by no means unconscious of the obligations of our race to the manifold and substantial labors of the spiritualist and the socialist, and, so far as defining prevailing social deformities, to the agrarian. But we have no faith in the schemes of either of them for bringing out and setting in motion all the progressive tendencies of a nation. It is not our purpose, however, at present, to define the insufficiency of their several systems; first, because the criticism of others is a very imperfect mode of advancing one's own opinions; and, secondly, because we can hardly hope to detain the attention of our readers, even for the space necessary to explain,-as it is our wish and will be our effort to do—the grounds of our confidence in the efficacy of political agencios, to achieve that final re

sult which all reformers in common desire.

Before making this attempt, it may be proper to premise-what will generally be conceded, we presume--that the common purpose of civil society is, or should be, to promote the happiness of all its members. That happiness can only be secured by the gratification of all those natural appetites, tastes and propensities, which are necessarily incident to our existence. A denial of any one of these gratifications will be a distinct cause of unhappiness, and will prove that the social state in which it occurred has thus far failed of its purpose. In so far as that social state is responsible for the evil, it requires change.

Now, it so happens, that in every so ciety of which we have any knowledge, a very large proportion of its members have been denied, to a considerable extent, the enjoyments which we suppose necessary to their happiness. They have been compelled to struggle with their physical necessities-with political and social oppressions of one kind and another, for their whole lives. By the burden of supporting their existence, they have been excluded substantially from all participation in the more elevated and elevating enjoyments of which our nature is susceptible. The great mass of them cannot presume to have any ideal life. They are forever possessed by their material wants.— Their minds are engrossed by day and by night-in season and out of season, in devising ways and means of satisfying the long procession of the appetites, as they approach, day after day, to enforce their uncompromising demands. In their incessant search after the means of living, they have been forced to forget the ends of life.

Et propter vilam vivendi perdere causas. How is it possible for nations thus enthralled their finer sensibilities deadened or extirpated, to receive the highest culture, or a symmetrical moral developement? How is it possible for them to experience the emotions which spring from a pure taste, and from elevated sentiments? The inexorable constraints of their position must cut them off, to a great degree, from all this range of pleasures, and their æsthetic susceptibilities, from which all the pur

est and most precious enjoyments of our nature spring, must die out of them. To prevent the continuance of this state of things is the true office of the social reformer; for to secure its opposite is the great purpose of civil society.

Obviously the first step to this end is to supply these oppressive necessities for life and sustenance with less expenditure of time and energy than is now required, that leisure may accrue to be devoted to more spiritualizing pursuits. How this result is to be effected, is the great economical question, in the decision of which the whole human race have a permanent interest, and which lies at the foundation of all statesmanship and of all political philosophy.

To achieve this spiritual emancipation, it will be necessary to increase the product of a man's industry, so that a less amount of labor may supply his necessities, and also to teach men what their actual necessities are, that they may not be the prey of conventional tastes and appetites.

As the last result will, in our judgment, follow, inevitably, from the first

for reasons which we may hereafter have occasion to render-we will confine ourselves to the consideration of the first, and will inquire if there be any hope of multiplying the product of a man's labor, so that his physical wants may not exclude the gratification of every other, and through what instrumentality that hope is to be realised.

If we have read aright the history of our race, and have at all comprehended the processes of its moral developement, we have discerned or imagined the quarter from whence the remedy is to be derived of which we are in quest.

We refer to an extended culture of the physical sciences and their enlarged application to the useful arts. It is by the aid of the physical sciences we hope to see the ample stores of nature subdued to the uses and convenience of men, and by the aid of powers which yet remain to be revealed. We believe that nature produces nothing which she is not competent to maintain according to the laws of its existence.-That its structural demands are but the shadows of promises which had preceded its creation, but which science might not yet have learned to interpret, and that it is to the man of science and the artisan that we are ultimately to look for the achieve

ment of this great work of social amelioration.

We say ultimately, for there is another agency to be employed, which the history of the physical sciences demonstrates to be indispensable to their prosperity. And that is the co-operation of free political institutions. It is only under the kindly influences of civil liberty and the amplest recognition of man's individual independence, that the natural sciences can be most successfully applied to the useful arts.

As the truth of this proposition lies at the base of our argument, we shall take the liberty of referring to the history of these sciences for its confirmation, and shall then endeavour to explain our reasons more at length for considering their growth and develop ment indispensable to the realization of that highest social enjoyment, the attainment of which we have indicated as the true end of all good government; and in the course of our inquiries we trust it will be made to appear, that it is to the political reformer to whom we must look as the immediate instrument under Providence for hastening a consummation so devoutly to be wished for.

According to the ancient mythology, which is but history transfigured, Prometheus is reported to have stolen from heaven the element of fire, of which Jupiter had interdicted the use to man. For this theft the sinning Titan was bound in chains, as the myth goes on Mount Caucasus, and an eagle was sent by Jupiter to prey upon his liver, which, by a cruel dispensation of the vindictive god, was permitted to grow during the night, as much as it was consumed during the day. After the lapse of many thousands of years, Hercules slew the eagle, and delivered the suffering Titan from his terrible bondage.

In this lay of Prometheus the imagination of antiquity has foreshadowed the fortunes and the fate of those throughout the ancient world, who, as artizans, mechanics, or philosophers, made the physical comfort of their fellows the business of their lives. It typifies the irreconcileable antagonism which was supposed to exist between the laws of nature and the harmony of constituted society-between the interests of the tens and the interest of the millions. It shows the terrible penalty which followed every avowed

effort to rob the guarded treasury of nature of her resources to distribute them among the people, and it shows the joint supremacies of human and divine legislation combined to enforce its infliction.

How broadly contrasted with this picture of error, established by law, and sanctioned by religion, is the condition of the minister et interpres nature of our own time-the Prometheus of the nineteenth century. For him no rewards are esteemed excessive, no dignities too exalted. He has been lifted up from the ranks of an ignominious caste into full communion with society, and is encouraged in his fruitful toil with every protection which the power and the gratitude of free people can supply. He dreads no Caucasian wilderness, nor chains, nor bondage, nor torturing vultures, but goes forth to his ministrations of mercy like the wise man of the preacher, bearing length of days in his right hand, and in his left hand riches and honor.

We will proceed to show that the fable has not exaggerated the reality, and that the contrast we have attempted to indicate is amply exemplified in the past history of physical science.

We have been spared the necessity of entering into any very elaborate argument, to show the degraded condition of physical science in its application to the useful arts among the ancients, a condition which the foregoing interpretation implies, by the diligent pen of one of the most profound critics and accomplished scholars of our time. The questions which Mr. Macauley has once argued, rarely admit of farther debate. In his masterly dissertation upon the Baconian philosophy, and the new impulses it gave to the prosecution of physica' science the utter barrenness of all the old philosophies previous to the reformation is exhibited with such demonstrative energy, that we cannot feel that any accumulation of evidence on our part would add strength to his proofs, or increase our readers' confidence in his conclusions. At the best, we could but prove what none will be disposed to deny, that in nearly every department of natural science the ancient philosophers adopted a system of investigation fatally vicious-that they prosecuted it for no adequate objects, and that they achieved comparatively