480 The Aru Islands. 



rapid, either by lowering the price at which the articles can 

 be produced, or by discovering new markets to which they 

 may be sent. If, however, the question that is so frequently 

 asked of the votaries of the less popular sciences were put 

 here — " Cid bono .^" — it would be found more difficult to an- 

 swer than had been imagined. The advantages, even to the 

 few who reap them, would be seen to be mostly physical, 

 while the wide-spread moral and intellectual evils resulting 

 from unceasing labor, low wages, crowded dwellings, and 

 monotonous occupations, to perhaps as large a number as 

 those who gain any real advantage, might be held to show a 

 balance of evil so great as to lead the greatest admirers of 

 our manufactures and commerce to doubt the advisability of 

 their further development. It will be said : " We can not 

 stop it ; capital must be employed ; our population must be 

 kept at work ; if we hesitate a moment, other nations now 

 hard pressing us will get ahead, and national ruin will fol- 

 low." Some of this is true, some fallacious. It is undoubt- 

 edly a difficult problem which we have to solve ; and I am 

 inclined to think it is this difficulty that makes men conclude 

 that what seems a necessary and unalterable state of things 

 must be good — that its benefits must be greater than its evils. 

 This w^as the feeling of the American advocates of slavery ; 

 they could not see an easy, comfortable Avay out of it. In 

 our own case, however, it is to be hoped, that if a fair con- 

 sideration of the matter in all its bearings shows that a pre- 

 ponderance of evil arises from the immensity of our manu- 

 factures and commerce — evil which must go on increasing 

 with their increase — there is enough both of political wisdom 

 and true philanthropy in Englishmen, to induce them to turn 

 their superabundant wealth into other channels. The fact 

 that has led to these remarks is surely a striking one : that 

 in one of the most remote corners of the earth savages can 

 buy clothing cheaper than the people of the coiintry where 

 it is made ; that the weaver's child should shiver in the win- 

 try wind, unable to purchase articles attainable by the wild 

 natives of a tropical climate, where clothing is mere ornament 

 or luxury, should make us pause ere we regard with unmixed 

 admiration the system which has led to such a result, and 

 cause us to look with some suspicion on the further extension 



