all debasing humility, and to teach its too humble inhabitants a proper and becoming pride. That pride will lead to an abhorrence of meanness, and will be the powerful supporter of a virtuous emulation. Last, though not least, in the catalogue of essentials to the increase of moral force, let the poor man be too proud to be a drunkard, or let him be discarded from the society of those who advocate good government and the cause of suffering humanity. Proclaim to the working classes, from morn to night-fall, that NO POLITICAL CHANGE CAN EFFECT

THE MELIORATION OF HIS CONDITION WHO IS THE SLAVE OF

DRUNKENNESS; and add to it this important truth, that political melioration is the resulting consequence of moral progression. With what consistency can that man reprobate the bad government of his country, who practises not good government at home? Or how shall that father reprove his child for immorality, who is himself an habitual drunkard? The vice of drunkenness is that which more especially unveils the deficiency of moral culture in this country. We affect an abhorrence of the crimes of savage life; yet, whilst exulting in the superiority of our attainments, were we to institute a comparison between the lowest state of savage existence and that of the brutal and confirmed drunkard, our pride might receive a salutary check, in the conviction that even cannibalism is scarcely more odious than drunkenness. The cannibal exists in a state of moral infancy, in which we discover that entire absence of governing principle, that absolute freedom of will which has so often occupied the attention of philosophers, and in praise of which partial knowledge has frequently had so much to say. Unchecked by considerations of humanity or moral feeling,-unrestrained by a sense of right or wrong,-the cannibal sits down with exultation to the war-feast of victory and joy; and whilst devouring the dead body of his slaughtered foe, constitutes the true representation of freedom of will. In contemplating such a state of savage existence, in such a moral desert, enlightened humanity is shocked at the commission of crimes for which nobody blushes, because they are permitted by all. Nor is this to be wondered at. Living in a state of society in which unrestrained will is the only governing principle--in which he is most reverenced who is most to be feared---in which cruelty is the redeeming virtue, not the vice---every external influence operates to produce a character ruthless in principle, and cruel in deed. Murder, torture, treachery and deceit, are among the virtues, not the crimes, of the lowest stages of human existence. Shame, in such a state, has not yet spread its tell-tale hue over the countenance of man; and a good conscience, the offspring of moral education, is unknown. With no good principle to appeal to---no law to controul---what but the most despotic authority could govern a society of individuals such as these? And what principle has the brutal and confirmed drunkard? What law is strong enough to controul him? What is his superiority over the cannibal ? Is he checked by considerations of humanity or moral feeling, or restrained by a sense of right or wrong, when, daily sitting down to the feast of his cups, he swallows, at each repeated draught, not indeed the body of a slaughtered foe, but the happiness and well-being of his wife and children, nor blushes at the deed which consigns them to wretchedness and want? And shall such beings prate about liberty and equality? The liberty

Al

they desire is the liberty to do wrong; and to descend to an equality with such individuals, is a degradation to which no honest man will stoop. Herding with society in which unrestrained will is the only governing principle--in which he is most reverenced who is most reckless---every external influence operate to the degradation of the man, and the increase of brutality. Witness the horrid spectacle of the domestic scene. The sound of his foot is the signal of fear, not of joy. The father that should protect, is coming home to abuse; and the child clings to its trembling mother in a frail, fruitless, but holy effort, to form a barrier of affection between her and brutality. most exhausted from the want of a sufficiency of food, half-naked, and wholly wretched, the pitiable partner of this human monster sues with fear and trembling for the miserable pittance which his brutal habit has spared for them. This picture of human degradation lacks but one more character to render its odiousness complete---the drunken mother. Then, indeed, the cup of domestic wretchedness is filled to the brim, and poverty, disease, and crime, are secure of their victims. If humanity is shocked at the supposed existence of such wretchedness, what must be the state of feeling on contemplating the reality? Drunkenness is the crying sin of this country, and its debasing consequences are manifest in thousands of instances, in the poverty and immorality of its victims. Nor are the consequences of this odious vice confined to the domestic circle; they influence the happiness and prosperity of the nation. Wealth, not wisdom,---corruption, not virtuous consistency, has hitherto been the highway to a seat in our Legislative Assembly, the members of which have sought to indemnify themselves from the labour of all for that which they have spent in the corrupting of a herd of misnamed freemen. The corrupted voter mortgages his own and his neighbour's labour, and drinks the produce without shame or remorse; and justice and morality are outraged through the land, whilst their paid guardians remain passive spectators. The labouring population of this country cannot regain their domestic prosperity,--- cannot raise themselves in the scale of political greatness, until they have raised themselves in moral excellence, and have learned the habits of prudence and sobriety. It has been correctly observed by a celebrated German writer, that "In all that is beyond mere animal organization, nature has placed in the hands of man the care of his own destiny: deprived of the succours of instinct, by the force of reason alone he must conquer and secure all the sum of happiness and of perfection which he ought to enjoy as his proper share. The safety of his person,---the invention of his clothes,---the engagements which constitute the charms of life,---his knowledge,---his prudence,---all, even the rectitude of his will, must be his own work."

