It is a light thing

"Look at the fruits of the present system. that natural deaths should be increased by suffering; that children should be crippled for life, and drained of their strength, by infantine services to senseless machines; and that mortality should continually increase among the poor while it decreases among the rich;-life has grown more cruel even than death itself, and his natural stroke must be anticipated.

"October 9th, 1840.-A man attempted suicide, not bearing to see his children starve.

July 2nd, 1841.—A poor man hanged himself in Orange Street, rather than go to the union workhouse.

"August, 1840.-A man named Garrat poisoned four of his children, not enduring to see them die from want.

"Oh, horrible! Miss Martineau records it as a real fact, that two women having been brought to bed, they quarrelled for the dead child! The order of nature is so reversed, the feelings of human nature are grown so unnatural, in this highly civilized country!

Money is such a god,—and bread at the same time is so hard to procure,—that a man put to death three of his own children by poisoning, for the sake of getting the money allowed by his club for burial-money!

"One example was sufficient in Samaria, to fulfil the prophesied curse, that women should eat their own children. Surely the examples and proofs of the enormity of our distresses are multiplied tenfold. We want no outward enemy to do this. We are worse to our own souls than any foreign enemy. We lay siege to ourselves. And, for the very disease of appetite, in the midst of plenty, we devour our own flesh."1

These are appalling representations. But their truth cannot be denied. Instead of flinching from the censure, it rather behoves us to search out the cause of all this wretchedness and crime. And, if we require merely the nearest proximate cause, our search will soon come to a point. An all-pervading mischief points to an all-pervading motive and principle. And "gold is the only power which receives universal homage. It is worshipped in all lands without a single temple, and by all classes without a single hypocrite; and often has it been able to boast of having armies for its priesthood, and hecatombs of human victims for its sacrifices. Where war has slain its thousands, gain has slaughtered its millions; for while the former operates only with the local and fitful terrors of an earthquake, the destructive influence of the latter is

1 Bosanquet's Principia, pp. 389-392.

universal and unceasing. Indeed, war itself-what has it often been but the art of gain practised on the largest scale? the covetousness of a nation resolved on gain, impatient of delay, and leading on its subjects to deeds of rapine and blood? Its history is the history of slavery and oppression in all ages. For centuries, Africa-one quarter of the globe-has been set apart to supply the monster with victims-thousands at a meal. And at this moment, what a populous and gigantic empire can it boast! the mine, with its unnatural drudgery; the manufactory, with its swarms of squalid misery; the plantation, with its imbrued gangs; and the market and the exchange, with their furrowed and careworn countenances, these are only specimens of its more menial offices and subjects. Titles and honours are among its rewards, and thrones at its disposal. Among its counsellors are kings; and many of the great and mighty of the earth are enrolled among its subjects. Where are the waters not ploughed by its navies? What imperial element is not yoked to its car? Philosophy itself is become a mercenary in its pay; and science, a votary at its shrine, brings all its noblest discoveries as offerings to its feet. What part of the globe's surface is not rapidly yielding up its last stores of hidden treasure to the spirit of gain? or retains more than a few miles of the unexplored and unvanquished territory? Scorning the childish dream of the philosopher's stone, it aspires to turn the globe itself into gold." 1

But perhaps some will say, 'This is mere declamation. The love of money is now what it ever has been, the root of all evil,— but it is no more a root of evil now than in former times. If you profess to assign a cause for modern evils, assign some cause of modern character.'

We answer, that we are reasoning strictly, and in close confor mity with fact. The leading characteristic of our own day, is, its commercial spirit. Other ages have been ages of darkness, of chivalry, of revived literature, of reformation, of conquest, of discovery: but our own is peculiarly the age of constant, all-pervading, traffic and money-getting. We adduce the recent description given of it by Mr. Martineau, an unexceptionable witness, as being himself a Liverpool man, and of a great trading family. He declares, that

"The spirit of gain is ascendant over every other passion or pursuit, by which men can be occupied. Neither pleasure, nor art, nor glory, can beguile our people from their profits. War was their madness once; but the temple of Moloch is deserted, and morning and evening the gates of mammon are thronged now.

1 Mammon, p. 78.

"The excess to which the master passion is carried, perverts our just and natural estimate of happiness. It cannot be otherwise, when that which is but a means, is elevated into the greatest of ends; when that which gives command over some physical comforts becomes the object of intenser desire than all blessings intellectual and moral, and we live to get rich, instead of getting rich that we may live. The mere lapse of years is not life; to eat, and drink, and sleep, to be exposed to the darkness and the light; to pace round in the mill of habit, and turn the wheel of wealth; to make reason our bookkeeper, and turn thought into an implement of trade, this is not life.

"With a large and, I fear, a predominant class among us, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that money measureth all things,' and is more an object of ambition than any of the ends to which it affects to be subservient. It is the one standard of value, which gives estimation to the vilest things that have it, and leaves in contempt the best that are without it. It is set up as the measure of knowledge-it is the rule by which, almost exclusively, parents compute the worth of their children's education, and determine its character and extent. Research and speculation which do not visibly tend to the production of wealth are regarded as the dignified frivolities of whimsical men. Still worse, money with us is the measure of morality; for those parts and attributes of virtue are in primary esteem which are conducive to worldly aggrandizement; and it is easy to perceive that no others are objects of earnest and hearty ambition. The current ideas of human nature and character are graduated by the same rule, and err on the side, not of generosity, but of prudence. The experienced are habitually anxious to give the young such an estimate of mankind as may prove, not the most true, but the most profitable,-an estimate so depressed into caution as to be altogether below justice.

