PREFACE.
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a long and practical acquaintance with the
subject has more and more convinced me that
their elevation, like everything else that is
good and lasting, must be by slow degrees, and
by the permeating influences of education and
religion. Intelligence and morality shape the
political economy of a people more than the
material and physical conditions which surround
them, and its form is every varying. Our
present political economy is very different from
that of the Ashantees or Patagonians—very
different even from our own of fifty years ago.
This treatise does not seek to dive deeply into
the past nor soar far into the future, but to
define as exactly as possible the political
economy of the present, to measure as nearly
as need be the elevation to which our working
classes have already attained as compared with
their immediate past, and to point out to them
selves and all interested in their welfare their
next steps still further upwards.
Amongst them, I am happy to know, are
thousands unsurpassed for intelligence and
morals by any in the land, and capable of
takino- their place in industrial associations far
ahead of their times, but they are ‘bound
in the bundle of life ’ with immensely greater
numbers who are now, and will be for many