INTRODUCTION.

IN laying before the public this cheap edition of Mr. Detrosier's Address, at a time when the patronage of all ranks of the people is solicited to promote its extensive circulation, it cannot but be as acceptable as useful to say a few words of the extraordinary man who wrote it.

MR. ROWLAND DETROSIER is one of the many examples this country has produced of men who have become highly instructed and greatly useful to their fellow-men.

Nothing need be said in praise of the attainments of a self-taught man, who is capable of writing the following address: they are conspicuous. Thoroughly acquainted with the habits and feelings of the working people,and knowing in what their happiness must consist,as well as the obstacles to its attainment, he has set himself to work to remove the one, and to facilitate the attainment of the other. These he has effected both to the greatest extent his limits permitted, in a masterly yet mostf amiliar manner.

Mr. Detrosier was greatly instrumental in founding and supporting the New Mechanics' Institution, at Manchester, which has in all its departments (we believe) been maintained and carried on by its own members. Here Mr. Detrosier occasionally read lectures on Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, and Morals, whilst discharging his duties as Manager in a Manufactory.

Owing to some new arrangements in the business he in part conducted, he became a short time since a public teacher, by means of Lectures, delivered in the country around Manchester; and in this way he is still endeavouring to extend his sphere of usefulness. In him precept is enforced by example; and when addressing himself to the working people, it is as one of themselves, and as it were with their He cannot therefore fail to produce the best possible effect.

own voice.

The infancy and childhood of Mr. Detrosier were not nurtured by his parents; he was bred by strangers, by whom, at nine years of age, he was put out as a warehouse boy, having learned little more than merely to read; and that little he was taught in a Sunday School. He mained in this and similar employments until he was twelve years of age, when he was apprenticed to a fustian-cutter for seven years, and,

as he observes in a letter to a friend, "from that day to the present, I have maintained myself by the sweat of my brow, or by the toil of my mind, and to my own industry do I owe the little knowledge I possess,

Mr. Detrosier's moral character stands high. He was married when very young, and has a family of children, to whom he is giving the best education his circumstances will permit. Every right-minded person must feel a desire that such a man should succeed in his lauda. ble endeavours to improve the understanding, and amend the moral condition of that class of the people who have hitherto been the most neglected, notwithstanding the conviction which has been gradually gaining ground of the utility of instruction to the people themselves, and the necessity, which has become more and more apparent, for the prevention of mischief, and the promotion of all good purposes, that they should receive as large an amount of instructionus their condition will enable them to obtain.

Two years have elapsed since I had the honour and gratification of addressing the members of the New Mechanics' Institution, and their friends, on the interesting occasion of its being opened for public instruction. If on that occasion it was gratifying to my feelings to address you on the advantages of education, and the prospects of our infant Institution, how much more gratifying must it be to me now, to congratulate you on the realization of our hopes, and the establishing of a property in books and materials, which has so greatly increased our means of usefulness. Met together at this time, to commemorate that interesting event, I trust the subject on which I have chosen to address you, namely, the great necessity for an extension of moral and political knowledge among the working classes, will not be deemed inappropriate. To direct the attention of man to the attainment of moral excellence, cannot be considered as an act of snpererogation; and as knowledge is valuable only in proportion as it tends to increase the sum of human happiness, those institutions must be imperfect in which no provision is made for the communication of moral and political knowledge. It is, however, a lamentable fact, that this part of education not only occupies individual attention the least, but is also most imperfectly taught. Yet it will not surely be denied that moral cultivation is as necessary to the superiority of civilized over savage man, as the extension of knowledge in the physical sciences. Man is neither born wise nor good; his wisdom and goodness are the results of education; and the differences of character which exist in the extremes of society, in what are called civilized countries, arise not from natural incapacity on the one hand, or inherent superiority on the other, but from controlling circumstances in both. Man is the creature of education and circumstances; and the general acknowledgment of this important truth, would do more for the advancement of individual happiness, than can possibly be effected by acting on a supposition of an opposite tendency. It is in the circumstances by which he is surrounded-and in the erroneous education of which he is the victim, that his misery and self-degradation originate. If, however, we would judge correctly of the effects of education, and the influence of circumstances, we must compare the extremes of society; and, in order to form a correct estimate of the progress of moral culture, we must separate the results of scientific education from those of moral improvement. In taking this view of the subject, it will not be difficult to discover, that the civilized nations of the present day are more indebted for their vast superiority to the increase of scientific knowledge, than to the individual extent of their moral cultivation. However humiliating it may be to our pride, it is nevertheless true, that our physical knowledge is far in advance of our moral attainments. The development of human powers in society is first physical, then mental; and this condition of our nature still remains with us, is still strikingly manifest, though little attended to in the present state of our boasted civilization. We come into the world at a

period of time when the records of the past, and the development of present discoveries, confer on us an incalculable advantage over our predecessors; yet we stop not to enquire to what it is that we owe our superiority. Dazzled with the splendid discoveries of science,-proud of the almost immeasurable distance at which we have left the men of former ages, in the application of mechanics to the purposes of life— still prouder of the discovery of that Leviathan of modern times, the power of steam, and elevated beyond measure at the rapid creation of wealth which has resulted from this union of individual talent and national industry, we forget, in our delirium of joy, to ask the important question, whether morality, in the most extended signification of the word, has progressed in the ratio of scientific acquirement ;—whether the great mass of our population is made better and happier ;— whether governors are wiser and more honest. To no part of society are these enquiries of greater moment than to the working classes; for history bears testimony to this important truth,-POLITICAL ME

LIORATION IS THE RESULTING CONSEQUENCE OF MORAL PRO

GRESSION. What is the reiterated apology for refusing even a limited extension of acknowledged political rights to the great body of the people? Their political ignorance and moral degradation. As the friend of the working man, I cannot but deplore that, in thousands of instances, there is but too much truth in the latter accusation, and that the former has even a more extended application. It ill becomes these, however, who are instrumental to the continuation of that ignorance and degradation, to seek in its existence an apology for the perpetration of injustice, monopoly, and oppression. But it ill becomes that class of society which receives, as a body, millions a-year for the dissemination of knowledge, to permit moral and political ignorance to exist to so degrading an extent. Institutions are valuable only in proportion as they tend to promote the general welfare: when they cease to do this, they sink in the public estimation: and the progress of their dissolution, though slow, is sure. Is it not a fact, which reflects the greatest disgrace on those whose especial business it is to chace moral ignorance from the land, and to leave not an abiding place for vice, that even in England, notwithstanding its boasted civilization, human nature exists in all its various grades of knowledge and of ignorance, except, indeed, that of positive cannibalism!. Is it not a fact that thousands of her inhabitants are still shamefully ignorant and brutal,—still to a very considerable extent uncivilized, degraded, and inhuman? Yes, I repeat it,-repeat it with regret, thousands of both sexes exist in this country, whose claims to the character of civilized beings are of the very lowest kind. They are human machines for the creation of wealth, whose physical education in the adaptation of their hands, &c., to mechanical purposes, is all that is thought of.

Let us neither be deceived by names, nor by appearances; neither let us flatter ourselves that this, the boasted seat of every art, is a civilized country, because a portion of its inhabitants are intelligent and virtuous. Still more would I guard you against the injustice of attributing the whole of the blame to the unhappy victims of that ignorance which is the basis of domestic misery, and the strong hold of national slavery. I repeat the important