and philanthropy of the age, for they have both been taxed in so many ways, and for so many purposes, that the world has become tired of projects which have no vitality in themselves, but must depend upon external aid for support. We shall propose a plan, which, once put in operation, will spread rapidly by its own inherent excellence; and which, while it improves the condition of the laboring classes, will not encroach upon any vested or personal rights, but will offer to the rich a stable and profitable investment of capital.

For an examination of the principles I shall set forth, I appeal to those who desire sincerely an amelioration of the condition of their fellow-men; to those who feel an ambition for taking part in a great and noble undertaking; and to those who, weary of the interminable strife and the barren controversies of political parties, desire new measures and new means of reform. I appeal also to conscientious Reformers who do not wish to waste their lives and labors upon ephemeral, selfish, and superficial schemes, which vanish with the day that has brought them forth.

It is not political and administrative reforms that the world requires; it is a SOCIAL REFORM. The EVILS which afflict society are social, not political in their nature, and a Social Reform only can eradicate them. The causes of Human Misery lie too deep for mere political and administrative reforms to reach them; and so long as the leading and influential men of society continue to waste their efforts and intellectual energies in party strife and contention, and the mass suffer themselves to be guided by them, in the vain hope of a change for the better, they will vegetate together in the deplorable social condition in which all are now sunk. May it not truly be said of them, that they are "the blind leading the blind," and that they are wandering in a labyrinth of false political doctrines and dogmas, and groping their way in social darkness, without any true principles and high objects to guide them? The history of this country proves practically that mere political and legislative reforms can.do nothing for the happiness of man and the social elevation of the mass. We have had over half a century of political strife and controversies; different parties, federal and democratic, have had the ascendency; various policies, Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian, have been carried out, and where are the great results which have been attained? We do not deny that commerce and industry have been greatly developed; that vast internal improvements have been made, and an important material progress has taken place. But are the people happier? Have they pleasing and encouraging prospects before them? And are they moving onward toward some high Destiny

which excites enthusiasm? No, far from it; social evils have increased, and to a melancholy extent; and the future offers us in the political world the prospect of bitter party strife, of dissensions and discord, and in the social world, of poverty and degradation for the mass.

If we examine the present condition of society with an impartial eye, we shall find that abuses and evils have increased with fearful rapidity, and that they are much more intense at present than they have been at any former period. Our system of free, or, as it should properly be termed, false and anarchical competition, is becoming more and more violent and relentless, and is engendering a degree of selfishness, antagonism, and animosity between all classes of society, which is revolting to contemplate. It is also leading to greater frauds and injustice in the business world than have ever before been practised, and to a commercial, financial, and industrial demoralization, which is almost legalizing fraud and indirect robbery of every kind. The condition of the Laboring Classes is also becoming more precarious, and the uncertainty of obtaining employment is gradually increasing. The Mechanic and Laborer can no longer look forward as in former years with the hope of securing a home for old age, but consider themselves fortunate if they can satisfy present necessities, and obtain the means of subsistence for the day. The price of rents, living, &c., has increased, while the price of labor has remained stationary or decreased; the power of Capital over Labor is augmenting, and there is a general tendency to a reduction of wages by the operation of free competition among the Laboring Classes; who, pressed by want, offer the sad spectacle of men competing with each other for the work which capitalists and employers require. The fluctuations and revulsions in commercial operations and in banking have become deeper and more sudden, ingulfing the rich in ruin, and reducing the working classes to utter want, and often to starvation. They overwhelm with the most bitter disappointments and despair all classes, and produce an amount of moral suffering more than equal to that caused by the civil wars and revolutions of former periods. Our whole system of commerce and industry, based upon free competition and envious strife and opposition, is a round of harassing cares, anxieties, disappointments, hopes blasted, and unforeseen reverses and ruin. The business world is an arena of conflicts, overreaching, and frauda school for the most callous selfishness, corruption, and demoralization. Its spirit has rendered petty cunning, craft, and business tact, the most important qualifications of men ; made the practice of a pure truth and integrity almost impossible; set up wealth as the only standard of excellence; left in inaction the

higher faculties of the mind; reduced the nobler pursuits, like the arts and sciences, below the mere ability of money-making; and caused an intellectual prostitution and a moral degradation which are pitiful to look upon.

But let us turn from the contemplation of what surrounds us, and take a general view of the civilized nations of the earth. If we do so, we shall find, at present, times of misery and distress such as the world has never seen before. I will lay before the reader a few statistical facts, which make the mind shudder with horror, when it reflects that so many millions of human beings wear out their lives in the wretchedness and wo which are here laid open before us. Before stating these facts I will remark, that the system of society of this country is the same as that of the civilized nations of Europe, where I find the examples of misery which I shall give. The difference between us and those nations, is the difference of government. But the form of government is to the social system what the dress is to the body; we have in this country the same body or social organization as France or England; but instead of the tinsel trappings of royalty, we have placed upon it the plainer robes of republicanism. If the social system be false, the form of government cannot correct the evils which it has engendered; to expect it were as vain as to hope to cure a diseased body by changing the dress. The form of government and of the administration exercise an influence only upon the surface of social relations; they do not go to the foundation of society, and cannot eradicate such evils as poverty, ignorance, vice, and degradation, from which man should be first relieved. The great error which has been committed, is to have looked upon political reforms as a sufficient means of realizing social good. The history of the past proves the fallacy of this belief, and common sense dictates that we should abandon a wornout and fruitless policy, which leads to no results, and seek for new plans and new measures of reform.

