the beauties of past generations adjusted their "amber-twisted ringlets." A loftier communion than with mere dumb matter is awakened by the beautiful proportions of the Grecian Temple, or amid the solemn majesty of the Gothic Minster. These things are fitted to nourish the sentiment and the love of Beauty, one of the deepest instincts of man, in its true and natural unfolding, leading the soul to the love and worship of the true and good. But their true use is perverted by their becoming appropriated and exclusive possessions, sought for and valued chiefly as tokens of the more fortunate social conditions. They are made things of ostentation and idle vanity, pampering luxurious pride, and starving the nobler sentiments they are fitted to nourish. Their true significance is lost, and they remain only as evidences of the sad and terrible contrasts of the human lot. The evils which afflict the favored classes, may be less gross in their outward exhibition; but perhaps even more dangerous and debasing, more hopeless of reform, and make more utter wreck of manhood, for the very reason that the veil of decency and external decorum covers their grossness even from the eyes of their victims. In this exhibition of social injustice, and the oppressions of labor, it is not intended to impute any particular degree of blame to any individual, or class or party. The differences of social condition are the results of maxims and laws which have been transmitted from all the past centuries, are consecrated by tradition and authority, interwoven with some of the most intimate convictions of opinion, and pleaded for, perhaps, even by the self-love of some who suffer from their operation, who endure with slight reluctance for the present, in the hope that their, or their children's, turn may come to profit by them. They may be defended by so many plausibilities of feeling and argument, that men are slow to perceive their radical injustice. The fact of their constant existence in all ages, stands for an ultimate reason, the voice of Providence, that original inequalities of condition are not only inevitable, but essential to the harmony of the world. While these things are so, few will be found who will hesitate to seize the opportunities, which the times afford, to mount above their fellows. Therefore,

in laboring to reform social abuses, no hostility is felt towards individuals or classes, but only against the false institutions, which create classes, and make poverty an inevitable lot,--which load this one with favors more than he can employ, and deprive that other of his birthright of an equal share of his Father's bountiful and plenteous earth, and of the means of training himself for the holy and lofty services to which that Father has appointed him. No war is waged against the capitalist in behalf of the laborer, for the mere purpose, as a final end, of reversing their positions. If poverty is an inevitable condition of human affairs,-poverty not produced by misconduct,-it is of little consequence who are the individuals that suffer, or that enjoy; especially since among us these distinctions are not likely to be hereditary through many generations. Social evils are not to be remedied by putting down those who thrive by abuses,and putting those who suffer, in their places. "The evil," says La Mennais," is in the injustice, and not that it is this one, rather than that, who profits by the injustice. Whoever is uppermost, man will still continue in a state of equal suffering, and the world remain unchanged. Good and evil will subsist in the same proportions; they will only be differently arranged in respect to persons. One will mount, and another will descend, and that is all." Nothing, therefore, will be gained by substituting one domination for another. The end to be aimed at, is to subvert all domination, to abolish the social institutions which give rise to separate classes and exclusive privilege, and thus prevent any pre-eminence of one man over another, but what is derived from superior wisdom, or higher virtue. The object of the reformer should be so to re-organize society, as to make it the nurse of manhood, by removing the limitations of man's freedom, and placing him in the most direct relations with the law of his nature, giving him full scope for the free unfolding of himself, and the clear exercise of his activity in that sphere to which his individual gifts direct him. The end is, in other words, so to arrange the conditions of society as to make it a true school for the education of man.

Society is now, and will be under any condition of human affairs, the school of He was man's practical education. placed in it for that end, and in it only can

