Not, I say, of the University: it is
not from her that the proposal must come, but from her friends outside. She
is doing her best with the tools which she has; fresh work will require
fresh tools, and I trust that such will be some day found for her.
I have now to tell those of them who may read this book, that it is not
altogether out of date.
Those political passions, the last outburst of which it described, have,
thank God, become mere matter of history by reason of the good government
and the unexampled prosperity of the last twelve years: but fresh outbursts
of them are always possible in a free country, whenever there is any
considerable accumulation of neglects and wrongs; and meanwhile it is
well--indeed it is necessary--for every student of history to know what
manner of men they are who become revolutionaries, and what causes drive
them to revolution; that they may judge discerningly and charitably of
their fellow-men, whenever they see them rising, however madly, against the
powers that be.
As for the social evils described in this book, they have been much
lessened in the last few years, especially by the movement for Sanatory
Reform: but I must warn young men that they are not eradicated; that for
instance, only last year, attention was called by this book to the working
tailors in Edinburgh, and their state was found, I am assured, to be
even more miserable than that of the London men in 1848.
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