He must, in most climates, contrive himself some kind of clothing, of barks or skins; must construct some rude shelter; prepare some kind of bed, and keep up a fire. In short, it is well known that those tribes of our race which are the least advanced in civilization, and whose wants are the fewest, have to labor the hardest for their support; but at the same time, it is equally true that in the most civilized countries, by far the greatest amount and variety of work are done; so that the improvement which takes place in the condition of man consists, not in diminishing the amount of labor performed, but in enabling men to work more, or more efficiently, in the same time. A horde of savages will pass a week in the most laborious kinds of hunting; following the chase day after day; their women, if in company with them, carrying their tents and their infant children on their backs; and all be worn down by fatigue and famine; and in the end, they will perhaps kill a buffalo. The same number of civilized men and women would probably, on an average, have kept more steadily at work in their various trades and occupations, but with much less exhaustion, and the products of their industry would have been vastly greater; or, what is the same thing, much more work would have been done.

It is true, as man rises in improvement, he would be enabled, by his arts and machinery, to satisfy the primary wants of life with less labor; and this may be thought to show, at first glance, that man was not intended to be a working being; because, in proportion as he advances in improvement, less work would be required to get a mere livelihood. But here we see a curious provision of nature. In proportion as our bare natural wants are satisfied, artificial wants, or civilized wants, show themselves. And, in the very highest state of improvement, it requires as constant an exertion to satisfy the new wants, which grow out of the habits and tastes of civilized life, as it requires, in savage life, to satisfy hunger and thirst, and keep from freezing. In other words, the innate desire of improving our condition keeps us all in a state of

want. We cannot be so well off that we do not feel obliged to work, either to insure the continuance of what we now

have, or to increase it. The man whose honest industry just gives him a competence, exerts himself that he may have something against a rainy day; and how often do we hear an affectionate father say he is determined to spare no pains, to work in season and out of season, in order that his children may enjoy advantages denied to himself!

In this way it is pretty plain that man, whether viewed in his primitive and savage state, or in a highly improved condition, is a working being. It is his destiny, the law of his nature, to labor. He is made for it, and he cannot live without it; and the apostle Paul summed up the matter, with equal correctness and point, when he said, that "if any would not work, neither should he eat."

It is a good test of principles, like these, to bring them to the standard of general approbation or disapprobation. There are, in all countries, too many persons who, from mistaken ideas of the nature of happiness, or other less reputable causes, pass their time in idleness or in indolent pleasures. But I believe no state of society ever existed in which the energy and capacity of labor were not commended and admired, or in which a taste for indolent pleasure was commended or admired, by the intelligent part of the community. When we read the lives of distinguished men, in any department, we find them almost always celebrated for the amount of labor they could perform. Demosthenes, Julius Cæsar, Henry the Fourth of France, Lord Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Franklin, Washington, Napoleon, different as they were in their intellectual and moral qualities, were all renowned as hard workers. We read how many days they could support the fatigues of a march; how early they rose, how late they watched; how many hours they spent in the field, in the cabinet, in the court, in the study; how many secretaries they kept employed; in short, how hard they worked. But who ever heard of its being said of a man, in commendation, that he could sleep fifteen hours out of the twenty-four; that he could eat six meals a day; and that he was never weary of his easy-chair?

It would be curious to estimate, by any safe standard, the

amount in value of the work of all kinds performed in a community. This, of course, cannot be done with any great accuracy. The pursuits of men are so various, and the dif ferent kinds of labor are so different in the value of their products, that it is scarcely possible to bring the aggregate to any scale of calculation. But we may form a kind of general judgment of the value of the labor of a community, if we look about us. All the improvements which we behold on the face of the earth; all the buildings of every kind in town and country; all the vehicles employed on the land and water; the roads, the canals, the wharfs, the bridges; all the property of all kinds which is accumulated throughout the world; and all that is consumed, from day to day and from hour to hour, to support those who live upon it, all this is the product of labor; and a proportionate share is the product of the labor of each generation. It is plain that this comprehensive view is one that would admit of being carried out into an infinity of details, which would furnish the materials rather for a volume than a lecture. But as it is the taste of the present day to bring every thing down to the standard of figures, I will suggest a calculation which will enable us to judge of the value of the labor performed in the community in which we live. Take the population of Massachusetts, for the sake of round numbers, at six hundred thousand souls.* I presume it will not be thought extravagant to assume that one in six performs, every day, a good day's work, or its equivalent. If we allow nothing for the labor of five out of six, (and this certainly will cover the cases of those too young and too old to do any work, or who can do only a part of a day's work,) and if we also allow nothing extra for those whose time is worth more than that of the day laborer, we may safely assume that the sixth person performs, daily, a vigorous, efficient day's work of body or mind, by hand or with tools, or partly with each, and that this day's work is worth one dollar. This will give us one hundred thousand dollars a day as the value of the work done in the

