evils under which that ill-starred country has so long laboured. We narrowly escaped such a catastrophe on occasion of the great monetary crisis of October 1847, by far the most serious and widespread which Great Britain has ever known; and so much was the nation in its vital resources weakened by that calamity, and so wearing-out and grievous are the causes of evil still operating amongst us, that it is much to be feared that the catastrophe we anticipate will not be deferred beyond the next of the periodical monetary crises with which the country is now so regularly afflicted.

What renders our present social condition so alarming and depressing to the contemplative mind is, that the evils which are so widespread through society have only increased with the advance of the nation in general industry, accumulated capital, and mechanical power; and at a time when universal and unprecedented exertions have been made both for the religious and moral education of the working-classes, the improvement of their habits, and the extension of their information. The most superficial observer must be aware what astonishing progress we have made since 1815. Our exports and imports have tripled our shipping doubled*-our population advanced fully 50 per cent. Our agriculture has kept pace with this astonishing increase, insomuch that, down to the commencement of five bad years in succession, in 1836, followed

by Free Trade in 1842 and 1846, our imports of wheat and flour had sunk to a hundredth-part of the food of our people. At no former period, in England's or the world's history, were such efforts made by energetic and philanthropic individuals to stem the progress of public and private disaster, or such noble and even heroic sacrifices made by the State to assuage, where it was most aggravated, the intensity of private suffering. At one period Government gave £20,000,000 to compensate the planters in the West Indies for Negro Emancipation; at another £10,000,000, to relieve the effects of famine and Irish improvidence. The efforts made in the cause of education, religious instruction, church accommodation, the relief of pauperism, the elevation of the standard of comfort, and the improvement of the habits of the poor, have been innumerable, systematic, and unwearied.

In Scotland, a new great sect of Presbyterians has grown up more suited than the Establishment to the inclinations of a large part of the people, and they have, in three years, built and provided for eight hundred new places of worship, at a cost of above £1,500,000. In Glasgow alone, thirtytwo have been erected, at a cost of £107,000! besides fifteen, erected a few years before, by subscription of persons connected with the Establishment. The prodigious efforts made by the dignitaries and pastors of the Church of England, to extend the sphere and increase the utility of

their Establishment, are known to all the world, and have extorted the reluctant applause even of the most inveterate of their opponents. All other religious persuasions have done the same: Roman Catholics, Methodists, Wesleyans, Dissenters of all sorts, have vied with each other in zeal and efforts to extend their respective adherents, and augment the number and respectability of their places of worship. Education has shared in the general movement; and although Government has yet done little, the number of voluntary schools established in most parts of the country almost exceeds belief. At the same time, the average poor-rates of England have for the last ten years been about £6,000,000. Scotland has got a more efficient one than the cautious administration of the old law had permitted, which already expends about £500,000 yearly on the relief of indigence; and Ireland has got a new one, which at its greatest distress expended above £2,000,000 in a year, and still dispenses upwards of £1,500,000 annually. Yet, in the midst of all this prodigious increase of national industry, religious zeal, and philanthropic activity, the condition of the greater part of our working classes has been daily getting worse, and was never perhaps, as a whole, so bad as in this year, when, in consequence of Continental pacification, Bank discounts at 21 per cent, and a great influx of Californian gold, prices of manufactured articles have risen 20 per cent, and the great manufacturing towns are in a state of general prosperity. Ample evidence of all this will be brought forward in the sequel of this essay. Notwithstanding all this, we do not despair either of the human race or of the fortunes and social condition of this country. We are firm believers in the doctrine, derived equally from natural and revealed religion, that the greater part of the evils, individual and social, of this life are derived from the effects of human selfishness, folly, or wickedness, and that it is sin which has brought death to nations not less than individuals. Barring some calamities which are obviously beyond the reach of human remedy-such as sickness, the death

of relations or friends, and external disasters, as famine or pestilencethere is scarcely an ill which now afflicts mankind which may not be distinctly traced to human selfishness or folly in the present or some preceding generation. That God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children is indeed as loudly proclaimed in the history of man as ever it was among the thunders of Mount Sinai. But, assuming this to be the principle of the Divine government of mankind, we are confident we are within bounds when we say that four-fifths, perhaps ninetenths, of the social and private evils which now afflict humanity, are the direct consequences of selfishness or folly in this or some recently preceding generation. Every attentive observer of the fate of individuals or families around him must see that this is the case in private life; and a very little attention alone is required to convince one that to the same cause is to be ascribed four-fifths of the social evils, great as they are, which all feel to be now so overwhelming.

