MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS. 297 



of the legislature? Have even the opponents of the 

 measure, with their professions of benevolence, ever 

 pressed, or even suggested, the duty of showing the 

 labouring man, not only that by combination his class 

 can provide for itself, but that the community which 

 found it necessary to make a change involving him in 

 years of uncertainty and possible hardship, was desirous 

 that he should have that knowledge, and willing to aid 

 him in attaining its full benefits ? 



It is not too late to take the necessary steps; and any 

 one who imagines a legislature able to feel, or to think, 

 will see the means of addressing himself to the first 

 faculty by such considerations as the preceding, and to 

 the second by urging the policy of giving every class a 

 share in the artificial system of property on which the 

 country now depends. At present, the property of a 

 labouring man is all tangible, and immediately at hand; 

 it would not be a great wonder if he were found to 

 have no clear opinion of the rights of a landlord, a fund- 

 holder, a mortgagee, or an annuitant. But if he him- 

 self were in possession of any of those claims which, by 

 means of law, can be created, enforced, or transferred 

 by virtue of the possession of a bit of paper still more, 

 if the support of his old age and of his sick bed were con- 

 nected with this purely legal tenure of his past savings, 

 he would then be interested in the preservation of the ex- 

 isting system by the share of it which belongs to himself. 



The friendly societies, numerous as they are, are by 

 no means universally distributed ; and if they were, the 

 smallness of their several amounts of investment must 

 occasion the expenses of management to bear a larger 

 proportion to the whole than would be the case if all 

 were united. Besides which, it happens every now and 

 then that the affairs of such a society fall into disorder 

 from want of skill or care. The government has lent 

 considerable assistance by allowing their investments a 

 larger rate of interest than could elsewhere be obtained ; 

 but this aid, independently of its being but little known 

 by the class whom it most concerns, does not guarantee 



