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ing only empirical and temporary remedies to so rooted an evil in the body politic, it affords a strong ground for suspecting that the whole system is a vicious one, and that the fundamental principles of all government, which can only be fixed by a deep knowledge of the nature of the beings to be ruled, are as yet mistaken at least, if not disregarded. In this state of things, with a danger great and imminent, and a government unable or unwilling to grapple with it, it is not wonderful that individuals who think they can see a remedy, should step forward to make the experiment; and if that experiment be, as it has proved itself in most instances, eminently successful, it is still less wonderful that it should have attracted the attention of the editors of the present series. Perhaps, even to the worthy persons who have set hand and heart to the work, the deeper causes of their success have hardly been apparent; for, to their credit, not their disparagement, let it be said, it was not among the great or the learned that it originated. Christian benevolence supplied the place of philosophy and science; but it can be displeasing to none, and may be useful to many, to shew that philosophy and science dictate the same course. We are not ashamed to have

learned from the Carpenter's son,—so his countrymen styled him when they meant to disparage his teaching, let us not now be ashamed to take another lesson from men in the same rank of life, and acknowledge that where the "disputer of this world" has now, as formerly, been at fault, they, in their simple following of their One Master, have found the path to safety and happiness for all, were it but possible to persuade others to pursue a like course with the same hearty devotion to the good of their fellow creatures, and the will of their Lord.

CHAPTER I.

THE DANGEROUS CLASSES.

HE very title of this chapter is, perhaps,

THE

the severest reproach which could be made to a government; for, undoubtedly, the object of all government deserving the name, ought to be that the people should be at once free and happy-free to do all that is not detrimental to the general happiness; free to enjoy the rational and moderate gratification of the needs of our common nature, and wise enough to be satisfied with this moderate gratification. If indeed any should suffer their animal passions to overpower their reason so far as to seek their gratification at the expense of others, then social law steps in, and forbids violence under pain of punishment; but at the same time says, "return to the path you have forsaken, and we offer you whatever is needful to human nature." This is a good government: and this is the beau ideal of the English law and constitution :—the good government for which many a field has

been fought over, and grown rich with the blood of those who poured it out freely for the cause they supported. For this, too, France has seen. tens of thousands of her inhabitants sacrificed; and thought, after each sanguinary revolution, that the good government was at last attained. Why then have France and England "Dangerous Classes," numerous and formidable enough to make it a question in the one country, of how long a government can exist at all in the presence of such an organised discontent? in the other, of how long a time may elapse before the same classes may rise to the same power? There is, however, this difference, that in France a large body of its legislators and people altogether ignore any future state of existence, and it is apparently no blot on a man's character to do so; in England it is bad taste to avow any such sentiment, and whatever indifference there may be in the heart, the lips must profess a belief in a God and an hereafter. I shall have occasion farther on to recur to this difference.

The Dangerous Classes in England, no less than in France, consist of those whom vice or poverty, or ignorance-generally all threehave placed in a state of warfare with social order. Society has done nothing for them, and

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they are soured and brutalized. When persons in this state of mind become numerous, there is always danger;-first, to individuals, from isolated acts of violence, and next, to the state, from their combined action: but, as is well observed by M. Fregier, in the work already mentioned, the law can do little or nothing in this matter;* for

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Dans les grandes villes et surtout a Paris la police ne peut exercer une surveillance assez directe ni assez étendue pour avoir action sur les individus qui ont coutume de mener une vie déréglée. Il faudrait qu'elle disposât de légions d'agens, et ceux qui connaissent les ressorts de cette grande et utile machine autrement que par les préjugés vulgaires, savent que ses moyens d'action sont très bornés en raison de l'immense population de Paris. D'ailleurs, la police a pour mandat de poursuivre les faits qualifiés contravention, délit, ou crime, par la loi pénale; et le vice proprement dit n'est pas punissable toutes les fois qu'il reste en dehors des prévisions de cette loi.... L'administration est désarmée en presence de l'homme vicieux, tantque ses excès ne tendent pas à troubler la paix de la citè. Elle ne peut juger de la corruption des différentes classes d'ouvriers que par les faits qui tombent sous sa jurisdiction; et ces faits, encores qu'ils aient leur source dans les desordres d'une mauvaise vie, ne forment qu'une faible partie de ceux que l'honnêteté publique réprouve."-Fregier. Des Classes Dangereuses. tom. i. p. 29.

If this be so in Paris, with how much more justice may the same observation be applied to London, where the population is so much more numerous.

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