to, no nation has properly and adequately availed itself of the advantages which increased and increasing national wealth holds out in respect of moral advancement. Some remarks on the difficulties and dangers most peculiar to a wealthy community, ' and on the faults which its members are most apt to commit, in 'not rightly availing themselves of its peculiar advantages,—in not rightly estimating those duties, and guarding against those dangers which are especially connected with such a state of 'things,'-form the subject of the concluding lecture.

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Many are the circumstances incident to a wealthy community, which may lessen or counteract the favourable results of national prosperity in reference to the moral condition of society. Among these, Dr. Whately enumerates, unwise laws, such as gamelaws, and laws whose object is the exclusion of foreign productions for the supposed benefit of domestic industry; the tendency of such enactments being to arm against the laws large bodies of persons not, in the outset, destitute of all moral principle, but 6 whose mode of life is a fit training to make them become so, namely poachers and smugglers.' Slavery, war, a corrupt religion, a defective state of criminal law, are also briefly noticed among the active causes of demoralization; and also, an excessive inequality in the distribution of wealth. 'If a large proportion of the wealth of a community consist of the enormous and overgrown fortunes of a few, that community has by no means such pro'mising prospects in respect of the intellectual and moral advancement of the rest of the people, or even of the possessors of those 'fortunes, with one that enjoys a greater diffusion of wealth.' Here, the question may suggest itself, How far is such excessive inequality the natural and certain concomitant of an advanced stage of national prosperity? and if not, to what errors in legislation is the evil attributable? A satisfactory solution of this most delicate problem would be one of the most valuable contributions to political science that could be offered. One circumstance noticed by the Author as more immediately connected with national wealth, which may prove unfavourable to national morality, is a consequence of the division of labour, when carried to a great extent ;- the evil of reducing each man too much to the condi'tion of a mere machine, or rather of one part of a machine; the ' result of which is, that the mind is apt to be narrowed, the in'tellectual faculties undeveloped, or imperfectly and partially developed, through the too great concentration of the attention on the performance of a single and sometimes very simple opera'tion.' The evil is pointed out by Adam Smith in a passage cited by the learned Lecturer. The man whose whole life is spent in per'forming a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding

out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He 'naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a hu< man creature to become. His dexterity at his own parti'cular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But, in every improved and civilized society, this is the state in which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must ne'cessarily fall, unless Government takes some pains to prevent it." This consequence of the division of labour is far, however, from being peculiar to an improved or wealthy state of society: it must equally attend upon the very earliest stages of civilization. Even in that rude state which precedes the introduction or improvement of manufactures, the ploughman, the woodman, the farrier, the wheelwright, the carpenter, the tinman, and other humble artisans and labourers, would be placed in the condition here described as so fatal to intelligence; that of spending a whole life in the performance of a few simple operations. Nor would it be found at all borne out by fact, that the dexterous mechanic whose employment is absolutely uniform and stationary, is, on the average, inferior in understanding, judgement, or a susceptibility of generous, noble, or tender sentiment,' to the agricultural labourer, the shepherd, the pedlar, or the backwoodsman. Dr. Whately admits, that Adam Smith, in the long passage extracted, greatly overrates the intelligence, thoughtfulness, and 'mental activity of barbarians,' which he contrasts with the mental torpor of the lower orders in a civilized society; if he has 'not much exaggerated the stupid narrowmindedness of the la'bouring classes where their education is totally neglected.' There is exaggeration in both parts of the picture; and, besides this, the very important fact is overlooked, that, in the barbarous societies, that education of the lower classes is impossible, which the division of labour so greatly facilitates. The evils here attributed to an excessive division of labour, are chargeable only on the exaction of excessive labour. It is not the labourer's being reduced to the condition of one part of a machine by the simple, uniform nature of his employment, that leads to the unhappy results described, but his being compelled to work sixteen hours of the four-and-twenty in order to earn a bare subsistence; which is no necessary consequence of the division of labour, nor, we apprehend, of an advancement in national wealth and prosperity. Another inconvenience adverted to as resulting from a high degree of division of labour, is, the additional liability to the ' evil of being thrown out of employment.' This inconvenience, though it may be greatly mitigated, cannot, Dr. Whately thinks, be entirely obviated in an advanced state of society, without not only foregoing the advantage of the division of labour, but intro

