prosperous times, mills are working full time; men, women, and children
are paid high wages; warehouses are emptied and filled; goods are
manufactured and exported; wherries full of produce pass along the
streets; immense luggage trains run along the railways, and
heavily-laden ships leave our shores daily for foreign ports, full of
the products of our industry. Everybody seems to be becoming richer and
more prosperous. But we do not think of whether men and women are
becoming wiser, better trained, less self-indulgent, more religiously
disposed, or living for any higher purpose than the satisfaction of the
animal appetite.

If this apparent prosperity be closely examined, it will be found that
expenditure is increasing in all directions. There are demands for
higher wages; and the higher wages, when obtained, are spent as soon as
earned. Intemperate habits are formed, and, once formed, the habit of
intemperance continues. Increased wages, instead of being saved, are for
the most part spent in drink.

Thus, when a population is thoughtless and improvident, no kind of
material prosperity will benefit them. Unless they exercise forethought
and economy, they will alternately be in a state of "hunger and burst."
When trade falls off, as it usually does after exceptional prosperity,
they will not be comforted by the thought of what they _might_ have
saved, had it ever occurred to them that the "prosperous times" might
not have proved permanent.

During prosperous times, Saint Monday is regularly observed. The Bank
Holiday is repeated weekly. "Where are all the workmen?" said a master
to his foreman on going the rounds among his builders,--this work must
be pushed on and covered in while the fine weather lasts." "Why, sir,"