IV—The Social and Moral Elevation of our Working Classes.—By James Haughton, Esq.
[Read 16th March, 1857.]
Gentlemen,
The subject I have chosen for my present paper is one of acknowledged importance; it has engaged the thoughts and the pens of many able men, so that I cannot hope to invest it with much fresh interest, or to bring it under the notice of the Society in any very new or attractive form. But, as it is a subject in which I have long taken a deep interest—which interest has, I doubt not, been equally shared by many of our members, I venture to trespass on your time and attention for the brief period allowed by our rules, in the hope that every effort made in a direction so likely to excite the warm sympathy of reflecting men, will serve to stimulate all the members of the Dublin Statistical Society, to strive to acquire a knowledge of those natural laws which may best enable them intelligently and wisely to promote an object of such national and universal importance as the elevation of the working classes.
It in my conviction that ignorance is the chief cause of the many social and moral evils which interrupt human happiness, and retard the civilization of man. It seems to me that men act pretty generally up to their own ideas of duty. I do not apprehend that