We propose, first, to establish the fact that, amidst all the boasted and really astonishing increase of our national industry, the suffering and misery of the working-classes has constantly, on an average of years, gone on increasing; and then to consider to what causes this most alarming and disheartening state of things is to be ascribed. To prove the first, it is sufficient to refer to three authentic sources of information-the records of emigration, of crime, and of pauperism, for the last twenty-eight years.

From the table given below, it appears that while, in the year 1826, immediately following the dreadful monetary crisis of December 1825,

by far the severest which had then been felt-the total emigration from the British Islands was under twentyone thousand; in the year 1849, being the fourth year of Free Trade, and in its last six months one of great commercial activity, it had reached the enormous and unprecedented amount of THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND! In twenty-five years of almost ceaseless Liberal government, and carrying out the principles, social and political, of the Political Economists,

the number of persons driven into exile had increased fifteen-fold. So extraordinary and decisive a proof of the progressive increase of suffering in a people is perhaps not to be found in the whole annals of mankind. The emigration-returns for 1850 have not yet been made up, but that they will exhibit a result not less striking and woful than the preceding years may be judged of by the facts, that the emigration from Liverpool, which in 1849 was 154,400, had risen in 1850 to 174,260; and that the emigrants who landed at New York alone, in 1850, were 212,796-of whom 116,552 were Irish, and 28,125 English subjects, the remainder being chiefly Scotch and Germans.*

We say, and say advisedly, that this prodigious flood of emigrants were, for the most part, driven into exile by suffering, not tempted into it by hope, and that its progressive

*Times, Jan. 21, 1851.

increase is the most decisive proof of the enhanced misery and suffering of the working-classes. The slightest consideration of the last column of the table below† must demonstrate this. Every known and deplored year of suffering has been immediately followed by a great increase in the number of emigrants in the next, or some subsequent years. Thus, in the year 1825, the total emigration was only 14,891; but the monetary crisis of December in that year raised it to 20,900 in the next year. In the year 1830, the last of the Duke of Wellington's administration, the emigration was 56,907; but in the two next years, being those of Reform agitation and consequent penury, these numbers were almost doubled: they rose to 83,160 in 1831, and to 103,140 in 1832. With the fine harvests and consequent prosperity of 1833 and 1834, they sank to 44,478;

In the next place, the criminal records for the same period, since 1822, demonstrate, in a manner equally decisive, that amidst all our advances in civilisation, wealth, and productive industry, the causes producing an increase of crime have been equally active; and that, abreast of the distress which drove such prodigious and increasing multitudes into exile, have advanced the social evils which have, in an equal ratio, multiplied the criminals among those who remain at home.

From the table quoted below, it appears that, since the year 1822, serious crime, over the whole empire, has advanced fully 300 per cent; while the numbers of the people, during the same period, have not increased more than 30 per cent, which of itself is a very great and most surprising increase for an old state. It has advanced from 27,000 to 75,000. In other words, serious crime, during the last twenty-five years, has advanced TEN TIMES as fast as the numbers of the people.*

The same table is equally valuable in another point of view, as demonstrating, that it is to a general and progressive increase of distress that this deplorable result is to be ascribed. Every year of great and general suffering has been immediately followed in the next and the succeeding ones by a sudden start in crime, which has again as regularly receded, when a returning gleam of prosperity has for a time illuminated the prospects of the working-classes in the community. Thus, the dreadful monetary crisis of December 1825 was followed next year by a considerable increase of commitments: they rose from 31,828 to 38,071. The numbers again fell to 33,273 and 36,009 in 1829 and 1830, which were years of comparative comfort. The Reform agitation, and consequent distress of 1831 and 1832, raised them again to 49,523 in 1834; while the Joint-stock mania and fine harvests of 1835 lowered it to

44,803. The bad harvests, great importation, and consequent monetary crisis of 1839 and 1840 raised them most materially; they amounted to 54,244 and 54,892 in those years respectively. The fine harvests and Railway mania of 1844 and 1845 lowered them to 49,565 and 44,536; but the Irish famine and Freetrade measures of 1846, followed, as they necessarily were, by the dreadful monetary crisis of October 1847, raised them again to an unprecedented amount, from which they have never since receded. In 1848, they were 73,780; in 1849, 74,162; of which, last year, no less than 41,980 were in Ireland, being nearly 4000 more than 1848-albeit the harvest of 1849 was very fine, and the preceding year had been the year of the Irish rebellion, and when that country might be presumed to be still labouring under the effects of the famine of autumn 1846. The poor's rate from 1822 to 1849*