"We live in times of great mental and moral activity. In the year which has now reached its close, changes have been accomplished, far more extensive and important than are usually witnessed by an entire generation of the sons of men; and around and about us opinions may be discerned, which involve, not merely the machinery of government, but the very framework of society: and these opinions are not confined to the closets of the studious, but pervade the workshop and the market, and interest the men who fill our crowded thoroughfares. In former ages, as well as in other conditions than the manufacturing in our own times, social inequalities may have presented themselves, or may still exist, great as those which characterise, in our own age, the seats of manufacturing labour; and the lord and vassal of the feudal system may have exhibited, and the squire and the peasant of some of our agricultural districts may still present, as wide a disparity of condition, as exists at this day between the master manufacturer and the operative; but the antagonism of interests, whether real or apparent, between the manufacturer and the operative, is altogether unlike that simple disparity of condition which may have perplexed former serfdom, or may excite wonder in the agricultural mind of our own age. To the eyes and the contemplations of the serf, as of the peasant, the lord or the squire was the possessor of wide and fertile lands, which he had inherited from other times, and which neither serf nor peasant had produced, but which both believed would minister to their necessities, whether in sickness or in poverty, because neither the castle-gate nor the hall-door had ever been closed against their tales of suffering and woe. Neither the ancient serf, nor the modern peasant, witnessed that rapid accumulation of wealth, which is so peculiarly the product of our manufacturing system, and saw not, as the operative does, fortunes built up from day to day, which he regards as the creation of his sweat and labour--and at once the result and the evidence of a polity which fosters capital more than industry, and regards not the poverty with which labour is so often associated. Different ages and conditions produce different maxims. The modern manufacturer is not a worse (he may be, and often is, a better) man than the ancient baron, but he has been brought up in a different philosophy. By him, the operative is well-nigh regarded as a machine, from whom certain economical results may be obtained--who is free to make his own bargains, and whose moral condition is a problem to be solved by himself, because, for that condition, no duty attaches to his employer, who has contracted with him none other than an economical relation. Yet, is there