“Your lordship stated that it was too frequently alleged that the industrious classes are thoughtless, improvident, ungrateful, and intellectually dull: but this assertion you emphatically denied; and you proceeded to reason thus:--‘Despair, produced by their unhappy condition, naturally led to dissipation in many instances; but were the working man placed in a position so that his livelihood should be rendered less precarious than it now was--were his labour adequately remunerated--were he more fairly paid by the representatives of property--were a scale of wages established, having a fixed minimum, but no fixed maximum, the increased comfort thus ensured to him would naturally remove from his mind those cares which drove him to the public-house.’--Well, my lord and gentlemen,” continued the Prince, “the suggestion has been adopted in Castelcicala: a fixed minimum for wages has been established--the lowest amount of payment ensuring a sum sufficient to enable the working man to maintain himself and his family in respectability. The results may almost be said to have been instantaneous. Crime diminished rapidly: statistical returns soon proved that intemperance experienced a remarkable decrease; and such was the falling off in the consumption of spirituous liquors, beer, and tobacco, that the Government found it necessary to grant a compensation to the licensed victuallers, publicans, and tobacconists who suffered by this change in the habits of the people. Even _employers_ speedily began to recognise the advantage of the new state of things in the improved condition of their _employed_, the increase and the excellence of the labour they obtained, and the superiority of their agriculture or their manufactures. No _maximum_ of wages has been fixed in Castelcicala; and when I left the country a month ago, those wages were higher than ever they were known to be before. The demand for labour has greatly increased; and, though the territory be densely populated, employment may be found for all. If a man be now a pauper or mendicant in Castelcicala, it must be either through physical infirmity, or through his unwillingness to work. Of this latter, however, we have comparatively few examples--emulation and patriotism acting powerfully in a country where so much happiness and such prosperity prevail. Now, with a slight alteration in your lordship’s speech, one of the most remarkable passages in that speech reads thus when applied to Castelcicala:--‘There is no fixed _maximum_ of wages, because wages are always to be increased in proportion to the value of productive labour to employers: but there is a _minimum_ established, to obviate the cruel and disastrous effects of those periods when labour exceeds the demand in the market. This is not considered unfair towards employers, because when the markets are brisk and trade is flourishing, they (the employers) reap the greatest benefit from that activity, and enrich themselves in a very short