The same influences which rapidly adapt the individual to his society, ensure, though by a slower process, the general uniformity of a national character....

And so long as the assimilating influences productive of it continue at work, it is folly to suppose any one grade of a community can be morally different from the rest.

In whichever rank you see corruption, be assured it equally pervades all ranks--be assured it is the symptom of a bad social diathesis.

Whilst the virus of depravity exists in one part of the body-politic, no other part can remain healthy."-- SOCIAL STATICS, chap.xx.

7.] [Footnote 1121: Some twenty-eight years since, the author wrote and published the following passage, not without practical knowledge of the subject; and notwithstanding the great amelioration in the lot of factory-workers, effected mainly through the noble efforts of Lord Shaftesbury, the description is still to a large extent true:--"The factory system, however much it may have added to the wealth of the country, has had a most deleterious effect on the domestic condition of the people.