dinary, every day, dealings with the
employers of labour a considerateness for those under them, which may
awaken the employers to a more lively care themselves. Only reflect on
the duty: opportunities of testing the strength of your resolves will not
be wanting.

We sometimes feel thoroughly impressed by some good thought, or just
example, that we meet with in study or real life, but as if we had no
means of applying it. We cannot at once shape for ourselves a course
that shall embrace this newly acquired wisdom. Often it seems too grand
for the occasions of ordinary life; and we fear that we must keep it laid
up for some eventful day, as nice housewives their stateliest furniture.
However, if we keep it close to the heart, and make but the least
beginning with it, our infant practice leads to something better, or
grows into something ampler. In real life there are no isolated points.

* * * * *

You, who have but few dependents, or, perhaps, but one drudge dependent
upon you, whether as servant, apprentice, or hired labourer, do not think
that you have not an ample opportunity for exercising the duties of an
employer of labour. Do not suppose that these duties belong to the great
manufacturer with the population of a small town in his own factory, or
to the landlord with vast territorial possessions, and that you have
nothing to do with them. The Searcher of all hearts may make as ample a
trial of you in your conduct to one poor dependent, as of the man who is
appointed to lead armies and administer provinces. Nay, your treatment
of some animal entrusted to your care may be a history as significant for
you, as the chronicles of kings for them. The moral experiments in the
world may be tried with the smallest quantities.

I cannot quit this part of the subject without alluding more directly to
the duties of the employers of domestic servants. Of course the
principles which should regulate the conduct of masters and mistresses
towards their servants, are the same as those which should regulate the
employers of labour generally. But there are some peculiar circumstances
which need to be noticed in the application of these principles. That,
in this case, the employers and the employed are members of one family,
is a circumstance which intensifies the relation. It is a sad thing for
a man to pass the working part of his day with an exacting, unkind,
master: but still, if the w