established every week in the year, by the concurring testimony of great numbers of witnesses."*

The very system of relief which mercenary wisdom has devised and worked out, aggravates these sores and the virulence of the distemper. The English system of poor relief, as it is at present carried into operation, is the conception of a purely mercantile age and spirit, the ultimatum of mechanical and arithmetical science, and selfish obtuseness; and is no more fitted to the habits and mechanism of human life, than a foot-rule to morals and philosophy. It binds up the wounds of human life with iron bands; and aggravates its torments. While liberty is extolled and worshipped in all mouths, and slaves are bought up and emancipated, this system revives and forges with ingenious cruelty all and more than all the fetters and degradations of punishment and slavery, and inflicts them by law and legislative enactment.† Nature rebels against the philosophic torture, and unnatural experiment; and throws off the gangrene and the application together, with raging inflammation. At the same time the mortification spreads, and extends itself over the whole system.

* Alison on Population, ii. 89, note.

"The more I converse with prisoners, the more I perceive of the fatal evils that must arise from a too close approximation between the state of the workhouse and the prison, as it regards physical comforts."

"Workhouses being so nearly connected with the prison :—on this ground I confess that my supply of useful and interesting reading to the prisoners is often checked by the apprehension of giving to the prison an advantage which the workhouse has not."-Report of the Chaplain to the Lewes House of Correction, 1842, p. 4, 6.

The mechanical obtuseness of the instrument by which we probe this aggravated wound, shows us to be as devoid of understanding as the mechanism which we delight in, and our hearts to be as hard as the material of which it is constructed. Our exclusive study and estimation of machinery has blunted our minds and understandings, and unfitted them for the study of human nature; and made all our works partake of the inferiority and uniformity which characterize the products of unintelligent machines. At the same time, love of money stifles the sympathies, which alone might somewhat correct this bluntness and ignorance with regard to the feelings and dispositions of the poor.

Machines may work up wool and cotton and flax; but even in these a distinction is made in respect of coarse and fine goods; and of all the texture is torn and fretted and deteriorated by the machinery. The texture of the mind and feelings is more delicate and intricate than that of the soft wool; the heartstrings are finer than the finest flax or cotton-even in the pauper. Know ye this, ye town-made commissioners? Know ye not this, ye steam-engine legislators? Know ye this, that there is no uniformity between the vicious and the virtuous; there is no possible uniformity of system for the wicked and the good; for the hardened and the sensitive. That which is wholesome and healthful to the one, is death to the other. There is no degree of severity and disgrace which commissioners will dare to inflict as a test, to which vice and idleness will not become inured and submit, rather than to honest industry. But grant that the limit may be attained of

swinish inertia and endurance.-That which is a sufficient test of want to the hardened and the brutalized, must be a torture worse than death to the undegraded and the sensitive.

Look at the fruits of the present system. It is a light thing that natural deaths should be increased by suffering; that children should be crippled for life, and drained of their strength, by infantine services to senseless machines; and that mortality should continually increase among the poor while it decreases among the rich ;-life has grown more cruel even than death itself, and his natural stroke must be anticipated.

October 9th, 1840.-A man attempted suicide, not bearing to see his children starve.

July 2nd, 1841.-A poor man hanged himself in Orange Street, rather than go to the union workhouse.

August, 1840.—A man named Garrat poisoned four of his children, not enduring to see them die from want.

Oh, horrible! Miss Martineau records it as a real fact, that two women having been brought to bed they quarrelled for the dead child. The order of nature is so reversed, the feelings of human nature are grown so unnatural, in this highly civilized country!

Money is such a god,—and bread at the same time is so hard to procure,—that a man put to death three of his own children by poisoning, for the sake of getting the money allowed by his club for burial money.

Is there not a noisome and grievous sore fallen upon them that have the mark of the beast? Is not Babylon fallen, and become the habitation of devils, and the

hold of every foul spirit, and the cage of every unclean and hateful bird?

One example was sufficient in Samaria, to fulfil the prophesied curse, that women should eat their own children. Surely the examples and proofs of the enormity of our distresses are multiplied tenfold. We want no outward enemy to do this. We are worse to our own souls than any foreign enemy. We lay siege to ourselves. And, for the very disease of appetite, in the midst of plenty, we devour our own flesh.

ESSAY XVII.

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE.

"THY WISDOM AND THY KNOWLEDGE IT HATH PERVERTED THEE."-ISA. XLVII. 10. "AND THE LORD SAID UNTO ME, TAKE UNTO THEE YET THE INSTRUMENTS OF A FOOLISH SHEPHERD. FOR, LO, I WILL RAISE UP A SHEPHERD IN THE LAND, WHICH SHALL NOT VISIT THOSE THAT BE CUT off, neither shall seek THE YOUNG ONE, NOR HEAL. THAT THAT IS BROKEN, NOR FEED THAT THAT STANDETH STILL; BUT HE SHALL EAT THE FLESH OF THE FAT, AND TEAR THEIR CLAWS IN PIECES. WOE TO THE IDLE SHEPHERD, THAT LEAVETH THE FLOCK! THE SWORD SHALL BE UPON HIS ARM, AND UPON HIS RIGHT EYE; HIS ARM SHALL BE CLEAN DRIED UP, AND HIS RIGHT EYE SHALL BE UTTERLY DARKened." -ZECH. XI. 15-17.

66 AND THE FIFTH ANGEL POURED OUT HIS VIAL Upon the SEAT OF THE BEAST; AND HIS KINGDOM WAS FULL OF DARKNESS."-REV. XVI. 10.

ANOTHER DARK AGE POSSIBLE-THE PRESS NO GUARANTEE AGAINST IT-EPHEMERAL LITERATURE MAY DESTROY THE HIGHER TASTESKNOWLEDGE OUR SUMMUM BONUM-SCIENCE MAKES US BLINDMORAL PHILOSOPHY IS EXTINCT AMONG US-PHILOSOPHY IS SHALLOW AND PUERILE-TENDS TO INDIFFERENTISM AND CONFUSION-OUR IDEA OF EDUCATION CONFOUNDS RELIGION AND LEARNING-WHICH ARE OPPOSITE PRINCIPLES-THE EDUCATION HERESY-EDUCATION INCREASES CRIME APOSTASY OF LEARNING.

If it were to be said, that we might possibly fall again into another dark age, it would be generally professed that there could be no proposition so monstrous as this. The notion that this enlightened era of the world,—so instructed, so inventive, so great and successful in all its operations, so fruitful in discoveries,―should ever again relapse towards a dark age, is just the most impossible of all events, and that from which we are the safest. "The press is of itself the sufficient guarantee against any failure or relapse from our present state of eminence in wisdom and intellect."