mansion and social exclusiveness until and unless he shall see fit of his own motion to do so; but it does solicit the wealthy, the refined, the philanthropic, the religious to invest something of their pecuniary means in and give something of their countenance and good wishes to all earnest efforts of the laboring classes to emancipate and elevate themselves." The leading idea of Association is to carry the principle of Organization as it now exists in the manufacturing village, into every community, and to apply it to the production within its own limits of all the necessaries and even of the comforts of life. But we will allow Mr. Greeley to sketch his own poetic realization of this idea, for although he disowns poetry he has here succeeded in picturing an Arcadian scene.

"Let me rudely sketch you a village, township, school district, or whatever you may term it, organized as we would have it, and as we hope many ultimately will be. The basis is a faith among the associates or members that they can live harmoniously with and deal justly by each other, treating any casual imperfections which may be developed with forbearance and kindness. One hundred families, animated by this spirit, resolve to make an attempt toward a more trustful and genial life, and to that end sell off as they can their immovable possessions and resolve to seek a new home together; we will say in Michigan or Wisconsin. They send out two or three chosen leaders, who, after careful examination, select and purchase a tract of one to five thousand acres, as their means will warrant, embracing the largest circle of advantages -Timber, Prairie, Water-Power, convenience for transportation, &c., &c. They have carefully foreseen that proper building materials, including brick or stone, lime and timber, are to be obtained with facility. Mills are erected and various branches of manufacturing established as fast as they are needed, or as there is any labor which can be spared for and advantageously employed therein. New members who bid fair to be desirable accessions are received, on due probation, as fast as there may be accommodations for them, and as they can be profitably employed. If a blacksmith, a carpenter, a brickmaker, or glazier, is wanted, he is obtained by hiring until, among the wide circle of friends or acquaintances of the members, one is found who would like to unite his fortunes with the Phalanx, and who is deemed a worthy associate. Thus they go on, producing abundant food and other raw staples, steadily extending the bounds of their cultivated area, and increasing its product; enjoying at least the necessa ries of life and doing without the superfluities until they are enabled to obtain them without running in debt. Soon an edifice, intended for the permanent home of them all, is commenced and finished piecemeal in the most substantial manner-fireproof so nearly that fire could not spread from one section to another, and so planned that the whole may be warmed, lighted, supplied with water, and cleared of refuse by arrangements answering as well for a thousand persons as for one. Three or four large and spacious kitchens, barns, granaries, &c., &c., supplied with every convenience, would answer the purpose of three or four hundred under our present economy, saving vast amounts now lost by waste, vermin, the elements, &c., &c. A tenth part of the labor now required for Household service, procuring Fuel, &c., would suffice, while that now consumed in journeys to the mill, the store, the blacksmith, the shoemaker, and the like, would be saved entirely. There would be abundant employment in the various branches of Industry pursued for all ages, capacities, tastes, and all that would be saved in the kitchen and the woods could be advantageously and agreeably employed in the gardens and nurseries, the mills and factories. The productive force of this population would be vastly greater than under ex

isting arrangements, while its economies in other respects would be immense. For a brief season, admit that these advantages would be counterbalanced by inexperience and perverseness-that some would refuse to work where they were needed, and insist on working where they would be comparatively inefficient, or nowhere-that bickerings and jealousies would arise, and that some would feel that their work was not adequately credited and remunerated-I foresee all these difficulties, and more. Yet I see also, the end being kept steadily in view-that having no unproductive labor or as little as possible, rewarding all work done according to its absolute worth, and charging each head of a family the simple cost of what he had-the rent of his exclusive rooms and the actual outlay for the subsistence and education of his familyin short, establishing Social Justice throughout-there would be a constant tendency and approximation toward the state of things desired and the harmony which must result from it. The defects of one year would suggest the remedies of the next, and each year's adjustment of accounts would be more satisfactory than the last.

