care for their being fed and clothed; but you will be anxious not to encourage unreasonable expectations in them, not to make them ungrateful or greedy-minded. Above all, you will be solicitous to preserve some self-reliance in them. You will be careful not to let them think that their condition can be wholly changed without exertion of their own. You would not desire to have it so changed. Once elevate your ideal of what you wish to happen amongst the labouring population; and you will not easily admit anything in your writings that may injure their moral or their mental character, even if you thought it might hasten some physical benefit for them. That is the way to make your genius most serviceable to mankind. Depend upon it, honest and bold things require to be said to the lower as well as to the higher classes; and the former are in these times much less likely to have such things addressed to them.
In the same way that we are fond of laying the neglect, and the duty, of exertion upon
some class, even on our own, rather than on our especial selves, we are much given to look for something new which, in a magical manner, is to settle the whole difficulty. But when people look for a novelty of this kind, what do they mean? Some moral novelty? The Christian religion has been eighteen hundred years before the world, and have we exhausted the morality in that? Some political novelty? We are surely the nation, whose constitution, whatever may be said against it, has been most wrought and tempered by diverse thought and action. Some novelty in art or science? Where has man attained to a greater mastery over matter than in this iron-shearing country? The utmost that one age can be expected to do in the way of discovery is but little; and that little by few men. Let us sit down and make use of what we have. The stock out of which national welfare might be formed lies in huge, unworked-up masses before us. Social improvement depends upon general moral improvement. Moral improvement mostly comes,
and at least is most safely looked for, not in the way of acquisition but of development. Now, as regards the conduct of the various classes of the state to each other, we do not want any new theory about it, but only to develop that kindly feeling which is already in the world between like and like, which makes a parent, for instance, so kind even to the faults of his children. We want that feeling carried over all the obstructions of imperfect sympathy which hedge it in now. This will be done by both classes knowing more of each other. One of the great reasons for the education of the people is, that even educating them a little enables rich and poor to understand each other better—in fact, to live more harmoniously together. If our sympathies were duly enlightened and enlarged, we should find that we did not need one doctrine for our conduct to friends, another for our conduct to dependents, and another for our conduct to neighbours. One spirit would suffice to guide us rightly in all these relations. The uninstructed man looking
around him on the universe, and seeing a wonderful variety of appearances, is inclined to imagine that there are numberless laws and substances essentially different, little knowing from how few of either the profusion of beauty in the world is formed. But the creative energy of what we call Nature, dealing with few substances, breaks out into every form and colour of loveliness. Here, we have the dainty floweret which I would compare to the graceful kindnesses passing among equals; there, the rich corn-field like the substantial benefits which the wise master-worker confers on those around him; here again, the far-spreading oak which, with its welcome depth of shade, may remind us of the duties of protection and favour due from the great to the humble; and there, the marriage of the vine to the elm, a similitude for social and domestic affection. The kindnesses to which I have compared these various products of Nature, are also of one spirit, and may be worked out with few materials. Indeed, one man may in his life manifest them
all. No new discovery, no separate teaching, for each branch of this divine knowledge, is needed.
I do not say that there may not be physical discoveries, or legislative measures, which may greatly aid in improving the condition of the labouring classes. But, if we observe how new things come, in our own life for instance, or in the course of history, we shall find that they seldom come in the direction in which we are looking out for them. They fall behind us; and, while we are gazing about for the novelty, it has come down and has mingled with the crowd of old things, and we did not know it. Let us begin working on the old and obvious foundations, and we shall be most ready to make use of what new aid may come, if we do not find an almost inexhaustible novelty in what we deemed so commonplace. There is no way of burnishing up old truths like acting upon them.
You may rely upon it that it is one of the most unwholesome and unworkmanlike states of mind to be looking about for, and relying
upon, some great change which is all of a sudden to put you into a position to do your duty in a signal manner. Duty is done upon truisms.
But let discoveries in morals or in physics have come; suppose any extent of political amelioration you please; and grant that the more outward evils have been conquered by combined effort. Let our drains flow like rivulets, and imagine that light and air permeate those dwellings which now moulder in a loathsome obscurity. Let the poor be cared for in their health, their amusements, their education, and their labour. Still the great work for an employer of labour remains for ever to be renewed; that which consists in the daily intercourse of life, in that perpetual exercise of care and kindness concerning those small things which, small as they may be, are nevertheless the chief part of men’s lives. Perhaps the greatest possible amelioration of the human lot is to be found in the improvement of our notions of the duties of master to man. It were hard to say what