It may to the unreflecting appear to require but a small exercise of skill to grow their food, weave their garments, or construct their houses; but set your “_independent_” gentleman to do either one or the other, and what a poor useless wretch he immediately becomes. We have, indeed, too long been taught to think, that an independent man, like an honest man, is “the noblest work of God;” as if it were not the noblest thing a man could do to labour for the food he eats, and as if what we are led to call an independent gentleman were not the most dependent of all animals in creation. Put such an one on an uninhabited island, and would he not be as helpless as an infant? What could he—this _independent_ man—do, when he had really to _depend_ on none others but himself for his living? Far be it from us to assert that manual dexterity or muscular labour is the _summum bonum_ of human existence; but what we wish to say is, that, owing so much of our comfort and happiness to both, we should honour them more than we do; and that, above all, if society would really have the world progress, it should do away with the cheat, which makes those men the most “_respectable_” who do the least for the bread they eat. If we wish to make gentlemen of our working men (we use the word “gentleman” in its highest Dekkerian sense, and certainly not in its mere conventional signification), our first step must be to assert the natural dignity of labour. So long as we look upon work or to it as a meanness, so long will our workers and toilers remain mean. Let industry be with us “respectable”—as it is really in the natural arrangement of things—and the industrious poor instead of the idle rich will then be the really respectable men of this country.