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can be permanently relieved where they fall, there can be nothing like perfect freedom of action for working men. The spirit of the Poor Law, throughout its long, sad history of mistakes, has always tended to restrain the movements and fetter the independence, to lower the character and destroy the self-respect of the labouring classes; and it is difficult to understand how in these days of enlightenment, truth and freedom, one single clause of the absurd and costly enactments relative to settlement and removal, is allowed to remain among its statutes or disfigure its code of laws. There seems to be a disposition on the part of the present Poor Law Authorities to sweep away the abuses which have clung so long, with such barnacle-like tenacity to the administration of the Poor Law; to legislate more liberally with broader and wider views as regards the whole system and its machinery; and to draw clearly and sharply the line between the sick, afflicted, the old, the suffering, and the sturdy able-bodied paupers by profession. The Poor Law Board have great powers, and they should exercise those powers more despotically and rigorously, insisting that their regulations and orders should be carried out to the letter. The great majority of the people are in favour of a liberal and enlightened, but at the same time a discriminating policy of Poor Law Administration, and will applaud and encourage in every way a Ministry determined to enforce such measures. At this present time, when almost unexampled distress exists, by reason of slackness in most trades-when vagrancy is alarmingly increasing in most counties of England - encouraged to a certain extent by the unsatisfactory arrangements and provisions for "casual relief," there is much work shaped out for the Poor Law Board, and the occasion demands most emphatically that there should be a thorough revision and readjustment of the whole set of laws relating to the vital question of Poor Relief in this Kingdom. This is very necessary for all classes of labourers, especially for agricultural labourers, who have been kept down systematically and

retarded in civilisation and progress in every way, first by the operation of the parochial system with its narrow, petty, partial government, only just recently swept away; by the laws of settlement and removal now fortunately modified-but still having traces of the old evil; and lastly by the "Unional system," at present holding everywhere. The Poor Law Board have, among other signal instances of their determination to reform and innovate, given opportunities to paupers to emigrate under certain circumstances and upon certain conditions, and to certain places. Emigration is obviously one of the most prominent methods of raising the wages of labour in every class throughout the land. As opposed to migration, emigration will effectually raise wages, while the former-the mere moving of bodies of men from place to place according to supply and demand—would merely equalise them. But the majority of agricultural labourers are attached to their homes, to their villages; and they would rather bear their present privations and short commons than sever the associations which surround them.

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'Adscripti Glebæ" by habit and profession, their minds and whole existences are also solely devoted to the farm upon which their forefathers toiled. For places besides the parish and the market town they have no aspirations-no realisation of anything good, important, substantial or in any way desirable beyond the limits of a walk. Their want of education strengthens these notions and confirms this torpor. Nor has emigration ever yet been conducted upon sound and correct principles so as to give confidence to working men, or to inspire them with the idea that foreign lands have advantages and give opportunities not dreamed of in their philosophy. Education is however slowly advancing, and agricultural labourers, dimly as yet, see its powers:-it is beginning to bear fruit. Knowledge is being disseminated among them, which will enable them to understand for themselves the real gain to be derived from emigration, as to what are the best

countries for emigration, and the bearings of the whole question. Education will soon enable them to discover, not only what their best course is, but who their best friends are to regard the blatant, interested, self-constituted champions of the working man in their true light, and to arrive at the truth; but they must to a great extent work out their own social improvement; they must see that they cannot expect relief to come to them sitting with folded arms awaiting its arrival; but that they must assist its advent by availing themselves of all educational advantages, by practising the great virtues of self-respect and self-restraint, losing no fair and legal opportunities of advancement.

CHAPTER III.

T has been shown that the wages of agricultural labourers are not likely to be raised very materially throughout the country, unless the working population of the rural districts is very much reduced in number, either by emigration or other processes of absorption. So long as the main summer work upon farms is performed by hand labour, there must be a large staff of hands kept somehow through the winter, upon wages which bear no proportion to those obtaining in the summer time, and the two seasons of winter and summer taken together give an average of

wages which in the best district is but a small and miserable pittance. Not much improvement is to be expected until the agricultural labourers get their eyes opened to the real bearings of the question, and nothing is more calculated to bring about this end than education in the general acceptation of the term. A knowledge of the situation in its truth and reality is only to be acquired by education, for a man's self and by a man's self alone. Such knowledge is reliable and is to be acted upon, while the froth spouted out by demagogues-mere windy verbiagehas no soundness or is at best mere third-hand and third-rate counsel. Men must think and act for themselves in the struggle for bread and independence; and one of the primary and most prominent results of education is the enlargement of the powers of thought and reflection. As education increases so do the scales disappear from the mental vision. Wide fields of infor

mation are spread out before the intellectual vision as the mists of ignorance clear away; and he who ranges far enough will gradually attain more light and truth. The ascent of Mount Parnassus is difficult and tiresome, the steeps are sharp and discouraging; but when once the wide table-lands are gained, the rewards are ample. The water of the fount of Helicon is grateful indeed to the thirsty seeker. The pursuit of knowledge refines and elevates; the acquisition of knowledge confers invaluable power. Lord Bacon's truest aphorism is that "knowledge is power," and it is peculiarly applicable to working men, for while they remain in the outer Egyptian darkness of ignorance, they neither dream of nor desire any state or condition beyond their own poor silly one; nor if they did, could they know in the least how to set about improving or bettering it. On the other hand, the instructed man with a mighty power in his mind- —a spur in his side which will not let him remain in the supine stagnation of his forefathers-is ever aiming upwards and onwards. His character is improved, his self-respect heightened; he has learned to labour and to wait, and to seize at the right time upon the golden opportunity. Whether the occasion be migration or emigration or any other means of improvement, when it arrives it is recognised and seized upon at once. This power has urged men across the wide seas to the sunny shores of the Antipodes, and has enabled them to acquire independence and comparative wealth, in lands whose names were even unknown a generation or two since. Even in this pauper-haunted land education has raised and will raise working men to affluence. In short, without this power it is hardly too much to say that nothing can be done, no steps gained in the ladder of life. With it the topmost rung may be attained-nothing is impossible. This is of education is the abstract, not of any peculiar or particular amount, nor of any particular school or teaching, for it must be said at the outset that neither the Blue Coat School nor the

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