I have thus glanced at the physical condition of the lower classes with what minuteness my space would allow. During these long centuries of degradation and suffering among the poor, what has the government done for their EDUCATION? In one word, nothing! In "Colquhoun's Treatise on Indigence," (1806,) an authority indisputable almost on this subject, it is said, "It has been shown that above one million of individuals (1,234,768) in a country containing less than nine million of inhabitants, have descended into a state of indigence requiring either total or partial support from the public." And he attributes the great proportion of this destitution to the ignorance, and consequently deep degradation and crime of the people. He says also that "a prodigious number among the laboring classes cohabit together without marriage, and again separate when a difference ensues, and their miserable offspring from neglect are rarely reared to maturity. It will be seen also from late publications, that after making very large allowances, at least one million seven hundred and fifty thousand of the population of the country, nearly one fifth at an age to be instructed, grow up to an adult state without any instruction at all, in the grossest ignorance and without any useful impressions of Religion or morality." The London Quarterly Review, which has never represented the sufferings of the people worse than they really were, presents the following gloomy picture.

After stating on the authority of Parliament, the number of children in London, without any means of education, at one hundred and thirty thousand, "several thousand of whom are let out to beggars and trained up in dishonesty," it says, "children are daily to be seen, hundreds and thousands about the streets of London, brought up in misery and mendicity, first to every kind of suffering; afterwards to every kind of guilt; the boys to theft, the girls to prostitution; and this, not from accidental causes, but from an obvious defect in our institutions. Throughout all our great cities, throughout all our manufacturing counties, the case is the same as in the capital." "Twothirds of the lower orders in London," (a great majority of the people) said Sir Thomas Bernard, "live as utterly ignorant of the doctrines and duties of Christianity, and are as errant and unconverted pagans as if they had existed in the wildest part of Africa." In quoting this remark into the 29th No. of the Quarterly, the Reviewer says, "The case is the same in Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield, and in all our large towns ; the greatest part of our manufacturing populace, of the miners and colliers, are in the same condition, and if they are not universally so, it is more owing to the zeal of the Methodists than to any other cause." When we read such horrible statements, we forget not, that many million pounds were during this same period wrung from the English people to support a National Church,

whose funds would have richly maintained schools, churches, and missionaries, for the education of these pagan millions. Neither is it to be overlooked, that this same organ of the church, from which we have taken these statements, was and is still, for ever talking of the necessity of an established religion for the moral and religious education of the poor. It is an acknowledgment of some value, coming from such a source, that the only instruction the poor despised classes enjoyed, was from the despised Methodists a body of Christians whom this same High Church Tory Magazine thinks they never can abuse enough; that with these heathen orders the established clergy had nothing to do. And yet this same Review has loudly clamoured for church extension, with a clergy which, on its own confession, does little or nothing for the instruction of the poor, to whom the Gospel was specially sent. - Well might this Quarterly acknowledge, as it did only twentyfive years ago, that "the lower orders of England are more ignorant of their religious duties than they are in any other Christian country."

These are the fruits of oppression. So much for a legislation in which the people have had no voice. Truly "the people are not the authors of the system which has ruined their freedom, their industry, and their morals." We can only judge of the feelings of the poor of past ages by their feelings now. There must have been "thoughts of agony, that scorpion-like have stung to mad

ness" the souls of millions into whose wretched hearts the very iron of despotism has been driven. But could we behold the tears of wretchedness that have drenched their pillows-seen only by God the limbs that have rotted in dungeon chains the "withered forms, that in Botany Bay have been doomed to perpetual exile from their country for offences against arbitrary and unjust laws "-could we see the parting scenes upon the shores of England where thousands of these poor wretches have been torn from their wives and children amidst their entreaties to be suffered to go with their husbands and fathers!-could we see them go and commit crimes that they might be condemned to the same now joyous fate-could we hear the cries of hungry and oppressed generations of the poor-could we glance but for once on that dark scroll of tyranny and wrong perpetrated in England, that will be unfolded in the great day of final assize-what tears could we find worthy of being shed over such a spectacle? "But this eternal blazon cannot be to ears of flesh and blood."

And while this deep wail of sorrow and suffering, that we can even now hear coming up through the vale of ages, was falling on the ears of successive races of nobles, hierarchs, and kings, where were "the successors of the apostles," the ministers of Jesus Christ, paid by the state?Collecting tithes!

To the man who will suffer himself to think of

such weighty matters as these, while his heart beats one hundred times, what mystery is there, that in England, where all this wrong has been perpetrated, all this suffering endured, "gaunt millions with their hungry faces are now standing up to ask, as in forest roarings, these washed upper classes, after long, unrelieved centuries, these questions. How have ye treated us? How have ye taught us-fed us-while we toiled for you? The answer can be read in flames over the midnight summer-sky-this is the feedingthe leading we have had of you-EMPTINESS OF POCKET, OF HEAD, AND OF HEART!"