great causes which depress the demand for labor and deprive the people of employment continue in operation, entirely nugatory and ineffectual, in a general view, to arrest our social evils.

The first of these is, that these remedies, one and all of them, are calculated for the elevation and intellectual, or moral improvement of the people, but have no tendency to improve their circumstances, or diminish the load of pauperism, destitution, and misery with which they are overwhelmed. Until the latter is done, however, all the efforts made for the attainment of the former, how benevolent and praiseworthy soever, will have no general effect, and in a national point of view, may be regarded as almost equal to nothing. The reason is that, generally speaking, the human race are governed, in the first instance, almost entirely by their physical sufferings or comforts, and that intellectual or moral improvement cannot be either thought of or attended to till a certain degree of ease as to the imperious demands of physical nature has been attained. In every age, doubtless, there are some persons of both sexes who will heroically struggle against the utmost physical privation, and pursue the path of virtue, or sedulously improve their minds, under circumstances the most adverse, and with facilities the most inconsiderable. But these are the exceptions, not the rule. The number of such persons is so inconsiderable, compared to the immense mass who are governed by their physical sensations, that remedies addressed to the intellect of man, without reference to the improvement of his circumstances, can never operate generally upon society. Even the most intellectual and powerful minds must give way under a certain amount of physical want or necessity. Take Newton and Milton, Bacon and Descartes, Cervantes and Cicero, and make them walk thirty miles in a wintry day, and come in to a wretched hovel at night, and see what they will desire. Rely upon it, it will be neither philosophy nor poetry, but warmth and food. A good fire and a good supper would attract them from all the works which have rendered their names immortal. Can we expect the great body of mankind to be less under the influence of the imperious demands of our common physical nature than the most gifted of the human race? do the people constantly ask for? It is neither cold baths nor warm baths, ragged schools nor normal schools, churches nor chapels, model houses nor mechanics' institutes-"It is a day's wage for a fair day's work." We would all do the same in their circumstances. Give them that, the one thing needful alike for social happiness and moral improvement, and you make a mighty step in social amelioration and elevation; because you lay the foundation on which it all rests, and on which it must, in a general point of view, all depend-without it, all the rest will be found to be as much thrown away as the seed cast on the arid desert.

In the next place, the intellectual cultivation and elevation which is regarded by so large a political party, and so numerous a body

of benevolent individuals, as the panacea of all our social evils, never has affected, and never can affect, more than a limited class in society. We may indeed teach all, to read; but can we make them all read books, or still more, read books that will do them any good, when they leave school, and become their own masters, and are involved in the cares, oppressed with the labors, and exposed to the temptations of the world? Did any man ever find a fifth of his acquaintance of any rank, from the House of Peers and the Bar downwards, who were really and practically directed in manhood and womanhood by intellectual pleasures or pursuits? Habit, early training, easy circumstances, absence of temptation, a fortunate marriage, or the like, are the real circumstances which retain the great body of the human race of every rank in the right path. They are neither positively bad, nor positively good: they are characters of imperfect goodness, and mainly swayed by their physical circumstances. If you come to a crisis with them, when the selfish or generous feelings must be acted upon, nine-tenths of them will be swayed by the former. The disciples of Rousseau will contest these propositions: we would only recommend them to look around them, and see whether or not they are demonstrated by every day's experience in every rank of life. We wish it were otherwise; but we must take mankind as they are, and legislate for them on their average capacity, without supposing that they are generally to be influenced by the intellectual appliances adapted only to a small fraction of their number. And, accordingly, upon looking at the statistical tables given in the commencement of this Essay, it will be found that, while emigration, crime, and pauperism, have advanced rapidly, despite all the efforts of philanthropy and religion, which are permanent, but affect only a part of society, they exhibit the most remarkable fluctuations, according to the prosperity or distress of particular years, because the causes then in operation affected the whole of mankind.

The only way, therefore, in which the physical circumstances of the great body of mankind can be ameliorated, or room can be afforded for the moral and intellectual elevation of such of them as have received from nature minds susceptible of such training, is by restoring the equilibrium between the demand for labor and the numbers of the people, which our late measures have done so much to subvert. By that means, and that means alone, can the innumerable social evils under which we labor be alleviated. Without it, all the other remedies devised by philanthropy, pursued with zeal, cherished by hope, will prove ineffectual. How that is to be done must be evident to every person of common understanding. The demand for labor must be increased, the supply of labor must be diminished. The first can only be done by a moderate degree of Protection to Native Industry, at present beaten down to the dust in every department by the competition of foreign states, where money is more scarce and taxation lighter, and consequently

production is less expensive. The second can only be attained by a systematic emigration, conducted at the public expense, and drawing off annually an hundred or an hundred and fifty thousand of the most destitute of the community, who have not the means of transport for themselves, and, if not so removed, will permanently encumber our streets, our jails, our workhouses.

But money is required for these things; and where, it will be asked, is money to be found in this already overtaxed and suffering community? The answer is, the money-question is the easiest of all; for it will be attained in abundance by the very means requisite to attain the other objects. Protection, even on the most moderate scale, to Native Industry, is not to be attained without the imposition of import-duties; and that will at once produce the funds requisite for the attainment of all these objects. Laid on the importation of all goods, rude or manufactured, they would yield such a revenue as would enable us to take off the Income Tax, and thereby let loose £5,500,000 a-year, now absorbed by it, for the encouragement of domestic industry. Agriculture, manufactures of all sorts, would take a renewed start from the exclusion, to a certain degree, of foreign competition. Domestic industry would cease to languish, because the ruinous competition of foreigners working at a third of our wages would be checked. By these means an ample fund would be raised to enable us to transport, at the public expense, and comfortably settle in their new habitation, some hundred thousand annually of the most destitute class of our people-that class who cannot get away themselves, and, as they are thrown out of employment by Free Trade, now encumber our hospitals, jails, and workhouses. We would convert them from paupers into healthful and sturdy emigrants, doubling in numbers, with constant additions from the parent state, every ten years; and consuming £8 a-head worth of our manufactures. Property in the colonies would double in value every five years, from the joint effect of domestic labor, and the prolific stream of external immigration; and every acre cleared in these fertile wilds would cause a wheel to revolve, or a spindle to move, or a family to be blessed, in the parent state.

