cross drawings. If we, the people of this country, purchase any quantity of goods whatever from any foreign country, and pay for them in gold, this is equivalent to our paying for them in our own manufactures or our mining and agricultural produce, and so we encourage our own producers. We are not a gold-producing country; and though we have obtained some small quantities of the precious metals in successful sea-fights, and the storming of Oriental forts, no one will pretend to say that the sums acquired in this manner would support a foreign trade. Where, then, do we get the gold which we send abroad for the commodities we import? By exporting commodities, and not otherwise; and so it is proved that those people who wish to encourage the home manufacture need not set any limits on their choice, but may with safe conscience purchase goods of undoubted foreign manufacture in the knowledge that they are such, without requiring the testimony of the retailer to their being 'genuine British.'

Upon the whole, it is believed that among the duties which the rich classes of society owe to the poorer, expenditure for the benefit of trade need not be included; and that this operation may with full propriety be left to take its natural course.

In a previous chapter we have called upon the working-classes, if they desire a precedent of the true method by which an order of men may raise their position, to look to the history of the middleclass for the past century. It would be a material addition to the merits of this body if it could be shown that they have given social encouragement to the advance upwards of those who are immediately beneath them, by holding out to them the hand of courtesy. It must be admitted that in this country there is a cold reserve on the part of all those who have a claim to come within the pale of the gentry towards all those without that pale, which appears to have increased just as other distinctions in rank have been obliterated. If we begin with the highest subject of the land, and trace society downwards, we shall find the grades but imperceptibly separated, and all the circles winding into each other, until we come down to the working-class, and there we find a wide distinct separation. It is as palpable between the last of the gentry class and the first of the working, as between the humblest guest who sits at a rich man's table, and the best-fed footman who stands behind his chair. We have elsewhere alluded to the artisan's unambitious nature--to his distaste for clean linen, good clothing, and the other comforts and elegancies which mark the gentleman, and might be afforded out of the skilful workman's wages often more easily than out of the poor gentleman's income. But it must also be remembered that in the present state of society, the half-pay lieutenant with 4s. 6d. a day, or the government clerk with a trifle more, would scorn to sit at table with the chaser of silver or the bookbinder, who, by reason of their great abilities and taste, may

be drawing an income of more than double the amount. Nor do the employers of workmen in general make any more advance towards an amalgamation. Many of those who are kind and considerate to their workpeople, are apt to approach them with a lofty condescension, which only serves to mark the more emphatically the social distinction.

There are proud spirits among these workmen; they see the marks of isolation even in acts of kindness, and it sours their spirit, helping them on to those discontents and hatreds which, when they burst forth, are no doubt injurious to the upper classes against whom they are directed, but fatal to themselves. These great severances of society make gulfs into which, like the gap of the Roman Forum, the precious creations of civilisation, skill, and industry have to be cast. Society is in its true and healthy state when all are pressing forward amicably together-not when it is divided into two sections, looking across at each other in hostile hatred. When Turgot saw the great people of France occupied with their pomps and frivolities, while the poor were engrossed with a sense of their miseries, he predicted that such an alienation of the two classes-such an absence of common grounds of sympathy and intercourse-must lead to convulsions. We know what followed. Matters are, it is true, very different at this time and in this country. The severed class lives by industry, and between those of the working-classes who have sense enough to know that order is essential to their welfare, and the higher orders, the supporters of the law and institutions of the country have the upper hand, and those who rise against them can only come under the horse's hoof. But forced conquests even over small ininorities are evil things. They deposit a little leaven of mischief that leaveneth the great mass; it may not be with rebellion or treason, but certainly it is with qualities that are the reverse of peaceful, humanising, and civilising. The great employer can often see the symptoms of this spirit. When he meets his workman individually face to face, he comes the representative of all the social strength of his position, and the workman is humble and respectful. Let him meet the same man as part of a deputation about wages or hours, conscious of the immediate strength of numbers, he is insolent, turbulent, and tyrannical.

It would not detract one iota from the true dignity of the employing and professional classes, were they to take the first step towards conciliation, and make those proffers of amity which the workmen are too proud and surly to court. It could not injure the good esteem in which the professional classes stand, were some of the able workmen, whose skill produces works held in wonder and admiration by the most distant quarters of the world, admitted of their set, and entitled to mix with them on a principle of social equality.

There is another matter in which the upper classes have scarcely used their power with a fair reference to the claims of those below them-the emoluments of office. In the gradations necessary for securing adequate aptitude from public functionaries, the salaries of members of the working-classes are too often fixed on a scale which, as it is insufficient to secure zeal and energy, is not conducive to the public service.

