of money against infirmity and age, but in general our families are in debt. The advance of the price of labour has made no improvement in the habits or comforts of the people the wife does not know how properly to employ the money in her power, or to promote the happiness and respectability of her family. Much has been said about advancing the price of labour, but if it was realized, that would not remedy the evil; our work people suffer no privation in the means of subsistence, but expend as much money now in their families as was done when the price of labour was higher, or as they probably would do were it again advanced. In this estimate I except the weaver, whose earnings are far from being equal to his wants. It is not that much more money is in general needed, but better habits, and more information and management in the expending of what is now obtained. It is therefore necessary, before Mr. Owen's plan can have any beneficial influence, that the females return to their proper occupations; then they will acquire their due weight and influence in society, and diffuse happiness and promote order in their families. The woman that never spent a day in domestic occupation cannot make a good wife, cannot promote the comfort, the respectability, and the happiness of her husband and children: but this is the state of the majority of the wives of our artisans, and presents almost an insuperable barrier to the introduction of any plan of moral improvement. Does the political economist attribute the evils now existing in the state to a redundant population? Does the merchant ascribe his embarrassed situation to the rapidity with which goods are manufactured? the remedy is at hand. The laws of nature have placed the husband at the head of his family, and made it his duty to provide for their necessities; appeal to this law, restore the women to their proper occupations, and most of the evils that surround us will cease. Say not that our families would starve, if every member of which it is composed did not engage in some branch of our manufactory; the income might be lessened, but the comfort would be greater: a farmer's servant is rich and happy on half the sum with which our spinners are poor and miserable. I repeat it: there has been, in the last thirty years, a great decrease in the domestic comfort and personal respectability of our labouring class, in consequence of the employment of women in manufactories; and that were they no longer so employed, the dread of a superabundant population would cease: the merchant's warehouse would not be overstocked; our political disquietude would terminate; while

domestic comfort and personal respectability would be greater, and the country be in a state to make rapid progress in moral habits. A disposition already prevails, and an effort is making by the people to advance in civilization; but so long as the women are brought up as they are at present, the effort must be foiled, and discontent must increase. Forty years ago, I understand, our cottages were remarkable for neatness and good order; they are now the reverse. That the people are disposed to an improved state of morals and a higher degree of civilization, I infer from the fact that drunkenness has very much decreased; not from poverty, for a large sum of money that used to be expended at the publichouse is now spent at the shambles. In proof of this assertion, I may state that, in 1811, the number of skins inspected at Manchester was, of horned cattle, 11,642; calves, 14,020; sheep and lambs, 63,164: in 1818, horned cattle, 17,990; calves, 16,534; sheep and lambs, 84,538; besides about 800 pigs per week for four months. The quantity of malt liquor and spirits has declined in as great a proportion; the duty paid for beer brewed in Manchester, in 1819, was about £75,000; in 1817, it was £100,000. These sums I state on the best information I can procure, and believe them to be near the truth, though I could not obtain the account at the excise-office. The duty is about an eighth part of the sum paid by the consumer, so that there is a sum less by upwards of £200,000 paid for these articles than formerly, and an increase to almost as great an amount paid for shambles meat. The population may have increased one-tenth from 1811 to 1818. Looking upon the condition of the town with an impartial eye, these two facts force themselves on the attention: first, that domestic comfort and happiness is much less than it was formerly; and, secondly, that there is a strong disposition in the people to change their present condition. A town thus circumstanced affords the finest scope for the philanthropist. Are the people dissatisfied and unhappy? inquire the cause, and correct the evil; increase their happiness on right principles, and you ensure order, and silence the voice of murmuring. The £500,000 now spent in excess, (I say excess, for when the amount spent for ardent spirits is added to that spent for beer, the gross sum will be 7 or £800,000,) will suffice for ample provision to be made for all the wants which an advance in civilization may produce. Let us now suppose the hours of labour to be reduced to twelve a day, and the affairs of the family to be better conducted; what then would hinder the beneficial influence of

Mr. Owen's system? The factories would not: they might with ease be made schools of virtue: they are now schools of vice only because they are badly conducted. Every establishment has its standard of morals, and no member is respected who does not attain to it; a thief or a drunkard would be disgraced, and dismissed from any factory. These vices are seldom practised, because they are forbidden; but the disposition to theft and to drunkenness is as strong as to any other vice: elevate the moral standard still higher, and the character will rise; people are, in general, what their employers make them. Should the women not be dismissed from the factories and the loom, but should their day's work terminate at six o'clock, and suitable inducements be held out to them to attend in the evening to the concerns of the family, very great advantage will accrue. I have witnessed the experiment, and seen its beneficial result. The master of many servants became their father: he honoured the virtuous, he discharged the vicious, and nurtured all that was excellent in character; his factory exemplified the truth of the New Lanark system. Factories are only injurious because the time employed in them is too great, and because the moral improvement of the people is not attended to; but should the proprietors ever consider how much of this system may be safely, and without expense, applied to their establishments, and to how great an extent the labour of women might be dispensed with, their factories would become the means of civilization and moral improvement. At present the tumult of the people shakes the foundation of the government, and the tumult will increase as long as the present system is continued. Some remedy must be applied. Mr. Owen holds it out; he indeed anticipates too much, but he points to the right path.

