spread their compulsory idleness amidst tens of thousands, and
periodically array the whole working classes under the banners of
sedition, despotism, and murder; still precocious female labour will
at once tempt parents into idleness in middle life, and disqualify
children, in youth, for household or domestic duties. We wish well to
the philanthropists: we are far from undervaluing either the
importance or the utility of their labours; but as we have hitherto
seen no diminution of crime whatever from their efforts, so we
anticipate a very slow and almost imperceptible improvement in
society from their exertions.

Strong, and in many respects just, pictures of the state of the
working classes in the manufacturing districts, have been lately put
forth, and the _Perils of the Nation_ have, with reason, been thought
to be seriously increased by them. Those writers, however, how
observant and benevolent soever, give a partial, and in many respects
fallacious view, of the _general_ aspect of society. After reading
their doleful accounts of the general wretchedness, profligacy, and
licentiousness of the working classes, the stranger is astonished, on
travelling through England, to behold green fields and smiling
cottages on all sides; to see in every village signs of increasing
comfort, in every town marks of augmented wealth, and the aspect of
poverty almost banished from the land. Nay, what is still more
gratifying, the returns of the sanatary condition of the whole
population, though still exhibiting a painful difference between the
health and chances of life in the rural and manufacturing districts,
present unequivocal proof of a general amelioration of the chances of
life, and, consequently, of the general wellbeing of the whole
community.