-spinner like Sir Robert Peel, the greater
is the tendency towards its abandonment by the small proprietor, who has
an interest in local self government, and the greater the tendency towards
the centralization of power in London and in the great seats of
manufacture. In all those places, it is thought that the prosperity of
England is dependent upon "a cheap and abundant supply of labor."[1] The
"Times" assures its readers that it is "to the cheap labor of Ireland that
England is indebted for all her great works;" and that note is repeated by
a large portion of the literary men of England who now ask for protection
in the American market against the effects of the system they so generally
advocate.

[Footnote 1: _North British Review_, November, 1852.]

The more the people of Scotland can be driven from the land to take refuge
in Glasgow and Paisley, the cheaper must be labor. The more those of
Ireland can be driven to England, the greater must be the competition in
the latter for employment, and the lower must be the price of labor. The
more the land of England can be centralized, the greater must be the mass
of people seeking employment in London, Liverpool, Manchester, and
Birmingham, and the cheaper must labor be.

Low-priced laborers cannot exercise self-government. All they earn is
required for supplying themselves with indifferent food, clothing, and
lodging, and they cannot control the expenditure of their wages to such
extent as to enable them to educate their children, and hence it is that
the condition of the people of England is as here described:--

"About one half of our poor can neither read nor write. The test of
signing the name at marriage is a very imperfect absolute test of
education, but it is a very good relative one: taking that test, how
stands Leeds itself in the Registrar-General's returns? In Leeds, which is
the centre of the movement for letting education remain as it is, left
entirely to chance and charity to supply its deficiencies, how do we find
the fact? This, that in 1846, the last year to which these returns are
brought down, of 1,850 marriages celebrated in Leeds and Hunslet, 508 of
the men and 1,020 of the women, or considerably more than one half of the
latter, signed their names with marks. 'I have also a personal knowledge
of this fact--that of 47 men employed upon a railway in this immediate
neighborhood, only 14 can sign their names in the receipt of their wages;
and this