The intense selfishness, thriftlessness, and folly of these highly paid operatives, is scarcely credible.  Exceptions are frequently taken to calling the working classes “the lower orders;” but “the lower orders” they always will be, so long as they indicate such sensual indulgence and improvidence.  In cases such as these, improvidence is not only a great sin, and a feeder of sin, but it is a great cruelty.  In the case of the father of a family, who has been instrumental in bringing a number of helpless beings into the world, it is heartless and selfish in the highest degree to spend money on personal indulgences such as drink, which do the parent no good, and the mother and the children, through the hereditary bad example, an irreparable amount of mischief.  The father takes sick, is thrown out of work, and his children are at once deprived of the means of subsistence.  The reckless parent has not even taken the precaution to enter a Provident or a Benefit Society; and while he is sick, his wife and children are suffering the pangs of hunger.  Or, he dies; and the poor creatures are thrown upon the charity of strangers, or on the miserable pittance wrung from the poor-rates.

It would seem to be of little use preaching up an extension of rights to a people who are so supinely indifferent to their own well-being,—­who are really unconcerned about their own elevation.  The friends of the industrious should faithfully tell them that they must exercise prudence, economy, and self-denial, if they would really be raised from selfish debasement, and become elevated to the dignity of thinking beings.  It is only by practising the principles of self-dependence that they can achieve dignity, stability, and consideration in society; or that they can acquire such influence and power as to raise them in the scale of social well-being.

Brown, the Oxford shoemaker, was of opinion that “a good mechanic is the most independent man in the world.”  At least he ought to be such.  He has always a market for his skill; and if he be ordinarily diligent, sober, and intelligent, he may be useful, healthy, and happy.  With a thrifty use of his means, he may, if he earns from thirty to forty shillings a week, dress well, live well, and educate his children creditably.

Hugh Miller never had more than twenty-four shillings a week while working as a journeyman stonemason, and here is the result of his fifteen years’ experience:—­

“Let me state, for it seems to be very much the fashion to draw dolorous pictures of the condition of the labouring classes, that from the close of the first year in which I worked as a journeyman until I took final leave of the mallet and chisel, I never knew what it was to want a shilling; that my two uncles, my grandfather, and the mason with whom I served my apprenticeship—­all working men—­had had a similar experience; and that it was the experience of my father also.  I cannot doubt that deserving