That such must necessarily be the case will be obvious to any reader who will reflect how adverse is the system to the development of intellect. Where all are farmers, there can be little association for the purpose of maintaining schools, or for the exchange of ideas of any kind. Employment being limited to the labours of the field, the women cannot attend to the care of their children, who grow up, necessarily, rude and barbarous; and such we see now to be the case in the West Indies, whence schools are rapidly disappearing. In Portugal and Turkey there is scarcely any provision for instruction, and in India there has been a decline in that respect, the extent of which is almost exactly measured by the age of the foreign occupation.[149] In the Punjab, the country last acquired, men read and write, but in Bengal and Madras they are entirely uneducated. Ireland had, seventy years since, a public press of great efficiency, but it has almost entirely disappeared, as has the demand for books, which before the Union was so great as to warrant the republication of a large portion of those that appeared in England. Scotland, too, seventy years since, gave to the Empire many of its best writers, but she, like Ireland, has greatly declined. How bad is the provision for education throughout England, and how low is the standard of intellect among a large portion of her manufacturing population, the reader has seen, and he can estimate for himself how much there can be of the reading of books, or newspapers among an agricultural population hired _by the day_ at the rate of six, eight, or even nine shillings a week--and it will, therefore not surprise him to learn that there is no daily newspaper published out of London. It _is_, however, somewhat extraordinary that in that city, there should be, as has recently been stated, but a single one that is not "published at a loss." That one circulates 40,000 copies, or more than twice the number of all the other daily papers united. This is a most unfavourable sign, for centralization and progress have never gone hand in hand with each other.