"The immense advantages of such an arrangement with reference to Universal Education need hardly be pointed out. In an Association such as we contemplate, the thorough Intellectual, Moral, and Physical Education of each will be the direct and palpable interest of all—a matter of the highest and most intimate concern. The cost of the books now thinly scattered in five hundred dwellings will procure one ample and comprehensive Library, with the apparatus and materials required to demonstrate the truths of Chemistry and the whole range of Natural Science. The best teachers in every branch will in time be selected-those who unite a natural capacity for teaching with the fullest attainments, and who do not need the stimulus of high salaries to induce them to devote some hours of each day to the inculcation of Knowledge, Industry, and Virtue. Frequent and agreeable alternations from the schoolroom to the garden, the factory, the halls and grounds set apart for exercise and recreation, will benefit alike teachers and scholars, giving a zest to learning as well as industry unknown to our monotonous drudgery, whether of work or study. In short, I see no reason why the wildest dreams of the fanatical believer in Human Progress and Perfectibility may not ultimately be realized, and each child so trained as to shun every vice, aspire to every virtue, attain the highest practicable skill in Art and efficiency in Industry, loving and pursuing honest, untasked Labor for the health, vigor, and peace of mind, thence resulting, as well as for its more palpable rewards, and joyfully recognizing in universal the only assurance of individual good."-Hints towards Reforms, pp. 42-45.

This reads well on paper, but the realization of the idea in practice would be attended with many and we think fatal difficulties. The plan is not, after all, one of thorough equality. The Association must have its leading minds, its superintendents, corresponding with the directors of a bank or a rail-road company, and human nature being what it is, these leaders would contrive to remunerate themselves for the responsibility of leadership by the accumulation of power and wealth in their own hands. It would be difficult also to regulate the distribution of labor both in kind and in quantity among the members of such a community where the stimulus of acquisition was withheld. Indolence would evermore get the advantage of Industry, and live upon its fruits; or if the idle and vicious are to be shut out from Association, what is this but to create a pauper world outside of the world of industry more marked in its character and its sufferings

than any pauperdom now known, for an outlawed pauperism would be far worse than a pauperism recognized and provided for in the bosom of the community. Nor would the plan of Association rid the world of the evils of competition, for each Association would form a selfish center, wishing to find the best market for its own surplus products and rivaling other associations in its dealings with the unassociated world. In respect to competition there is no difference between manufacturing companies and individual manufacturers, unless it be that the former as soulless corporations are more urgent and uncompromising than the latter. The principle of competition can not be ruled out of the worldeven if that is desirable-by any artificial arrangements. This principle of Association is moreover fatal to its own life, for the very reason that it tends to destroy individualism and thus to take away the mainspring of industry-the acquisition of property. The forms in which capital and labor are now combined are such as promise to yield the largest interest not to the association as such but to the individuals associated, and any institution which fails to meet this demand can not live. The principle of association as propounded by Mr. Greeley, is destructive of personal independence and individual life. It is to the social world and the world of economics what the Roman Catholic church is to the religious world; hence it is well said by the Abbé Gaume that true Socialism is realized within the pale of that church. But in this age of general independence and intelligence it is not likely that men to any extent will merge their individuality in Associations political, social, economical or religious.

The fatal obstacle to this sheme of social reform lies in human depravity; not in depravity merely as an article of the catechism, but in depravity as seen and felt in all the forms of life and as testified to by history and the word of God. This element Mr. Greeley has left out of his calculation; but it spoils his whole theory and mars his ideal Eden. Men are essentially selfish, and no organization or outward arrangement whatever can eradicate or effectually restrain that selfishness. We need not argue this point. If any man thinks otherwise, and believes in the perfectibility of human nature without the grace of God, let him make the experiment.

This universal fact of human depravity suggests the starting point of all social reform. It is with the hearts of individual men and by means of the old tried system of gospel truth. Man must be regenerated, and that not for the future merely but for the present. He must receive the gospel not only as a revelation of life and immortality, but also as a remedy for sin, for every evil that afflicts society, and he must apply the principles of the gospel to commerce, to politics, to social life. As Mr. Hood well says, You do not move men merely by presenting to them in regi

mental array long figures and tables of statistical information; you do not effect much by making mechanical changes the great motives of conduct; the highest results are obtained by appealing to man's sense of the infinite and the responsible. There is no vital action in the world where these are not. **** The holiness of commerce needs to be vindicated. There is no hope for man until commerce shall be regarded as a moral dispensation." Here is a point where Christian faith may exercise itself for the performance of duty and for the welfare of mankind. Let the Christian merchant, the Christian employer, set out with the determination that whatever may be the usages of trade or the laws of political economy, he will be just and liberal in his business transactions with those who are dependent upon him, and will always give to labor not merely the market price but a just compensation, and see if God will not sustain and prosper him upon such a system. Here surely is the place for faith in Providence. Mr. Hood gives the following illustration of the advantages of mutual confidence between employers and the employed, and of the means by which that confidence may be established.

