bour with their hands
for hire--that this is an indispensable condition of all civilised
society. They know likewise that the labour-market is necessarily full
of vicissitude, that work of particular kinds is constantly shifting
its place, now from one street to another, now from one town to
another, now from one province to another. It would seem, therefore,
to be their cue, to fit the labourer for the changes that are liable
to beset the way of life he has chosen, or into which he has been
thrown; to imbue him with the noble Crusoe spirit of adventure and
expedient; and to leave his hands free to embrace his fortune wherever
it may offer. But no such thing. Their grand effort at present appears
to be, to chain him to the spot on which he happens to stand, by
making him the possessor of some small house, or some small plot of
ground. If the labour-market were permanent in its demand, exactly
proportioned to the existing numbers, and yet elastic enough to meet
the movement of population, this would be an excellent plan; but as it
is, it may be doubted whether there is not in a system which restricts
the locomotion of the workman, the germ of a great evil, both to the
class to which he belongs and to the cause of general progress. It
seems to us that this plan, which is now making such rapid strides
over the whole kingdom, is in antagonism with the other great
influences that are occupied in developing the character of the age.
While railway transit and steam navigation are labouring to break the
chains that bound the workman to the locality in which he grew, the
various land-investment societies are doing everything in their power
to rivet them anew. But this hint must be understood as applied to the
system in its general, not special application. There can be no doubt
of its admirable effect in multitudes of individual cases: what we
disapprove of, is the manner in which it addresses itself to the
working-class as a body.

That no external circumstances at home, however terrible or desperate,
can struggle successfully, except in a small minority of cases, with
the spirit of conventionalism and the inert force of habit, is proved
by what is passing around us in society. But it may at least be hoped,
that reason is able to exercise a power which appears not to reside in
the mechanical pressure of events. The misfortune is, that the
calamities of life do not find our minds in a state of preparation to
meet them. We have