he grow to the perfect stature of a man. Let the name be given to whatever institution, endowment, form, establishment, institute or mechanism, it may, life is man's real university, his prac tical education is in the influence which society and his fellows shed around the path of his life. All these are not evil. Society is not all a falsehood. Manifold are its influences, which are sanctified and holy, beneath which the strong soul, who truthfully seeks wisdom, may walk in safety, and find peace. But only the strong. For numberless are its temptations and adverse influences, which the weak find it impossible to resist. What then shall be said, viewed in their relation to man's culture, of society's primary denials of manhood; its falsehoods organized in institutions; its insane rivalries and partizanships; its fierce struggles for power; its discordant sects and parties, with their mutual criminations; its restraints upon free opinion and utterance; its sordid, selfish, and solitary industry; its isolated households; its selfish competitions of office, trade, pleasure; even its refinement generat ing on one side pride and contempt, and hatred and envy on the other; its laws, which punish misfortune as crime, and weave cobweb-nets for magnificent villainy; its administration of justice depending on prescriptive forms and subtle technicalities; its gorgeous palaces built by withholding of his wages from the hireling on whose tattered hovel they look down in cold, glittering mockery; its hereditary wealth won without toil, and received without deserving; its pride, contempt, luxury, licentiousness, and multifarious vanities, contrasted with its poverty, ignorance, and broad-lying degradation; its frequent spectacles of youth without culture and without hope, its manhood without respect, its age without reverence; its workhouses, prisons, and penitentiaries, where it consummates its injustice on its own victims; its public wars and private feuds; its merchandise of human flesh, and its shambles where man is bought and sold; its engrossing avarice beating tumultuously through all its pulses, and filling all the currents of its life, which measures Man, his intellect, affections, reputation, hopes, necessities, rights, good and evil, by Money, and which dreams of heaven, not because its walls are salvation and its

gates praise, but because its edifices are built with rubies and emeralds, and its harmonies are sung to the chords of golden harps? "The world dishonors its workmen, stones its prophets, crucifies its saviors; but bows down its neck to wealth however won, and shouts till the welkin rings again, Long live violence and fraud!"

Few of the evils which men suffer are the results of an inevitable destiny. Man was made for society. Society is a law, a necessity of his being. Social existence, therefore, was not designed to be a state of antagonism, isolated interests and selfish competitions, in which the strong and wise should override and oppress the weak and simple. Its true mission is aid and mutual help, to protect the feeble against the powerful, and secure to every man the free equality of a common humanity. Founded in the oneness of humanity amid the diversity of its forms and manifestations, its primary essential idea is brotherhood, and brotherly help; not to take away from any one, but to ensure to each and all the full enjoyment of the bounteous resources provided impartially in nature for human subsistence and improvement,-to give to each freedom to grow, and attain to the stature of a perfect man.

If such are the true functions of so

ciety, it is a mere absurdity; yea, worse, it is to calumniate the Creator, to suppose that its conditions may not be so arranged as to fulfil them. If it do not fulfil them, its organization is false, or imperfect. Social evils are the fruits of the perversion of the natural laws of society. The existence of such evils is itself the evidence of a false and unnatural state. The only adequate remedy, then, the only true protection to labor, is a return to nature and justice. It has been seen that one of the prime sources of evil is the unjust distribution of property, which has imposed upon vast masses of mankind a life of ceaseless toil for mere animal necessities, made even their labor a sordid drudgery and dishonor, and robbed them of the leisure for mental improvement, without which the individual must remain dwarfed of the just proportions of a man. That leisure is man's right, and it is written in the book of Providence that the race shall one day attain it. Silently, through the ages of the past, where the laborer has been doomed to unrequited

toil and unpitied suffering, the stripes of his scourging have been working out and hastening his deliverance. The brass collar has been filed from the neck of "Gurth, the son of Beowulf, the born thrall of Cedric, of Rotherwood." But that is not the end. The silver gorget of "Wamba, the son of Witless," still presses upon the neck of his descendants. That, too, shall be cast off; for humanity has not yet attained an ultimate state. Man, the laborer, in acquiring political rights, and the privileges of wages, has not attained the highest condition of his existence. In the past, the progress of labor towards the successive improvements of its condition has been effected, in almost every step, by convulsion and blood. It may be so in the future. It may be that, from every new position he shall gain, he may have to turn back upon his path, to build up the desolations, and repair the wastes he has made on his way thither. But thus it need not be. Thus it will not be, if they, to whom wealth and wisdom, or that which passes for wisdom, have given the direction of the world's outward affairs, will set themselves in earnest to meet, or anticipate, with generous manliness, instead of foolishly striving to counteract, the march of events, the ordinances of Providence. Let political economy leave its poor fantastic problems of demand and supply, of furnishing employment to labor, and other speculative vanities. Let American statesmen and politicians cease their idle babbling about the balance of trade and discriminating tariffs, and labor to carry out the authentic "American system," by which alone the laborer can be really protected. Give to labor all its rights, social equality, freedom of industry, and it needs no other protection from government, though all the world conspire against it. This is the true American System which we are called to pursue, equally by the social principles we profess and the motives of mere selfish interest. The elevation of labor is the peculiar mission of our institutions, the basis of our history, the only hope of our public fortunes. Our national existence is the affirmation of the worth of man, as man, of the essential equality, social and political, of all men. To the people, the laborer, the low as well as the high, are the fortunes of the nation committed. Every man is a laborer, or

