But this sort of doctrine is stigmatised by some as Political Economy; and a unionist is said to have boldly declared, in Hyde Park, 'If political economy is against us, then we are against political economy.' 'Where reason is against a man,' says Hobbes, he will be against reason.' To declare against the law of gravitation were indeed quite as futile as to declare against the law of supply and demand. Neither physical nor moral conditions will accommodate themselves to the restrictive regulations of trades' unions. Even they themselves have sometimes admitted the fact. The cotton-spinners of Glasgow and the potters of Staffordshire not long since formed themselves into associations for the purpose of enabling the spare hands in their respective trades to emigrate, and thus relieve the market. The London builders, however, conceiving labour to be a fixed quantity, and that it might be so divided amongst them as to allow of an equal price being paid to each, no matter how large the number of workmen, struck to obtain a reduction in the hours of labour, in order, as they alleged, to provide for the employment of the surplus hands in their trade. But as they did not offer to give up the pay for the hour which they proposed to deduct, the question for the masters to consider was simply whether they were prepared to add ten per cent. to their workmen's wages? It has been alleged, indeed, that the builders' hours of labour are too long; but the men have been accustomed to remedy this evil by taking out not less than one-tenth of the established working time in holidays. Only, for those holidays they have not heretofore been paid; whereas, by the new regulation proposed by the union, the idle days would really be paid for by the public. The conduct of the master builders in adopting a general lock-out, upon a strike taking place in one particular workshop, has been severely censured. To lookerson it had an appearance of hardship punishing the innocent for the acts of the guilty, and depriving them of bread. The masters' reply was, that their shops are open to such as choose to work for them, provided they renounce all connexion with any society which directly or indirectly interferes with the arrangements of their establishments or the hours or terms of labour,' and 'recognise the right of employers and employed individually to make any trade engagements on which they may choose to agree.' But the masters have a further answer to give. They were aware of the intention of the unionists to take

them one by one, and force them to adopt their terms in detail. The strike ordered in the Messrs. Trollope's shop was but a beginning; and if the other builders had consented to keep their works open, and to provide the men in their employment with the funds by means of which the seceders were to have been maintained, it is perfectly clear that, one by one, the masters must have succumbed. They felt that it was time for them to imitate the example of their workmen; and when masters are forced into union for self-defence, strikes have no longer a chance of success. They are as futile as the assault of an unarmed and unprovisioned multitude upon an impregnable and provisioned fortress. However harsh the step of the builders may have appeared, its policy was afterwards clearly established by the statements of the unionists themselves; for one of their number, Mr. Mark Noble, made, at the Surrey Gardens meeting, this valuable, though probably unconscious, admission:- If the masters had not shut their shops and locked the men out, we should have had ample money to carry out the nine hours' movement; but, as the masters have locked out many thousands of men, how do you suppose that we can guarantee you anything like a tangible support? When the subject of strikes was discussed before the Society of Arts a few years ago, the question narrowed itself to this-Does a partial strike on the part of the workmen justify a general lock-out on the part of the masters? In cases where the partial strike forms part of a combined scheme of operations, we think Mr. Mark Noble has effectually supplied an answer. And whenever it is known that the masters are prepared to resist the attempts of trades' combinations to enforce their conditions upon them one by one, strikes will be rendered more and more difficult, if not altogether impossible. Nevertheless it might possibly have savoured less of an appearance of oppression, if, instead of adopting the severe measure of a general lock-out, the master builders had sent detachments of their men into the Messrs. Trollope's shop, on the strike taking place there, leaving with the men themselves the responsibility of refusing to remain on the terms on which employment was offered.

Hugh Miller, when working as a stonemason near Edinburgh in 1824, was drawn into one of the strikes which were so common in that city during the prevalence of the building mania. He found that the agitation was, as usual, got up and kept up by those who were better speech-makers

of pressing on their jobs during the winter, and the consequence was that the majority, after a good deal of talk about nailing their colours to the mast,' and a week's idleness, drinking, and oratory, went back to work on their masters' terms. 'I saw

enough at the time,' Miller sensibly observes, to convince me that, though the right of combination, abstractedly considered, is just and proper, the strikes which would result from it as consequences would be productive of much evil and little good. Speaking to one of his associates, who acted as a clerk to the operative house-painters, he observed:

