charitable allowance put together, come in fact to make out no more than the scanty remuneration which is ever attendant on an overdone employment. Thus it is, that men who, with the clearing away of goods from the market, might in a few monthshave been earning an adequate subsistence for their families, and that in the shape of a fair and honourable recompense for their work, be forced to drivel out a much longer period in a penury composed of two stinted ingredients, and rendered more degrading by the contribution which charity has made to it.

This is just the operation of Poor-rates in England, when employed in supplying the inadequacy of wages. They ultimately displace as much in the shape of wages, as is rendered in the shape of charity; and men who, if the regulation of their numbers had been left to natural causes, would have continued scarce enough to have dictated the remuneration of an entire maintenance for their work, have been collected in such multitudes, as to have stripped themselves of all control over this matter, and brought the question of their subsistence under the determination of Church-wardens and overseers. It is thus that this fallacious system has inflicted on the labouring classes of that country a permanent degradation. What the Legislature intended as a boon, has turned out to be a sore bereavement. Had they confined it to one class of labourers, as weavers for example, then weavers would just have sunk under the oppression of this apparent privilege, and been singled out to public notice as the miserable and degraded caste of our nation. They would thereby have descended beneath the level of all other labourers, and been, in our land, what hewers of wood, and drawers of water were in the land of Judea. And these are not the judicious friends of the poor, but their unwise advocates, or perhaps their designing agitators, who would plead, as a right of theirs, for that which passes in the first instance into the pockets of their employers, and then goes to stamp an unnatural cheapness on the produce of their employment.

Such works as those of Mr Cleland are of great value, and are well fitted to pioneer the way of the economist to a sound and experimental eonclusion on questions of great interest. He has extended his survey beyond the precincts of the immediate neighbourhood of Glasgow; or rather, instead of a survey, he has given an estimate of the country looms now employed by the manufacturers of Glasgow, and compares it with the number employed antecedently to the present depression in that branch of our manufactures. We should like to see a similar estimate for Manchester and its vicinity; as nothing could be more important than to learn the proportion between the em

ployed and unemployed looms in the great weaving districts of England, and thus to ascertain what effect the Poor-laws have had in fixing the labourers of a declining branch of industry down to their employment, and so in increasing and accelerating its declension. It is quite clear, that neither the feeling nor the clamour of distress were at all less in the country where a compulsory provision has a full, than in the country where it has yet only obtained a partial operation. But it were desirable to know in how far, allured by the promise of their own institutions, the weavers of England were kept together at their work, instead of going off by those outlets which, in times of fluctuation and distress, enable the people of every country, in a certain degree, to shift their wonted employments.

And here we may state an inequality between Scotch and English operatives, to which many of our Southern neighbours may never perhaps have adverted. Should the Poor-rates of England reduce the nominal price of weaving there to five shillings a week, that becomes the real price to the operative in Scotland. This at least holds true, without any qualification, in as far as the Poor-rate for manufacturing workmen is contributed, not by the capitalists who employ them, but by other capitalists, or by the landed interest of the country. The manufacturers of Glasgow must be undersold by those of Manchester, if the latter can hire their workmen with a bounty upon their work, in the shape of a legal provision; and, to put the capitalists in both places on a footing, the whole hardship of the difference must fall on the weavers whom they employ. To obtain an equalization, there are only two methods; either to extend the Poor-rate to Scotland, or to abolish that part of the English practice, by which the fund is made applicable to a defect of work, or to a defect of wages. We are quite satisfied, that the effect of the former method would be, to sink the whole profession, as by a death-warrant, into a state of helpless and incurable degradation-and that the effect of the latter method would be, to raise the price of weaving to the rate of allowance that is now made up of its present nominal price, and of the supplemental charity which goes to the English operative. It would ultimately work out a great and a glorious emancipation for the weavers of England; and, to Scotland, it would come with all the force and charm of an immediate deliverance. And, placed as we are, in the pestilent neighbourhood of our sister country, we would plead for this partial abolition of her whole charitable system, as the prelude to a gradual and entire abolition; so that this worthless and pernicious nuisance which her

mistaken policy has entailed upon our empire, may, in time, be utterly swept away.

There is another, and certainly a better, way of meeting this distress. Instead of supplying the deficient wages of the operatives in their employment, take so many of them away from their employment. Provide other work for them, where they may have a somewhat better remuneration than they have at their own work. In this way you will disengage so many, for a season, from a line of industry that is already overdone, and perhaps may transfer a number of weavers permanently to other employments. Thus may the supply of goods be reduced beneath the consumption, and the market, relieved of its superabundant stock, return to natural prices, and a fair remuneration for the operative. This, certainly, is a far more legitimate object for a public subscription, than the former; and the only hazard is, that after it is once started, and is obtruded on the view of the workmen as a likely expedient for their deliverance, it may not be supported with enough of vigour and liberality on the part of the benevolent. For, to pay the difference between bad wages and better, is not nearly so expensive as to pay the better wages altogether:-And it is this which tempts the charitable to the first method of supplying, rather than to the second method of withdrawing; and, even when the second method is entered upon by any public or combined movement, it is scarcely ever done in such a style of magnitude as to work any sensible effect. There will, no doubt, be a certain fraction withdrawn; but probably a very small proportion of the number that would need to be withdrawn, or of the number that would withdraw themselves, if left to prosecute their own expedients, without any delusive influence being set up to deceive and to detain them in their present situation, Government, for example, has held out the resource of emigration. But this they ought not to have done, unless they were in a condition to prosecute the enterprise on so great a scale as to work a national effect. Otherwise, they have only diverted individuals from their own measures for emigration, and in fact have lessened the relief of this expedient to the whole country-for many have trusted in this way to facilities which have not been realized. The city of Glasgow, in like manner, employs a few hundred operative weavers at a public work, the expense of which is in part defrayed by a public subscription, But, by this very measure, she has detained within her territory many more operatives than she employs. She has held out a prospect of employment at home which she has not been able to realize; and has so slackened the emigration to Ireland

