III. TO THE WORKING CLASSES THEMSELVES. In America, more than in any other land on earth, the working classes may work out for themselves an honourable destiny. To a wide extent, these classes are conscious of their opportunities. Many a mother in the hut of poverty presses her child to her heart, and anticipates for him a sphere of life higher than her own. How shall she place his feet in the path which leads to it? This question starts in her thoughts a thousand times. Here she may solve it. Asking a higher destiny, the working classes cry, “Who will show us any good?” And responses come back to them in numberless forms,--one telling them that their rise in the social scale is to be secured by the triumph of a political party, or by the success of certain measures of public policy,--another bidding them seek relief in “Unions” for the regulation of the wages of labour, and for mutual protection against the oppressions of employers--and another declaring that their depression is the fruit of a false social organization, and will find its remedy in the schemes of “Association.” But these are not responses of wisdom and truth. The labouring classes must work out their own rise, through their own intelligence and virtue. Intelligent and virtuous, they will command respect; they will be neither the dupes of the designing, nor the slaves of the tyrannical. On these points they will find this little volume, from one of their own class, full of counsels gathered from the source of all truth. Let them ponder thoughtfully its pages. I need not explain the occasion of the publication of this Essay in England. That is sufficiently explained in the Introduction which follows. It has had a large circulation in that country, under the patronage of the great and good, and dedicated, by her own cheerful permission, to the excellent woman who sits upon the British throne, and exalts her lofty position by her exemplary piety. I cannot doubt that the Essay will be equally acceptable on this side of the water, and as fruitful in beneficent influences. _New York, Nov. 15 1848._ INTRODUCTION.