"Some time since in a large manufactory, the masters and work-people of which were upon excellent terms with each other, it happened, that owing to a long-continued dullness of trade in that particular manufacture, it became necessary as a measure of prudence and safety to lessen the supply. Two courses presented themselves, either to discharge some two or three hundred of the workmen, or to put all upon short time. The proprietors felt a difficulty as to which of these courses they should follow. They called together a number of their best hands. They stated to them the facts as they really were, and asked them their opinion as to which was the better course to take. The workmen took time to consider, and the next morning expressed their unanimous wish that all the workmen should be put upon three-quarters time, (and of course three-quarters wages,) so long as the pressure might last. There was no complaint made, no suspicion engendered for a moment in their minds that they were unjustly treated: they saw that it was a matter of necessity and they submitted to the privation: they were gratified by being called into council to deliberate upon what was best to be done for the interests of the concern; and in the conduct they displayed towards their brother workmen, those who would have been discharged had a different decision been come to, they showed that the kindness which they themselves had received had borne good fruit in their own hearts, and induced them to submit to some privation on their parts, rather than the others should be exposed to greater suffering.'* But, of course, confidence like this can only be secured by a prompt raising of wages when profits are high; this will convince the workmen that they have a just and righteous employer to deal with; and unless this is done, there can be no justice in reducing wages in times of adversity and low profits. Nor should the rise in the price of labor be a tardy concession, but a prompt forestalling the demand of the work-people, and evidencing an honesty of purpose, not wrung by repeated effort from the employer but a willing admission of right from the virtue and the independence of his own character. If the masters of the country in our large towns would act thus, they would do more to restore confidence to the heart of labor, more to prevent the frequent recurrence of strikes, more to purify the atmosphere of the workshop, and to invest the

dealings of commerce with the insignia of integrity and moral dignity, than the preaching of thousands of sermons, the drafting into the market of boundless orders of wealth, or even the most happy fundamental changes in the economy of trade."-The Age and ils Architects, pp. 137–139.

Much then as certain social reforms are needed, there is no need of a radical reconstruction of society in order to secure them. Society is in progress, and with every stage of progress the poor are benefitted. It only remains to bring the mighty practical power of Christianity to bear upon the uncorrected evils of society, to see those evils scatter like mists before the sun. Then upon the bells of the horses, upon the implements of husbandry and the utensils of domestic life, upon every instrument of trade and every vessel of commerce, upon all capital, all currency, and all labor, a sanctified and jubilant world shall write, "Holiness to the Lord." Then the tabernacle of God shall be with men; and the whole earth, radiant with his presence and his love, shall be an Eden.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Report to the Corporation of Brown University, on changes in the system of Collegiate Education.-Read March 28th, 1850. Providence: 1850. THIS report to the Corporation of Brown University was made by a committee of which the President of the University was chairman; and the report is understood to be from his pen. President Wayland in a former publication expressed his dissatisfaction with the general plan, on which the colleges in New England and others formed on their model in other parts of the United States, have been organized. In this report he has gone more into detail of what he considers the defects of our colleges in the instruction which they afford, and of the remedies which ought to be applied. In prosecuting his object he brings under review, the system of University Education in Great Britain, the progress and present state of University Education in this country, the present condition of Brown University,-the measures which the Committee recommend for the purpose of enlarging the usefulness of the institution, and the subject of Collegiate degrees.

It is impossible here to enter into a minute consideration of these several topics, and of others glanced at in this report. It is undoubtedly true, that our colleges were originally modeled on the English plan, with such variations at first, as the poverty of the country made necessary. That there was, however, at the time of their foundation, or, that there has been at any time since, a settled opposition, as is not unfrequently asserted, to improvements in instruction, or to changes from the primitive model, is not according to fact. Classical and mathematical knowledge constituted the basis of the system; but it is doubted whether the sciences even at first were entirely neglected. As the means of scientific instruction increased, the field for its cultivation was enlarged. For more than half of the last century the plan of education in the colleges then in being, included attention to the classics, to mathematics, to Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, to Rhetoric and to Mental Philosophy, embracing Logic, Metaphysics and the Science of Morals. More or less instruction was given also in Theology. A foundation, as was supposed, was thus laid for understanding and relishing the literature of the most polished