and other parts of the country, that we have at this moment more occupied looms in consequence of the public work thus provided, than we would have had without it. When the transference was left to itself, we find that there was an abandonment of looms to the extent of three thousand and upwards. The whole public work takes up scarcely as many hundreds. But the name and the expectation of it detained a great many more; of whom, a few were admitted to the privilege of this extra employment, and the rest were obliged to hang on under the chance either of an enlargement or a vacancy. So that all which has been publicly done in this way, is rather an apology for a good thing, than the good thing itself. It was great, perhaps, in reference to the sums contributed by several individuals; but quite of Lilliputian dimensions in reference to the evil to be combated. And it were well that all corporations, and more especially Government, the greatest corporation in our land, were more aware of the insignificance of all that they have done, and, perhaps, of all that they can do, to moderate the evils of a deranged and distempered commerce.

But the same powerlessness of effort cannot be charged on the benevolence of wealthy and enlightened individuals. Government is one, and city corporations are few; but rich individuals are many: and, were a wise direction given to their charity, there is no doubt of a great and valuable result coming out of it. The efforts of landholders and country gentlemen to procure extra work for our weavers, have created a most important and salutary diversion in our present emergencies. A list of all the individuals who have thus signalized themselves, would furnish a most gratifying record of the kind sympathy that is to be found, in our day, under the guidance of wisdom and just discernment. The names of the Duke of Hamil-. ton, and Lords Belhaven and Douglas, in Lanarkshire, and of Mr Maxwell in the county of Renfrew, have a foremost place in this history of pure and honourable patriotism.

But there is yet another and a far more excellent waynot to be attained, certainly, but by a change of habit among the workmen themselves--yet such a change as may be greatly promoted by those whose condition or character gives them influence in society. We have always been of opinion, that the main use of a Savings Bank was, not to elevate labourers into the class of capitalists, but to equalize and improve their condition as labourers. We should like them to have each a small capital,

* It should be remarked here, that though upwards of 5000 looms were found unoccupied, yet nearly 2000 out of the whole 18,000 would, upon an average, be unoccupied even in ordinary times.

not wherewith to become manufacturers, but wherewith to control manufacturers. It is in this way (and we can see no other) that they will be enabled to weather all the fluctuations to which trade is liable. It is the cruel necessity of overworking which feeds the mischief of superabundant stock, and which renders so very large a transference of hands necessary ere the market can be relieved of the load under which it groans and languishes. Now, this is a necessity that can only be felt by men on the brink of starvation, who live from hand to mouth, and have scarcely more than the day's earnings for the subsistence of the day. Let these men only be enabled, on the produce of former accumulations, to live through a season of depression while they work moderately, or, if any of them should so choose it, while they do not work at all,—and they would not only lighten such a period of its wretchedness, but they would inconceivably shorten its duration. The overplus of manufactured goods, which is the cause of miserable wages, would soon clear away under that restriction of work which would naturally follow on the part of men who did not choose, because they did not need, to work for miserable wages. What is now a protracted season of suffering and discontent to the lower orders, would, in these circumstances, become to them a short but brilliant career of holiday enjoyment. The report of a heavy downfal of wages, instead of sounding like a knell of despair in their ears, would be their signal for rising up to play. We have heard, that there does not exist in our empire a more intellectual and accomplished order of workmen than the weavers of Paisley. It was their habit, we understand, to abandon their looms throughout the half or nearly the whole of each Saturday, and to spend this time in gardening, or in the enjoyment of a country walk. It is true, that such time might sometimes be viciously spent; but still we should rejoice in such a degree of sufficiency among our operatives, as that they could afford a lawful day of every week for their amusement, and still more, that they could afford whole months of relaxed and diminished industry, when industry was underpaid. This is the dignified posture which they might attain; but only after the return of better times, and through the medium of their own sober and determined economy. Every shilling laid up in store, and kept in reserve for the evil day, would strengthen the barrier against such a visitation of distress and difficulty as that from which we are yet scarcely emerging. The very habits too, which helped them to accumulate in the season of well paid work, would form our best guarantee against the vicious or immoral abuse of this accumulation, in the season either of entire or comparative inactivity. We would expect an increase. of reading, and the growth of literary cultivation, and the steady

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