ng
the domestic affections, watching the expanding bodies and minds of
their children, leading them on in the road of improvement, warning them
against the perils with which they are surrounded, and observing with
somewhat of a more jealous and parental care, what it is for which by
their individual qualities they are best adapted, and in what particular
walk of life they may most advantageously be engaged. The father and
the son would grow in a much greater degree friends, anticipating each
other's wishes, and sympathising in each other's pleasures and pains.

Thirdly, one infallible consequence of a greater degree of leisure
in the lower classes would be that reading would become a more common
propensity and amusement. It is the aphorism of one of the most
enlightened of my contemporaries, "The schoolmaster is abroad:" and many
more than at present would desire to store up in their little hoard a
certain portion of the general improvement. We should no longer have
occasion to say,

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unrol.

Nor should we be incited to fear that ever wakeful anticipation of the
illiberal, that, by the too great diffusion of the wisdom of the wise,
we might cease to have a race of men adapted to the ordinary pursuits
of life. Our ploughmen and artificers, who obtained the improvements
of intellect through the medium of leisure, would have already received
their destination, and formed their habits, and would be disposed to
consider the new lights that were opened upon them, as the ornament
of existence, not its substance. Add to which, as leisure became more
abundant, and the opportunities of intellectual improvement increased,
they would have less motive to repine at their lot. It is principally
while knowledge and information are new, that they are likely to
intoxicate the brain of those to whose share they have fallen; and, when
they are made a common stock upon which all men may draw, sound thinking
and sobriety may be expected to be the general result.

One of the scenes to which the leisure of the laborious classes is seen
to induce them to resort, is the public-house; and it is inferred
that, if their leisure were greater, a greater degree of drunkenness,
dissipation and riot would inevitably prevail.

In answer to this anticipation, I would in the first place assert, that
the merits and demerits of the public-house are very unjustl