of cloth cost a day’s labor, as did every bushel of grain.  England herself, it is computed now does the work, by means of steam and machinery, of eight hundred millions of men.  And yet English wants are no more satisfied to-day than they were a thousand years ago.  I do not say they are altogether unsatisfied; but I say that the consciousness of want, the demand for products, is just as keen to-day; and I have not a doubt that if inventions could be introduced into China whereby the labor of her people should be rendered fifty times as effective as it is to-day, you would find not a dearth of employment as a consequence, but rather an increase of activity and an increased demand for labor.  To-day British capital and British talent are fairly grid-ironing the ancient plains and slopes of Hindostan with British canals, irrigating, and railroads.  It is their gold they say; but it is not British capital, so much as British genius and British confidence, that are required.  There is wealth enough in India, more gold and silver and gems, probably to-day than in Europe, for the precious metals always flow thither, and they very seldom flow thence.

* * * * *

From “Recollections of a Busy Life.”

=_166._= LITERATURE AS A VOCATION; THE EDITOR.

No other public teacher lives so wholly in the present, as the Editor; and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth,—­the most self-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish Public Sentiment that regards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solely as it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars fall jingling into the merchant’s drawer, the land-jobber’s vault, and the miser’s bag,—­can but be noted in their day, and with their day forgotten.  It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings,—­to condemn Vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures, or alarm the consciences of the vicious,—­to praise and champion Liberty so as not to give annoyance or offence to Slavery, and to commend and glorify Labor without attempting to expose or repress any of the gainful contrivances by which Labor is plundered and degraded.  Thus sidling dexterously between somewhere and nowhere, the Able Editor of the Nineteenth Century may glide through life respectable and in good case, and lie down to his long rest with the non-achievements of his life emblazoned on the very whitest marble, surmounting and glorifying his dust.

There is a different and sterner path,—­I know not whether there be any now qualified to tread it,—­I am not sure that even one has ever followed it implicitly, in view of the certain meagerness of its temporal rewards, and the haste wherewith any fame acquired in a sphere so thoroughly ephemeral as the Editor’s, must be shrouded by the dark waters of oblivion.  This path demands an ear ever open to the plaints of the wronged and the suffering, though they can never repay advocacy, and those who