Dwellings of the Poor.  The writer specifies one of the greatest difficulties as existing in the working-people themselves:  when provided with a variety of rooms for the separation of the various members of their families, they are very apt to defeat the whole plan by taking in lodgers, and contenting themselves with the filthy and depraving huddlement out of which their benevolent superiors endeavoured to rescue them.  But it may be hoped that, by promoting only a few of the more intelligent and better-disposed to such improved dwellings, and thus setting up good examples, the multitude might in time be trained to an appreciation of the decency and comfort of ampler accommodation.  Another wide field of usefulness is open to the employers in the establishment of schools, reading-rooms, baths, wash-houses, and the like.

It strikes us that the writer of this article is not true to his own principle in his view of the duties of the employer.  We readily grant the duty of making his business prosperous and his workshops healthy.  To fail in the latter particular especially, were not merely to fail in a duty, but to incur a heavy positive blame.  But we cannot see how it is incumbent on the employer to provide houses for the persons who enter into the labour-contract with him, any more than to see that they get their four-pound loaf of a certain quality or price.  It may be a graceful thing, a piece of noble benevolence, to enter into these building schemes, but it is also to go back into that system of vassalage out of which it is assumed that the relation of employer and employed is passing.  Either the new buildings will pay as speculations, or they will not.  If they are sure to pay, ordinary speculators will be as ready to furnish them as bakers are to sell bread.  If the contrary be the case, why burden with the actual or probable loss the party in a simple contract which involves no such obligation?  Clearly, there must be no great reason to expect a fair return for capital laid out in this way, or we should see building schemes for the working-classes taken up extensively by ordinary speculators.  For employers, then, to enter into such plans, must in some degree be the result of benevolent feelings towards their men; and, so far, we must hold there is an acknowledgment on both sides that the system of vassalage is not yet extinct amongst us, and that the time for its extinction is not yet come.

If we look, however, at the entire condition of the working-people of England, we shall see that it acknowledges the same truth in some of its broadest features.  When a time of depression comes, and factories do not require half of their usual number of hands, or even so many, it is never expected, on any hand, that the superfluous labourers are to maintain themselves till better times return.  The employer is expected to keep them in his service, at least on short time, and at a reduced remuneration, although at a ruinous loss to himself.  The workmen, though well aware