obvious; but through and behind this barrier the forbidden communication always practically takes place, and it guards neither individuals nor society from the consequences of the natural laws which established diversity of sex. Nature every

day loudly and plainly answers the querist that the barrier, for the end proposed, is the most flimsy, worthless, costly contrivance that ever men loaded themselves with. Thus, amongst the many moral and political truths willingly assented to by the people, and forced on the still incredulous statesman by the rapid progress of population within the last half century, there is none clearer or of greater importance than that he is not the author of social progress nor of civilisation. This assertion requires illustration.

One of the most effectual instruments of social progress and modern civilisation is the Press; which legislation, far from having created or fostered, has, from the time at least of Wolsey, regarded as a terrible enemy, and laboured incessantly to chain to its own chariot-wheels. It has failed. Star Chambers and libel laws, censorships and pensions, have mutilated and poisoned, but could not kill. It has survived the malignity of Parliaments and the arrogance of kings, and has triumphed over both. It has become the ruling influence of society, and has everywhere been useful, truthful, and enlightened, in proportion as it has escaped the fetters of the law and the trammels of patronage. Another powerful aid to civilisation is the steam-engine, particularly when applied to locomotion. Never, perhaps, in the world were eighteen millions of human beings more uninterruptedly tranquil, and confident in the results of their own exertions, than the inhabitants of Great Britain during the last ten years. Their contentment is mainly owing to the rapidity and freedom of communication between one part of the island and another. The inhabitants of every part have been almost instantly informed of what the inhabitants of every other part were doing, and that their distant fellow-subjects, like themselves, were unassailed and secure. They have also been informed of everything done by the government, and at no time have they dreaded from that powerful organisation any sudden or violent invasion of their rights. Legislation, by subjecting the promoters of private enterprise to monstrous expenses, by absurd standing orders, ridiculous precautions, and erroneous judgments, has done much to impede locomotion, and nothing to promote it. Gas, too, spreading by

night a light half like that of day through every nook and cranny, every closed-up court and crooked alley, in our old and inconveniently built towns and cities, has, as it were, kept every man always under the eye of the public, and has contributed much to put an end to those violent outrages for which, only a few years ago, our towns were somewhat remarkable. We might run through a score or more of the most remarkable mechanical inventions of modern times, and show their influence in repressing crimes, promoting social order, and bringing about civilisation; though, as in the case of the Press, they have often been the means of effecting it in direct opposition to the lawgiver. These examples are, however, sufficient to confirm the assertion, that civilisation, whatever be its origin, and whatever hand may guide it, is not the child of political or legislative wisdom.

Division of

One other leading fact we must briefly advert to. labour, or the exclusive devotion of individuals to particular employments, is undoubtedly a great means of carrying forward the human race. In one or two instances, the legislator, seizing hold of the fact after division of labour has come into existence, has endeavoured, as in India, to confine it under a few denominations, and has divided the people into castes, appropriating to them different occupations. His success has produced stagnation. Society ceased to be progressive, and became the victim of nations amongst whom the establishment of castes had not suppressed emulation and subdued energy. Division of labour is as completely a natural phenomenon as the diversity of sex. No legislator establishes or promotes it. Man, in all countries and ages, has taken one species of occupation, and Woman another. The aged too, and the young, in all stages of society, have other occupations than the robust, and those who are mature in years and strength. Climate, situation, and peculiarity of dispositionother sources of division of labour-lead one man to be a wine grower, another an iron-founder, a fattener of cattle, a miner, a painter, a poet, or an inventor; and thus, as population increases in any given space, these natural circumstances, for ever existing, continually enforce and maintain a progressive extension of division of labour, to the benefit and civilisation of all.

This principle has been generally considered in its single relation of influencing the production of wealth, and its moral effects, though equally beneficial, have been disregarded. Commerce, which binds nations together in amity, is the result of terrestrial

Rival

division of labour, diversity of climate and situation. governments and statesmen only interrupt the peace and friendship that terrestrial division of labour is continually promoting. The mutual dependence of man on man in the same country, caused by no one completing, of himself and unaided, any piece of work, begets civility and friendship. It establishes a relation of mutual service and mutual kindness between the butcher and the grazier, the farmer and the miller, the spinner and the weaver, and between all the industrial classes. They cannot live without one another. The right hand might as well quarrel with the left, as the shipwright with the sailor, or the tanner with the shoemaker. Division of labour substitutes friendly and just relations, for jealousy, envy, and fear, and contributes to check crime and promote virtue.

Population, as it increases, carries with it a continual extension of the principle of division of labour. It calls new classes of industrious men into existence. New arts spring up, new wealth is created, and new relations are established between individuals and nations. Old laws are continually found to be incompatible with the progress of society, and noxious to human welfare. Does society accommodate itself to the old institutions? No: it bursts them asunder, and they fall away like withes from the arm of the strong man. The lawgiver always essays to bind them on anew, and may succeed, with some relaxation or change of form; but it is only to restore the incompatibility between him and Nature, and at no distant day compel society to destroy his new chains.