On the Evils of Commercial Speculations, &c.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE INVESTIGATOR.

SIR,-In reading the memoir of a merchant, in your last Number, who, upon the whole, appears to have been an amiable and a pious man, I was powerfully struck with that part of his conduct which his biographer passes over without comment or reproof; and which neither the subject of it, nor

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his friends whom he consulted in the difficulty and distress it occasioned, appear in the narrative to have thought defective. I refer to that period in his life when he had embarked in a great speculation; when he was determined, from his belief in the rise of the article, to buy up all the cotton he could lay his hands on; a course which, from a depression in the price before his purchases were completed, involved him in a loss of £20,000, and the expectation of still farther loss, if not total ruin. In this emergency, he calls in his religious friends; who, after prayer and consultation, adopt measures to save him from its consequences; and from which he was preserved by almost a miracle in Providence.

I should have supposed, that the piety of himself and his friends, if it had been judicious, would have led them first of all seriously to have examined into the correctness of his motives and conduct, in the determination he had made, to buy up all the cotton he could find in the market; which in the beginning was an error of the heart, and in the sequel proved to be an error in judgment. This would have produced sentiments proper to the crisis; humility and repentance before God, from a discovery that it originated in covetousness; and have placed him in a fit posture, and in the authorized way, of expecting deliverance. Instead of this, no person, on reading the memoir, would conceive that there was any notion in his or their minds of there being any thing in the transaction but what was perfectly compatible with the honour, the dignity, and the integrity of the Christian character: but, sir, if it be so, I should be glad to know the use of those Christian precepts which every where abound in the Scriptures, against a hasting to be rich-against the love of money, represented as the root of all evil-against the deceitfulness of riches; and such admonitions as, "Let your conversation be without covetousness-Let your moderation be known unto all men." Is it then become a venial thing for a Christian to buy up all he can lay his hands on, from a grasping, monopolizing spirit? and to engage in those speculations which may not only bring ruin upon himself, but involve others in the same consequences?

How many instances of desperate failures have you and I known to have happened to persons with high pretensions to religion; but without any regard to distributive justice, or they would never have involved others so deeply in ruin! Formerly these evils were not considered in so harmless a light; the subjects of them were disowned immediately by our Christian churches, as having forfeited their character

for integrity and justice, with probably not half the amount of moral evil attaching to them, and with nothing like the train of consequences that have resulted from modern failures. To say nothing of the loss of peace of mind, which large speculations inevitably produce, and the jealousy implied in preventing any sharers in the expected advance, are there no considerations, arising from the injury that a man's creditors may sustain if he does not succeed, which would make a benevolent and honest dealer pause before he engaged in any speculation, much more to resolve against those rash adventures which lead him to buy up all he can lay his hands on? Besides, in every speculation a man pledges his own opinion against the general opinion of the market; for if the dealers conceived there would be a rise in the article, they would not be disposed to sell without a considerable advance in the price. This very circumstance of the possibility of being mistaken, connected with every speculation, makes it always hazardous; and a prudent and modest man would not dare to venture to any extent. It is true that some bold speculations succeed, which, like a prize in the lottery, encourage fresh adventurers; but, as Lord Bacon says, "Men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss."

But there are considerations of a higher kind: there is a tranquillity of spirit which a Christian is never to sacrifice. Having received a rich legacy of peace from his Divine Master, he will study to preserve it, as the birthright of his profession, and, if he be a true disciple, he dare not forfeit or barter it, being above all price.

I am induced to make these reflections, because I have known several striking instances, in which many strong men, having been thus engaged, have been cast down wounded, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows: conscious of the evils they have also entailed on others, they have ended their days in the bitterness of their souls. It appears to be to be a delusion, sprung up of late years, that a man may innocently engage in speculations with the utmost avidity; that they become venial, if part of his gains is devoted to the cause of religion. Men will thus venture their all, and the property of others, upon the change of the seasons, the event of a battle, a bill in parliament, the downfal of a minister, or the overthrow of a dynasty, either at home or abroad. From acting in this spirit, there have been many instances in which a man has been possessed of £30,000 or £40,000 one year, and the next year has been in the Gazette.