ustrial life; but of which the success must wholly depend upon our
clearly understanding the circumstances and necessary _limits_ of this
change. No teacher can truly promote the cause of education, until he
knows the conditions of the life for which that education is to prepare
his pupil. And the fact that he is called upon to address you nominally,
as a 'Working Class,' must compel him, if he is in any wise earnest or
thoughtful, to inquire in the outset, on what you yourselves suppose
this class distinction has been founded in the past, and must be founded
in the future. The manner of the amusement, and the matter of the
teaching, which any of us can offer you, must depend wholly on our first
understanding from you, whether you think the distinction heretofore
drawn between working men and others, is truly or falsely founded. Do
you accept it as it stands? do you wish it to be modified? or do you
think the object of education is to efface it, and make us forget it for
ever?

Let me make myself more distinctly understood. We call this--you and
I--a 'Working Men's' Institute, and our college in London, a 'Working
Men's' College. Now, how do you consider that these several institutes
differ, or ought to differ, from 'idle men's' institutes and 'idle
men's' colleges? Or by what other word than 'idle' shall I distinguish
those whom the happiest and wisest of working men do not object to call
the 'Upper Classes?' Are there really upper classes,--are there lower?
How much should they always be elevated, how much always depressed? And,
gentlemen and ladies--I pray those of you who are here to forgive me the
offence there may be in what I am going to say. It is not _I_ who wish
to say it. Bitter voices say it; voices of battle and of famine through
all the world, which must be heard some day, whoever keeps silence.
Neither is it to _you_ specially that I say it. I am sure that most now
present know their duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps
than I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class,
which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the
less terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit is
there to that of which we are unconscious?

Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen, and ask them,
also as representing a great multitude, what they think the 'upper
classes' are, and ought to be, in relation to them. Answer, you workmen
who are here, as