population have been long festering in misery in the south, at some six or seven shillings of weekly earnings, whilst others have been at the same time obtaining nearly half as much again in the north, at the same kind of employments.

Another illustration of the difficulty which attends every transfer of labour was presented by a circumstance which occurred in 1836. At that time wages being high, and labour much wanted, in Lancashire and Yorkshire, it was thought that great advantage would accrue from removing thither a certain number of families from some of the pauperized districts of Norfolk and Suffolk. The plan had every possible recommendation. The increase of wages obtained by the families who migrated was immense. They were kindly received by the people of the districts in which they settled. Most of them considered the change like an entrance into paradise, and yet it required the whole energy of the Poor Law Commission, then at the height of its influence, to overcome the obstructions which stood in the way of transferring a few hundred families. Nor was this all; the first reverse which took place in manufacturing prosperity, though it did not drive away the bulk of the emigrants, yet produced discontent amongst many, and powerful organs in the press denounced the whole operation retrospectively as a scandalous contrivance for saving the rates in Suffolk, and placing cheap labour at the command of the capitalists.

A still more striking instance of the inveterate strength of the habits which oppose transition from one employment to another, appears in the large body of the hand-loom weavers. Notwithstanding the long period that has elapsed since the depression of their wages, you may still go any day into Spitalfields and see one of these men, who, from his infancy, has been steeped in privation, and who yet not only does not change to a new employment himself--for the gnarled trunk will not readily assume a new inflexion—but is resolved to bequeath his inheritance of wretchedness, by condemning his innocent child to that loom over which he has so often bowed his own

despairing head'. Various circumstances have combined with peculiarities in the national character to give this immobility to the English labouring population. The Irish, who both migrate and adapt themselves to new circumstances with greater facility, have, as is well known, absorbed a large portion of the new employment in the manufacturing districts. The English labourer does not like to wander if he can avoid it, and the whole of the usages growing out of the poor law have helped to bind him to the district in which he has a settlement. There is no doubt that these obstacles to the movement of the population towards the districts of highest wages are diminishing; but what has been said is quite enough to show that the process of establishing anything like an equilibrium of wages must be one of the most gradual and protracted description.

Prospect of long-continued Changes.

A prospect, therefore, of change not leading to equilibrium or settlement, but to change after change, during a period of such length as to stretch out far beyond our power of conceiving it, is that which would seem to be before us; but two great features distinctly present themselves as almost certain to belong to our social condition during the lifetime of the present generation. Those are :—

1. A greatly accelerated growth of wealth and population, in all those districts which produce commodities for export.

2. A far more powerful tendency than ever to that kind of excess in the real and apparent amount of capital constantly seeking and unable to find employment, which has hitherto been found productive of disastrous and demoralizing speculations.

Lancashire, which may be taken as the type of all the

I have been informed that this practice still goes on in Spitalfields, by my esteemed friend, Mr. C. L. Corkran, the Minister of the Domestic Mission in Spicer Street, whose Christian zeal is combined with great powers of thought and observation.

manufacturing districts of England, will exhibit on the most gigantic scale the social changes resulting from a rapid increase of wealth. The new temptations will first be brought to bear upon that remarkable population, which, upon the whole, in fine native elements of character, can scarcely be surpassed in the world. The moral and intellectual features of the people have been painted by a highly-gifted writer' in a work of fiction, which contains more valuable truth than the bulk of histories. The story of " Mary Barton" is worthy of the study of statesmen. "Ivanhoe" and "Old Mortality" are both open to the cavils of the antiquarian, whose value for the letter makes him dead to the spirit of history; but they are in all essential respects more true and instructive exhibitions of the past than can be found in Robertson or Hume, or even in Macaulay. For not only are the peculiar insight and creative power of genius necessary to reproduce life and action, but freedom also, which the historian has not, to choose only such facts out of a highly complex mass as are capable of being reanimated by the imagination. The fiction referred to is, in this view, of more value than any Inspector's report, or than any statistical table. It shows that fine people, in the midst of all their hardships and temptations, as they think, feel, and act; the manly courage and veracity, the stubborn industry, the deep domestic attachments, exposed as these so often are to the rudest trials, nay, the rich and pregnant idiom, still preserved from an earlier time, and even those beautiful tastes for music and natural research, which here and there break out like glimpses of the pure blue sky of heaven through the heavy drifting clouds which overhang the habitual current of factory existence.

Structure of Society in Lancashire.

Amongst that people we shall see developed, on a more prodigious scale than has even yet taken place, a form of society of

1 Mrs. Gaskell.

too recent construction to possess the safe and well-connected gradations which elsewhere give stability to the social fabric in England. Those districts present the peculiar spectacle of a small and very wealthy class standing apart on a great height, far above the level which is occupied by the rest of the population. The connection between the two consists wholly of those harsh and cold pecuniary links which have never yet had time to become clothed with the soft and warm interlacement of affectionate moral associations. The work carried on by the two parties is essentially one of co-operation; but their moral attitude towards each other is much more one of hostility than one of friendship. The new feudalism, whenever the skeleton shall have put on flesh and blood, will be a higher form of society than the old; but the medieval revivalists are right in thinking that the earlier and now quite irrecoverable relations were more complete than the modern for their peculiar purpose. In the latter we see far more freedom, more multiplied and refined connections of interest between man and man, and, as a consequence, more power entrusted to each over the welfare of his fellows,-a far greater capacity, therefore, in the whole community to attain a grade of social elevation never before reached by a working class, but also a far greater capacity of moral deterioration and suffering.

Need of new Moral Influences.

Exactly in proportion to that widening in the prospect of good and evil which industrial development causes for the manufacturing population, is the need of new and powerful institutions for acting upon their whole intellectual and moral life, and which shall help to bind the loosened elements of society by stronger ties than any that can be formed by money. There is absolutely no instance in history of a social fabric having survived any serious shock through the strength of such ligaments as grow out of mere prudential calculations. From the nature of the human mind, such a thing could not

occur. Seasons of social trial, such as those of political excitement and popular distress, are seasons of passion, and when passion has the mastery, prudence is gone. At such times nothing will bear the strain but some old habit-something traditional and authoritative-some principle recognised as sacred, because it brings into the daily life of man higher and better influences than any that can ever flow from the weekly pay-table. Amongst a people so rich in moral capacities, the growth of these higher influences is not to be despaired of, if those who see and feel the need do what lies in their power. There is not, indeed, any time to lose. For schools in especial, invigorated by all the zeal that religious faith can infuse into them, the necessity is most urgent. But, if opportunities be not lost, there will be no need to look with regret to times gone by. We may yet realize something better than that chivalry which under its poetic mask concealed and sanctioned an abundance of brutality and disorder. To reform the criminal is, after all, a nobler thing than to lay the oppressor low, and the labours of Thomas Wright are a proof that even now souls heroic, in a higher fashion than any known to the Mannys or the Bayards, are to be found amidst the smoke of the cotton mills 1.

Reactions from Over-Trading.

The manufacturing population is exposed to one class of dangers from the mere increase of wealth outstripping the development of those higher tastes which would use it for other than sensual indulgences. But it is also exposed to another class of dangers from the peculiar liability of manufacturing industry to checks and reactions whenever it is to any very great extent governed by speculation. The expansibility of the factory system, and its power of rapidly glutting new markets, have been already noticed. The causes now and for a long time to

See the highly interesting account of Mr. Wright, in Household Words for March 6, 1852. May he be able to adhere to the simplicity of his former life, in spite of the temptations which his recent fame will raise up in his path!