of adoption, not only in default of children, but to fulfil the purposes, and satisfy the sympathetic wants, to which such children as there are may happen to be inadequate.  The third is a most important point—­the incorporation of domestics as substantive members of the family.  There is hardly any part of the present constitution of society more essentially vicious, and morally injurious to both parties, than the relation between masters and servants.  To make this a really human and a moral relation, is one of the principal desiderata in social improvement.  The feeling of the vulgar of all classes, that domestic service has anything in it peculiarly mean, is a feeling than which there is none meaner.  In the feudal ages, youthful nobles of the highest rank thought themselves honoured by officiating in what is now called a menial capacity, about the persons of superiors of both sexes, for whom they felt respect:  and, as M. Comte observes, there are many families who can in no other way so usefully serve Humanity, as by ministering to the bodily wants of other families, called to functions which require the devotion of all their thoughts.  “We will add, by way of supplement to M. Comte’s doctrine, that much of the daily physical work of a household, even in opulent families, if silly notions of degradation, common to all ranks, did not interfere, might very advantageously be performed by the family itself, at least by its younger members; to whom it would give healthful exercise of the bodily powers, which has now to be sought in modes far less useful, and also a familiar acquaintance with the real work of the world, and a moral willingness to take their share of its burthens, which, in the great majority of the better-off classes, do not now get cultivated at all.

We have still to speak of the directly political functions of the rich, or, as M. Comte terms them, the patriciate.  The entire political government is to be in their hands.  First, however, the existing nations are to be broken up into small republics, the largest not exceeding the size of Belgium, Portugal, or Tuscany; any larger nationalities being incompatible with the unity of wants and feelings, which is required, not only to give due strength to the sentiment of patriotism (always strongest in small states), but to prevent undue compression; for no territory, M. Comte thinks, can without oppression be governed from a distant centre.  Algeria, therefore, is to be given up to the Arabs, Corsica to its inhabitants, and France proper is to be, before the end of the century, divided into seventeen republics, corresponding to the number of considerable towns:  Paris, however, (need it be said?) succeeding to Rome as the religious metropolis of the world.  Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, are to be separated from England, which is of course to detach itself from all its transmarine dependencies.  In each state thus constituted, the powers of government are to be vested in a triumvirate of the three principal