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Untitled Article
this must be attempted , for , in nine cases out of ten , it is poverty that has driven them from us , and converted them into beasts of prey . But a good education is impossible , unless it is accompanied by the means of livelihood—the first cannot be imparted without the last . How then are the means of doing it to be
offered ? First , by repealing all laws which check national industry , amongst the most prominent of which are the Corn-laws . Secondly , by affording to all the free choice of cultivating lands or manufactures , either in the mother country or the colonies . These measures would banish poverty from the nation , but
whether the quantum of reform which it has obtained will send men into parliament , fit and willing to execute them , time alone can show , but I trust much more to the law of necessity than to any other . We can , of course , obtain no data frorirrwtiic % 4 o calculate the
amount of population that our country can maintain , under a free system of exchange of manufactures for food , and it is possible that Great Britain may become to the world—what . London is to Britain—a great metropolis . Now , as the inhabitants of . London live by importing food from all quarters , ( if the term import may be allowed in this case , ) it is only to extend the same idea to
a whole country or nation , and why may it not do the same ? Holland has for ages been in this situation . The limit of the comfortable condensation of the population in any place may not easily be defined , and of the two modes of supporting it—bringing food to the people , or sending them to the food—the former is the most desirable , inasmuch as it is generally allowed that
progression of intellect , and consequently the rapidity of human improvement , will always be in a direct ratio to the density of the people , in which the human mind is brought into full action by constant collision . No efforts of the press can possibly afford a full substitute for colloquial intercourse , as far as the improvement of the mind is concerned , and it is to be regretted that the custom
of detached houses in the agricultural districts should exist , from which the proverbial ignorance of the English farmer arises ; I therefore cannot join in the regret expressed by Sir Walter Scott , that the French farm-houses were grouped in villages instead of being dispersed all over the country as in England . It is in some degree to the French nation being so gregarious that their superiority over other people in the agrSmens de la vie is to be
attributed . The isolated dispersion of the population exists also in the United States , and however superior that nation may be over all others in its government , I still think that our country will be the first to demonstrate the proposition of what is the best form , and place it on a permanent basis , for there are many more modifications of a government than any which the world has yet witnessed ; but under none can liberty and poverty exist togetherthe one will inevitably destroy the other . Before we can , therefore ,
Untitled Article
98 ! Cn the Prospects qfthe People .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1833, page 98, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2608/page/30/
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