The principle on which officials of the higher class are salaried is, that they shall have a sufficient pecuniary inducement to devote their time and talents to the duties of their office. They are thus not only placed in ease and comfort according to their condition in life, and, if they be prudent, beyond the worldly cares that press on people of uncertain income, but their remuneration is a temptation to them to aspire to the office, and to keep it when they have obtained it. With the humbler class of subordinates, on the other hand, the principle adopted is generally the most stringent economy. There are always people who will accept of the lowest certain income capable of sustaining life, in preference to the chances of free labour. Some departments of the public service-chiefly, with the great exception of the army, those which are under corporation management—are a great house of refuge for those who are so prepared to sell their labour for the minimum of subsistence, and thus the duty is economically performed. No man has reliance on the zeal or integrity of these men. It is well known that they have no future to look forward to in their occupation. They take it until a better opening appears, and are ready to shake themselves free of it whenever a sufficient motive presents itself. The only hold which the public possess over them, is the imperfect and clumsy control of discipline, which is totally inadequate to supply the place of respectability and conscientious responsibility. The public do not gain by the system. The multitude of thefts annually committed in the post-office department must be attributed to the meagre salaries of the letter-carriers, who, having no interest in the establishment, or zeal in the performance of their duties, yield to temptations which would be insufficient to overcome men to whom the situation formed a comfortable provision. In some towns, policemen-the guardians of the public peace and of private property-are paid at the rate of 9s. or 10s. a week, because men can be had at the price: their quality is not examined. The functions of the first officer of the law are of a very different character, in point both of their importance and of the skill they demand, from those of a night watchman; but perhaps even this distinction is rather too stronglymarked, when the salary of the one is £15,000 a year, and that of the other £25-the one being six hundred times as great as the other. So it may be a just as well as a noble thing, in a great nation like ours, to give an illustrious commander about £40,000

a year; but do we apply the same justice to all the gradations downwards, when the soldier who participated in his victories has but an income of £20 annually? The insufficiency with which our gallant sailors were remunerated gave rise to the gross and scandalous injustice of impressment. In the army we have not, as we once had, an actual conscription; but the remuneration and the prospects of rising are insufficient to prompt men of a high tone of mind to join its ranks. It brings together the refuse of society; and its sole sanction for supplying that military ardour and high sense of honour which poetry makes the attribute of the soldier, is in the despotic application of an iron discipline. The irksomeness of the chain-not relieved by long use, which reconciles us to most things-is testified by numerous desertions, and until the time of service was lately abbreviated, was still more terribly indicated by numerous suicides. In the payment of our common soldiers we take a false analogy from other services, which, however, is not permitted to influence the remuneration of our general officers. The same pay that in a rich country will only be accepted by the dregs of the population, may be a temptation to the middle or upper classes of a poor community. It was thus long considered a more economical system to hire bodies of stipendiaries from the petty German princes, who let out the services of their subjects, and increased their incomes by a profit in the transaction, than to induce British subjects to enlist. While a shilling a day is insufficient to secure bare respectability in this country, sixpence purchases a sort of aristocracy for the East India Company, whom it is considered so great a privilege to serve, that they have the choice among many applicants of the high-soldier cast for each vacancy. When we double to our home army the sum that is so efficacious in the golden East, we indolently suppose that we have done enough. But these things are not to be measured in coin—they ought to be accommodated to the habits of the people, and so accommodated, as rather to raise than depress their character.

CHAPTER XI.

THE DUTIES OF LANDED PROPERTY.

Feudalism-Its effect on the Relation of Landlord and Tenant-Landed Privileges-Game-Laws-Advantage of Landlords being Capitalists-Evil of Burdened Estates to the Community-Absenteeism and Residence-Large and Small Farming-Economical and Moral Condition of Small Tenants and Peasant Proprietors.

The traditions of the feudal period still hover so thickly round the relationship of agricultural landlord and tenant, that it seldom can be viewed as a mere contract, like the chartering of a ship or the hiring of a horse. It is a relationship, however, that possesses infinite varieties-from the obsequious owner of furnished apartments, who sometimes includes his own menial services in the accommodation which he is willing to extend to every one who can pay for it, up to the great territorial duke who knows his estates only geographically, has no more personal intercourse with his individual tenantry than a sovereign with his subjects, and has as little acquaintance with the personal rights and obligations to which he and they are mutually subjected. Whenever we rise beyond the class of house-speculators, who partake more of the character of the makers of a commodity for the market than of territorial chiefs, there is always a disposition to rate the landlord and the tenant as persons belonging to distinct spheres of life, and bearing to each other the relation of patron and client, or leader and follower. Nor is this traditional classification lost even when the landlord is a needy spendthrift and the tenant a wealthy yeoman, whose regularly paid rent is the main resource to which the owner of the soil has to look for the support of his household. Though receiving a benefit, the landowner is still allowed by the courtesy of society to be looked upon as the conferrer of a favour; and the time has scarcely yet gone by when even such a landlord would consider that he was entitled to dispose of the vote of his tenant, and to think for him on all public questions, whether political or religious.

There are some specialities in the law which tend to support this social distinction. Until very lately, the game-laws in England were not only a virtual privilege of the aristocracy, as they are at present, but the letter of the law limited the privilege of enjoying field-sports to landowners, and those who received a special qualification from them; a peculiarity which still subsists in Scotland. The reservation of a privilege to the landlord and