somewhat less conceit as to their own incontestable pre-eminence, somewhat better education, and considerably wiser guides, or sagacity to choose such, perhaps also absit omen—a harsher lesson of suffering than has yet been forced on them. I am convinced, too, that these amended habits of life and thought -difficult, no doubt, to begin with-need. involve no deterioration, no steps downwards or backwards, in any of the essential comforts and respectabilities of family existence (I say nothing as to mere idle luxuries), probably, indeed certainly, the reverse. By adopting these they will conquer a securer, less anxious and less precarious position, for the next generation at all events, if the passing one be too rigid and too old to change.1

1 The following extract from the Economist's Commercial Review of 1878 will be interesting :—Within the last twelve years our labouring classes have had opportunities of setting aside a considerable amount, and there ought to be no reason for the excessive distress complained of at this moment. A certain amount has doubtless been saved by the thrifty and careful, as witnessed by the larger amount held by the Savings Banks, Friendly, and Building Societies,1 a large portion of which 1 The amount held by the Savings Banks in 1866 and 1877 was as follows:

The amount held by friendly societies in 1865 was £5,362,000, and in 1874, £9,039,000.-increase, £3,676,000; total of both savings banks and friendly societies in ten years, £32,113,000 or an average of £3,200,000 per annum. On December 31, 1877, the liabilities of building societies, in which the working classes have largely invested, to the holders of subscription or incomplete shares, of completed or realised shares, and of preferential shares, to depositors, and also for unappropriated profits, werein England and Wales £23,916,000; Scotland, £1,126,000; and Ireland, £678,000.-total, £25,720,000.

B

In writing thus hopefully we can point to examples and illustrations at our door as proofs that we are indulging in no baseless dream. Eight years ago our

nearest neighbours had to encounter a reverse almost unparalleled among modern nations, to pay a debt or a fine (whichever we may call it) about equally unexampled, to meet a drain upon their resources which to critical and observant Europe appeared too exhausting. France had to part with a considerable portion of her territory, to promise an indemnity of five milliards, and to provide taxation to meet this enormous

2

belongs to the working classes. But a considerable proportion of the extra amount earned, especially from 1871 to 1873, has been spent in maintaining a standard of comfort higher, probably, than a labouring man is warranted in looking for, unless he has first put by something for the rainy day, and more especially in an excessive expenditure for eating, drinking, and smoking. A wiser and more economical appropriation of wages is the great want of the British working population. In no other country are the wages more liberal, but in no other country are they more wastefully used than in the United Kingdom. Here there is scope enough for practical education touching the moral, quite as important as the intellectual, bringing up of the new generation.

2 The consumption of the following imported and excisable articles of food and drink per head of the population in 1866 and 1877 was as follows:

sum.

There was no help for it. She accepted the tremendous fate, spent no time in whining, but set to work with admirable fortitude and spirit to redeem the vast misfortune, complicated as it was with revolution and civil war. The incalculable wealth and the unexpected strength that lie hid in economic habits when inherent in a nation then came to light and astonished all Europe. We began to realise the full meaning of the maxim, Magnum vectigal est parsimonia.1 The immense resources of a country where every peasant was a proprietor and almost every citizen a patriot, enabled her to nearly double her debt without impairing her credit, and to nearly double her revenue without crushing her productive powers; and the result has been that probably France has suffered less from the calamitous years that have swept over the world than either Germany, Great Britain, America, or Russia. How can we seriously entertain any doubt that, if English artisans as a rule had the careful habits, and the modest, though thoroughly comfortable, requirements, of the French peasantry; still more if they were aided and encouraged in the practice of these unfamiliar virtues by the example of those captains of industry who have

1 Mr Smith's comparison of the taxation, local and imperial, of the three great capitals of the world is curious and rather consolatory :

hitherto taught them rather how to make money than how to hoard it,—we might have tided over far more easily and speedily a crisis imcomparably less severe ? 1

It is now nearly a generation since our great philosophical economist laid his finger on one of the

1 We may be reminded of one special difference between the French and English people, which makes saving so much easier and more natural to the former, viz., their much slower rate of increase. To this may be added that their laws of inheritance foster habits of economy, which the English ones certainly do not. This is true enough; but to discuss fully the bearings of the subject would take us too far from our present topic. It may suffice at present to say that we have the vast and almost inexhaustible resources of emigration, of which our neighbours make, perhaps can make, comparatively so little use. England thus disposes of those redundant numbers which in France do not appear. In the thirty-nine years, 1837-76, there left the United Kingdom as voluntary emigrants, destined chiefly to North America and Australia, 8,000,000 of persons, or an average of 22,800 persons per annum. It has been computed that each emigrant was worth to the country or colony to which he went, quite £175; that is to say, speaking in commercial language, his infancy, education, training, skill, and the stock of clothes, money, and goods he brought with him were worth £175 to the new country of his choice. On the average of the thirty-nine years, 1837-76, this country has contributed £40,000,000 per annum in emigrants to the progress of North America and Australia, and no discussion of the progress of these new countries can be of any value which does not assign due prominence to this wonderful phenomenon. Of late years the emigration to Australia has assumed larger dimensions. In 1866-70 it was 9 per cent. of the whole; in 1876 it was 29 per cent. Shorter and cheaper passages to Australia have produced a large effect. No part of the social changes of the last forty years is more satisfactory, both to the mother-country and the colonial and foreign countries than this voluntary emigration undertaken by the free choice, and paid for out of the savings, of the emigrants themselves.

most serious blots in our social economy-the unsoundness of our distributive system; that is, the excessive proportion which the distributors bear to the producers, the number of retailers of consumable articles in comparison to the need for them. Retail trade required, in reference to other occupations, little professional skill or knowledge, and little capital; and in consequence many scarcely qualified easily took up this line of business, or added it to their other functions. The mischief grew, and with it grew its many disastrous consequences. Small shopkeepers multiplied beyond any actual demand; they competed with each other for a business inadequate for all, and those who might have made a decent and an honest livelihood out of a hundred customers could not do so out of fifty. Those, again, who have capital sufficient to enable them to buy their stores cheaply because on a large scale, might be satisfied with moderate profits in retailing them; those who were destitute of these advantages were forced either to ask higher prices or to serve out inferior qualities. Those, too, who gave credit to their customers did not always get paid: thence came the practice of making punctual purchasers pay for those who paid tardily or perhaps never paid at all—at once a cruelty and an injustice. Unsoundness thus crept into the whole practices of retailers in smaller towns and among poorer populations, and buyers—that is, the whole body of customers—were mulcted, paid more than they need have done, or ought to have done, and found that their