commit fraud; is it not to purloin; is it not, in short, to rob, if you take from the labourer more than the fair worth of the wages you pay him? Even to overreach, to outwit your equals in point of wealth, though in transactions illegal in themselves, are deemed worthy of expulsion, from society; and yet to defraud the labourer, to defraud him who is the maker of your riches, who gives you ease and abundance, the profit of whose labour (and that alone) places you above him in the estimation of the world to defraud him, to cheat him by the means of false measures and deceitful calculations, is thought nothing of, or if thought of, only as a matter of exultation, the criterion of cleverness being the greatest quantity of labour obtained in exchange for the smallest quantity of food!

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In order to disguise from ourselves our own meanness, ingratitude and cruelty, we put the thing on a different footing: we consider labour as an article of merchandise, and then proceed upon the maxim, that we have a right to purchase as cheap as we can. This maxim, even supposing the idea of merchandise to be correct, is no so sound as habit, and very vicious habit, makes us regard it to be. We are not justified, upon any principle of morality, to give less for any thing than we ourselves believe the thing to be worth, because this is not doing as we would be done unto. The comparison, therefore, is of little avail; and besides, a worse example than that of the merchant could not easily be referred to. "He is a Merchant," says the Prophet Hosea, "the balances of deceit are "in his hand; he loveth to oppress." No wonder that those who wish to enrich themselves by the means of

just profits drawn from labour should put them

se.ves upon the footing of the Merchant ! But labour is not merchandise, except, indeed, it be the labour of a slave. It is altogether personal. It is inseparable from the body of the labourer; and cannot be considered as an article to be cheapened, without any regard being had to the well-being of the person who has to perform it. The labourer, if you persist in treating his labour as a commodity for which you have a right to give the smallest quantity of food in return, has his rights, too; his rights of nature; his right to a sufficiency of food and of raiment; or else his right to employ his strength and ingenuity to obtain them without reference to the laws passed for the appropriation of the property created by labour.

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It is, however, nothing more than shuffling and equivocating with our consciences to attempt to justify by such arguments the withholding from the labourer his fair share of the profits of his labour. The man who wholly disregards every moral and religious consideration; who tells you at once that he regards the labourers as cattle, and that he has a right to treat them in that way+ which shall be most conducive to his own advantage, is consistent enough: he is a brute in human shape; like a brute he acts, with the additional malignity of human refinement. But what are we to say of the pretended friend of religion; of the circulator of the Bible; of the propagator of the gospel, who, with brotherly love on his lips, sweats down to a skeleton, and sends nightly home to his starving children, the labourer out of whose bones he extracts even the means of his ostentatious display of piety? What are we to say of the bitter persecutor of " in

"fidels," who, while he says grace over his sump tuous meals, can bear, without the smallest emotion, the hectic coughs of the squallid crowds whose halffamished bodies pine away in the pestiferous air of that prison which he calls a factory?

Can such things be; and can such men know peace of mind? Can avarice and habit have so far obliterated reason, deadened the feelings of humanity, quieted the cries of conscience as to afford tranquillity to such men, on the miserable plea that their conduct squares with the maxims of commerce? So did the conduct of Judas Iscariot; for, to rob men of their blood differs only in degree from robbing them of their sweat; and, in some respects, the former is less cruel than the latter. Deliberately to take away man's life; coolly to betray him and sell his blood; patiently to lie in wait for the blood of our neighbour seems to admit of no comparison in point of atrocity. But, does even the murderous spy much exceed in iniquity the wretch who adopts-and steadily pursues a system of fraud on those by whose labour he is enriched? To profit by deceits practised on the community at large; to cheat our neighbours and countrymen by means of short measures, false balances, and extortions; this bespeaks a heart odiously wicked; this bespeaks greediness, dishonesty and cruelty: what, then, must the man be, who can deliberately and systematically act in the same way towards those, who, in his field, or under his very roof, exert their strength and exhaust their ingenuity for his benefit; and who are content if they obtain a mere sufficiency of food and of raiment out of the fruits of that labour, which gives him all the means of indulging in luxurious enjoyments? What must the man be, who

can see his table spread with dainties, with all that nature aided by art can set before him to pamper his appetite; who knows, that he owes no part of this to his own labour; and yet, who can, while he affects to thank God for the blessing, studiously defraud and degrade those whose labour has created all that he possesses, all, that fills his heart with pride?

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shivering limbs

God has comhave their full

Oppressors, and especially oppressors of this description, seldom fail to be hypocrites, hypocrisy being necessary to screen them from public odium. the ranks of feigned and ostentatious humanity such men. generally stand amongst the foremost. But, will this avail them ought? Will this take them out of the purview of the prophet's denunciation? God has not said, nor has he left room for the oppressor to hope, that he who has delighted in, that he who has, fattened on," the gain of oppressions," is to purchase forgiveness by flinging his orts to the almost expiring oppressed, or by hiding their naked and with the cast-off coverings of his horse. manded, that those who labour shall share of the fruits of their labour; that they shall be liberally furnished out of the flock, the floor and the wine-press. He has most pointedly commanded, that this shall be as matter of right, and not of favour ; and he has strictly forbidden the giver to make any humiliation of the receiver a condition of, or a circumstance belonging to, the gift. Obedience and fidelity in servants God strictly enjoins, but the compensation for these is not to consist of garbage, rags and beds of straw out of that which arises from his labour the servant is to share, not only in all things needful unto him, but in all the pleasures springing from the same source. And, again, what must that man be, who can

reason, to exGive him the

enjoy festivity, arising out of the fruit of his servant's labour, while he knows that the limbs which have created the feast are perishing with cold: while he knows the feast to be the fruit of unrequited toil, and that that which fills his body and makes his heart glad, is, if traced home, the flesh, blood and bones of the labourer? To attempt persuasion, to postulate, with such a man is vain. thing in kind cut up the carcase and serve it him in a charger he remains unmoved. Nothing short of the vengeance of God can touch his heart of flint: he has lowered the measure and heightened the price; he has made the Ephah small and the Shekel great; he' has falsified the balance by deceit; he has robbed the hired servant of his hire; he has bought the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes; he has fattened on the gain of oppressions; he has “eaten the "flesh and drunk the blood of his poorer brother;" "his feasting shall be turned into mourning, saith the "Lord God, and his songs into lamentations."