employment and subsistence to a great number of persons of all classes, but not in anything like the proportion of the rents that are exported.

The moral influence, however, of a resident landlord, the natural guardian of the poor, is not so easily estimated, varying, as it necessarily does, with each individual; but his absence probably on this score is more to be lamented than on account of the income spent abroad.

But although a landlord residing in his own country may expend a portion of his income in the support of foreign labourers, if he become non-resident his country will be deprived of the means of supporting those classes of the community that are unconnected with the land, to the amount of the remainder of his income.

It was shewn before, that minute subdivision of property, and insecurity of property, had a similar effect in checking the growth of the classes unconnected with the land.

Thus, whether a country is deprived of the advantages of a surplus produce from its land by the exportation of rent, by the insecurity of property, or by its minute subdivision, the same

effect will be induced, namely, a great deficiency, if not a total absence of the manufacturing and higher classes of society, and a corresponding deficiency in the comforts to be distributed among the population.

CHAPTER X.

CONCLUSION.

"There is mirth in Heaven

When earthly things, made even,

Atone together."

AS YOU LIKE IT, Act I. Scene IV.

THE increase of the human species may be compared to the growth of an individual: at first the progress is rapid, but every succeeding year adds less to its growth than the preceding; and it may be expected to be in its highest state of perfection when it shall have attained its greatest magnitude. For civilization advancing with population, the comforts, conveniences, and enjoyments of life become more extensively diffused; fewer are worn down with sickness, and the average period of death is removed to a greater distance; a larger proportion of mankind are

In a

enabled to live in ease and plenty, and the intensity of distress is diminished to the poor. barbarous state, population is regulated and restrained by pestilences, famines, and wars. As mankind advance in civilization, population becomes more and more governed by the dif fusion of wealth, comforts, and enjoyments. Tyranny declines, and the power to oppress diminishes; the reward of honesty, industry, and labour, becomes more secure and more abundant.

Yet how frequently do we hear complaints of the great inequality of condition, as naturally and necessarily attendant upon a high state of civilization,—the power of the great and wealthy,—and thy, and the abject condition of the poor; whereas, the greatest inequality between man and man exists among barbarous nations-between the strong and the weak-between parent and child

-and between master and slave. No such

power to oppress exists in this country, in the most powerful of the great over the humblest of the poor. De Lolme well observed, that "no one in Great Britain ever sees the man on whom depends his property, his life, or his liberty."

The greatest equality between, man and man is that which is found among the civilized nations of modern times. Every improvement in knowledge and legislation tends to improve the condition, both physical, moral, and religious, of the middling and lower classes. It is not that the higher orders of society are debased, but the inferior classes are raised to a higher level. Thus the spread of education has tended to equalize the diffusion of knowledge. The post office conveys the letter of the poor man with equal rapidity and punctuality as that of the rich; the stage coach travels as fast as the carriage of the wealthy it were endless to enumerate the various modes in which the middling and lower classes are gradually approximating in comforts, in enjoyments, and in knowledge, to the condition of those whom wealth has placed above them.

This is no new feature in modern society; but in all countries that have been advancing in civilization it has been a constant cause of complaint with the aristocracy at all times. Shakespear puts the following words into Hamlet's