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ducing the most oppressive compulsory enactments. It is, how ever, a fortunate countervailing circumstance, that, in those employments which are the most liable to fluctuation, wages are generally the highest; so that, in prosperous times, the workman of steady habits may make some little provision that shall enable him, when employment falls short, to subsist for a time, till he can procure his livelihood by other means or in another neighbourhood. Of these two evils, however, the contraction of the faculties and mental debasement resulting from a too limited range of occupation, and the danger of being thrown out of work, the appropriate remedies are to be found, Dr. Whately justly remarks, in judicious education and habits of provident frugality.' And that advanced state of Society which is the most exposed 6. to the evils, is also the most favourable to the application of the ' remedies.'

A small degree of care in education will diminish the extreme helplessness which is often found in manufacturing labourers. The women in particular are often so improvident, in devoting themselves exclusively and unremittingly to a single operation, for the sake of earning higher wages for the present, that they grow up ignorant of the common domestic offices; and when they marry, are wholly dependent on such as they hire for those purposes; so that a fall of wages, or want of work, reduces their families to a state of much greater discomfort than others, with the same absolute poverty, have to encounter. The plan has been adopted, accordingly, in many schools, of teaching the children, even of both sexes, both needlework and several other little manual arts, which at all times may be a convenience to them, and, in emergencies, may materially alleviate the pressure of distress.' p. 224.

The importance of this suggestion will be appreciated by all who are practically acquainted with the condition of the lower classes of our towns and villages, and who are aware how much the suffering and moral degradation of the poor are increased by their ignorance of the most needful arts of domestic economy. 6 Cottage ' comforts' will cost one family less than a bare subsistence will another *. Nor does that deserve the name of education, which

may

* A case in point has recently come under our observation, which be worth detailing. We know two families residing in the same neighbourhood, and in houses of the same rent; the father and mother, in each instance, hard-working, honest, and sober persons. The one man earns twenty shillings a week, and his wife and boys earn several shillings in addition. The other man earns eleven shillings a week ; his wife, nothing; and he has two or three unproductive children. Yet, the latter family live in a state of comparative comfort: the former, from the mismanagement of the ill-taught, though well-meaning wife, are in a condition of perpetual discomfort and uneasiness.

VOL. VII.-N.S.

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does not tend to qualify for the most necessary employments of after life.

Dr. Whately is no advocate, however, for a niggard, jealous, timid, and reluctant impartation of the boon of education to the lower classes. He is the firm, explicit and enlightened friend of the most liberal diffusion of knowledge. His sentiments on this point do him the highest honour; and we cannot but rejoice that Oxford should have heard such doctrines from one of her Professors; still more, that they should have proceeded from one whose recent elevation to almost the highest ecclesiastical dignity in poor benighted Ireland, will place in his hands so much power and influence at this critical juncture. Mandeville, in a treatise against Sunday Schools, throws out a remark worthy of a West India planter or a Turkish pasha: 'If a horse knew as much as a man, I should not like to be his rider.' Dr. Whately forcibly replies:

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There is a reason for this, beyond what was in the Author's mind. It would be not only unsafe, but unjust, to treat a rational being (which on that supposition the horse would be) as a slave; governed not for his own benefit, (however humanely,) but for his master's. If, in any country, it is the settled plan to keep the lower orders in this kind of brutish subjection, it is at least consistent to keep them in brutish ignorance also. But where they are admitted not only to freedom, but also, many of them, to a share of political power, it is the height of inconsistency to neglect any means of instructing them how to make a good use of their advantages. It seems preposterous to reckon a man fit to take a part in the management of a ship, and yet unfit to learn any thing of navigation.' p. 218.

