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    with obstinacy from a false pride , like the middle , nor profesa what it does not think , like the upper class . Its errors , and they are many , are the result of a want of intelligence ; they are never fraudfuL What it does , it does effectually , it concentrates all its energies to attain its object ; and withal there is a good temper , a moderation , a stern sense of justice ,

    which does not always distinguish those whose intelligence is far greater . Perhaps some of my readers will smile incredulously at this portraiture of the collective mind of the working classes ; they will point triumphantly to the French revolution and other historical records of popular phrenzy . But the people of that

    day Tiad not a mind . They were mere animals , and they acted as such . Their rulers had kept them in awful ignorance atid most abject servitude , and it is not wonderful that when they had power they should abuse it . But since that era there has been a public mind : the press has been busy , the schoolmaster has been abroad , the people have learned that they are human beings , because they have been treated somewhat as such ,

    and they have comported themselves accordingly . Three or four centuries ago scarcely a year passed without an open rebellion in this country , now it is a thing almost unknown . Forty years ago the brutal populace bathed France in blood ; in our own day the scene of a revolution has been acted again in the same theatre , and not a life was wantonly wasted , nor in a single instance was the sacred right of property violated . And why this contrast X The working classes are men now , they were brutes then . V 1 i

    That this great division of the collective mind is rapidly advancing , none can doubt ; and not only is it on its march here , but throughout the whole of Europe . It is unfortunate that this should have occurred at a time when peculiar circumstances have depressed the physical condition of the working classes ; for the very improvement of their mental state makes

    their distresses the more painful , and may urge them to try experiments which , in their cooler moments , they would studiously have shunned . Such are the Trades' Unions , once so formidable , the offspring and the avengers of past bad governments . These associations remarkably illustrate the above view of this division of our national mind . A union of so vast ' a multitude to obtain their end by peaceful means is an

    evidence of an advanced state of knowledge and civilization , whidh is further confirmed by the speeches and addresses that proceeded from its members . The object for which they combined , namely , to raise wages , proves that they have not attained that poult \ t \ mental cultivation which marks the utilitarian , properly bo called , when the mind dwells not alone

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    S 3 * Th * Signs of the Time * .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 224, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/32/