moral, regular, and steady habits conduce to men's best interest, and
that vice is not sin merely, but folly. But of these men each has
passions and prejudices, the gratification of which he prefers, not only
to the general weal, but to that of himself as an individual. Under the
action of these wayward impulses a man drinks to-day though he is sure
of starving to-morrow. He murders to-morrow though he is sure to be
hanged on Wednesday; and people are so slow to believe that which makes
against their own predominant passions, that mechanics will combine to
raise the price for one week, though they destroy the manufacture for
ever. The best remedy seems to be the probable supply of labourers from
other trades. Jeffrey proposes each mechanic shall learn some other
trade than his own, and so have two strings to his bow. He does not
consider the length of a double apprenticeship. To make a man a good
weaver and a good tailor would require as much time as the patriarch
served for his two wives, and after all, he would be but a poor workman
at either craft. Each mechanic has, indeed, a second trade, for he can
dig and do rustic work. Perhaps the best reason for breaking up the
association will prove to be the expenditure of the money which they
have been simple enough to levy from the industrious for the support of
the idle. How much provision for the sick and the aged, the widow and
the orphan, has been expended in the attempt to get wages which the
manufacturer cannot afford them, with any profitable chance of selling
his commodity?

I had a bad fall last night coming home. There were unfinished houses at
the east end of Atholl Place,[33] and as I was on foot, I crossed the
street to avoid the material which lay about; but, deceived by the
moonlight, I stepped ankle-deep in a sea of mud (honest earth and water,
thank God), and fell on my hands. Never was there such a representative
of _Wall_ in Pyramus and Thisbe--I was absolutely rough-cast. Luckily