was felt that it had never been made before. If its public usefulness continues apparent after due consideration, no doubt a book of the nature in question will be issued.

There is no law in America which permits co-operation to be commenced in the humble, unaided way in which it has arisen in England. When I pointed this out to the gentlemen of the Colony Aid Association, the remark was made, "Then we will get a law for the purpose." In England, working-men requiring an im provement in the law have thought themselves fortunate in living till the day when a member of Parliament could be induced to put a question on the subject; and the passing of a bill has been an expectation inherited by their children, and not always realized in their time. Emerson has related that when it was found that the pensions awarded to soldiers disabled in the war, or to the families of those who were killed, fell into the hands of unscrupulous claim agents, a private policeman in New York conceived the plan of a new law which would enable every person entitled to the money to surely receive it. Obtaining leave of absence he went to Washington, and obtained, on his own representation, the passing of two acts which effected this reform. I found the policeman to be an old friend of mine, Mr. George S. McWatters, whom I found now to be an officer of customs in New York. An instance of this kind is unknown in this country. Emerson remarks that," having freedom in America, this accessibility to leg islators, and promptitude of redressing wrong, are the means by which it is sustained and extended.'

Before leaving Washington, I thought it my duty to call at the British Embassy, and communicate to His Excellency Sir Edward Thornton particulars of the request I had made to the governments of Canada and of the United States; since if His Excellency should be able to approve of the object thereofait would be an important recommendation of it. I pointed out to Sir Edward that though public documents were issued by the departments of both govern ments, the classes most needing them knew neither how to collect or collate them, and reports of interested agents could not be wholly trusted; while a government will not lie, nor exaggerate, nor but rarely conceal the truth. Since the British Government do not discourage emigration, and cannot prevent it, it is better that our poor fellow-countrymen should be put in possession of information which will enable them to go out with their eyes open, instead of going out, as hitherto, with their eyes mostly shut, I ought to add here that the Canadian Minister of Agriculture has sent me several valuable works issued in the Dominion, and that the American Government have presented me with many works of a like nature, and upward of five hundred large maps of considerable value, all of which I have placed at the disposal of the Guild

of Co-operation in London, for dispersion amid centres of working. men, with whom the founder of the Guild, Mr. Hodgson Pratt, is in communication.

Because I admired many things in America, I did not learn to undervalue my own country, but came back thinking more highly of it on many accounts than I did before. Not a word escaped me which disparaged it. In Canada, as well as in America, I heard expressed the oddest ideas imaginable of the decadence of England. I always answered that John Bull was as sure-footed, if not quite so nimble, as Brother Jonathan; that England would always hold up its wilful head; and should the worse come to be very bad, Uncle Sam would superannuate England, and apportion it an an nuity to enable it to live comfortably; doing this out of regard to the services John Bull did to his ancestors long ago, and for the good-will the English people have shown Uncle Sam in their lucid intervals. As yet, I added, England has inexhaustible energies of its own. But lately it had Cobden with his passion for international prosperity; and John Stuart Mill with his passion for truth; it has still Bright with his passion for justice; Gladstone with his passion for conscience; and Lord Beaconsfield with his passion for -himself; and even that is generating in the people a new passion for democratic independence. The two worlds with one language will know how to move with equal greatness side by side. Besides the inexhaustible individuality and energy of Americans proper, the country is enriched by all the unrest and genius of Europe. I was not astonished that America was "big"-I knew that before. What I was astonished at was the inhabitants. Nature made the country; it is freedom which has made the people. I went there without prejudice, belonging to that class which cannot afford to have prejudices. I went there not to see something which I expected to see, but to see what there was to be seen, what manner of people bestrode those mighty territories, and how they did it, and what they did it for; in what spirit, in what hope, and with what prospects. I never saw the human mind at large before acting on its own account-unhampered by prelate or king. Every error and every virtue strive there for mastery, but humanity has the best of the conflict, and progress is uppermost.

Co-operation, which substitutes evolution for revolution in securing competence to labor, may have a great career in the New World. In America the Germans have intelligence, the French brightness, the Welsh persistence, the Scotch that success which comes to all men who know how to lie in wait to serve. The Irish attract all sympathy to them by their humor of imagination and boundless capacity of discontent. The English maintain their steady purpose, and look with meditative, bovine eyes upon the novelties of life around them, wearing out the map of a new path

with looking at it before making up their mind to take it; but the fertile and adventurous American, when he condescends to give co-operation attention, will devise new applications of the principle unforeseen here. In America I received deputations from real state Socialists, but did not expect to find that some of them were Englishmen. But I knew them as belonging to that class of politicians at home who were always expecting something to be done for them, and who had not acquired the wholesome American instinct of doing something for themselves. Were state workshops established in that country, they would not have a single occupant in three months. New prospects open so rapidly in America, and so many people go in pursuit of them, that I met with men who had been in so many places that they seemed to have forgotten where they were born. If the bit of paternal government could be got into the mouth of an American, it would drop out in a day -he opens his mouth so often to give his opinion on things in general. The point which seemed to be of most interest to American thinkers, was that feature of co-operation which enables working-men to acquire capital without having any, to save without diminishing any comfort, to grow rich by the accumulation of savings which they had never put by, through intercepting profits by economy in distribution. Meditating self-employment by associative gains, English co-operators do not complain of employers who they think treat them unfairly, nor enter into defiant negotiations, nor make abject supplications for increase of wages; they take steps to supersede unpleasant employers. With steam transit ready for every man's service, with the boundless and fruitful fields of Australia, America, and Canada open to them, the policy of self-protection is to withdraw from those employers and places with whom or where no profitable business can be done. To dispute with capital which carries a sword is a needless and disastrous warfare, even if victory should attend the murderous struggle. Even the negro of the South has learned the wisdom of withdrawing himself. He has learned to fight without striking a blow: he leaves the masters who menace him. If he turned upon them he would be cut down without hesitation or mercy. By leaving them their estates become worthless, and he causes his value to be perceived without the loss of a single life.

