CONDITION OF THE LABORERS. 135 



effects must presently be felt in all their violence. Men with 

 families dependent upon their labor, earning not more than 7s., 

 and in some instances even less, per week, and oftentimes with 

 only occasional employment at that rate, present objects of deep 

 interest to a philanthropic mind. Men living themselves upon 

 a single meal per day, and that potatoes only, for the sake of 

 keeping a wife and children from absolute starvation, and there 

 is ample evidence that such cases exist, present a sad spectacle. 

 What are the remedies for such a condition of things, if remedies 

 there are to be found, it is not within my province, in this case, to 

 discuss. It is a hard lot, where the most severe and unremitted 

 labor will not avail to procure a subsistence for one s self and 

 family, and where, with immense tracts of uncultivated land, 

 the opportunity even of exerting this labor, however cheerfully 

 it might be rendered, is, for any cause whatever, refused or 

 prevented.* 



The subject, it appears to me, and perhaps wholly from my 

 being unaccustomed to a condition of things in any degree re 

 sembling it, is daily assuming a fearful aspect ; I do not mean 

 of danger to the government, for the government of the country 

 seems never to have been stronger, but fearful in its bearings 

 upon the public peace, the public morals, the security of property, 

 and the state of crime. I make no apology for touching upon it, 

 because the experience of an old cannot be without its advan 

 tages to a new country, and the condition of labor is a subject 

 which materially concerns every just government. Any hopes 

 of a government being founded or administered upon strictly 

 moral principles are contradicted by all past experience.! 



* One can scarcely read, withcwt a shudder, the following declaration of a 

 celebrated economical writer : 



&quot; A man born into the world already possessed, if he has no assistance from his 

 parents, upon whom he has a just demand, or from society for his labor, has no 

 claim for the smallest portion of food, and no business where he was. At Nature s 

 mighty board there was no cover for him ; she tells him to be gone.&quot; 



This passage, which appeared in the first edition of his great work, was after 

 wards suppressed, being, it is said, too strong for the temperature even of the 

 rankest of the economical school. 



f &quot; To provide for us in our necessities is not in the power of government It 

 would be a vain presumption in statesmen to think that they can do it. The 

 people maintain them, and not they the people. It is in the power of government 

 to prevent much evil ; it can do very little positive good in this, or perhaps in any 

 thing else. It is not only so of the state and the statesman, but of all the classes 