This important remark, which relates to the general mass of mankind, is particularly applicable to the labouring population of this country. Their destiny is in their own hands, to a very considerable extent; for the endeavours of that portion of the higher grades of society which has wisdom, virtue, and humanity sufficient to induce it to labour for the good of the working-classes, can effect but little if the latter do not aid them by consistency of conduct and unity of purpose. "Put thy own shoulder to the wheel," was the reply of Jupiter to the

waggoner; and seeing the necessity of a change in the moral and political culture of the operative classes, I call upon them to unite in the endeavour to effect that for themselves which others do not seem disposed to do for them. Acquire for yourselves a political importance by the force of character; by moral consistency and mental improvement; for hitherto the labouring population of this country has been powerless, except as a mob. Think not that this remark is dictated by a feeling of reproach or contempt. Far other are the sentiments that animate my mind. "The knowledge of a disease is half its cure ;" and it is most important to the working classes of this country, that they should become convinced that political reform, to effect the regeneration of national happiness, must be supported by moral improvement. It is admitted on all hands, that to secure "the greatest happiness to the greatest number," ought to be the primary object of all governments; but it is by no means so generally admitted that, in order to effect this desirable end, two kinds of good government are essential---DOMESTIC as well as NATIONAL. The wisest political institutions cannot avert the natural consequences of individual vice, whilst such is the force of individual virtue, that were a nation truly civilized, a vicious government could not exist. If this be true, why not make public education a part of our scheme for obtaining political reform. Why not educate our youth to public as well as to private virtue? He who is not a good citizen is but half a social man, It is by the progress of intelli gence and morality that the melioration of political institutions has been effected. The change of human laws, the modification of their severity together with that of the kinds of punishment, which have been effected from time to time, are so many barometrical indications of the existing state of morality and social improvement in the great body of the people, and of the degree of enlightened humanity in the governing mind, at the different periods at which they have taken place. In proportion as man becomes enlightened and moral, in such proportion he learns to appreciate his natural rights, and to husband his moral force and the iron rod of power is no longer necessary to restrain him from the commission of crime, whose corrected judgment leads him to abhor it. Tyranny is the natural concomitant of ignorance and barbarism, and despotism the baby-step of civilization. How important, then, it is that moral and political knowledge should be extended to the great mass of our population; that in all our institutions for the dissemination of knowledge to the working classes, the best possible means should be adopted for the formation of character and the developement of mind. As one great means to this desirable end, it behoves the working classes to cultivate a proper and becoming pride, and to support, by consistency of conduct, the enlightened efforts of that portion of the rich who are sincerely anxious for their welfare, and have laboured to promote it. The formation of a character in the rising generation, which shall be equal to the task of assisting in the obtaining and securing of wise political institutions, demands a change in the system of our moral teaching. Let its principal bearing and tendency be to increase the moral dignity and happiness of man upon earth. Listen to the language of the celebrated Adam Smith-" Wherein consisted the happiness and perfection of a man, considered not only as an individual, but as the member of a family, of a state, and of the great society of

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mankind, was the object which the antient moral philosophers proposed to investigate. In that philosophy, the duties of human life were treated of as subservient to the happiness and perfection of human life. But when moral, as well as natural philosophy, came to be taught only as subservient to theology, the duties of human life were treated of as chiefly subservient to the happiness of a life to come. In the antient philosophy, the perfection of virtue was represented as necessarily productive, to the person who possessed it, of the most perfect happiness in this life. In the modern philosophy, it was frequently represented as generally, or rather as almost always, inconsistent with any degree of happiness in this life; and heaven was to be earned only by penance and mortification, by the austerities and abasement of a monk; not by the liberal, generous, and spirited conduct of a man."

