arger share of influence in our
legislation, our commerce, and our whole social organization--we shall
never, as regards the whole community, attain to any real or important
superiority over the better class of savages.

This is the lesson I have been taught by my observations of uncivilized
man. I now bid my readers--Farewell!

NOTE.

THOSE who believe that our social condition approaches perfection, will
think the above word harsh and exaggerated, but it seems to me the only
word that can be truly applied to us. We are the richest country in the
world, and yet cue-twentieth of our population are parish paupers, and
one-thirtieth known criminals. Add to these, the criminals who escape
detection; and the poor who live mainly on private charity, (which,
according to Dr. Hawkesley, expends seven millions sterling annually
is London alone,) and we may be sure that more than ONE-TENTH of our
population are actually Paupers and Criminals. Both these classes we
keep idle or at unproductive labour, and each criminal costs us annually
in our prisons more than the wages of an honest agricultural labourer.
We allow over a hundred thousand persons known to have no means
of subsistence but by crime, to remain at large and prey upon the
community, and many thousand children to grow up before our eyes in
ignorance and vice, to supply trained criminals for the next generation.
This, in a country which boasts of its rapid increase in wealth, of its
enormous commerce and gigantic manufactures, of its mechanical skill
and scientific knowledge, of its high civilization and its pure
Christianity,--I can but term a state of social barbarism. We also boast
of our love of justice, and that the law protects rich and poor alike,
yet we retain money fines as a punishment, and make the very first
steps to obtain justice a matter of expense--in both cases a barbarous
injustice, or denial of justice to the poor. Again, our laws render it
possible, that, by mere neglect of a legal form, and contrary to his own
wish and intention, a man's property may all go to a stranger, and his
own children be left destitute. Such cases have happened through the
operation of the laws of inheritance of landed property; and that such
unnatural injustice is possible among us, shows that we are in a state
of social barbarism. One more example to justify my use of the term, and
I have done. We permit absolute possession of the soil of our country,
with no legal ri