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pulse, wages reduced to the lowest point of sustentation, through every hour hanging on abject conditions, every expression of personal preference in religion and politics scornfully denied,-we may wonder at their forbearance. They are often cared for less than the clod of the valley, or the herd of the stall. shall be improved. Breeds shall be perfected. Stock shall be adjudged with honour. Cultivation shall be assisted with every experiment and be rewarded with every prize. And then, when some monstrous growth, some crass carcase, some field implement, has been lauded to the echo which applauds again, a poor labourer is introduced, and he shares in the honours of the show, for having brought up so many children without parish pay! Nature and ingenuity have been racked in the other instances of success, and surely not the less in this! It is an appropriate climax to the fete! An admiring district can scarcely determine where the greater glory of invention falls!

The question of the comparative morality of these departments is, of all, the most important. It is not to be decided by a glance. It is commonly taken for granted that the country is the favourite scene and haunt of the virtues. The cottier is the Adamite dressing his plat on the outer fence of Eden. The village green and oak might be the neighbourhood of Mamre. Here simplicity has received no blight, and purity no taint. Pastorals fill the air, and the melody of woods and brooks swells the chant of native reeds. But

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there may be observers who yield to no such romance. They yet hold that, in the rural portions of the kingdom, there is a more spotless state of morals. Now will it be contended that there is in them as exalted sense, as generous practice, of morals as is often demonstrated in our city-marts? Is it maintained that the vices of our towns are not rife in our villages? Perhaps the complaint simply respects the number of the offences. Our County calendars must determine that. Then do we feel bold in the argument, that the most numerous and most odious crimes come not from the towns, but from scattered hamlets and solitary dwellings. The Quarter Sessions, it will be said, dispose of cases that come from the towns, and they are not heard of in the gaol delivery of the shire. But these enormities, wherever committed, must go to the higher court. And are there not Sessions for the counties and divisions of counties, as well as for the boroughs? Let the truth,--it is extorted from those who are impartial,-be simply told. The proportion of criminals to every thousand inhabitants is higher in Worcestershire than in Middlesex, and is equal to that of Lancashire. Herefordshire exceeds Leicestershire. Dorset surpasses Nottinghamshire. The county of Oxford is on a par with that of Stafford. Does this account justify the transcendence of rural, over municipal, order and virtue? It may not be improper to throw a classical relief over the comparison. Where did the ancient Mythology place

its most monstrous forms? In the gardens, by the streams, among the woods. There range Pan and Silenus the Sylvani, the Satyrs, the Fauns. The Dryads are also there. They approach not the cities nor disfigure the towns.

The manufacturing and the agricultural provinces have sometimes been in a state bordering upon insurrection. The cause has been some imputed grievance. When the flail was to be superseded by the thrashing machine, the farmers' men were roused to phrenzy. Their revenge was not only against the machine,which might be expected, but upon the stacked corn. Now this was blind and wicked. Incendiarism is still the crime of the day. It stalks with its brand among the fairest gardens of our country. It spreads on every hand suspense and panic. Very recently there rose up a band of marauders in the trading districts, gathering the idle and the vicious as it advanced. It was an invasion. It insisted on the universal suspension of manufacture. Its plea was the injustice of existing wages. Save in one spot, and nearly where the tumult begun, there was no depredation on property; in no instance was there violence on life, except in withstanding force. With this wild proceeding, this profligate interference, there was little sympathy. It was rightly judged and strongly condemned. "A poor man that oppresseth the poor is like a sweeping rain which leaveth no food."* Like a torrent it died

* Prov. xxviii. 3.

away. Between the two courses of proceeding there was almost every advantageous contrast on the side of the manufacturing workmen. There was no deep-laid plot, no vindictive passion, no long-sustained resistance, no midnight concealment, no cowardly agent, no reckless devastation. The power for mischief was for days uncontrollable, but it was spontaneously stayed. It differed much in this. The one was an agrarian rebellion, the peasantry taking a general part in it, or harbouring those who did. It lasted for years. Its dastard fires still blaze. The other was a rolling movement from the extreme verge of the manufactures it was precipitated upon an unwilling people: it sought a definite, though most lawless, purpose: amidst the most easy opportunities of plunder, it resolutely adhered to that purpose: after a few days, for all the wreck it left behind, it might not have been. Never did faction more utterly fail, and that through the sound sense and Christian principle of the people on whom it so vainly sought to practise.

It is well known that this irruption gradually diminished in its progress through Yorkshire. An irregular sally might be expected to lose strength in proportion to the distance. But it never repaired the loss. The people felt that it was fatuous and self-destructive. They never breathed wish as to its success. Leeds,marked out for ignorance and cruelty by none who know it, was the formidable pass most dreaded by this bandit- multitude. 66 We have nothing to hope

for there," cried the leaders,-" there are too many Sunday Schools!"*

The proper education of the people ought to be pursued in no party spirit. It excited no surprise, that the children of the manufacturer were often neglected. It was made matter of enquiry, but it was known and allowed before. It was for a lamentation. Vicious habits destroy self-respect, and corrupt the sense of relative responsibility. The focal knowledge of great communities supposes not the illumination of each constituent. But surprise was felt, sudden and indignant, when the pitch and extent of education among the rural districts were absolutely rated higher than in the great emporiums of cunning device and production. It startled all. The bravado overreached itself. It is outrageously untrue. It is characterised by that hardihood of assertion which is commonly adopted to appease a misgiving conscience and to bolster a defenceless cause. In what manufacturing district could a parish be found abutting on a city with its

* And why should the Author suppress this anecdote, now that his beaver is up? A town more upright in its character, more noble in its race, does not exist. His lot, when little more than a penniless boy, his independence had made him this, though other were his accidents of birth and inheritance!-was to be cast among this community. It was far from home and kindred. He entered it amidst every adversity and depression. It received him. It has sustained him. It still encourages him. God do so to him, and more also, .ere he will join the rank of its satirists and calumniators! Esto perpetua !

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