of a pleasure which he must needs pursue. On the conditions under which an industrial spirit is promoted, Hearn says:

The principal cause of energy is found in connection with the motives which induce men to work. On this point there are two fundamental conditions of energetic labour. The first is, that the labour should be productive: the second is, that the labourer should be sure of receiving the results of his toil. There is no more potent stimulus to exertion than success; and no more certain cause of relaxation than failure. We daily see how men who have attained to eminence in their several walks of life, when fresh demands are made upon their powers, rise to the occasion, and perform with credit an amount of work which formerly they would themselves have thought impossible. On the other hand, men show an almost instinctive abhorrence to merely fruitless labour. In the old mythology, no more terrible punishment could be devised for guilt of the deepest dye than an eternity of useless toil.

Certainly there is nothing more like grinding the air than the labour of the drunkard, and great is the friction thereof. There is nothing more opposed to the spirit of industry than tippling. Higher wages only bring additional means for the injury of the drinker; and hence we can imagine topers, in sober moments, wishing that their spending power were less. The reliability of workmen is impaired by their drinking habits; hence a large amount of expense in watching and checking, which might be saved to the wealth of the country. The intelligence and morality of the working classes, and of the commercial classes too, suffer much from the depraving habit of drinking. This is a great loss to the nation, in a material sense. The crime of the country alone, springing in a large measure from drinking habits (at least, so say all the judges), is an immense tax upon industry, an incubus upon the shoulders of labour in its struggle against wants. Let us notice also the influence of the drinking customs upon capital, which is the great co-operator with labour in the blessed work of production. Labour and capital are now meeting in deplorable and unnatural antagonism. Not only at Sheffield, but in every town, and even in rural districts, opinions are prevalent that the gain of the one class is the loss of the other. Bitter feelings are in the hearts of the labourers against employers. The employers are in arms against the workmen. The great problem is how to reconcile the two. Naturally capital is the friend of labour; it nourishes labour, puts tools into its hands, and shelters it from many evils. Labour, again, is the source and the necessary ally of capital. But labour and capital have, of course, some interests which are separate, and even contrary. Capital goes into the market to buy up labour at the cheapest possible price; it is the interest of labour to command a high price, and the amount the labourers get depends upon their numbers. This dependent connection between employed and employer tends to sink the dignity of manhood in the labourers,

who form the bulk of the nation. The only remedy for this real evil is that the workmen shall themselves become owners of capital. This will bridge over the gap between the contending classes. When capital has the advantage, its extra gains will be distributed over the whole body, labourers and employers alike, since all will be more or less capitalists.

Co-operation and partnerships of industry may amend the social anomalies we have mentioned; but there is a preparatory step-sobriety. Temperance men are the leaders in co-operation; those who spend their surplus earnings to gratify the drink-appetite cannot, will not follow. It is just the money which is spent in drink that ought to form the nucleus of the working man's capital. At the very least, the working classes might have saved for this purpose during the past year £50,000,000 which have been wasted in the purchase of narcotic drinks. 'Civilisation is the economy of power,' says Liebig. The next step in the civilisation of Britain seems to be to check the enormous waste we have been condemning, and to turn it into savings, co-operation, and productiveness. The whole nation will thus come up a grand step towards a higher civilisation; and 'strikes,' overcrowding,' and 'pauperism' will be well-nigh unknown.

As to the right and duty of prohibition of the liquor traffic, as a fruitful source of drunkenness and wrong-doing, political economy cannot, we have admitted, alone decide. The opinion of Amasa Walker on this point, as a political economist, is, however, interesting, as showing in what direction his investigations have led him :

But all these (viz., reasons against sumptuary laws) furnish no conclusion against the regulation of public morals and manners in things that affect the happiness and safety of the community. It is no longer legislation to supplement the wisdom of the individual or to instruct industry. It becomes the defence of the general good. It is not a breach of personal rights, but the safeguard of public liberty. If there is any habit or practice which brings disease, and suffering, and disorder, which abridges the power of labour and the span of life, which inflicts misery upon the innocent and unoffending, which entails expense upon the whole community for the charge of pauperism and the punishment of crime, there can be no doubt of the right and duty of the people to protect themselves, through the power of their Government, by the most severe and efficient laws which can be devised.

Something must be done in this matter, and it must be done quickly, if it is to be done efficiently. Professor W. Stanley Jevons, M.A., of the London University, has shown reasons for supposing that the greatest height of our industrial prosperity as a nation has been already reached, or will soon be attained. Our pre-eminence in manufacturing depends, in a great measure, upon our coal supply; and the question has been brought under Parliamentary notice, through Professor

