principle in his view of the duties of the employer. We readily grant
the duty of making his business prosperous and his workshops healthy.
To fail in the latter particular especially, were not merely to fail
in a duty, but to incur a heavy positive blame. But we cannot see how
it is incumbent on the employer to provide houses for the persons who
enter into the labour-contract with him, any more than to see that
they get their four-pound loaf of a certain quality or price. It may
be a graceful thing, a piece of noble benevolence, to enter into these
building schemes, but it is also to go back into that system of
vassalage out of which it is assumed that the relation of employer and
employed is passing. Either the new buildings will pay as
speculations, or they will not. If they are sure to pay, ordinary
speculators will be as ready to furnish them as bakers are to sell
bread. If the contrary be the case, why burden with the actual or
probable loss the party in a simple contract which involves no such
obligation? Clearly, there must be no great reason to expect a fair
return for capital laid out in this way, or we should see building
schemes for the working-classes taken up extensively by ordinary
speculators. For employers, then, to enter into such plans, must in
some degree be the result of benevolent feelings towards their men;
and, so far, we must hold there is an acknowledgment on both sides
that the system of vassalage is not yet extinct amongst us, and that
the time for its extinction is not yet come.

If we look, however, at the entire condition of the working-people of
England, we shall see that it acknowledges the same truth in some of
its broadest features. When a time of depression comes, and factories
do not require half of their usual number of hands, or even so many,
it is never expected, on any hand, that the superfluous labourers are
to maintain themselves till better times return. The employer is