CONDITION OK TUT LABORERS. 143 



will be endured before any violence is hazarded or permitted. 

 Still it is obvious to every reflecting mind how important it is to 

 the public peace and the security of property, that the rights of 

 the laborious classes should be fully acknowledged, and main 

 tained in the spirit of kindness and equity, as well as of strict 

 legal justice, and that every philanthropic effort should be 

 stimulated and encouraged to protect and comfort them, and, 

 more than that, by education, moral and intellectual, for, with 

 out moral, intellectual too often proves a curse, to elevate them 

 in their social condition. Next to the satisfactions of an honest 

 conscience, the highest of all earthly pleasures to a good man, is 

 that of conferring happiness upon others. I have seen, in Eng 

 land, with a gratification which it would be difficult to express, 

 among persons of the most brilliant rank and the most com 

 manding influence, many instances of a conduct which deserved 

 and secured all this felicity. Every where men are to be found 

 feeling their high responsibleness, and, without any offensive 

 assumption of superiority, devoting all their energies to the pro 

 tection of the houseless, and to the comfort and improvement 

 of those whom divine Providence has cast within the circle of 

 their beneficence, and enjoying all that calm security which such 

 conduct is sure to bring with it. I confess there has been no 

 occasion in my life when I have been so much disposed to envy 

 the possession of wealth and power. On the other hand, I dare 

 say I shall only be compassionated for my simplicity, when I 

 add that the high stone and brick walls, with which houses, and 

 parks, and properties, are here often intrenched and fortified, so 

 high that even the nimblest jail-bird would look at them with 

 despair, and the fences every where bristling with iron spikes and 

 broken glass, and the sullen gates opening &quot;with discordant jar,&quot; 

 and the ferocious watch-dogs, to say nothing of other mastiffs, 

 often stationed by them, from whose terrific growl even the 

 honest applicant shrinks back with dread ; and then the signs 

 which meet your eye constantly, &quot;All vagrants and beggars for 

 bidden here,&quot; &quot; All trespassers here will be prosecuted to the 

 utmost rigor of the law,&quot; and &quot; Steel man-traps set here,&quot; often 

 bring a cold chill over me, and compel me to feel that property 

 held under such cautions loses somewhat of its value. At the 

 same time, it makes me estimate the more highly a condition of 

 society where the road of acquisition is equally open to all, and 