Social evils are less intense in this country than in Europe, it is true-and why? Because we have a vast extent of soil and a thin population; and because there are outlets and new fields of action offered to the increasing population, and to those who cannot find employment, or who have been broken down in their fortunes.

But we are verging gradually toward the frightful misery which exists in older civilized countries; nay, we are already in part in it, and we are moving round ward in the fatal circles of the horrible vortex. Some of the miseries of which I shall speak are already upon us; and those which are not, should serve as beacons to warn us of our danger.

VOL. X., No. XLIII.—5

There are in the city of London about two hundred and thirty thousand beggars, thieves, pickpockets, and vagrants. What a vast array of human beings are here plunged in vice, crime, pov. erty, and degradation! In Paris there is in comparison nearly an equal amount of misery and depravity. In some of the wards where the poor reside, out of every twelve children born, eleven die the first year.

If the entire annual product of France were divided equally among its thirty-two millions of inhabitants, each would have eleven cents per day; but of this scanty product a minority of the rich absorb so large a portion, that twenty-two millions have upon an average but about six cents a day each, to defray all expenses food, lodging, clothing, education, &c.

The fact that the annual income or product of France, equally divided among all, would yield but eleven cents per day to each person, shows the folly of Agrarian doctrines, of a reform in the currency, and of all such false and minor plans and schemes of amelioration.

What France requires, is increased production of real wealthincreased eight or ten fold-which is only possible with Association and Attractive Industry. What is true of France is true of all other countries. We have had in this country nearly ten years of uninterrupted controversy about the currency, and our politicians have not yet perceived that it is an entirely secondary question, and that the primary and important one is that of production." In Sicily, an island so highly favored by soil, climate, and position, the condition of the people is frightful. Count Gasparin, Peer of France, in speaking of the state of its agriculture, and the poverty of the peasantry, says: "When the crops are bad, or the prices of grain are low, so that the landholders require less labor, then the misery of the country becomes intense without means of subsistence for the winter, it is not a rare thing to find peasants starved to death in the fields with grass in their mouths, from which they have vainly endeavored to draw nourishment.”

In Ireland, out of a population of eight millions, every third person experiences, during thirty weeks in the year, a deficiency of even third-rate potatoes.

According to the Journal of the Statistical Society, of January, 1840, there are in Liverpool 7,862 inhabited cellars, damp,

*Money, whether paper or specie, is merely the representative of the products of industry. By industry, we understand Agriculture, Manufactures, and Mechanics. If we wish to render a country rich and prosperous, we must increase those products, not their conventional representative. Instead of endless quarrels about the currency, we want a reorganization of industry, and a good application of the three elements of production, which are labor, capital, and talent.

dark, dirty, and ill ventilated; and in these lodge 39,300 of the working classes. In Manchester, of 132,000 working people, 14,960 live in cellars. At Bury, one third of the laboring classes are so badly off, that in 773 houses, one bed serves for four persons; in 207 one for five; and in 78 one for six human beings. In Bristol, 46 out of every one hundred of the working classes have but one room for a family. In Glasgow, thirty thousand Irish and Highlanders are said, according to the description of Dr. Cowan, "to wallow in filth, crime, and wretchedness in the cellars and wynds of this great commercial city." From ten to twenty persons, of both sexes, lie huddled together in their rags and filth on the floors each night. The cellars are beer and spirit shops.

Multitudes of young girls, says Mr. Symonds, applied to Capt. Miller, the head of the Glasgow police, to rescue them from these scenes, to which they are driven by sheer want. A year or two served to harden and hurry them, from drunkenness, vice, and disease, to an early grave.

The Register General states, that he "has seen in one small garret, the husband, sick of a typhus; a sick child laid across the sick man's bed; two others sleeping under the bed; two window recesses let to two Irish lodgers at sixpence a week as restingplaces for the night; the wife, a young healthy woman, lying in the same bed with her sick husband at night, and supporting the family by taking in washing, which was hung across the room to dry-the parish authorities having forbidden the exposure of linen out of the windows." · London Quarterly Review, for July, 1840. John Critchley Prince, a weaver and a poet, gives the following description of a night passed in a workhouse. He had been to the continent to obtain work, but having found none, he had returned to England. "The first night after his arrival he applied for food and shelter at a workhouse in Kent, and was thrust into a miserable garret, with the roof sloping to the floor, where he was incarcerated with twelve others, eight men and four women, chiefly Irish, the lame, the halt, and the blind. Some had bad legs, which emitted a horrible stench; some were in a high state of fever, and were raving for drink, which was denied to them; for the door was locked, and those outside, like the bare walls within, were deaf to their cries. Weary and way-worn, he lay down on the only vacant place amid this mass of misery, in a sleeping-chamber for the unfortunate child of wo, the hapless vagrant in Christian England, at the back of an old woman who appeared to be in a dying state; but he could get no rest for the groans of the wretched around him; and the crawling vermin, which, quitting his companions, crept up and down his limbs,