friendly relation, no means would exist of lessening their mutual prejudices, or of producing mutual respect and esteem; they would consequently regard each other with feelings of hostility. Sectarian seminaries of every kind are, from their very constitution, nurseries of bigotry and intolerance; and all experience proves, that the education of the youth of the country in such institutions, would do more than all other causes combined, to strengthen the virulence of party spirit, and to embitter and perpetuate religious animosities. 6 It gives us pleasure to close the foregoing observations with the opinions expressed in the following passage from the eloquent Inaugural Address,' which the present Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow delivered on occasion of his recent installation in that high office.* We honour him for the firmness and candour with which he, on so marked an occasion, expressed his own sound and enlightened convictions, before an audience which, whatever may have been the case with the younger members of the University, contained among the Professors some of the most inveterate supporters of the reprobated Test: • One thing I do indeed deeply regret, and speaking in accordance with the sentiments of many, and in earnest prayer for the welfare of this University, I trust I may, without offence, express my regret that the same liberality which has opened 6 your schools to the taught has not been extended to the selection of the teachers. Making the proper and necessary exception of those chairs which are devoted to teach the doctrines of 'the Established Church, may we not ask why the other chairs of this University-its secular chairs-should not be open to a 'candidate bringing admitted superiority in science-what is not less important, nor less rare, extraordinary power of communi'cating knowledge, and exciting the emulation of his studentsand withal unimpeachable character, merely because he may 'not agree in all things, possibly in some nice point of church government, with the views of the Establishment? May we < not ask whether danger now exists to require the rejection from your secular chairs of men-it may be of European celebrity who would make your schools the resort of all generous and aspiring youth? Shall we still require tests which might have repelled the scrupulous consciences of William Hunter, of Locke, or of Newton? William Hunter has enriched your college by his donations, not of books only and medals, though * Inaugural Address by Andrew Rutherfurd, Esq. M.P., on his Installation as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, (Jan. 10, 1845.)-P. 10. 21 t VOL. LXXXI. NO. CLXIV. 6 6 these are the rarest and choicest of their kind, but by a museum much more valuable-the result of his labours in anatomical ' science—and showing how much may be accomplished by one man ardently devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. His biographer tells me, that from scruples of conscience he left the 'profession of the Church, to which his father had intended him ; and the same scruples might have prevented you hearing that great master explain the structure of this frame of ours-how 'fearfully and wonderfully we are made. Locke might have 'been unable to teach here Logic or Ethics, though the same 6 pen which recorded his Inquiry into the Human Understand'ing has evinced his piety, and rendered no mean service to Christianity in showing its reasonableness, as demonstrated in Scripture. Newton himself "Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnes 'Newton might have been refused admission to the chair, from ' which it would have been his duty to unfold the mechanism of 'the heavens, and declare the glories of their Maker.' ART. VII.-The Claims of Labour: an Essay on the Duties of the Employers to the Employed. 12mo. London : 1844. PERSONS 6 ERSONS of a thoughtful mind,' says the introduction to this little volume, seeing closely the falsehood, the folly, and the arrogance of the age in which they live, are apt, occasionally, to have a great contempt for it; and I doubt not 'that many a man looks upon the present time as one of feeble'ness and degeneracy. There are, however, signs of an increased solicitude for the Claims of Labour, which of itself is a thing of the highest promise, and more to be rejoiced over than all the 'mechanical triumphs which both those who would magnify, ' and those who would depreciate, the present age, would be apt 'to point to as containing its especial significance and merit.' 6 It is true that many are now enquiring, more earnestly than heretofore, how the great mass of the people are fed, clothed, ' and taught and whether the improvement in their condition 'corresponds at all with the improvement of the condition of the middle and upper classes.' And many are of opinion, with the writer from whom we quote, that the answer which can be given to these questions is an unsatisfactory one. Nor is the newlyawakened interest in the condition of the labouring people confined to persons, like this author, of feeling and reflection. To its claims upon the conscience and philanthropy of the more favoured classes, to its ever-strengthening demands upon their sense of self-interest, this cause now adds the more ephemeral attractions of the last new fashion. The Claims of Labour have become the question of the day: the current of public meetings, subscriptions, and associations, has for some time set strongly in that direction; and many minor topics which previously occupied the public mind, have either merged into that question, or been superseded by it. Even the Legislature, which seldom concerns itself much with new tendencies of opinion until they have grown too powerful to be safely overlooked, is invited, in each Session with increasing urgency, to provide that the labouring classes shall earn more, work less, or have their lot in some other manner alleviated; and in each Session yields more or less cheerfully, but still yields, though slowly yet increasingly, to the requisition. That this impulse is salutary and promising, few will deny; but it would be idle to suppose that it has not its peculiar dangers, or that the business of doing good can be the only one for which zeal suffices, without knowledge or circumspection. A change from wrong to right, even in little things, is not so easy to make, as to wish for, and to talk about. Society cannot with safety, in one of its gravest concerns, pass at once from selfish supineness to restless activity. It has a long and difficult apprenticeship yet to serve; during which we shall be often reminded of the dictum of Fontenelle, that mankind only settle into the right course after passing through and exhausting all the varieties of error. But however this may be, the movement is not