ons that
demand a perpetual exercise of the intellectual faculties, we cannot
preserve, on the average, an intellectual superiority fully equivalent to
the difference of rank and station. Let the vast tracts now left barren
smile with cultivation: the happier lands, which the rivers of
civilization have enriched for ages, will still maintain their supremacy.
And remember this, that every insight you give the humbler classes into
the vast expanse of knowledge, you give them the means of estimating with
a deference founded on reason, those persons who do possess knowledge of
any kind. Let us have faith that knowledge must in the long run lead to
good; and let us not fancy that our prosperity as a class depends upon
the ignorance of those beneath us. Has not our partial enlightenment
taught us in some measure to be reconciled to the fact of there being
classes above us? And why should we fear that knowledge, which smoothes
so many of the rugged things in life, should be found unavailing to
soften the inequalities of social distinction? It is the ignorant
barbarians who can pluck the Roman Senate by the beard; and who, in the
depth of savageness, can see nothing in sex, age, station, or office, to
demand their veneration. Make the men around you more rational, more
instructed, more helpful, more hopeful creatures if you can; above all
things treat them justly: and I think you may put aside any apprehension
of disturbing the economy of the various orders of the state. And if it
can be so disturbed, let it be.

What I have said above is not drawn from airy fancies of my own. Such
things as I have suggested, have been done. I could mention one man, who
might not, however, thank me for naming him, who has devoted himself to
the social improvement of his working people: and, without such an
example, I should never, perhaps, have thought of, or ventured to put
forward, the above suggestions with respect to the social intercourse
between masters and men. It is the same benevolent manufacturer from
whose letters to Mr. Horner I have made extracts before. The general
system on which he has acted may be best explained in his own words. "In
all plans for the education of the labouring classes my object would be
_not to raise any individuals among them above their condition_, _but to
elevate the condition itself_. For I am not one of those who think that
the highest ambition of a working man should be to rise above the stat