contributed to create has been far short of the number they have extinguished. The same causes have, of course, exercised very important effects on the economic condition of the working class. They have reduced them more and more to the permanent position of wage-labourers, and have left them relatively fewer openings than they once possessed for investing their savings in their own line, and fewer opportunities for the abler and more intelligent of them to rise to a competency. This want may perhaps be ultimately supplied under existing industrial conditions by the modern system of co-operation, which combines some of the advantages of the small capital with some of the advantages of the large, though it lacks one of the chief advantages of both, the energetic, uncontrolled initiative of the individual capitalist. But at present, at any rate, it is premature to expect this, and as things stand, many of the old pathways that linked class with class are now closed without being replaced by modern substitutes, and working men are more purely and permanently wage-labourers than they used to be. But while the wage-labourer has perhaps less chance than before of becoming anything else, it is a mistake to suppose, as is sometimes done, that he is worse off, or even, as is perhaps invariably imagined, that he has a less share in the wealth of the country than he had when the wealth of the country was less. On the contrary, the position of the wage-labourer is really better than it has been for three hundred years. If we turn to the period of the English Revolution, we find that the income which the labourer and his family together were able to earn was habitually insufficient to maintain them in the way they were accustomed to live. Sir M. Hale, in his "Discourse Touching the Poor," published in 1683, says the family of a working man, consisting of husband, wife, and four children, could not be supported in meat, drink, clothing, and house-rent on less than 10s. a week, and that he might possibly be able to make that amount, if he got constant employment, and if two of his children, as well as their mother, could earn something by their labour too. Gregory King classifies the whole labouring population of the country in his time, except a few thousand skilled artisans, among the classes who decrease the wealth of the country, because, not earning enough to keep them, they had to obtain occasional allowances from public funds. We do well to grieve over the pauperism that exists now in England. A few years ago, one person in every twenty received parochial support, and one in thirty does so yet. These figures, of course, refer to those in receipt of relief at one time, and not to all who received relief during a year. But for Scotland we have statistics of both, and the latter come as nearly as possible to twice as many as the former. If the same proportion rules in England, then every fifteenth person receives relief in the course of the year.[4] But in