disadvantages. The peasantry are in the lowest physical degradation; they derive the smallest possible quantum of happiness from their power of disposing of themselves and their families, and of acquiring property; while their rights of citizenship are too frequently perverted to purposes detrimental to themselves, and dangerous to the public peace.

When the slavery of the working classes had been gradually extinguished in Western Europe, it began to be seen that the theory of personal freedom could not be carried consistently into practical effect for the entire community. A man might, in the eye of the law, be presumed able and bound. to maintain himself and his family but want of industry, or intelligence, or providence, or the rapine of the strong, might reduce him to destitution and helplessness. Accordingly, unless many of the laboring class were to be permitted to die of hunger and neglect, it was necessary to find some means of alleviating their sufferings.

In further reply to the Edinburgh Reviewer, and to illustrate by examples our theory of "Cannibals All; or, Slaves without Masters," read the following from the North British Review for November, 1855, on the Rural Population of England:

Have we not come upon a very paradise of rural seclusion? Is it not a spot to be chosen by those who are intending to while away existence among the never tiring sweets of a country life? But let us step on a little way,

and overtake the group of children that is just now crossing the common. Alas! yet should we not refrain from expressing the sad feelings which the first sight of these. infant shadows has awakened? feelings heightened by contrast; for lately we were making our way through a fourth class street, where the prime necessities of life are amply provided for. Besides, if we look a second time at these shrunken forms-such is the beneficence of the Creator-we see that childhood will have its smiles, its laughs, its gambols, under conditions even the most forlorn. Moreover, there is, notwithstanding that famished, watery look-there is, taking the group altogether-there is an air of pure rusticity-there is an innocence, comparatively, and a modest propriety-there is a respectfulness in their style and deportment which is greatly in their favor when thought of in comparison with the bold, unreverential sauciness of the infant Hercules of manufacturing towns.

But look at these unfortunates-the infant serfs of a neglected rural district! Look at them physiologically -observe their lank, colorless hair, screening the sunken eye, and trailing upon the bony neck; look at the hollow cheeks, the candle-like arms, and the unmuscular shanks which serve the young urchins for legs! But are not these children breathing a pure atmosphere? Are they not Nature's own? Yes; but there is one thing wanting to them-one ominous word clears up the mystery. Starvation! Not, indeed, such starvation as brings the sorrows of a sad lot to a speedy end; but such as drags its pining sufferings out, through the overshadowed years of childhood and youth; through those spasmodic years

of manhood during which the struggle to exist wears an aspect of rugged rigor; and then through that residue of early decrepitude, haggard, bent, idiot-like, which is indeed an unblessed end of an unblessed existence. This rural population does pretty well if the father be ablebodied and sober, and the mother managing, through the summer season, of wheat-hoeing, hay-making, and wheat harvest; that is to say, when the labor of the mother and her children comes in to swell a little the weekly wages. During these weeks something of needed clothing is obtained, rent is paid up, and a pittance of animal food, weekly, is added to the bread, and the tea, and the potato of the seven months' diet.

It would be doing a wrong to our worthy farmer friends, and to the rural sporting gentry, to affirm that these miserables are actually dying of want. No, they are not dying, so as inquests must be held before they may be buried-would to God they were-they are the living-they are living to show what extremities men, women and children may endure, and yet not die; or what they hold to be worse, not to betake themselves to "the union!" But how do these same men, women and children pass five months of the year? Gladly would one find them curled round like hedgehogs, and hybernating in hollow trees; in rabbit burrows, lost to consciousness. We should, indeed, count it a miracle if, on a May morning, we were to see a group of human beings start up alive from the sward, along with the paiglus and the cowslips. But it is much less than a miracle to see the people of a depressed rural district stepping alive out of the winter months! * * *

The instances are extremely rare in which those who were born to the soil, and destined to the plow, rise above their native level. Such instances-two, three, or fivemight be hunted up, if an agricultural county were ransacked for the purpose; but the agricultural laborer, even if he had the brain and the ambition requisite, and if otherwise he could effect it, would seldom bring with him that which the social mass, into which he might rise, especially needs, namely, a fully developed and robust body. Meantime, what is it that is taking place in hundreds of instances, and every day, throughout the entire area of the manufacturing region? Men, well put together, and with plenty of bone, and nerve, and brain, using with an intense ardor those opportunities of advancement which abound in these spheres of enterprise and of prosperous achievement-such men are found to be making themselves heard of among their betters, are seen well-dressed before they reconcile themselves to the wearing of gloves; by rapid advances they are winning for themselves a place in society—a place which, indeed, they well deserve; and there they are doing what they had not thought of-they are regenerating the mass within which they have been received.

We extract the following from an article in the Edinburgh Review on Juvenile and Female Labor, in its January No., 1844. It is of the highest authority, being part of a report of commissioners appointed by Parliament, and stands endorsed as well by the action of Parliament as by the authority of the Reviewer:

Our limits will not allow us to go through all the employments reported upon in these volumes; but, as specimens, we will give a short account of the condition of the people engaged in Coal mines, Calico-printing, Metal wares, Lace-making, and Millinery.

Coal Mines.-The number of children and young persons employed in these mines is enormous; and they appear to commence working, even underground, at an earlier age than is recorded of any other occupation except lace-making. The Commissioners report

"That instances occur in which children are taken into these mines to work as early as four years of age, sometimes at five, not unfrequently between six and seven, and often from seven to eight, while from eight to nine is the ordinary age at which their employment commences. That a very large proportion of the persons employed in these mines is under thirteen years of age; and a still larger proportion between thirteen and eighteen. That in several districts female children begin to work in the mines as early as males.

"That the nature of the employment which is assigned to the youngest children, generally that of 'trapping,' requires that they should be in the pit as soon as the work of the day commences, and, according to the present system, that they should not leave the pit before the work of the day is at an end.

"That although this employment scarcely deserves the name of labor, yet, as the children engaged in it are commonly excluded from light, and are always without companions, it would, were it not for the passing and repassing of the coal carriages, amount to solitary confinement of the worst order.

"That in some districts they remain in solitude and darkness during the whole time they are in the pit, and, according to their own account, many of them never see