We have certainly had numerous “Reforms.”  We have had household suffrage, and vote by ballot.  We have relieved the working classes of the taxes on corn, cattle, coffee, sugar, and provisions generally; and imposed a considerable proportion of the taxes from which they have been relieved on the middle and upper ranks.  Yet these measures have produced but little improvement in the condition of the working people.  They have not applied the principle of Reform to themselves.  They have not begun at home.  Yet the end of all Reform is the improvement of the individual.  Everything that is wrong in Society results from that which is wrong in the Individual.  When men are bad, society is bad.

Franklin, with his shrewd common sense, observed, “The taxes are indeed very heavy; and if those laid on by the Government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us.  We are taxed quite as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement.”

Lord John Russell once made a similar statement to a body of working men who waited upon him for the purpose of asking relief from taxation.  “You complain of the taxes,” he said; “but think of how you tax yourselves.  You consume about fifty millions yearly in drink.  Is there any Government that would dare to tax you to that extent?  You have it in your own power greatly to reduce the taxes, and that without in any way appealing to us.”

Complaining that the laws are bad, and that the taxes are heavy, will not mend matters.  Aristocratic government, and the tyranny of masters, are nothing like so injurious as the tyranny of vicious appetites.  Men are easily led away by the parade of their miseries, which are for the most part voluntary and self-imposed,—­the results of idleness, thriftlessness, intemperance, and misconduct.  To blame others for what we suffer, is always more agreeable to our self-pride, than to blame ourselves.  But it is perfectly clear that people who live from day to day without plan, without rule, without forethought—­who spend all their earnings, without saving anything for the future—­are preparing beforehand for inevitable distress.  To provide only for the present, is the sure means to sacrificing the future.  What hope can there be for a people whose only maxim seems to be, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die”?

All this may seem very hopeless; yet it is not entirely so.  The large earnings of the working classes is an important point to start with.  The gradual diffusion of education will help them to use, and not abuse, their means of comfortable living.  The more extended knowledge of the uses of economy, frugality, and thrift, will help them to spend their lives more soberly, virtuously, and religiously.  Mr. Denison