But, after all, it must be allowed that there is a great deal of confessorship in the world, independent of a regard to cake and pudding. It is in many cases simply a fascination exerted over one mind by another; in others, the result of that very common failing, the want of confidence in one’s own resources. Young men—by which, I mean men in the mason-lodge time of life, say between twenty and five-and-twenty—are most apt to indulge in confession. _They_ think friends all in all, and for friends would give up every thing. All business and duty is to them an episode, only consented to because it is unavoidable; while the enjoyment of the countenance of their friends seems the main and true concern of life. Then are the joys of confession truly relished. Then does the vampire confessor suck deepest into the vitals of his devotee. Happy delusion—sweet morning dream—alas! too certain to awake to the conviction that it is “but a dream!” A CHAPTER OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, WRITTEN FOR THE BRITISH PEASANTRY. The monstrous absurdity, that there is a principle in the economy of nature by which population increases beyond the means of support, has been stated by men eminent in various departments of political economy, and countenanced by individuals in whom the soundest reasoning and farsightedness might have been expected. There is _not_ a principle in nature having a tendency to increase population beyond the means of subsistence, or to overpeople the world. To suppose that there is, is to impugn the magnificent designs of the Creator, and to call in question his vigilant and ever-sustaining providence. When the globe which we inhabit, and all that it sustains in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, was called into existence, and sent forth fresh from the hands of its Divine Constructor, certain fixed principles were ordained and put into unintermitting action, by which all were to be sustained, and prevented alike from coming to a stand, or into collision. These principles involved the production and reproduction of food for man and beast through an incalculable series of ages; and this process of production was left to be excited or retarded in a great measure by man, for whose convenience all subordinate parts were organised, and by whose thinking faculties the increase or decrease of food was apparently to be proportioned. In a word, it was left to our free-will whether to cultivate the soil, or leave it in its rude and unproductive condition.