The improvement of which we have been speaking must not blind us, however, to the darker side of the picture. Notwithstanding the improvement which has been made, and the inestimable good which flows from the practice and pursuit of frugality and economy, it is still the exception and not the rule among the bulk of our labouring population. For the hundreds who look to the exigencies of their life, there are thousands who are utterly careless of such considerations, and who, in the coarse enjoyment of the present, bury alike all thought of the past and all expectation of and hope for the future. The stigma of improvidence has long attached, and we fear must yet long attach, itself to the generality of English artisans. But for this stigma there would be no operatives in the world equal to the English operative either in wealth, intelligence, or influence. No one with any experience in the case, and with any care as to accuracy, would venture to say that the English workman, _sui generis_, is not industrious at his work,[6] but too many can say that he is not provident in his home.[7] The English artisan has been said to be at once the hardest worker and the hardest spender in the world. He works like a horse and spends like an ass. So foolishly, indeed, is much of this hard-earned money spent, or misspent, that it were a charity to withhold it, or if it could be done, to throw it into the sea. The consequences attending this riot of expenditure is as natural and as inevitable as any of the laws of God's government. As one who knows them well, and one who has done much for the intellectual culture of the better portion of the artisan class tells us: "In a time of prosperity they feast; in a time of adversity they _clem_." Any depression of trade, be it even of the most transient nature, finds them totally unprepared for it; those who have been accustomed to the best wages invariably suffer the most; for, accustomed to the greatest amount of indulgences, they can do worst without it. It is such classes as these that must be reached by some means. In the improvement brought about in the social habits of the people of late years we have a happy augury of the future.[8]