The child is taken in, not out of charity, but because an imp of such a kind happens to be wanted, and Devilsdust grows up, naturally enough, a Chartist and a dangerous member of society. But was there ever a more horrible picture drawn? It is like a chapter of Isaiah in Cockney novelist dress. Such things, we are told, cannot happen now. Can they not? There was a recent revelation at Battersea not so unlike it. The East-end of London produces crimes which are not obliterated because they are forgotten; and rag bundles may be seen on frosty nights at London house-doors, which, if you unroll them, discover living things not so unlike poor Devilsdust. For the future, these waifs and strays are at least to be sent to school. The school will do something, especially if one full meal a day is added to the lessons; but what is the best of Board schools compared to the old apprenticeship? The apprentice had his three full meals a day, and decent clothes, and decent lodging, and was taught some trade or handicraft by which he could earn an honest living when his time was out. The school cannot reach the miserable home. The school teaches no useful occupation, and when school-time is over the child is again adrift upon the world. He is taught to read and write. His mind is opened. Yes. He is taught to read the newspapers, and the penny dreadfuls, and his wits are sharpened for him. Whether this will make him a more useful or more contented member of society, time will show. Devilsdust was but one of many products of the manufacturing system which Disraeli saw and meditated upon. He found a hand-loom weaver starving with his children in a garret, looking back upon the time when his loom had given him a cottage and a garden in his native village. The new machinery had ruined him, and he did not complain of the inevitable. But, as it was too late for him to learn another trade, he argued that if a society which had been created by labour suddenly became independent of it, that society was bound to maintain those whose only property was labour, out of the profits of that other property which had not ceased to be productive. He talks with a superior artisan, who says to him: 'There is more serfdom in England now than at any time since the Conquest. I speak of what passes under my daily eyes when I say that those who labour can as little change or choose their masters now as when they were born thralls. There are great bodies of the working classes of this country nearer the condition of brutes than they have been at any time since the Conquest. Indeed, I see nothing to distinguish them from brutes, except that their morals are inferior. Incest and infanticide are as common among them as among the lower animals. The domestic principle wanes weaker and weaker every year in England: nor can we wonder at it when there is no comfort to cheer and no sentiment to hallow the home.