There are eighteen different species of these little insects, chiefly distinguished by their colour: they have been observed to keep together in companies, like the bees, and maintain a sort of republic among themselves. Of the effects of their industry, there are proofs that would surpass all credence, were they not demonstrated to our senses. Their works surpass those of the bees, wasps, beavers, and other animals, as much as those of the most polished European nations excel the labours of uncultivated savages. And even the proudest structure of human architecture, cloud-capt towers, our gorgeous palaces, our solemn temples," sink into pitifulness, when measured in the comparative scale with the edifices raised by these citizens of a bit of mould. The labourers, indeed, are not a quarter of an inch in length; yet in a little time they raise edifices ten or twelve feet above the ground, and to such a solid structure, as bear the weight of three or four men upon them; and some of their structures, in the scale of relative proportions, have been found to amount to five times the height of the greatest of the Egyptian Pyramids.

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The only material difference is, that, unlike our pyramids, monuments, churches, and cathedrals, their architectural structures have an use in them, and are devised and raised to answer an adequate and worthy end. They have post-offices for business, theatres for recreation, but no gospel-shops. Naturalists have observed among them all the circumstances of a well-ordered commonwealth; different ranks and orders of society, each in their several vocation and calling, labouring to promote the public happiness, and finding the individual in the general good. Their greatest passion is to lay up hoards of wheat and other corn; but this, without avarice. And, for fear the corn should sprout by the moisture of their subterranean cells, they gnaw off the end which would produce the blade; which certainly they could not do without a knowledge of natural history, and a very rational deduction from that knowledge. They are then absosolutely reasonable and reasoning creatures. Can there be any doubt then of the correctness of the lesson we learn in such a school?-or any suspicion of a double purpose in the reproof of those innocent monitors?

The suggestions they supply are left to be the unconstrained corollaries of our own observance. They are Nature's example laid out before us. There is neither speech nor language; but her voice is heard among them. And 'tis not a far-fetched or overstrained interpretation of that voice

"Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake,
Go from these creatures, thy instruction take;

Lessons of industry from the ant receive,

Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave ;
Learn of the little Nautilus to sail,

Spread the thin oar and catch the driving gale.

Learn from the birds that food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;
And for those arts mere instinct might afford,
Be crown'd as monarchs, or as gods adored.”

Can we then miss of seeing-can we doubt that energy of character, industry, activity, and diligence, are co-essential to the life and happiness of man?-or can we fail of admiring the wise constitution of nature, that has made all the adversities of our condition, and all the “calamities that flesh is heir to," subserve the end of stimulating us into action, and obliging us to put forth the qualities which would else lie unappreciated, and unknown even to their own possessors?

Were it all ease and comfort to mankind, or were there in nature a possibility that ease and comfort should be unconditional or uncircumstantial, or other than they are the mere transition from pain and trouble, to be achieved and conquered-not inherited or purchased. What stage would there be on earth for Virtue's triumph?-in what would happiness, in what would physical life itself consist? The history would be, that perception itself would become obtuse and blunted; the latent faculties and capacities would never be evolved: man would seem to be born only to eat turtle, and to die like an alderman, choked in his own fat.

But who can tell, or what arithmetic calculate the immense loss of talent and excellence, the innumerable wise and clever men, the makings-up of artists, reasoners, orators, heroes, philosophers, all lost, and thrown away for want of industry to have called them forth; or for want of some happy misfortune, or lucky calamity, to call forth that industry?

We see the physical powers of man not merely evolved, but apparently created by exercise and action. 'Tis certain that they would be greatly deficient, or wholly perish, if never called into action. The same analogy must hold of all our intellectual faculties. The memory, the judgment, quickness of perception, and accuracy of the mind's action, are entirely the result of exercise.

Three or four days' continued experiments will enable a man to throw a weight which, at first, he could not conveniently lift from the ground. But precisely by the same law may a man create in himself a memory, a power of recitation, an ease of utterance, or any other intellectual qualification, which he may deem worthy of his ambition.

And 'tis for this reason that experience authorises the inculcation of industry upon the minds of young persons. There is a natural propriety and fitness in the lesson to them; because it is to them more easy, more practicable, more fit, more promising; and the want of industry more inexcusable, and more extensively mischievous.

Except where disease, or some inappreciable physical defect, has induced a lethargy of mind or body, the solicitations to inaction and indolence are not so strong; and the excitability to action and energy is greater in young persons than in the more advanced. So that they cannot, and do not without greater censure of themselves in their own minds, without a greater fault, and greater consciousness of that fault, suffer the rust and canker of consuming sloth to grow on their green vigour. Some diminished intensity of action has more than its apology, when the springs of life are a good deal worn, and their elasticity consequently abated; but in us young men, who are but in the green and blooming May of life, and shall see many a good and happy year, I hope, roll over us, before we can be said to have reached middle age. For us there can be no natural apology for idleness: we should be doubly inexcusable, should we let "Sloth's consuming fogs depress to earth our tender blossom, check our streams of life, and blast our spring."