The progress of society, against the will of the lawmaker overturning his institutions, has, in modern times, been very marked. It is one of the moral phenomena of the age. The increase of dissenters and catholics made the laws to preserve the dominion of the state-church unbearable, and test acts and penal disabilities were rent asunder and trampled under foot. A wonderful increase of population, forming several new and great towns, made the old system of representation inadequate. Did society reduce itself to the size prescribed by the lawgiver? Quite the contrary: he was compelled to adapt his law to the new circumstances. He yielded, indeed, as little as possible, and coupled his compliance with registration, rate-paying clauses, and other foolish restrictions, to supply evidence hereafter of his present imbecility when they follow the fate of the boroughs in schedule A. Still later, the increase of the manufacturing classes made the laws which confined them for

their supply of food to the land owned by the lawmakers, a complete nuisance; and though the lawgivers thought their pecuniary interest and their power at stake, they were compelled to abolish the Corn Laws.

We need not advert, for further illustrations of this important principle, to the abolition of slavery, and the great limitation of capital and other punishments, which the progress of knowledge and the instrumentality of the Press have forced on an unwilling legislature. A lawgiver may now and then be found who gives an impulse to social progress, but the true characteristic of legislators, in relation to the onward moving masses, is holding back; and this characteristic is not altered by such rare exceptions to the rule as that of Joseph the Second. In the great majority of cases, the natural progress of society has necessarily swept away old laws to bring about improvement. That this depends on natural circumstances is certain, from the progress being nearly simultaneous and consentaneous throughout civilised society. Steadily have the nations of Europe marched almost abreast, one now and then going faster and farther than the other; but in most of the great natural features of civilisation, such as the increase of knowledge and the division of labour, they more nearly resemble each other than they differ in their political features. The lawgiver has always been at work trying to build up a superstructure of his own on the natural foundation of society, and to make us believe that he is the great architect of the whole; but the same power which laid them carries on the building, and is continually toppling down the little buttresses, and bursting asunder the little bonds by which he tries to cramp and deform the lordly temple. Society is, at places and times, limited and distorted by conventionalities derived from his regulations not yet out-grown, and by laws still in existence. They extend, however, only to small portions of the structure; they are not essential, they are only adjuncts. All its main beams, as well as its foundationsdivision of labour, as well as diversity of sex-commerce, with all its consequences of money, agency, credit, &c.,-as well as climate, inequalities of wealth (within certain limits,) as well as variety of talents and disposition; the progress of knowledge, as well as the multiplication of the species-are all natural, not artificial. If they are not legal, or recognised and sanctioned by the lawgiver, they ought to be, and in the end must be, in their fullest freedom and perfect growth.

There is only one point on which any doubt can be entertained. It is usually supposed, and said, that political power protects property, and that without property, and without protection for property, there would be no civilisation. Admitting the two latter circumstances, the fact that the labourers of Europe, who produce all its wealth, have little or nothing, while a number of other classes, by means of taxation and other political contrivances, are secured in opulence, it is clear that political power only protects one species of property; and it may be doubted whether its most injurious action be not its habitual violation of the natural rights of property in the labourer. It tries to protect, we admit, the right of property which it creates, as when it secures to Lord Ellenborough, or the Rev. Mr. Thurlow, the income which it bestows on them in the shape of fees or tithes ; but such a right of property is evidently founded on some fixed exactions, and is that violation of the property of the industrious classes which dooms them to indigence.

Our conclusions-to sum them up-are, that there are two systems of society, one superinduced on the other-the natural and the political; and that the former is continually out-growing and casting aside the latter. Civilisation is the result of the former, and is opposed to the latter not to nature. Political society, not civilisation, is artificial. The natural system is infinitely powerful compared to the parasitical system wound around it. These points established by rather a long introduction, we come to the theme for the sake of which it was written.

Where is the place of the Fine Arts in the natural system of society? Exotics in our country, patronised by the throne, or by those who sit around it; Sculpture especially, next Painting and Music, having at present their home chiefly in courts, or amongst the politically great; having little or no connexion with the industrious masses, and dove-tailing not in with them who compose, almost exclusively, the natural system of society-the Fine Arts, as now cultivated, form, and have long formed, a part of the political system. Their professors, as the rule, are dependent on the state, or those who derive power from its regulations. They seek pensions and cry aloud for patronage. They are not content, like merchants, and farmers, and manufacturers, with the support of the public. Their situation is one of dependence, and they are too often the flatterers of the politically great. Whatever they might have been in Greece, in modern Europe they are, in the