her public improvements, by
which intercourse is facilitated, and the convenience of man subserved;
the conveniences and luxuries of life enjoyed by those who are in
possession of fortune, or have profitable employments; of all, in short,
that places her at the head of modern civilization, he proceeds to give
the reverse of the picture. And here I shall use his own words: "The
laboring class compose the bulk of the people; the great body of the
people; the vast majority of the people--these are the terms by which
English writers and speakers usually describe those whose only property
is their labor."

"Of comprehensive words, the two most frequently used in English
politics, are distress and pauperism. After these, of expressions
applied to the state of the poor, the most common are vice and misery,
wretchedness, sufferings, ignorance, degradation, discontent, depravity,
drunkenness, and the increase of crime; with many more of the like
nature."

He goes on to give the details of this inequality and wretchedness, in
terms calculated to sicken and appal one to whom the picture is new.
That he has painted strongly we may suppose; but there is ample
corroborating testimony, if such were needed, that the representation is
substantially just. Where so much misery exists, there must of course be
much discontent, and many have been disposed to trace the sources of the
former in vicious legislation, or the structure of government; and the
author gives the various schemes, sometimes contradictory, sometimes
ludicrous, which projectors have devised as a remedy for all this evil
to which flesh is heir. That ill-judged legislation may have sometimes
aggravated the general suffering, or that its extremity may be mitigated
by the well-directed efforts of the wise and virtuous, there can be no
doubt. One purpose for which it has been permitted to exist is, that it
may call forth such efforts, and awaken powers and virtues which would
otherwise have slumbered for want of object. But remedy there is none,
unless it be to abandon their civilization. This inequality, this vice,
this misery, this _slavery_, is the price of England's civilization.
They suffer the lot of humanity. But perhaps we may be permitted humbly
to hope, that great, intense and widely spread as this misery
undoubtedly is in reality, it may yet be less so than in appearance. We
can estimate but very, very imperfectly the good and evil of individual
condition, as of