* In 1830; at present, above eight hundred thousand.

state of Massachusetts. I have no doubt that it is much more; for this would be very little more than it costs the population to support itself, and would allow scarce any thing for accumulation, which is constantly taking place to a great extent. It will, however, show sufficiently the great amount of the labor done in this state, to take it as coming up, at least, to one hundred thousand dollars per day.

It appears, then, first, that man is, by his nature, a working being; and, secondly, that the daily value of his work, estimated merely in money, is immensely great, in any civilized community.

I have made these preliminary remarks, as an introduction to some observations which I propose to submit, in the remainder of this lecture, on the subject of "a workingmen's party." Towards the organization of such a party, steps have been taken, in various parts of the country. It is probable that a great diversity of views exists among those who have occupied themselves upon the subject, in different places. This circumstance, and the novelty of the subject in some of its aspects, and its importance in all, have led me to think that we might pass an hour profitably in considering it.

I will observe, in the first place, then, that if, as I have endeavored to show, man is, by nature, a working being, it would follow that a workingmen's party is founded in the very principles of our nature. Most parties may be considered as artificial, in their very essence; many are local, temporary, and personal. What will all our political parties be, a hundred years hence? What are they now, in nine tenths of the habitable globe? Mere nonentities. But the workingmen's party, however organized, is one that must subsist in every civilized country, to the end of time. In other words, its first principles are laid in our nature.

The next question that presents itself is, What is the general object of a workingmen's party? I do not now mean, what are the immediate steps which such a party proposes to take; but, what are the main object and end which it would secure. To this, I suppose, I may safely answer, that it is not to carry this or that political election; not to elevate this

or that candidate for office; but to promote the prosperity and welfare of workingmen; that is, to obtain for every man disposed to work the greatest freedom in the choice of his pursuit, the greatest encouragement and aid in pursuing it, the greatest security in enjoying its fruits; in other words, to make work, in the greatest possible degree, produce happiness.

The next inquiry seems to be, Who belong to the workingmen's party? The general answer here is obvious: All who do the work, or are actually willing and desirous to do it, and prevented only by absolute inability, such as sickness or natural infirmity. Let us try the correctness of this view, by seeing whom it would exclude and whom it would include.

This rule, in the first place, would exclude all bad men ; that is, those who may work, indeed, but who work for immoral and unlawful ends. This is a very important distinction; and, if practically applied and vigorously enforced, it would make the workingmen's party the purest that ever existed since the time of the primitive Christians. It is greatly to be feared, that scarce any of the parties that divide the community are sufficiently jealous on this point; and for the natural reason, that it does not lie in the very nature of those parties. Thus, at the polls, the vote of one man is as good as the vote of another. The vote of the drunkard counts one; the vote of the temperate man counts but one. For this reason, the mere party politician, if he can secure the vote, is apt not to be very inquisitive about the temperance of the voter. He may even prefer the intemperate to the temperate; for, to persuade the temperate man to vote with him, he must give him a good reason; the other will do it for a good drink.

But the true principles of the workingmen's party require not merely that a man should work, but that he should work in an honest way, and for a lawful object. The man who makes forged money probably works harder than the honest engraver who prepares the notes for those authorized by law to issue them. But the former would be repelled with scorn, if he presented himself as a member of the workingmen's party. The man who passes his life, and gains a wretched,