Many apprehend mischief from what they call over-education of the mass of the people; the too great amount, or too sudden increase of the knowledge placed within their reach,-of their taste for intellectual pursuits, and their disposition to think and judge for themselves. They are thence, it is said, disposed to be puffed up with conceit at their superiority to their unenlightened forefathers, arrogant, and averse to subordination; deeming themselves competent to decide on every question; rashly embracing crude theories, and craving after innovation, from an idea that all ancient institutions must be either obsolete remnants of a state of general barbarism and darkness, or contrivances of fraudulent oppressors for imposing on the simple.

'I am far from thinking that serious dangers of this kind do not arise as accompaniments of the progress of Society, in wealth, and in knowledge and intelligence. But I am convinced they do not arise from the too great amount, or too great diffusion, of mental cultivation, but from misdirected and disproportionate cultivation. And this misdirection does not consist so much in the imparting of knowledge which had better be withheld from a particular class, or the exercise of faculties which, in them, had better be left dormant, as in the violation of proportion-the neglect of preserving a due balance between different studies and different mental powers. No illustration will better ex

plain my meaning than that of the bodily growth. A child neglected at the period of growth, will become ricketty and deformed, from some of the limbs receiving perhaps no absolutely undue increase, but a disproportioned increase; while others, do not indeed shrink, nor perhaps cease to grow, but do not increase at the same rate. In such a case,

we sometimes say that the head or the trunk is grown too large for the limbs; meaning, however, not absolutely, but relatively ;-not that the growth of one part is in itself excessive, but that the other parts have not kept pace with it. And though such a distortion is worse even than a general dwarfish and stunted growth, it is obvious that a full and regular development of all the parts, is far preferable to either; and also, that it is, when Nature is making an effort towards growth, not only more desirable, but more practicable, to make that an equable and well-proportioned growth, than to repress it altogether. We should endeavour rather to strengthen the weak parts, than to weaken the strong. But if we take no pains to do either the one or the other, it is plain that both the corporeal, and also the intellectual and moral expansion, must lead to disease and deformity.

As far as relates to Religion, the most important point of all, both in itself, and as far as relates to the question now more immediately before us, I will avail myself of the words of a recent publication, which express sentiments in which I wholly coincide.

"A vast and momentous moral crisis is rapidly approaching-the rise of Education throughout the mass of the People. Amidst pretensions to sensible spiritual communion on the one hand, and a careful avoidance of recognising any divine interposition on the otheramidst theories invented or imported, that would subject the sacred volume to the rules of mere ordinary criticism, opposed only in partial and personal controversy-a large portion of the community, which has been hitherto uneducated, is suddenly roused into free inquiry, and furnished with ability to perceive all that darkens and deforms the subject; but-it must be owned and lamented-not furnished with that spiritual training, which alone enables the inquirer to see his way through it.

"It is not that the people at large are without any religious and moral instruction; it is not that they have absolutely less now than heretofore; they have probably more. But the progress of spiritual and worldly knowledge is unequal; and it is this inequality of progress that constitutes the danger. It is a truth which cannot be too strongly insisted on, that if the powers of the intellect be strengthened by the acquisition of science, professional learning, or general literature-in short, secular knowledge, of whatever kind, without being proportionately exercised on spiritual subjects, its susceptibility of the objections which may be urged against Revelation will be increased, without a corresponding increase in the ability to remove them. Conscious of having mastered certain difficulties that attach to subjects which he has studied, one so educated finds it impossible to satisfy himself about difficulties in Revelation; Revelation not having received from him the same degree of attention; and, forgetful of the unequal distribution of his studies, charges the fault on the subject. Doubt, discontent, and contemptuous infidelity, (more frequently secret than avowed,)