I learned in America two things never before apparent to me, and to which I never heard a reference at home: First, that the dispersion of unrequited workmen in Europe should be a primary principle of popular amelioration, which would compel greater changes in the quality of freedom and industrial equity than all the speculations of philosophers or the measures of contending politicians. Secondly, that the child of every poor man should be educated for an emigrant, and trained and imbued with a knowl.

edge of unknown countries, and inspired with the spirit of adventure therein; and that all education is half worthless-is mere mockery of the poor child's fortune-which does not train him in physical strength, in the art of fighting the wilderness, and such mechanical knowledge as shall conduce to success therein. I am for workmen being given whatever education gentlemen have, and including in it such instruction as shall make a youth so much of a carpenter and a farmer that he shall know how to clear ground, put up a log-house, and understand land, crops, and the management of livestock. Without this knowledge, a mechanic, or clerk, or even an M.A. of Oxford, is more helpless than a common farm-laborer, who cannot spell the name of the poorhouse which sent him out. We have in Europe surplus population. Elsewhere lie rich and surplus acres. The new need of progress is to transfer overcrowding workmen to the unoccupied prairies. Parents shrink from the idea of their sons having to leave their own country; but they have to do this when they become soldiers-the hateful agents of empire lately-carrying desolation and death among people as honest as themselves, but more unfortunate. Half the courage which leads young men to perish at Isandula, or on the rocks of Afghanistan, would turn into a paradise the wildest wilderness in the world of which they would become the proprietors. While honest men are doomed to linger anywhere in poverty and precariousness, this world is not fit for a gentleman to live in. Dives may have his purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day. I, for one, pray that the race of Dives may increase; but what I wish also is, that never more shall a Lazarus be found at his gates. GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE, in the Nineteenth Century.

ON HAVING TOO MUCH AND TOO LITTLE TO DO. AMONG the various classifications to which human beings may be subjected, there is one that makes them consist respectively of those who have too much. and those who have too little to do. As a rule, however, a great deal of error lurks under a sweeping generalization. Nothing is so false as facts, except figures, to which we may also add except philosophical "generalizations, Of course there are a set of people who have too much and another set who have too little to do; but my belief is that the majority of people belong to both categories, that at varying times of their life they have respectively too much and too little to do. Of the two sharply contrasted classes it must be much more comfortable and agreeable to belong to the latter; but on the broad principle

that it is better to wear out than to rust out, it may be supposed that the first lot may intrinsically be more human and more honorable. It happens in the case of multitudes of people that they have really too little to do in early life; they have seasons of much holiday and glorious leisure; then comes the long middle stretch of life with its incessant activities; and then, when men retire from business, or business retires from them, there is the protracted evening during which many who have had too much now find that once more they have too little to do. Of course the real philosophy of life is to hit the golden mean, to steer between the too much und too little; but practically there are quite sufficient people who miss the mean to furnish us with an article on them and their ways.

Oh, this ample, blessed, glorious season of youth, with its leisure and independence and hopes and chances! In these days especially, when the home rufe is so mild and loving-very different from the Rhadamanthine rigor which some of us remember-when the tone of our public schools is infinitely altered and softened, when even the universities lay as much stress on rackets and the river as upon lectures and chapel, there is a season of leisure which may never come back again in life, or perhaps not till life is nearing its final rapids. There are many young people whose lives are miserably overtaxed in working for open scholarships at school; but there are also numbers who really seem to have too little to do. And it is just possible that early in life young people may acquire an inveterate habit of this too little, which may last all through life and thoroughly spoil it for them. One of our greatest judges was lamenting to a friend of mine the other day that he was altogether behind in the literature of the day. If you go to a barrister or member of Parliament in the full tide of activity, he will probably tell you that he has no time for reading; and if you are a youngster he will probably exhort you to do what you can in the way of reading while you are young, because when you have too much to do there will be no time for it. It may be said generally of our jeunesse dorée that they have too little to do. There are all sorts of diabolical proverbs about such men: "The devil tempts other men, but idle men tempt the devil." dances in an idle head.

64

The devil

Of course this applies to our very charming but somewhat volatile young friend, the girl of the period. That interesting young woman frequently answers to the name of Lady Clara Vere de Vere. We all know that that very unsettled young person had a great deal too little to do.

"Is time so heavy on your hands,

You needs must play such pranks as these?"

Such young people speak of pastime, i.e., passing time, also of killing time, and are frequently pathetic in their declarations that they