The experience of all who have gone before us testifies to us that they have only been prosperous, and only happy as they have been industrious. But, observe ye, I pray, this grand and essential axiom of a national industry-The truly industrious man never works hard. He is never, like your Jacks in office, too busy to attend to his business; never overwhelmed, absorbed, swallowed up in it; or going to it, as idle men may always be observed to do so as it is impossible that they should continue their efforts. He never does the work of two days in one; nor shows such malice to his avocation as if he were determined to kill, or be killed by it.

To be wisely industrious you must see your method, see your reason, see your reward through every stage, in every effort of your labour; or otherwise you run before your horse to market, and only have your labour for your pains.

Industry is, indeed, commendable, and most heartily do I commend it; but, without its proper counsel, its measured action, its judicious application, all the industry and labour in the world, the toil of Hercules, and the strength of Sampson, will leave the hum-drum fag, like the beggar that died of sore legs, and went to Abraham's bosom; for no conceivable reason that a man could guess at, but because he wasn't worth the devil's fetching.

Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet street, where all Communications, post paid, or free of expence, are requested to be left.

The Lion.

No. 20. VOL. 4.] LONDON, Friday, Nov. 13, 1829. [PRICE 6d. CURRENCY MANIA.

IT is not only with individuals that the principle of a monomania is found; but history records many instances, in which it has extended among large masses of mankind, even throughout nations, and of many centuries in its duration. Such was the monastic or ascetic mode of living, introduced by religious feeling, which may be traced from India to every quarter of the. globe. Gibbon, as far as he has gone, prettily displays the progress of the monastic monomania; but he is unpardonably deficient in tracing out its more early history: to it, the whole earth is indebted for its religious fables.

The mania, on which I am now about to treat, is that mentioned at the head of this paper, and which appears to me to be the prevailing political mania of the day in this country. A great change of condition, a lessening of the means of subsistence among the many, or an unpleasant and unsocial transfer of property from a more diffused to a less diffused state, has been long going on in this country; and one noisy, shallow man, having exclaimed that this change is owing to a change in the state of the currency, the million seem disposed to follow him, in barking to the same tune. In lately passing through a large district, I found it in the commercial rooms, among the shopkeepers, and with as large a part of the working people as thought or spoke at all on the subject, an universal opinion, that the present biting distresses of the country are attributable to changes in the currency, or to a suppression in part of the paper money, called one and two pound bank notes. As, in the early part of my life, on seeing other persons professing to be very religious, not having discovered any errors in religion, I have wondered why I had not the same stimulatives to its possession and profession-why I could not fathom this avowed mystery, with a desire too, thinking the profession of religion to be good, to be really and truly religious: so, on hearing so much said, and reading so much about, this equally mysterious affair of the currency, I have wondered why I could not see it as other people professed to see it, and why I could not understand it as they profess to understand it. As in the case of the mystery of religion, so in the case of No. 20. Vol. 4.

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the mystery and metaphysics of the operation of different kinds of currency, or more or less of money, I have found a radical error in the commonly-received notions on the subject. Mankind have found the evidences of their religion, in their ignorance of the phenomena by which they were surrounded; and those evidences have receded, as their knowledge has been extended. So, in the case of this question of the currency, a change has been made in the character or quality, perhaps in the quantity of the currency: a change for the worse is also felt among the mass of the people; and, without any assignable reason, the one case is made to follow the other; the change in the currency is made the cause of the distress of the people as the effect. Superficial minds may, by superficial men, be clamored into an acknowledgment of any monstrous proposition. Thus have arisen all the extensive errors of mankind; and the only remedy for this state of things is to be found in the most free analytical discussion.

One of the chief grounds of the increasing distress of the people of this country, is a lessening of the consumption, or a lessening of the demand for the articles which they producea lessening of the value of their labour, and of the quantity of labour required. How is this to be connected with the state of the currency, past, present, or progressing? To show a connexion of this state of things with the currency, in relation to foreign trade, it is necessary to show, that certain good orders for certain goods have been received in this country, which could not be accomplished for the want of currency or capital among our manufacturers or merchants. Can such a circumstance as this be shown? If it cannot, then it follows that there is no diminution of our trade with foreign countries, following upon any alteration in our currency.

Nor can it be said, that any alteration in our currency has checked the speculation by our merchants in foreign trade: for what market on the globe is there that has not, for ten years past, been overstocked with English produce? There is no want of means to send goods abroad, which should be the case to connect the present distress with the present or late state of the currency; but the want is in the market abroad, and the means of exchange there of our goods for some available value...

Thus then we separate so much of our distress at home, as relates to foreign trade, from the question of currency at home, and come to the more abstruse and difficult point for explanation, in the question of the home trade or consumption, as connected with the state of the currency.

It is a point maintained by those who have involved themselves in this currency mania, that the unrestrained issue of bankers' paper money, in one and two pound notes, increases the means of consumption, and facilitates the means of paying rents, taxes, and other imposts. This is more easily asserted than shown.