cientific world, and
appreciated by men of science, from the astronomer royal downwards. He
has been over to America, to report upon the progress of manufactures
and the state of the mechanical arts in the United States, and he has
returned. No report from him to the government has yet been published.
But it has oozed out in Manchester that he found in America a degree of
intelligence amongst the manufacturing operatives, a state of things in
the mechanical arts, which has convinced him that if we are to hold our
own, if we are not to fall back in the rear of the race of nations we
must educate our people to put them upon a level with the more educated
artisans of the United States. We shall all have the opportunity of
judging when that report is delivered; but sufficient has already oozed
out to excite a great interest, and I might almost say some alarm."

Having done this, let them next ask themselves what have been the causes
of the vast change in the relative positions of the two countries. Doing
this, will not the answer be, common schools, cheap school-books, cheap
newspapers, and cheap literature? Has not each and every one of these
aided in making authors, and in creating a market for their products?
Having thus laid the foundation of a great edifice, are we likely to stop
in the erection of the walls? Having in so brief a period created a great
market for literature, is it not certain that it must continue to grow
with increased rapidity? Assuredly it is; and yet it is that vast market
that our authors desire to barter for one in which Hood was permitted
almost to starve, in which Leigh Hunt, Lady Morgan, Miss Mitford,
Tennyson, and Sir Francis Head even now submit to the degradation of
receiving the public charity to the extent of a hundred pounds a year! The
law as it now exists, invites foreign authors to come and live among us,
and participate in our advantages. The treaty offers to tax ourselves for
the purpose of offering them a bounty upon staying at home and increasing
their numbers and their competition with the well-paid literary labor of
this country. Were Belgrave Square to make a treaty with Grub Street,
providing that each should have a plate at the tables of the other, the
population of the latter would probably grow as rapidly as the dinners of
the former would decline in quality, and it might be well for our authors
to reflect if such might not be the result of the trea