change of pursuit which is one of the main aliments both for
body and soul, and leaving little time or opportunity for any thing to
grow up in their minds beyond the rudest and most trivial cares and
objects.

4. THE WORKMAN'S HOME.

That the workman should have a home, which, however humble it may be,
should yet afford room and scope for the decencies, if not for some of
the comforts and refinements of civilized life, is manifestly essential,
if we wish to preserve the great body of the people from a state of
savageness. There is an important and original remark on this subject in
the Hand Loom Weavers Report of 1841:

"The man who dines for 6d. and clothes himself during the year for 5
pounds is probably as healthily fed, and as healthily clad, as if his
dinner cost two guineas a day, and his dress 200 pounds a year. But
this is not the case with respect to habitation. Every increase of
accommodation, from the corner of a cellar to a mansion, renders the
dwelling more healthy, and, to a considerable extent, the size and
goodness of the dwelling tends to render its inmates more civilized."

Indeed, if civilization does not show itself in a man's home, where else
is it likely to take much root with him? Make his home comfortable, and
you do more towards making him a steady and careful citizen, than you
could by any other means. Now only look around, and see how entirely
this has been neglected, at least, until within a recent date. Our
workers are toiling all day long, or, if they have leisure, it is mostly
accompanied by pecuniary distress: and can you expect in either case that
they will busy themselves about those primary structural arrangements
without which it is scarcely possible to have a comfortable home? Many
of the things, too, which are needful for this end, require capital, or,
at least, such conjoint enterprise as can hardly be expected from the
poor. Take any individual workman. Suppose there is defective drainage
in his street, or, as often happens, no drainage at all, what can one
such man do, even if at all alive to the evil? When you consider the
dependent condition of the labouring classes, and how little time they
have for domestic arrangements of any kind, does it not behove the
employer of labour to endeavour that his workmen should have
opportunities of getting places to live in, fit for human beings in a
civilized country? I use the phrase "employer