We can affix no limits in imagination to what the British Empire might become, or the amount of social and general happiness it might contain, with the physical advantages which nature has given it, and the character which race, and consequent institutions, have impressed upon its inhabitants. In the centre of the Empire stands the parent state, teeming with energy, overflowing with inhabitants, with coal and ironstone in its bosom capable of putting in motion manufactories for the supply of half the globe. In the extremities are colonies in every quarter of the earth, possessing waste lands of boundless extent and inexhaustible fertility, producing every luxury which the heart of man can desire, and one only of which could furnish the whole staple required for its greatest

fabrics. With such providential wisdom were the various parts of this immense empire fitted for each other; so marvellously was the surplus, whether in animated beings or rude produce, of one part adapted to the deficiencies and wants of another, that nothing but a just and equal system of government, alive to the wants, and solicitous for the interests, of every part of its vast dominion, was requisite to render it the most united, prosperous, growing, and powerful state that ever existed on the face of the earth. The Roman Empire, while spread around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, affords but a faint image of what it might have been. The ocean was its inland lake; the British navy its internal means of communication; the foreign trade of the whole earth its home trade. We obtained the empire of the seas precisely to enable us to carry out this magnificent destiny; the victory of Trafalgar presented it to our grasp. But a just and equal system of government was essential to the existence and duration of so immense a dominion; a sense of fair administration, a consciousness of protected interests, would alone hold it together for any length of time. The simple precept of the gospel, "to do to others as we would they should do unto us," would, if duly carried into practice, have for ever kept united the mighty fabric, and caused it to embrace in peace and happiness half the globe. This object was practically attained by the virtual representation of all classes, interests, and colonies under the old constitution; and thence the steady growth, vast extent and unvarying loyalty during many a severe contest, of this multifarious dominion. The new constitution, by vesting the government in the representatives of our manufacturing towns, and thence introducing the rule of class interests, is visibly and rapidly destroying it. The only remedy practicable --and even that is so only for a short season-is the extension to the colonies of a direct share in the Imperial Parliament; but that is far too just and wise a measure to permit the hope that it will ever be embraced by the class interests who now rule the state.

Notwithstanding all the obvious advantages of the course of policy which we have recommended-though it would at once furnish the means, as we have shown in a former paper, of obviating our external dangers and maintaining our national independence,

"At present the native consumption of cotton in India is estimated at from 1,000,000,000 lb. to 3,000,000,000 lb. annually; while the export to Great Britain is only 60,000,000 lb., and to all the world only 150,000,000 lb. In this state of things, the rough production that suits the home market will, of course, only be carried on; while, if sufficient means of conveyance existed to render the cotton that is now grown in the interior, at 11d. per lb., remunerative for export, increased care in its preparation would be manifested, as was the case in the United States, just in proportion to the increased reward that would result. In developing these views, Mr. Chapman undertakes to demonstrate, by well-arranged facts and tables, that the export of cotton from India to England has risen exactly as the difficulties or expense of its transmission have been diminished; and also that costs and impediments still remain which are sufficient to account for the smallness of the quantity we continue to receive."-Times, Jan. 1851.

and at the same time relieve our internal distresses and extend and consolidate our colonial dependencies-we have scarcely any hope that it will be adopted. The Freetraders have got such hold of the burghs to which the Reform Bill gave a decided majority in the House of Commons-and their leaders so perseveringly pursue their own immediate interest, without the slightest regard to the ruin they are bringing upon all other interests of the state, that the hope of any change of policy—at least till some terrible external disaster has opened the eyes of the nation to a sense of the impending calamities brought on them by their rulers-may be regarded as hopeless, without a general national effort. This imposition of a moderate import duty upon the produce, whether rude or manufactured, of all other nations, but with an entire exemption to our own colonies, is obviously the first step in the right direction, and would go far to alleviate our distresses, and at the same time replenish the public Treasury and avert our external dangers. In taking it we should only be following the example of America, Prussia, and nearly all other nations, who levy a duty of 30 per cent. on our manufactures, and thereby make us pay half of their taxes. But it is to be feared the mania of Free Trade will prevail over a wise and expedient policy, calculated equally to advance the interests of all classes in the state. We do not say, therefore, that any such system will be adopted; but this we do say, and with these words we nail our colors to the mast,-PROTECTION MUST BE RESTORED, OR THE BRITISH EMPIRE WILL BE DESTROYED.

[For the Western Journal.]

ARTICLE IV.

GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION.

BY A MEMBER OF THE KEOKUK (IOWA) BAR.

To explore the foundations of civil government-to survey its noble structure and admirable proportions, and, above all, to investigate the original end and purpose of its institution, are among the most grateful, instructive, and delightful employments of the human mind: and, as the examination of this subject is interesting and profitable, when viewed as a whole, so, is it equally so, when examined in its parts. I propose to discuss a topic kindred with it-of great public importance, and one, which I fear is too much neglected-I mean the duty of government to promote public instruction.