of events, and debarring the agency of accident, it is well nigh as impossible that men such as this labourer can sink into pauperism, as that men of the opposite stamp can avoid sinking into it. The dissipated mechanics, with youth and strength on their side, and with their earnings of twenty-four and twenty-seven shillings per week, were yet paupers in embryo. It is, according to the inevitable constitution of society, too, that vigorous working men should have relatives dependent upon them for sustenance,―aged parents, or unmarried sisters, or, when they have entered into the marriage relation, wives and families. And hence the mighty accumulation of pauperism when the natural prop fails in yielding its proper support.

We have another fact to state regarding our old acquaintances, which is not without its importance, and in which, we are convinced, the experience of all our humbler readers will bear us out. Some of the most skilful mechanics of the party, and some, too, of the most intelligent, were among the most dissipated. One of the number, a powerful-minded man, full of information, was a great reader: there was another, possessed of an intellect more than commonly acute, who had a turn for composition. The first, when thrown out of employment, and on the extreme verge of starvation, enlisted into a regiment destined for some of the colonies, whence he never returned the other broke down in constitution, and died, before his fortieth year, of old age. What is the proper inference here? Mere intellectual education is not enough to enable men to live well, either in the upper or lower walks of society, and especially in the latter. The moral nature must also be educated. Was Robert Burns an ignorant or unintelligent man? or yet Robert Ferguson?

Facts such as these,-and their amount is altogether incalculable, indicate the point at which the sources of pauperism can alone be cut off. The disease must be anticipated; for,

when it has passed to its last stage, and actually become pauperism, there is no remedy. Every effort which an active but blind humanity can suggest in such desperate circumstances is but a baling back of the river when the floods are rising. If there be a course of moral and religious culture to which God himself sets his seal, and through which even the dissipated can be reclaimed, and the uncontaminated preserved from contamination,-a course through which, by the promised influences of a Divine agent, characters such as that of our friend the poor labourer can be formed,—that course of moral and religious culture is the only remedy. The pauperism of Scotland, in its present deplorable extent, is comparatively new to the country; and certain it is, that in the last age the spirit of anti-pauperism and of anti-patronage were inseparable among the Presbyterian people. There is a close connection between the non-intrusion principle and the formation of characters such as that of our friend the labourer. What were the religious sentiments of the class, happily not yet forgotten in our country, who bore up in their honest and independent poverty, relying for support on the promise of their heavenly Father, but who asked not the help of man, and who, in so many instances, would not receive it even when it was extended to them? To what party in the Church did the poor widows belong who refused the proffered aid of the parish, if they had children, lest it should be "cast up" to them in after-life,-if they had none, "because they had come of honest people?" Much of what was excellent in the Scottish character in the highest degree arose directly out of the Scottish Church in its evangelical integrity; much, too, of what was excellent in the main, though perhaps somewhat dashed with eccentricity, arose out of what we may term the Church's reflex influences.-March 20, 1840.

PAUPER LABOUR.

WE hold that the only righteous and practical check on adult pauperism, the only check at once just and efficient, is the compulsory imposition of labour on every pauper to whom God has given, in even the slightest degree, the labouring ability. One grand cause of the inefficiency of workhouses arises mainly from the circumstance that their names do not indicate their character. The term workhouse has become a misnomer, seeing that it designates buildings in which, for any one useful purpose, no work is done. We say for any useful purpose; for in some cases there is work done in them which is of a most mischievous, pauper-producing kind. They enter, in the character of competitors, into that field of unskilled, or at least very partially skilled, labour, which is chiefly occupied by the self-sustaining classes that stand most directly on the verge of pauperism; and their hapless rivals, backed by no such bounty as that upon which they trade, sink in the ill-omened contest, and take refuge within their walls, to assist in carrying on that war against honest industry in which they themselves have gone down. Folly of this extreme character in the management of the pauperism of the country admits of no apology, from the circumstance that it is as palpable as it is mischievous. The legitimate employment of the inmates of a workhouse we find unmistakeably indicated by the nature of their wants. What is it that constitutes their pauperism? Nature has given them certain wants, which, from some defect either in character or person, they themselves fail to supply; they lack food and they lack raiment; and these two wants comprise the wants of a poor-house. Then, let the direct supply of these wants be the work of a poor-house,-its direct, not its circuitous

work,-not its work in the competition market, to the inevi table creation of more paupers, but its work in immediate connection with the soil, out of which all food and all raiment are produced, and with the wants of its own inmates. The organization of labour in society at large we regard as an inexecutable vision. In even the most despotic nations of Europe, that compulsory power is wanting which must constitute-man being what he is-the moving force of organized labour; but within the precincts of a workhouse the compulsory power does exist; and there, in consequence, the organization of labour is no inexecutable vision, but a sober possibility. It would impart to our workhouses their proper character, by not only furnishing them with an efficient labour check, and converting them into institutions of discipline, in which the useless member of society, that could but would not work, would be compelled to exert himself in his own behalf; but it would also convert them into institutions in which a numerous pauper class, of rather better character,too inefficient, either from lack of energy or of skill, to provide for themselves, amid that pressure and bustle of competition which obtains in society at large,-might, by being shielded from competition, and brought into immediate contact with the staple of their wants, become self-supporting. All that would be necessary in any poor-house would be simply this, that its class of raiment-producers should produce clothes enough for both themselves and its sustenance-producers; and that its sustenance-producers should, in turn, produce food enough for both themselves and its raimentproducers. And, brought fairly into contact with the soil and its productions in the raw state,—with their wants reduced to the simple natural level, the profits of the trader superseded, the pressure of taxation removed, the enormous expenses of the dram-shop cut off by that law of compulsory temperance which the lack of a command of money imposes,

-we have little fear but that many of those institutions would become self-supporting, or at least very nearly so. The country would still have to bear some of the expense of what has been well termed its heaven-ordained poor,-the halt, the maimed, and the fatuous; but be it remembered that these always bear a definite proportion to the population ; and that the present alarming increase in the country's pauperism is not a consequence of any disproportionate increase in that modicum of its amount which the heaven-ordained poor composes.

So much for the country's adult pauperism. With regard to its juvenile pauperism, the labour scheme is more important still. The country has many poor children living at its expense in workhouses, or boarded in humble cottages in the country; and there are many more that either want parents or worse than want them, that are prowling about its larger towns, and scraping up a miserable livelihood by begging or theft. Unless in the season of youth,-ere the mind becomes rigid under the influence of habit, and takes the set which it is to bear through life, these juvenile paupers and vagabonds be converted into self-sustaining honest members of society, they will inevitably become the adult paupers or criminals of the future, and the country will have to support them either in poor-houses or penal settlements, or, worse still, to pay executioners for hanging them. Of all non-theological things, labour is the most sacred; of all non-ethical things, labour is the most moral. The working habit,-the mere homely ability of labouring fairly and honestly for one's bread,—is of more value to a country, when diffused among its people, than all the other gifts,-be they hills of gold or rocks of diamonds, that can possibly fall to its share. And if its people, or any very considerable part of them, possess not that habit and ability, it matters not what else it may possess there is an element of weakness in its constitution, for