therefore to be damped or discouraged. If, in the attempt to benefit the labouring classes, we are destined to see great mistakes committed in practice, as so many errors are already advocated in theory, let us not lay the blame upon excess of zeal. The danger is, that men in general will care enough for the object, to be willing to sacrifice other people's interest to it, but not their own; and that the few who lead will make the sacrifice of their money, their time, even their bodily ease, in the cause; but will not do for its sake what to most men is so much more difficult-undergo the formidable labour of thought. For several reasons it will be useful to trace back this philanthropic movement to its small and unobvious beginnings-to note its fountain-head, and show what mingled streams have from time to time swelled its course. We are inclined to date its origin from an event which would in vulgar apprehension seem to have a less title to that than to any other honourable distinction-the appearance of Mr Malthus's Essay on Population. Though the assertion may be looked upon as a paradox, it is historically true, that only from that time has the economical condition of the labouring classes been regarded by thoughtful men as susceptible of permanent improvement. We know that this was not the inference originally drawn from the truth propounded by Mr Malthus. Even by himself, that truth was at first announced as an inexorable law, which, by perpetuating the poverty and degradation of the mass of mankind, gave a quietus to the visions of indefinite social improvement which had agitated so fiercely a neighbouring nation. To these supposed corollaries from Mr Malthus's principle, it was, we believe, indebted for its early success with the more opulent classes, and for much of its lasting unpopularity with the poorer. But this view of its tendencies only continued to prevail while the theory itself was but imperfectly understood; and now lingers nowhere but in those dark corners into which no subsequent lights have penetrated. The first promulgator of a truth is not always the best judge of its tendencies and consequences; but Mr Malthus early abandoned the mistaken inferences he had at first drawn from his celebrated principle, and adopted the very different views now almost unanimously professed by those who recognise his doctrine. So long as the necessary relation between the numbers of the labouring population and their wages had escaped attention, the poverty, bordering on destitution, of the great mass of mankind, being an universal fact, was (by one of those natural illusions from which human reason is still so incompletely emancipated) conceived to be inevitable ;-a provision of nature, and as some said, an ordinance of God; a part of human destiny, susceptible merely of partial alleviation in individual cases, from public or private charity. The only persons by whom any other opinion seemed to be entertained, were those who prophesied advancements in physical knowledge and mechanical art, sufficient to alter the fundamental conditions of man's existence on earth; or who professed the doctrine, that poverty is a factitious thing, produced by the tyranny and rapacity of governments and of the rich. Even so recent a thinker, and one so much in advance of his predecessors, as Adam Smith, went no further than say, that the labourers might be well off in a rapidly progressive state of the public wealth;—a state which has never yet comprehended more than a small portion of the earth's surface at once, and can nowhere last indefinitely; while they must be pinched and in a condition of hardship in the stationary state, which in a finite world, composed of matter not changeable in its properties, is the state towards which things must be at all times tending. The ideas, therefore, of the most enlightened men, anterior to Mr Malthus, led really to the discouraging anticipations for which his doctrine has been made accountable. But these anticipations vanished, so soon as the truths brought to light by Mr Malthus were correctly understood. It was then seen that the capabilities of increase of the human species, as of animal nature in general, being far greater than those of subsistence under any except very unusual circumstances, must be, and are controlled, every where else, by one of two limiting principles-starvation, or prudence and conscience: That, under the operation of this conflict, the reward of ordinary unskilled labour is always and every where (saving temporary variations, and rare conjunctions of circumstances) at the lowest point to which the labourers will consent to be reduced-the point below which they will not choose to propagate their species: That this minimum, though every where much too low for human happiness and dignity, is different in different places, and in different ages of the world; and, in an improving country, has on the whole a tendency to rise. These considerations furnished a sufficient solution of the state of extreme poverty in which the majority of mankind had almost every where been found existing, without supposing any inherent necessity in the case-any universal cause other than the causes which have made human progress altogether so imperfect and slow as it is. And the explanation afforded a sure hope, that whatever accelerates that progress would tell with full effect upon the physical condition of the labouring classes. Whatever raises the civilization of the people at largewhatever accustoms them to require a higher standard of subsistence, comfort, taste, and enjoyment, affords of itself, according to this encouraging view of human prospects, the means of satisfying the wants which it engenders. In every moral or intellectual benefit conferred upon the mass of the people, this doctrine teaches us to see an assurance also of their physical advantage; a means of enabling them to improve their worldly circumstances-not in the vulgar way of rising in the world,' so often recommended to them-not by endeavouring to escape out of thei class, as if to live by manual labour were a fate only endurable as a step to something else; but by raising the class itself in physical wellbeing and in self-estimation. These are the prospects which the vilified population-principle has opened to mankind. True, indeed, the doctrine teaches this further lesson, that any attempt to produce the same result by other means-any scheme of beneficence which trusts for its moving power to any thing but to the influence over the minds and habits of the people, which it either directly aims at, or may happen indirectly to promote might, for any general effect of a beneficial kind which it can produce, as well be let alone. And, the doctrine being brought thus into conflict with those plans of easy beneficence |