the tyranny of their own follies. One would have thought that the experiments already made must have convinced them that "strikes," injurious to all, must be chiefly injurious to themselves; that it is just cutting off the nose to be revenged on the face," as the proverb says. Here is a million or more of wages lost to themselves and their families; the little hoards, which ought to have been a sacred deposit for old age or a day of adversity, exhausted; the community at large subjected to great loss and anxiety; the habits of thousands amongst the artisans themselves deeply, and, in many cases incurably, injured; and nothing in the world to show for it all except a few weeks of frenzied excitement and ruinous idleness. The only people benefited are the keepers of beershops, and those fools or knaves (for one or other they must be) who seduce the poor creatures into the notion that "strikes" are wise things. As for the leaders, a "strike" is, of course, for a month or two, a fool's paradise; they spout and speechify- they form "committees," they preside over them they travel gratis -they assume state they are agreeably inflated (even next door to bursting) with the fumes of conceit and self-importance. Really, when one considers how, on these occasions, the poor folks are led by the nose; how plain it is, that come what will of a strike, and be the provocation to it what it will, the labourers themselves must be the chief losers, and yet how slow they are to learn truth so obvious, it almost makes one despair. But you, I know, do not despair; neither in truth do I, though I have not the faith which some of our modern savans and reformers profess in that infallible "specific "--knowledge! "Knowledge is power" they are eternally chanting. Why, ay; and so is ignorance, as our strike-demagogues agreeably find; indeed, I fear, if we consult history, that we shall find, so far as mere power goes, that great events have depended, for their possibility, quite as much on the ignorance of men in general as on the knowledge of those who have practised upon it; not to say that half the great things men have accomplished would have been unattempted, if a happy ignorance had not shrouded, at the commencement, the tremendous obstacles to

be encountered. "Naturalists have observed," says South, "that blindness is a very great help and instigation to boldness. And amongst men, as ignorance is commonly said to be the mother of devotion, so in account of the birth and descent of confidence too . . . he who makes ignorance the mother of this also, reckons its pedigree by the surer side."

Knowledge, I grant, is a more respectable source of power than ignorance; but still whether it be a beneficial power, depends on a variety of conditions with which it has no essential connection in the world. Mere enlightenment is as little capable of subduing a refractory will and selfish passions, as ignorance; and surely the history of the world, of unscrupulous ambition and crooked policy, suffice to show that intellect and knowledge are in themselves instruments merely, and are just as ready to serve wrong as right-villany as virtue. I should as little hope by mere knowledge to make a man act aright, as to get incendiary "Hodge" (as some one said), just as he is about to stick his torch into a wheat-stack, to forego his enlightened purpose by reading to him the treatise on "Heat" out of the Library of Useful Knowledge, and showing him that, by the laws of the communication of 66 caloric," ," the said wheat-stack would first "expand," and then inconveniently "contract " under the action of that mysterious element.

Mere "political" knowledge, however sound, will effect the object just as little. Indeed, Hodge, ignorant as he may be, has quite light enough, before kindling his conflagration, to see by. What is wanted is a training that shall operate on habit; a training, religious and moral as well as intellectual; that alone will do the business.

If it be said that the schooling, by which knowledge is imparted, will do good, that I admit most willingly; any decently managed school is, in that point of view, beyond all price; but then, though the giving of the knowledge is the avowed object, the great benefit reaped is a moral one: it is the effect produced in the very process itself of acquisition that constitutes the chief value of schooling; it is because industry, perseverance, patience,

punctuality, veracity, honesty, and so on, are practically taught in the course of this school discipline; it is because it involves the right employment of time, and the exclusion of temptation.

When right habits, indeed, have been formed, then the knowledge imparted during their formation becomes invaluable, and an instrument fit to be profitably used; but, in itself, it is as liable to moral abuse as ignorance. If (to use a Socratic figure) you could pour all this knowledge into a lad's mind" as from a vessel," at once, and without the moral process of schooling, it would as little follow that it would be rightly used, or prove beneficial (though a "power" it would be), as the gifts of genius, which, we know familiarly enough, are no infallible passport to virtue. It is just the same with mere knowledge. Neither capacity nor knowledge have, in themselves, any reference to virtue, any more than anything else that is merely instrumental, and that may be, like these, used or abused.

