Lord Shaftesbury delivered by far the best address in opening
the Social Science Congress last Wednesday at Manchester to which that useful but misnamed body has ever listened from its President, —poor Lord Brougham pointing the contrast painfully by talking a good. deal of inflated nonsense the next day as Presi- dent of the Council. Lord Shaftesbury, who, in spite of his zeal for tracts and damnation, has always taken a profound interest in pro-
etingthe earthly welfare, moral and physical, of the working classes, made his address a very masterly review of the schemes for promoting their better education and their better lodging in the great cities. He gave some moat interesting details of the success of the half- time education system for the children in the Potteries, and showed that it would not answer for children in the rural districts, because they are far too scattered to relieve each other at work and in schooL For the children of agricultural labourers he proposed in- stead alternate day education. He discussed ably the question of better housing for the poor, and recommended a plan which a society to which he belonged had adopted of securing the property in poor streets, and then draining and clearing and repairing them, instead of building. By this means decent rooms may be let at a much lower rate, and with a very small comparative expenditure of capital. Of coarse Lord Shaftesbury was a little unctuous. That he cannot help, but almost all he said was not only good, but founded on minute knowledge ; and once, in criticizing the fashionable trades which buy up poor women's lives at such very low prices, he even committed an epigram, expressing his horror of the mercenary belief that " as godliness is gain, gain must be godliness." Lord Shaftesbury almost succeeded in put- ting off Exeter Hall for the benefit of social science.
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