SERVING THE PEOPLE.

No honours are considered too splendid and no rewards too great for those who serve the country. We endeavoured in our last Number to explain their merits. Those who serve the people are treated in a different manner, and judged of by a different standard. For example, Edward Laws, an engine-driver on the Newcastle and Darlington Railway, was charged a short time ago, before the sitting magistrates of Sunderland, with having negligently caused a collision between the engine he was driving and that of the mail-train, which left Sunderland on the 15th of August. The defendant pleaded guilty, admitted that he had neglected certain orders, and was fined 51. He had not impoverished any man by a tax; he had not starved a multitude by a law; he had spilled no man's blood, and wasted no man's substance; he had placed no restraint on industry, and no fetter on thought; he had not distorted the national intellect by bribing men to embrace falsehood and punishing them for adhering to truth he had, merely from carelessness, driven one engine against another, and he was fined two weeks' wages, or the twenty-fifth part of a whole year's income. He was described as a man of

good character, and perfectly sober. It would be wrong to extenuate his negligence, or encourage carelessness like his; but it is right to notice the contrast between the strict rules which are properly applied to those who serve the people, and the indulgence we show to those who serve the country.

Edward Laws, like other engine-drivers, works by night and by day; he is exposed to wind and rain, to the hot sunshine of summer, half-suffocated by the heat and smoke from the engine furnace, and to the severest cold of winter, when he is grateful for its kindly warmth and begriming smoke. Through all changes of weather and many sharp trials, he guides in safety day after day, week after week, and year after year, a long train of goods and passengers to their destination, with what would have been to our fathers inconceivable velocity; he continually conducts great crowds of unthinking, if not ungrateful persons, scores or hundreds of miles; and they are only made sensible by now and then

hearing of an accident, or experiencing a rough jolt, that they are safely carried past many dangers by the watchful attention and skill of Edward Laws. The lives of hundreds and thousands are placed in his hands, and by him delivered up uninjured. For continual exposure, considerable bodily exertion, and much anxious watchfulness, Edward Laws gets, not a large pension and a peerage, but a remuneration of about fifty shillings a week; and, when he is guilty of a moment's negligence, he is mulcted of a fortnight's wages. No reward, apparently, is considered too small for his important and useful services, and no severity too great, which is supposed will induce him punctually to perform his duties. Edward Laws is at his post night and day; he gets little more than bread to eat, and works with a rod hanging over him. He serves not the country, but the people.

What is true of Edward Laws is true of all engine-drivers-all masters of steam passage-boats and ships. It is true also of jarvies and cabmen, though the charge they undertake be not so great. They are entrusted with our lives and property, and convey us, while they are exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons, wherever we choose to go; and many of them receive, beyond their poor wages, no other reward than contumely and abuse. The masters of our steam-ships are intelligent, gentlemanly men they are, for a time, captains over hundreds, and sometimes over thousands; they are charged with the care of many lives, and their remuneration is scarcely on a par with that of the valet of some man who serves the country. To minister to his meanest bodily wants is more profitable than their useful labours in the service of the multitude. If they delay on their voyage, if they take on board a passenger or two more than can be conveniently accommodated; if they go too fast for the little boats, and too slow for the impatience of their passengers, they are liable to many maledictions; and, when an accident happens, to a verdict of manslaughter. They are held responsible for the tide running too strong, and the wind blowing too hard; everything under their management is expected to be conducted with clockwork precision, and when a pin gets loose, or a wheel is clogged, complaints of their ignorance and unskilfulness resound through the land; appeals are made to the magistrates to punish them, and to the legislature to reform them. Such is the treatment, and such are the rewards, of those who daily and nightly serve the people. The case is not different with those who are engaged in the old

occupations of feeding and clothing us. From the many new inventions by which these most necessary arts are now carried on, they have the characteristic of novelty, cultivating the ground and weaving cloth being almost as different now from what they were in the time of Virgil or Homer as railway locomotion is different from walking. But whether employed in new or old arts, all who serve the people are poorly paid. To be very usefully employed is to be degraded. A shoemaker is a snob; a tailor is a snip, and the ninth part of a man; a weaver is something worse than a tailor; a ploughman is a bumpkin; a smith a mere bellows-blower; a carpenter is chips; a sailor (for whom, nevertheless, there prevails a kind of affectionate feeling, as if he were a helpless child), is Jack Tar; a soldier is a lobster, or Johnny raw; and a servant, particularly if he be very useful, is a flunkey. The services of all these classes are indispensable. We could neither be waited upon, defended, lodged, nor clothed without them; yet are they all poorly paid and harshly treated. Magistrates pounce upon them for every indiscretion, and stringent laws hold them to their duty.

