Overlooked as this prodigious change has been, as all things are which arise gradually in this country, it has yet attracted, as well it might, the astonishment of writers on the Continent. Nine yeas ago, M. Moreau observed, speaking of the increase of crime in Scotland--"In the year 1805, the criminal commitments in Scotland were eighty-nine: they are now 2864--that is, they have increased in thirty years thirty-fold. It would appear that Scotland, in becoming a manufacturing state, has in a great degree lost the virtue and simplicity of character by which she was formerly distinguished."[2] What renders this prodigious increase of crime in so short a period, in all parts of the British Empire, in a peculiar manner extraordinary and alarming, is, that it has taken place at the very time when unheard-of efforts were made, in every part of the country, for the moral and religious instruction of the people. We are very far indeed from saying that enough has been done in this way: no one is better aware that the vast debt, which the prosperous wealth of Britain owes in this respect to its suffering indigence, is still in great part undischarged, and that till it is taken up and put on a proper footing _by the state_, it never can be completely liquidated;--still, more has been done to discharge it during the last thirty years, than in the whole previous centuries which have elapsed since the Reformation. The churches of England and Scotland, during that period, have improved to an astonishing degree in vigour and efficiency: new life, a warmer spirit, a holier ambition, has been breathed into the Establishment; the dissenters of all denominations have vied with them in zeal and effort; churches and chapels have been built and opened in every direction; and though they have by no means, in the manufacturing districts, kept pace with the increase of population, yet they have advanced with a rapidity hitherto unheard of in British history. The laity of all denominations have made extraordinary efforts to promote the cause of education. In this great and good work, persons of all descriptions have, though from very different motives, laboured together; but much remains to be done. We well know how many tens and hundreds of thousands, in the manufacturing districts, are now wandering in worse than heathen darkness in the midst of a Christian land;--we well know what insurmountable obstacles mere voluntary zeal and exertion meet with in the most praiseworthy efforts, from the selfish resistance of property and the reckless dissipation of indigence. But still, no one acquainted with the subject can deny, that during the last thirty years, incomparably more has been done to promote education among the poor than in the preceding three centuries. Yet this period of anxious solicitude, awakened fear, and general effort to stem, by all the known methods, the deluge of profligacy and depravity with which the country has been