SUPP

CHAPTER II.

SOCIAL GOVERNMENT.

UPPOSING, reader, that whether you are manufacturer, master-workman, owner of land, or private individual, you are now thoroughly impressed with the duty of attending to the welfare of your dependants; I proceed to make some general reflections which may aid you in your outset, or sustain you in the progress, of your endeavours.

And, first, let me implore you not to delay that outset. Make a beginning at once, at least in investigating the matters to which I have striven to draw your attention. It is no curious work of art that you have to take up; it requires no nicety of apprehension;

you can hardly begin wrongly, I do not say in action, but in the preparation for action. However little of each day you may be able to call your own for this purpose, it is better to begin with that little than to wait for some signal time of leisure. Routine encumbers us; our days are frittered away by most minute employments that we cannot control; and, when spare moments do occur, we are mostly unprepared with any pursuits of our own to go on with. Hence it is, that the most obvious evils go on, generation after generation, people not having time, as they would say, to interfere. Men are for ever putting off the concerns which should be dearest to them to a 66 more convenient season," when, as they hope, there may be fewer trifles to distract their attention: but a great work, which is to commence in the heart, requires not to have the first stone laid for it, with pomp, upon some holiday. It is good to have made a beginning upon it at any time.

The wisdom, or the folly, of delay is in most instances like that of a traveller coming to a stream, and wishing to ford it, yet con

tinuing his journey along its banks: and whether this is wise, or not, depends mainly on the simple fact, of whether he is walking up to the source, or down to the fall. The latter is apt to be the direction in the case of our generous resolves: their difficulty widens as we delay to act upon them.

Throughout the progress of your work, there is nothing that you will have more frequently to be mindful of than your views with respect to self-advancement. To take one form of it, the acquisition of money. Money, as Charles Lamb, a great despiser of cant, observed, is not dross, but books, pictures, wines, and many pleasant things. Still I suspect that money is more sought after to gratify vanity, than to possess the means of enjoying any of the above named pleasant things. Money is so much desired, because it is a measure of success; so much regretted, because we fancy the loss of it leaves us powerless and contemptible. That kind of satire, therefore, which delights to dwell upon the general subserviency to wealth is not likely to make men less desirous of riches.

But a man would be likely to estimate more reasonably the possession of money and of all kinds of self-advancement, if he did but perceive, that even a man's worldly success is not to be measured by his success for himself alone, but by the result of his endeavours for the great family of man.

There is a source of contemplation which nature affords us, one, too, that is open to the dweller in crowded cities as well as to the shepherd on Salisbury plain, and which might sometimes suggest the foolishness of an inordinate love of money. Consider the prospect which each unveiled night affords us, telling of wonders such as we have hardly the units of measurement to estimate; and then think how strange it is that we should ever allow our petty personal possessions of to-day to render us blind to the duties, which, alone, are the great realities of life. There was some excuse, perhaps, for the men of olden time, who looked upon this earth, the birth-place of their gods, as no mean territory. That they should dote upon terrestrial things was not to be wondered at. But what is to be said for us who know that this

small planet is but a speck, as it were, from which we look out upon the profusion of immensity. To think that a man, who knows this, should nevertheless not hesitate to soil his soul, lying here, cringing there, pursuing tortuous schemes of most corrupt policy; or that he should ever suffer himself to be immersed, innocently, if it may be so, in selfish, worldly pursuits, forgetful of all else; when, at the best, it is but to win some acres of this transitory earth, or to be noted as one who has been successful for himself. The folly of the gambling savage, who stakes his liberty against a handful of cowrie shells is nothing to it.

Perhaps the next thing that is likely to divert you from useful endeavours for the benefit of others is fear of criticism: you do not know what the world will say: indeed, they may pronounce you an enthusiast, which word, of itself, is an icy blast of ridicule to a timid mind. You shudder at doing anything unusual, and even hear by anticipation the laugh of your particular friends. You are especially ashamed at appearing to care for