lican travellers have said little about the condition of the poor in Great Britain of any class; much less have they thought of looking for distress in the English cottage. Little has been known, even in England, among the higher classes, of the agricultural distress until recently, and they have cared still less than they knew. All hear the groan of the Factory operatives who are congregated in dense masses in the large manufacturing towns. But from the scattered and isolated position of the country laborers, their sufferings are less likely to be inquired into. Poets who vegetate in Grub street attics may sing of "vine-clad cottages," and Republican tourists, who struggle to gain admittance to aristocratic circles abroad, (and this is no difficult matter for any foreigner,) and who are there flattered, not only out of their republicanism but their humanity, may say a thousand soft things of Lords and Ladies, and England being a Paradise; it will nevertheless remain true, that

there is not a step but simply a hand's breadth between the condition of the English agricultural laborer and pauper

ism.""

We have extracted the more copiously from the pages which treat of the Agricultural Laborers in England, because the general fact of the Factory distress is less novel to most of our readers than the equally bad condition of these "muzzled oxen that tread out the corn." We pass over all that relates to the Collieries, the ineffable horror of which was so recently brought up to the light of day-with only an allusion to the remark made by some of the most sensible members of the House of Lords, on the occasion of the Bill for their reform, which grew out of these revelations, namely, that it was questionable whether there was any humanity in going any further than a very slight modification of some of the abuses of the system, as they were, after all, a refuge from greater evils of their starvation above ground..

We have no space to dwell on the condition of the slaves of the Factory system, though we have not been able to read through Mr. Lester's accumulation of facts and evidence in relation to their destitution and degradation without the most sickening sensations. It is evident that very little good has resulted from the enactments which were adopted in 1833, after the celebrated Report of the Factory Commissioners, to regulate the abuses of the

"Our

employment of Infant Labor. factories," says a recent number of an excellent journal, the "Non-Conformist," 99 66 are daily scenes, even now, of hecatombs of youthful victims, sacrificed not only without remorse, but with a stoical indifference, to which it is difficult, we should imagine, for human nature, in its most depraved state, to attain." "Thirty thousand children," says the London Morning Post, many of them under eight years of age, are worked in cotton factories even now, in many cases, more than twelve hours a day. Nay, these helpless creatures are compelled (as was fully proved before a Parliamentary Committee) to walk after the machinery from twenty to thirty miles a day. The cruelties proved, by irresistible evidence, to be committed on these helpless victims of our gambling system of trade, are sufficient to chill the blood

of

every person possessed of the ordinary attributes of humanity." "It is a monstrous thing," says the Quarterly Review, Dec., 1840, "to behold the condition, moral and physical, of the juvenile portion of our operative classes, more especially that which is found in the crowded lanes and courts of the larger towns, the charnel-houses of our race.

Emerging from these lairs of filth and disorder, the young workers,-rising early, and late taking rest-go forth that they may toil through the fifteen, sixteen, nay seventeen relentless hours, in sinks and abysses, oftentimes even more offensive and pernicious than the holes they have quitted; enfeebled in health and exasperated in spirit, having neither that repose which is restorative to the body, nor that precious medicine which can alone tranquillize the soul, they are forced to live and die as though it were the interest of the state to make them pigmies in strength and heathens in religion. Much are we often tempted to imprecate on these cities the curse of Jericho (Joshua 6, xxvi.); but far better is it for us, at most humble distance, to imitate those gracious and holy tears which fell over the pride and covetousness and ignorance of Jerusalem."

Of the ignorance and demoralization, the necessary accompaniments of the state of semi-starvation of the great mass of the English operatives, we need not speak. The proportion of

them is extremely small who possess, or can acquire, even the humblest rudiments of education. The conclusion forced upon us from the testimony we have adduced," writes Mr. Lester, "is, that among the working classes, which are by far the most numerous, not more than one half, so far as direct education is concerned, are in a condition very much better than barbarians!" And he thus closes the chapter devoted to this branch of his sad subject:

"In bringing to a close this faint but dreary picture of the woes of the poor, I again ask what has England yet done for the mass of her slave population at home? She has been experimenting on human suffering for a thousand years. While she has made her commerce and wealth eclipse that of Alexandria and Tyre-while she has extended her domain over continents, and reared an empire greater than that of Rome-while she has enlarged the bounds of civilisation in the earth-she has not yet achieved the first work of all just governments, to supply the lowest physical wants of her people. But there is something more painful to contemplate than a famishing population-it is a population of heathen under the shadow of a Christian throne."

However, thank heaven, things are fast ripening in England for a change of all this. The present generation cannot pass away without beholding it. To be effectual, the change must be radical and thorough indeed. The Corn-Laws must be the first thing to go -that question is now beyond argument. The annual burthen of the interest on the National Debt must be the

next. Labor must be relieved from

the crushing weight of that tax. In one mode or another it must be transferred to accumulated Property, with as little hardship as possible to the actual holders of the funds, especially the less wealthy classes of them. There are various modes in which this can be done. Let the necessary property and income taxes increase, perhaps largely, in proportion to the rising scale of wealth. Let the whole wealth of the three kingdoms be taxed directly to any extent necessary for its redemption. Labor, destitute Labor, would not suffer

by this, though there would needs be some considerable transfers of wealth from certain classes of holders to others. The Debt need not be repudiated; unrighteous as it is, let it be paid; or at least the compromise might be made between the different classes of wealth, by the payment of all under a certain amount. Let the Establishment go next, and, applying its property toward the extinction of the Debt, let the various forms of Religion, purified and renovated by the process, find the support which in this country proves so ample, in the Voluntary Principle. And let the enormous burthen of the support of the splendor of the monarchy and its attendant aristocracy, and the great military establishments, with the thousands and tens of thousands of little drains upon the public treasury, growing out of the official abuses and corruptions incident to them, be cast off by the only means adequate to reach the evil, the adoption of a simple, easy, and cheap republican form of government. All this must come soon. The parts of the huge fabric of the English system are so inseparably united together, that the fall of one must drag down all the

rest.