ent and well-being of
his morals and intellect as well as of his bones and muscles?

Mere money is no indication of prosperity. A man's nature may remain the
same. It may even grow more stunted and deformed, while he is doubling
his expenditure, or adding cent, per cent, to his hoards yearly. It is
the same with the mass. The increase of their gains may merely furnish
them with increased means for gratifying animal indulgences, unless
their moral character keeps pace with their physical advancement. Double
the gains of an uneducated, overworked man, in a time of prosperity, and
what is the result? Simply that you have furnished him with the means of
eating and drinking more! Thus, not even the material well-being of the
population is secured by that condition of things which is defined by
political economists as "National Prosperity." And so long as the moral
elements of the question are ignored, this kind of "prosperity" is, we
believe, calculated to produce far more mischievous results than good.
It is knowledge and virtue alone that can confer dignity on a man's
life; and the growth of such qualities in a nation are the only true
marks of its real prosperity; not the infinite manufacture and sale of
cotton prints, toys, hardware, and crockery. The Bishop of Manchester,
when preaching at a harvest thanksgiving near Preston, referred to a
letter which he had received from a clergyman in the south of England,
who, after expressing his pleasure at the fact that the agricultural
labourers were receiving higher wages, lamented "that at present the
only result he could discover from their higher wages was that a great
deal _more beer_ was consumed. If this was the use we were making of
this prosperity, we could hardly call it a blessing for which we had a
right or ground to thank God. The true prosperity of the nation
consisted not so much in the fact that the nation was growing in
wealth--though wealth was a necessary attribute of prosperity--but that
it was growing in virtue; and that there was a more equable distribution
of comfort, contentment, and the things of this lower world."

In making the preceding observations we do not in the least advocate the
formation of miserly, penurious habits; for we hate the scrub, the
screw, the miser. All that we contend for is, that man should provide
for the future,--that they should provide during good times for the bad
times which almost invariably follow them,--that they should l