He works harder and more skilfully than the workman of any other country; and he might be more comfortable and independent in his circumstances, were he as prudent as he is laborious.

But improvidence is unhappily the defect of the class.

Even the best-paid English workmen, though earning more money than the average of professional men, still for the most part belong to the poorer classes because of their thoughtlessness.

In prosperous times they are not accustomed to make provision for adverse times; and when a period of social pressure occurs, they are rarely found more than a few weeks ahead of positive want.
Hence, the skilled workman, unless trained in good habits, may exhibit no higher a life than that of the mere animal; and the earning of increased wages will only furnish him with increased means for indulging in the gratification of his grosser appetites.

Mr.Chadwick says, that during the Cotton Famine, "families trooped into the relief rooms in the most abject condition, whose previous aggregate wages exceeded the income of many curates,--as had the wages of many of the individual workmen."[1] In a time of prosperity, working-people feast, and in a time of adversity they "clem." Their earnings, to use their own phrase, "come in at the spigot and go out at the bunghole." When prosperity comes to an end, and they are paid off, they rely upon chance and providence--the providence of the Improvident! [Footnote 1: _Address on Economy and Trade._ By EDWIN CHADWICK, C.B., p.
22.] Though trade has invariably its cycles of good and bad years, like the lean and fat kine in Pharaoh's dream--its bursts of prosperity, followed by glut, panic, and distress--the thoughtless and spendthrift take no heed of experience, and make no better provision for the future.
Improvidence seems to be one of the most incorrigible of faults.