In the meantime, it is hard to say how long it will be before our artisans and mechanics will learn practical wisdom, since experience itself has so often failed to teach it. I fear that thousands of families, in the present case, will find the table of "Dry Measure" in Bonnycastle utterly wrong, and that a "strike" is anything but equal to "two bushels," while, not "twenty strikes," but "one," will prove a "load" of intolerable misery!

Ever yours faithfully,

R. E. H. G.

LETTER XXVII.

To the Same.

Leicester, Dec. 19, 1842.

My dear West,

I met last night, at the house of a friend in this place, one who knew the celebrated Robert Hall. Among other things, he told me he had heard that, when a student at Bristol, Robert had

been brought before the college authorities for being present at a prize-fight! He defended himself half in jest and half in earnest, and to the great horror of the square-toes, confessed the fact, but denied any fault; on the contrary, contended that a prize-fight was a very instructive sight for a youth to witness! One can imagine the consternation of the seniors, while perhaps the young scapegrace insisted that it was a fine exhibition of vigilance, patience, and fortitude; as such, eminently desirable for a Christian, and most desirable of all for a Christian minister to gaze upon; that Paul himself had evidently been at many a prize-fight, as shown by his fondness for the imagery derived from it; that it was also a most melancholy exhibition of human depravity and corruption, and therefore full of solemn and tender suggestions to one whose business it would be to rebuke and correct iniquity; and in short (for Robert was not the lad in those days to halt at a half paradox), that it was a singularly instructive and monitory spectacle for young ministers of the Gospel!

There is certainly something very attractive in a fight of any kind, let us say what we will. It was only the other day that I felt this (shall I confess it?), when I saw too little imps pitching into one another with much good-will that is, ill-will- in the street. Out of regard for the public peace, or to prevent some member of the "Peace Society," should any such come along, from knocking their heads together by way of teaching them to abstain from all violence, I magnanimously "struck up" their swords—I mean, their fists with my umbrella, looked awful, and said solemnly," Sirs, ye are brethren ; why do ye wrong one to another?" Yet, methinks, I could have stayed and seen a round or two with much comfort and edification. "After all," thought I, as I went along somewhat uplifted and vainglorious, "how do I know that I have not impeded justice, and given indemnity to the wrong doer? How do I know that I have saved weak innocence from tyrannous strength? Nay, how do I know (on whichever side lay justice or injustice) I have really done anything?" And this last, probably, was the correct view; for, as soon as my back was turned, the great suit most likely proceeded to its or

dinary arbitration, as if no such potent mediator had appeared. It was just like many more important actions: whether our interference does good or harm, we know not; or, for the matter of that, whether it has any effect at all.

You remember the feeling, I dare say, with which, at school, the symptoms of a "fight" were hailed. "A ring, a ring," shouted the amiable bystanders, ignorant of the cause of the quarrel, and afraid only of its being too early accommodated. Certainly the love of a contest, of seeing energy and passion exhibited, must be strong in our pugnacious race; for whether it be a fight between a matador and his brute antagonist, or of two knights at a tourney, or an intellectual combat between acute and accomplished minds, it seems to be witnessed with much the same eagerness by the spectators as the fights of our school-days by us. Too often men feel as little regard to the justice of the cause as we did, when we watched, perhaps fomented, the first happy symptoms of a quarrel; trembling lest a little reasonable diplomacy should rob us of our treat! In that case we felt as much defrauded as the servant girl whose mistress had given her a holiday — to see an execution. She came back in tears, and her mistress was needlessly afraid that the sorrows of the spectacle had been too much for her sympathetic nerves. The lady was never more mistaken. "Oh, ma'am," sobbed the girl, "the man was not hung after all !”

What would you not have given to see the young scapegraces of Athens who assembled round Socrates, and listened to his disputes with the Sophist tribe? It would have been almost as interesting to watch their countenances as those of the chief combatants. How few amongst them should we have found fairly and ingenuously awaiting the issue of the investigation! How few cared an obolus about the truth! How few were willing to adopt the practical teaching of the great sage they admired! Yet who can question that the delight with which these subtle youths watched the process by which the redoubted athlete of logic cast to the ground his antagonists, was most intense? Just as intense, I dare say, as that with which many of the hearers of