Jevons's work on 'Coal,' as to how long the supply will last. We were glad to see that the learned professor, in a recent communication to the daily press, drew the right inference from the results of his investigations. He urged that now is the time, when fortune is in our favour, to get rid of intemperance and ignorance-the great impediments to progress and the great hasteners of decay. We echo the sentiment. But whether a nation be progressive in aggregate wealth, or stationary, or declining, the impoverishing effects of drinking customs are equally certain and destructive. They clog progress, originate decay, and accelerate the downward course of communities. The teaching of political economy, then, is entirely on the side of temperance as an essential element in material greatness. One might be tempted to try to strike a balance between the good and the evil flowing from the liquor traffic, only that the figures would be all on one side. Above a million acres of land wasted in growing barley for beer (whilst England has not sufficient land to feed its own population); this might be put down as the first item. Millions of capital not only uselessly, but injuriously employed. The expense of detecting and punishing crime.* Thousands of labourers continuously engaged in the production of that which doth not enrich, but makes us poor indeed. To this must be added-if the imagination can grasp it, or if figures can express it-all the physical and moral deterioration of the labouring classes; not forgetting the shattered health and the wasted time which spring from this source of evil. Having thus attempted to measure the loss of power which humanity suffers from the liquor system as a whole, then let us look around for the per contra. We cannot find any economical benefit flowing from the liquor traffic. It is in scales like these that the liquor traffic will be ultimately weighed by public opinion; and who can doubt that it will be found wanting?

But if the drinking customs prejudicially affect the national wealth in every conceivable way, it ought to be found that when the drink is removed there is great prosperity. And so it is. In Meliora' for April, 1867, we gave a description of the model manufacturing town of Bessbrook, near Newry, county Armagh, Ireland. There sobriety, co-operation, education, and morality are displayed and developed in a manner which must be peculiarly gratifying to those who are pondering the social difficulties of the day, and seeking a remedy

At the recent Summer Assizes at Liverpool, after a very heavy calendar of violent crimes had been gone through, the Grand Jury, in their presentment, remarked on the causative effect of the drink. The Judge (Chief Justice Bovill), in reply, said that nine-tenths of these cases were caused by drink.

for them. The founder of the town and chief proprietor, Mr. Richardson, allows no public-house on the spot, nor on any of his lands surrounding it; and, as a corollary to this, he allows no police in the place. The Irish constabulary, armed cap-àpie, occupy every town in Ireland, and have barracks for half a dozen men each along every roadside; but there are none in Bessbrook. Mr. Richardson alleges that so long as he keeps out the public-house he can do without police; but that so soon as the taproom is introduced the constabulary will be required. There is no drunkenness in Bessbrook; no quarrelling, though the inhabitants are all Irish; no theft, no crime, no infanticide; in short, the operatives are models of sobriety and good order. Of course, it is not meant to be said that they have not their faults and failings, like mankind everywhere; but the town is wholly free from the sad scenes which are to be met with publicly every night in much smaller populations. And the population of Bessbrook is composed entirely of operatives, while that of many other towns is mixed, comprising the wealthy and the poor. The operatives themselves have not two opinions on the question of the absence or presence of the public-house. They are agreed that if licensed houses were opened in Bessbrook, the reading room, the library, the schools, the co-operative societies, would all be deserted, by only too many, for the allurements of the dram-shop, and that another establishment, hitherto unknown in Bessbrook, the pawn office, would soon be required; and not only so, but the police barrack, the handcuffs, and the dark cells would come into fashion, too, and homes now happy would soon be rendered miserable. All this Mr. Richardson had seen in too many other towns, and he decided to keep the licensed public-houses out of Bessbrook. The results have decidedly confirmed him in his resolution, and would convince the most sceptical of the wisdom of the course he has adopted, if the town were visited by them. What our consideration of economical laws would lead us to expect, in the train of prohibition of the liquor traffic, is found by experience actually to have been realised in Bessbrook and similar places. It is for intelligence and patriotism to apply the remedy for many of our social disorders, now that it has been discovered and proved.

PUBLIC FREE LIBRARIES.

students and lovers of books, the word library possesses

a charm which scarcely any other can claim; and there are few associations so pleasant as those excited by it. To them it means a place where one may withdraw from the hurry and bustle of everyday life, from the cares of commerce and the strife of politics, and hold communion with the saints and heroes of the past; a place where the good and true men of bygone ages, being dead, yet speak, and reprove the vanity and littleness of our lives, where they may excite us to noble deeds, may cheer and console us in defeat, may teach us magnanimity in victory. There we may trace the history of nations now no more; and in their follies and vices, in their virtues, in their grand heroic deeds, we may see that 'increasing purpose' which runs through all the ages,' and learn how the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns.' There we may listen to the fairy tales of science,' or to the voices of the poets singing their undying songs. There grand old Homer or sombre Dante may detain us; or we may pause to listen to that blind bard who, with no middle flight,' vaulted o'er the battlements of heaven, and did

assert Eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

But our subject is not merely libraries, but free libraries open to all comers; and the multiplication of these is, we think, one of the noblest signs of the age in which we live. Greater, grander, and nobler in their aim, and in their ultimate results, are these new-born institutions, where the portals are thrown wide open, and everyone, of high or low degree, may enter in and satisfy that hunger and thirst after knowledge which is proper to the human soul.

Every man should have a library. The works of the grandest masters of literature may now be procured at prices that place them within the reach almost of the very poorest, and we may all put Parnassian singing birds into our chambers to cheer us with the sweetness of their songs. And when we have got our little library we may look proudly at Shakspeare, and Bacon, and Bunyan, as they stand in our bookcase in company with other noble spirits, and one or two of whom the world knows nothing, but whose worth we have often tested. These may cheer and enlighten us, may inspire us with higher aims and aspirations, may make us, if we use them rightly, far wiser and better than we should otherwise have been.