The working classes very much under-estimate themselves. Though they
receive salaries or wages beyond the average earnings of professional
men, yet many of them have no other thought than that of living in mean
houses, and spending their surplus time and money in drink. They seem
wanting in respect for themselves as well as for their class. They
encourage the notion that there is something degrading in labour,--than
which nothing can be more false. Labour of all kinds is dignifying and
honourable; it is the idler, above all others, who is undignified and
dishonourable.

"Let the working man," says Mr. Sterling, "try to connect his daily
task, however mean, with the highest thoughts he can apprehend, and he
thereby secures the rightfulness of his lot, and is raising his
existence to his utmost good. It is because the working man has failed
to do this, and because others have failed to help him as they ought,
that the lot of labour has hitherto been associated with what is mean
and degrading."

With respect to remuneration, the average of skilled mechanics and
artisans, as we have already said, are better paid than the average of
working curates. The working engineer is better paid than the ensign in
a marching regiment. The foreman in any of our large engineering
establishments is better paid than an army surgeon. The rail-roller
receives over a guinea a day, while an assistant navy surgeon receives
fourteen shillings, and after three years' service, twenty-one
shillings, with rations. The majority of dissenting ministers are much
worse paid than the better classes of skilled mechanics and artizans;
and the average of clerks employed in counting-houses and warehouses
receive wages very much lower.

Skilled workmen might--and, if they had the will, they would--occupy a
social position as high as the educated classes we refer to. What
prevents them rising? Merely because they will not use their leisure to
cultivate their minds. They have sufficient money; it is culture that
they want. They ought to know that the position of men in society does
not depend so much upon their earnings, as upon their character and
intelligence. And it is because they neglect their abundant
opportunities,--because they are thriftless and spend their earnings in
animal enjoyments,--because they refuse to cultivate the highest parts
of their nature,--that they are excluded, or rather self-excluded, from
those social and other privileges in whi