may become one. The capitalist of today may become the hireling of to-mor row. It is the real interest of all to remove social abuses, since all in turn may be their victims. In any event, many successive generations cannot profit by them. There can be no hereditary advantages of any long continuance. Every man is interested in the well-being and just order of the present, in such a sense as no community of ancient or modern times has been. And for the future, love of posterity, the strong and just motive for so much of the activity of society, would impel every man, without exception, if he viewed it wisely, to labor for a perfect social equality, as the surest provision for the welfare of his descendants. What, then, shall hinder a peaceful and perfect development of the theory of our institutions, the righting of the wrongs of man, the laborer, and the reconstruction of society, in fact as in form, upon the principles of immutable truth and justice? History, experience, and prophecy, with voices of many tones but one accord, incite us to earnest, loving work for such a renovation, which all the past and the present are working together to consummate in the future. How near a future, who can tell? Let not indifference, or unbelief, or despair, struggle to retard it. They are evil and unclean demons, spirits of the outer darkness, and have no right to interfere in man's affairs. Faith and hope are the guiding stars of his fortunes, and always is his salvation nearer, as soon as he believes, and loves, and hopes.

Such a reorganization is practicable, without violating any of the rights acquired under the existing social arrangements; that shall reconcile the conflicting claims of labor and capital, and secure a just distribution of wealth, without evoking any hideous agrarian spectre and chimera. It consists simply in the application of the principle of Association, which is the mainspring of so much of the activity of the present age, to the industrial affairs of society. I have no definite scheme to propose, but only offer some desultory hints. The labor and the capital of the world are now, in a large degree, hostile, and their interests adverse. Capital is the master of labor. Labor itself is solitary, antagonistic, and inefficient. In consequence of the misapplication and want of a proper di

vision of labor, an incalculable amount, even in the employments most skilfully conducted, is wasted, and yields no return. In various ways, besides the appropriation, by a part, of an undue share of the products, industry is barren of results, its activity is dissipated in profitless toil, and it is made a drudgery and curse. By a judicious union and cooperation of the capital and labor of society, and an equitable distribution of the products of their united activity; the evils which now encompass both, and weigh upon the latter with so terrible a pressure, would be avoided, and both incalculably benefited. By coöperation, a vastly increased amount of comfort for any one may be obtained at less expense, than is possible under the present disjointed, counteracting and hostile arrangements. It is capable of statistical demonstration, that if every one who is able, should labor only four hours a day, with the aid of the mechanical facilities already in the possession of society, the whole, and vastly more than the present work of society would be done, and more perfectly than it now is. If this be so, what an enormous, oppressive and terrible wrong is inflicted upon the laborer who is compelled to labor twelve or fifteen hours a day, for little more than a bare subsistence, and to whom that is the destiny of his life! Under a just distribution of labor and its products, the luxuries and embellishments of life would be indefinitely multiplied, and instead of being made the panders of the pride of a few, would be brought within the reach of all, and serve their true mission of refining the manners and sentiments of all. Until industry is made harmonious, helpful, brought into loving coöpera

tion, men will never know how rich and glorious a world they occupy; what prodigality of wealth is laid up for them in the open storehouses of Providence; how foolish, unnatural and insane is their unbrotherly struggle for the richest vintages and costliest bowls, while Nature has provided for every one golden cups and the waters of life.

