82 RIGHTS OF THE POOR. 



our coarser propensities, and lower ourselves to a level approaching 

 the habits of brutes. 



Another class of political economists, with more show of reason, 

 advocate emigration. We are, they urge, weighed down by a sur- 

 plus population ; labour by the force of competition, and the intro- 

 duction of machinery, is becoming daily less and less valuable ; and 

 as labour constitutes the poor man's sole capital, he is rapidly going 

 to ruin. But they continue, there are many fertile regions many 

 wide countries nearly if not altogether uninhabited countries, too, 

 with genial climates, and great capabilities as to soil and situation 

 why should our starving population not be located there ? why not 

 extend the blessings of civilization? why not call into " existence 

 new worlds" to counterbalance the decay which dogs the steps of 

 old countries ? why not relieve ourselves from .an incubus which is 

 pressing upon our resourses, and threatening the most serious conse- 

 quences ? Why not, indeed for the plan is feasible, and has some 

 certain advantages ? Why not ? Because some of the best prin- 

 ciples of our common nature revolts against it. Can we wonder that 

 the inhabitants of the quiet hamlet, whose forefathers have for gene- 

 rations lived beneath the same thatched roof cultivated the sam,e 

 plot of ground and now rest in the same grave, still cling to their 

 familiar homestead ? Their condition, it is true, may differ widely 

 from that of their immediate predecessors. The home manufacture 

 is lost their plots of ground are either greatly over-rented, or they 

 are rapidly losing them, the proprietor having broken up his small 

 farms, and the commoning is all enclosed. The wheel and the dis- 

 taff are idle the shuttle and knitting-needle are abandoned, and 

 the cheerful industry of content is converted into apathetic idleness. 

 Yet still they cling to their homes, and sincerely do we hope that this 

 feeling, which is the basis of all nationality, may never be lost amongst 

 us. Sincerely do we trust that the hearts of our peasantry may never 

 be so dead within them as to abandon their home, their kindred, and 

 their country at the bidding of the cold calculations of scheming pro- 

 jectors. The feeling which attach men to the soil and to particular 

 localities, form an integral part of those great moi;al and social in- 

 stincts implanted within us for the wisest and noblest purposes, and 

 we do not envy that man whose "smooth-rubbed soul" does not 

 acknowledge them. We, on the contrary, would widen the circle of 

 such attachments we would bind man by domestic and political 

 ties we would have him consider his cottage, his wife, and his 

 family as his home, and his country as his world. 



It is some consolation to know that amidst these crude masses of 

 theory and nonsense, genuine philanthropy, and wise and prudent 

 measures are to be found, and that a system is steadily and quietly 

 progressing, which has produced excellent results, and which can- 

 not fail to be the means for removing many of the evils now pressing 

 on the labouring poor. It is satisfactory to reflect, that when the 

 heaps of illustrations, outlines, and hints are forgotten, which have 

 of late swarmed from the press, and whose greatest recommendation 

 has been their perfect unintelligibility, and whose popularity we pre- 

 sume to depend upon the same principle as that of the oracles of other 