"With us, money is the measure of all utility, it is this which constitutes the real though disguised distinction between the English notions of theory and practice. By an unnatural abuse of terms, practical men do not mean, with us, those who study the bearing of things on human life in its widest comprehension, but those who value anything by its effect on the purse.

"In obedience to the same dominant passion, vast numbers spend their term of mortal service in restless and uneasy competition; in childish struggles for a higher place in the roll of opulence or fashion; in jealousies that gnaw into the very heart of luxury; in ambition that spoils the present splendour by the shadow of some new want."

We need add nothing to this vivid but just description, except,

perhaps, a brief reference to the working of this master-vice, in the present state of North Wales. That hitherto peaceful country is now the seat of something like a civil war. And what is its ori

ginating cause? By the concurrence of all testimony, we find it to be pecuniary exaction on all sides. The landowners, without regard to the tenants' comfortable subsistence, have screwed up their rents; the tithe-owners, generally lay-impropriators, have used the commutation act for a like end. Even the New Poor Law has been worked, for the profit of some, to the burdening of the many. And, lastly, even the use of the roads has been so taxed, for the profit of lawyers and money-lenders, that the little farmer is made to pay often as much in tolls, as a whole load of manure is worth! Thus beset on all hands, and ground down by taxation of every kind, the peasant at last loses all self-command, and falls upon the toll-gates, the most visible signs and instruments of the oppression under which he groans.

It cannot, however, need much proof, that the present is peculiarly a day marked by eagerness for gain; and that a far larger proportion of the community is engaged in this pursuit, and with a far greater avidity and unscrupulosity, than at any former period.

But how comes it that the pulpit does not impose a salutary check, and aim at an effective counteraction, of these evils? Sad we are to reply, that to a great extent, and in a variety of ways, the pulpit, in the present day, is either careless of, or even favourably disposed towards, this growing mischief. The usual proportion, perhaps, of Christian writers and preachers, are timid, and if they approach the subject at all, deal only in vague generalities; while some there are, who, having been inveigled into the net of a "science falsely so called," are actually helping forward one of the crying evils of the day.

The test of their system, and the proof of their guilt, is found in their systematic banishment of the word of God from their whole system of communital economy.

As an instance of this, though not in any remarkable degree, we may cite Dr. Reed's book, which now lays before us. It professes much, but performs little. It devotes a chapter to the state of the nation; and declares, with truth, that "Religion is our single, but our sufficient hope." And in this generalizing style, it hovers around the subject; but never grapples with it. It neither boldly denounces evil, nor displays the word of God as the only standard of what is good. In fact, the whole chapter, and indeed the whole book, is about "religion," a word which, we need hardly remark, is scarcely scriptural; and, in this comprehensive application, not at all so.

A second example of this erroneous and imperfect way of viewing things we may adduce from a late number of the Patriot,the chief dissenting weekly journal,-which, in noticing "the Perils of the Nation," says, "The strictures upon political economy and political economists must, however, be excepted against: they show only that the writer, in venturing upon these subjects, soon gets out of his depth. Political economy is not more at war with religion, than any other branch of physical science; and for the fallacies which have been put forth as doctrines and principles, the only remedy is sounder investigation. In other words, the appeal is not from Malthus, Martineau, and Chalmers to the Bible, but to sounder principles of economical philosophy."

"The appeal is, not to the Bible, but to sounder principles of economical philosophy."

Aye! but who is to decide which are the "sounder principles?" When a standard of infallible truth and accuracy is put into our hands, is it consistent with common sense to throw it aside, and to "appeal," from Smith to Malthus, or from Macculloch to Ricardo? and so on, ad infinitum?

But was the Bible ever meant to be thus applied to the government of our conduct in matters of common life? If we do not go to the Bible for instruction in geology, or chemistry, or in astronomy, why should we imagine that it was intended to teach us the true doctrine in matters of political economy?

In answer to this question we offer two observations :

1. Let the Word of God answer for itself. Is it not obvious to the eyes of even a boy of twelve years of age, that the Bible does not offer instruction in matters of geology, chemistry, or astronomy; and that it does offer instruction in matters of national economy? If it is obliged to speak, in passing, of visible objects, external to man, such as the sun, the moon, the winds, the bowels of the earth, it merely names them in the current language of mankind. It does not attempt to teach, on any of these subjects. But in everything which relates to man himself, it is full, accurate, instructive, and commanding. And let our theorists beware how they attempt to shut up, what God has laid open to be read of all men. Continually have we to remark this tendency, even in theologians and religious teachers. Continually have we to lament and to blame, the efforts of men to deprive their fellows of a large portion of that "light to their feet and lamp to their path" which God has given. We have already had to censure, in a former article, the efforts of certain writers of our day, to represent the bulk of the prophecies of Scripture as having respect solely to times yet to come, and to empires yet to arise; and hence as being of little use to