On Practical Cooperative Societies, 389 



both in fact and on general principles. We should wish to 

 see the plan carried into execution in all towns and villages, 

 or wherever people of different trades and pursuits are associ- 

 ated together in numbers of three or four hundred. It seems 

 to have at once the advantage of encouraging industry, fruga^ 

 lity, and the desire and love of property. The interest and 

 importance thus excited and produced, in the minds of the 

 poorest and humblest labourers, must be most salutary. A 

 man belonging to one of these societies will feel that he is some- 

 thing, because he has acquired some property, however small; 

 and as this property may be increased by skill and labour, as 

 well as by chance, he, having a greater stake in society, will 

 play a more careful game himself, and will see that the game is 

 fairly played by others. No man in any class of society is 

 much to be depended on who has not some property ; who is 

 not connected with his countrymen and his country by some 

 other tie than that of merely belonging to the same species. 

 The natural desire of having something we can call our own, is 

 one reason why the poorest men marry soonest ; to have a 

 wife and family, they feel, at once renders them of some import- 

 ance, because they have something belonging to them and 

 depending on them. They can no longer be esteemed an 

 isolated point, or an unconnected fragment, but a perfect 

 whole; and, as soon as children are produced, a whole complete 

 in all its parts. Where a young man takes a saving turn in 

 early life, he does not marry so soon, partly because his savings 

 are something to set his heart on, and partly because every 

 day he feels more and more the importance attached to pro- 

 perty. Marriage he looks forward to at a future day, and he 

 also looks to marrying some one, who, like himself, has saved 

 a little property. The operation of this principle in young 

 men is thus a cause of saving in the other sex, and, should a 

 couple of young persons, who have been saving, produce 

 children, they are likely to educate them, and instill into them 

 the same principles. With a view, therefore, to keeping popu- 

 lation within due limits, these Cooperative Societies will not 

 be without their use, and more especially when they are con- 

 nected, like the Brighton Society, with the education of the 

 rising generation; for any plan for the amelioration of the 

 laborious classes, in which this is not included or supposed, 

 can only be considered of temporary use. We reserve a 

 good deal more which we have to say on this subject, till we 

 review in a succeeding Number the two publications alluded to; 

 in the mean time, we should be glad of further information, 

 and of the opinions of different readers. — Co7id. 



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