There is a saying, that "the poor shall have their good things hereafter, whilst the rich shall be sent empty away." Enlightened humanity cries with an unceasing voice,-let the poor enjoy as much as possible of good things in this life, and let all the virtuous, the humane, and the truly patriotic, unite to obtain them the restoration of prosperity, and labour to give them the moral and political knowledge that will enable them to secure it. We live at a period when the exciting causes of political changes are peculiarly active; and when, as I have before remarked, the apology for the limited extension of acknowledged political rights, to the great body of the people, is their political ignorance and moral degradation. "Till recently," says Mr. Mill, in the article which I have before quoted, "it was denied that intelligence was a desirable quality in the great body of the people; and as intelligence is power, such is an unavoidable opinion in the breasts of those who think that the human race ought to consist of two classes-one, that of the oppressors-another, that of the oppressed. The concern which is now felt for the education of the working classes, shows that we have made a great step in knowledge, and in that genuine morality which ever attends it." That concern however, has hitherto manifested itself almost exclusively in the teaching of physical, not moral and political, science. And when the friends of good government ask for a restoration of the rights and privileges of the people, the answer is, they are not prepared to receive them; they are not yet sufficiently informed on political subjects. "Give them political knowledge," say the former. "They are not prepared to receive it, they have not sufficient knowledge to be entrusted with it," reply the latter. Heaven save the mark! They are too ignorant to be taught; so that ignorance is not only made the apology for injustice, but also for the continuation of its own existence. Can we separate man from the political events of the times in which he lives, and if not, is knowledge or ignorauce most preferable ?

Human life is a series of experiments for the discovery of human happiness; and whatever is admired as great in the result,-whatever is acknowledged as wise or beneficial, every part of the mental edifice which is looked up to as politically great or morally good, in the aggregate of human institutions, is the gratifying result of education to man, the hallowed witness of the happy and redeeming influence of the extension of knowledge. Let us then labour to increase the sum of that knowledge; for, unlike every other species of capital, it increases

by division, and leaves the distributor richer. The institutions of a country are valuable only in proportion as they tend to promote the general welfare; and as it is impossible to separate the individual prosperity of the inhabitants of a nation from the political circumstances by which it is influenced, it is a duty of paramount importance to themselves, that they should become acquainted with the general tendency of measures which involve consequences of such serious import. Let it be remembered, that the melioration which has hitherto taken place in the government of society and the happiness of man, is the result of comparatively a very partial education. How glorious will that result be, when " knowledge shall cover the land, as the waters cover the bed of the sea!" When true patriotism and the love of mankind shall glow in every bosom, and when the practice of morality shall have convinced man that there is a heaven of peace and happiness for him even here upon earth! "The practical end of all our social institutions must be devoted to the melioration and perfecting of the moral, physi. cal, and intellectual state of the poorest and most numerous class of society;" and then our political millenium will be at hand. Let us not despair of its attainment; for human society is not retrogading."The age of gold," which a blind tradition has hitherto placed in the past, is yet to come. Its dawn is approaching. The doctrine of human degeneration, and its afflicting consequence---increasing misery, is contradictory to reason, and in opposition to facts. Man is progressive, and human perfectibility is not a chimera; but that perfectibility cannot be attained until the great mass of our population is morally and politically free. All the corrupt interests are leagued against the progress of freedom and good government; and it is only by the union of the patriotic and the good of both the middle and the working classes, that those corrupt interests can be shaken from their unhallowed situations. Their strong hold is the ignorance, the vice, the corruption of the many remove that, and they shrink into comparative littleness.

[The Friends of education and of human happiness are earnestly solicited to use their utmost exertions in procuring for this cheap tract an extensive circulation.]

G. COWIE, PRINTER, WYCH STREET, STRAND.