Such an association of industry, and equitable division of its fruits, would resolve and supersede most of the hitherto insoluble problems of political economy, with which Congresses are vexed, and nations disquieted. It would give to labor a substantial protection, which will be attempted for ever in vain by tariffs and discriminating duties. Production and consumption, instead of being dependent upon commerce, and a thousand unknown and incalculable contingencies, would be brought into fixed, permanent, and manifest relations. The number of consumers would be indefinitely increased, by the conversion of millions of laborers, whose demands are now restricted within the limits of the most indispensable physical wants, into independent workmen, in whom the wants of sentiment and taste no longer clamor for supply in vain. There would be an end to the unsatisfactory inquiries concerning the causes, prevention and remedies of high and low prices, over-production and scarcity; and the endless controversies about specie and paper currencies would vanish into thin air. Above all, and as the end of all, man will obtain leisure, no longer degraded and enslaved by labor, but ennobled and strengthened thereby to the most appropriate culture, and clearest development of his moral and intellectual powers.

ALI BANU, the Sheik of Alexandria, was a singular man. When in the morning he walked through the streets of the city clothed with a turban of the costliest cashmere, a rich robe and girdle which were worth fifty camels, as he passed slowly along with grave step, his forehead gathered in dark folds, his brows knit together, his eyes downcast, and thoughtfully every five steps stroking his long black beard, as he thus went to the mosque as his office demanded, to read the Koran to believers, then would the people stop in the streets and gaze after him, and say to one another, "He is a handsome, stately man." "And rich, a rich man," another would add perhaps; “ very rich, has he not a castle at the harbor of Stamboul? Has he not estates and fields, many thousand cattle and many slaves?" "Yes," spake a third, "and the Tartar who was lately sent to him from Stamboul, from the Grand Seignor himself (the Prophet bless him), the Tartar told me that our Sheik stood in great esteem with the Reis Effendi, the Capudan Bashas, with all, even with the Sultan himself." "Yes," cried a fourth, "his steps be blessed; he is a rich, noble lord, but-but-you know what I mean?" 66 Yes, yes," murmured the others, "it is true, he has his burden to bear; I would not exchange with him; he is wealthy and renowned, but-but-"

Ali Banu had a noble house upon the finest square in Alexandria; before the house was a broad terrace, walled around with marble, and shaded with palm trees; there he often sat in the evening and smoked his chibouk. In respectful distance, twelve richly dressed slaves awaited his nod. One bore his betel root, another held his parasol, a third had vessels of solid gold filled with rich sherbet; a fourth carried a fan of peacock's feathers to scare away the flies from his master, others were singers, and held lutes and wind instru

ments to delight him with music when he desired it, and the most learned of all had several scrolls to read before him.

But they delayed in vain for his nod; he wished neither music nor song; he would hear no sentences nor poems of the wise poets of former times; he desired no sherbet nor to chew betel root; even the slave with the peacock's feathers had his labor in vain, for the Sheik noticed it not when the flies swarmed humming about him.

Those who passed by often stood still and wondered at the splendor of the house, the richly dressed slaves, and the luxury with which everything was provided; but when they looked upon the Sheik as he sat serious and gloomy beneath the palms, and turned his eyes upon nothing except the blueish clouds from his chibouk, they shook their heads and said, "Truly the rich man is a poor man; he who has much is poorer than he who has nothing; for the Prophet has not given him understanding to enjoy it." Thus spoke the people, laughed at him, and went their way. One evening, as the Sheik sat thus before the door of his house be-, neath the palm trees, surrounded by all the splendor of the earth, and lonely and mournfully smoked his chibouk, some young people stood not far off, considered him and laughed.

"Truly," said one, "he is a foolish man that Sheik Ali Banu. If I had his treasures I would apply them very differently. I would every day live gaily and in pleasure; my friends should eat at my table in the splendid chambers of the house, and merriment and laughter should fill those mournful halls."

"Yes," replied another, "that were not so bad, but many friends consume an estate, even were it as great as the Sultan's, whom the Prophet bless; if I sat so in the evening under the palm trees upon that beautiful spot, then should yonder slaves sing and play, my dancers should dance and leap, and