The older the occupation, in general the worse it is paid. Our "rude forefathers," like many of their sybarite sons, had an aversion to toil, and with a strong arm they compelled the weaker sex, and the weaker men they were enabled to subdue, to perform for them all necessary drudgery. Thus the most enduringly useful occupations were from the first, and still partially remain, connected with slavery and degradation. With the skill required in them many persons have been at all times familiar, and, being always overstocked with hands, they have never been cleared of the slavery which originally tainted them. Occupations which grow from modern inventions, being known to comparatively few, have always been better paid at first than the old occupations, from which they have drawn supplies of labourers; and one of the most signal advantages of those inventions is their tendency to emancipate the labourer and improve his condition. comes, indeed, in common with us all, the servant of the clockwork machinery-the offspring of intellect to which, in steamboats and on railways, the highest must submit; but he obtains a release from his old degrading slavery to his fellow-creatures. Those who use the mighty engines which now serve our every-day purpose, are for the time our masters. Of all the old occupations, none have been worse treated than that of Jack Tar. The cultivator of the earth has been merely impoverished, and starved

or consigned to the union; but the sailor has been doomed to an outrageous system of cruel tyranny, besides being plundered. Though he rot away in a pestilential climate, or go daringly to death in the service of the people, he receives for his reward the violation of his property and the insecurity of his person. serves the people; but he is enslaved by those highly-rewarded gentlemen who serve the country.

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The manners of those who serve the people and of those who serve the country are as different as their treatment. At least, the latter are full of self-respect and always desirous of impressing an idea of their importance on the world at large. They speak of each other with great regard. Whatever they may say of reckless enginedrivers, unskilful captains, ignorant agriculturists, or insolent cabmen, they are all tenderness and politeness to each other, as if they were conscious of being unable to bear rough handling. Parliamentary and professional language is full of the kindest and blandest epithets. Honourable gentleman, or honourable friend, the gallant officer, the noble lord, the learned serjeant, or my learned brother, reverend, right reverend, or most reverend, most noble, his grace, and her most gracious, are specimens of the courtesy those who serve the country show one another and exact from the world at large. Amongst them to speak in plain language is considered an insult, and a contradiction is rather insinuated than expressed. A difference of opinion is put hypothetically, or shrunk from altogether; and a charge of hypocrisy, of falsehood, or of fraud, is conveyed inferentially. A rival is perfumed to death; he is smothered under the roses of courtesy; he is coaxed to slaughter; he is removed with step-mother tenderness, beguiling another's offspring out of the way of her own. The useful classes, on the contrary, are assailed with the coarsest weapons; they are stigmatised by the most odious words. They adopt their betters' estimate of their calling and abuse each other, even worse than they are abused by the rest. A cabman or a carter in the way of another is a "stupid" or a "blockhead," and is to be terrified, by hard words or blows, out of his rival's way. Their contradictions are positive and violent; their accusations sharp and direct. Those who serve the people embitter their own lives by coarse wrangling and violence such as are never witnessed amongst those who serve the country.

There is, perhaps, little novelty in these observations; they have been made before-they occur to every man ; but it is neces

sary sometimes to remind us of our duties. We must continually point out the vices and crimes that are to be avoided. We justly say of public men, that they are not trustworthy, and of institutions, that they are unsuitable; but many social evils arise from our ill-formed opinions, and may be corrected by ourselves. We properly complain of the want of consideration in those who follow useful occupations, and by treating them as a degraded class, and refusing them our esteem, we deprive them of true self-respect, which is the reflection of the good opinion of others. To raise up the lower classes is the one thing needful. Their debasement is the universal, the absorbing evil of society. Let us honour them as they deserve, and we shall make them more careful of their sayings and doings than the bench of bishops. It will cost us neither money nor labour. We have only to set an appropriate and just value on the services of such men as Edward Laws, and they will form a high opinion of themselves. A well-fed, well-clothed, respectable gentleman, filling an honoured situation, is careful of his own person, and will not, for his own sake, endanger lives placed under his charge. To induce Edward Laws to be equally careful, we must make him feel that he himself is worth taking care of. Once inspire him and his class with a thorough conviction that they perform important duties and fill a respectable station in society, and they will strive zealously to preserve its good opinion. Part of the courtesy of the upper classes is the reflection of the general deference. If we honour in the same way those who serve the people, they will become as dignified and courteous. The public are now justly punished, by tyrannical masters and bad servants, for honouring man-slayers and treating their preservers with disdain. By a just estimate of worth it seems possible to fill all the people with respect for each other, and thus give them all the good qualities of the upper classes. To promote this end we repeat familiar observations; believing that criticism, whether of morals or of poems, which does not point out the way to do better is only half complete.

Engine-drivers, railway directors, and captains of steam packets, with cabmen and tailors, should unquestionably be held tight to their responsibility. They undertake to convey us with safety, or clothe us comfortably, and the magistrate or the power of the community should strictly enforce the fulfilment of their contract. proportion as they are powerful, like railway directors, and individuals are placed at their mercy, so should the power of the com

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