these victims of
licentiousness, but from the almost irresistible nature of the
temptations to which the poor are exposed. The rich, who censure
their conduct, would in all probability yield as rapidly as they have
done to the influence of similar causes. There is a certain degree of
misery, a certain proximity to sin, which virtue is rarely able to
withstand, and which the young, in particular, are generally unable to
resist. The progress of vice in such circumstances is almost as
certain and often nearly as rapid as that of physical contagion."

And elsewhere:

"When the higher orders for their own profit have drawn the labouring-
classes in great numbers into a small space, the contagion of guilt
becomes rapid and unavoidable. The lower orders, situated as they are
in so far as regards moral or religious instruction, are frequently
hardly more to be blamed for yielding to the temptations which
surround them than for falling victims to the typhus fever."

Enough! The half-bourgeois Alison betrays to us, however narrow his
manner of expressing himself, the evil effect of the great cities upon
the moral development of the workers. Another, a bourgeois _pur sang_, a
man after the heart of the Anti-Corn Law League, Dr. Andrew Ure, {122}
betrays the other side. He tells us that life in great cities
facilitates cabals among the workers and confers power on the Plebs. If
here the workers are not educated (_i.e_., to obedience to the
bourgeoisie), they may view matters one-sidedly, from the standpoint of a
sinister selfishness, and may readily permit themselves to be hoodwinked
by sly demagogues; nay, they might even be capable of viewing their
greatest benefactors, the frugal and enterprising capitalists, with a
jealous and hostile eye. Here proper training alone can avail, or
national bankruptcy and other horrors must follow, since a revolution of
the workers could hardly fail to occur. And our bourgeois is perfectly
justified in his fears. If the centralisation of population stimulates
and develops the property-holding class, it forces the development of the
workers yet more rapidly. The workers begin to feel as a class, as a
whole; they begin to perceive that, though feeble as individuals, they
form a power united; their separation from the bourgeoisie, the
development of views peculiar to the workers and corresponding to their
position in life, is fostered, the cons