world."

The existence of such a state of things is indeed a "formidable evil,"
but how could it fail to exist in a country in which all individuality
is being lost as the little land-owner gradually disappears to be
replaced by the day-labourer, and as the little shop-keeper gradually
sinks into a clerk? How could it be otherwise in a country in which
weak women, and children of the most tender age, spend their nights in
cellars, and the long day of twelve or fifteen hours in factories,
whose owners know of them nothing but, as in a penitentiary, their
number--a country in which males and females work naked in
coal-mines--and find themselves compelled to do all these things
because of the necessity for preventing the poor Hindoo from calling
to his aid the powerful steam, and for compelling him, his wife, and
his children, to limit themselves to the labour of the field? How
could it be otherwise in a country in which "labourers, whether well
off or not, never attempt to be better?"[130] How otherwise in a
country distinguished among all others for the enormous wealth of a
few, for the intensity of toil and labour of all below them, and for
the anxiety with which the future is regarded by all but those who,
bereft of hope, know that all they can expect on this side of the
grave is an indifferent supply of food and raiment? "In no country of
the world," says Mr. Kay--

"Is so much time spent in the mere acquisition of wealth, and so
little time in the enjoyment of life and of all the means of
happiness which God has given to man, as in England.

"In no country in the world do the middle classes labour so intensely
as here. One would think, to view the present state of English