"There is a want of true leadership_among our operatives in these combinations. It is the wilder spirits that dictate the conditions; and pitching their demands high, they begin usually by enforcing acquiescence in them on the quieter and more moderate among their companions. They are tyrants to their fellows ere they come into collision with their masters, and have thus an enemy in the camp, not unwilling to take advantage of their seasons of weakness, and prepared to rejoice, though secretly may hap, in their defeats and reverses; and further, their discomfiture will be always quite certain enough when seasons of depression come, from the circumstance that, fixing their terms in prosperous times, they will fix them with reference rather to their present power of enforcing them, than to that medium line of fair and equal adjustment on which a conscientious man could plant

his foot and make a firm stand. Men such as you, able and ready to work in behalf of these combinations, will of course get the work to do, but you will have little or no power given you in their direction: the direction will be apparently in the hands of a few fluent gabbers; and yet even they will not be the actual directors-they will be but the exponents and voices of the gene. ral mediocre sentiment and inferior sense of the

mass as a whole, and acceptable only so long as they give utterance to that, and so ultimately exceedingly little will be won in this way for working men. It is well that they should be allowed to combine, seeing that combination is permitted to those who employ them; but until the majority of our working men of the south become very different from what they now are -greatly wiser and greatly better-there will be more lost than gained by their combinations. According to the circumstances of the time and season, the current will be at one period running in their favour against the masters, and at another in favour of the masters against them; there will be a continual ebb and flow, like that of the sea, but no general advance, and the sooner that the like of you and I get out of the rough conflict and jostle of the tideway, and set ourselves to labour apart on our own internal resources, it will be all the better for us." William,

however, did not give up his clerkship, and I dare say the sort of treatment which I had received at the hands of my fellow-workmen made ject; but the actual history of the numerous strikes and combinations which have taken place during the quarter of a century and more which has since intervened, is of a kind not in the least suited to modify my views. There is a want of judicious leadership among our werking men, and such of the autobiographies of the class as are able and interesting enough to obtain a hearing for their authors, show, I am inclined to think, how this has taken place. Combination is first brought to bear among them against the men, their fellows, who have vigour enough of intellect to think and act for themselves; and such always is the character of the born leader: their true leaders are almost alrating between themselves and the men fitted by ways forced into the opposition, and thus sepanature to render them formidable, they fall under the direction of mere chatterers and stump-orators, which is in reality no direction at all. The author of the "Working Man's Way in the World "-evidently a very superior man-had, he tells us, to quit at one time his employment, overborne by the senseless ridicule of his brotherworkmen. Somerville states in his autobiography, that, both as a labouring man and a soldier, it was from the hands of his comrades that, save in one memorable instance, he had experienced all the tyranny and oppression of which he had been the victim. Nay, Benjamin Frankin himself was deemed a much more ordinary man in the printing-house in Bartholomew Close, where he was teased and laughed at as the Water-American, than in the House of Representatives, the Royal Society, or the Court of France. The great Printer, though recognised by accomplished politicians as a profound statesman, and by men of solid science as "the most rational of the philosophers," was regarded by his poor brother-compositors as merely an odd fellow, who did not conform to their drinking usages, and whom it was therefore fair to tease and annoy as a contemner of the sacrament of the chapel.'

The fallacy which seems to prevail amongst working men is, that, by diminishing production, the remuneration of the workman may be increased. With this view, bricklayers must not put the trowel out of their hand to do any other labour, and hodmen must carry only a certain weight defined by edict or by usage. Men are virtually forbidden to do their best, and the wages of the most skilled artificers are kept down to the level of the worst,all that the superior hands gain being merely the earliest chance of obtaining employment. But it is a most dangerous thing for workmen to proclaim that the idle and unskilled shall be as well paid as

the industrious and the skilled. This is to place the energetic and the indolent, the competent and the incompetent, on the

Capital flies turbulence and strife, and thrives only in security and freedom. Though senselessly denounced for the tyranny it exercises over labour, it is really its motive power. It is also the result of labour, and represents the self-denial, the providence, and the enterprise of the past. The most successful accumulators of capital have in all times risen from the ranks of labour itself; they are working men who have shot ahead of their fellows. and give employment instead of receiving it. These persons, who are not the less working men because they have ceased to be manual labourers, by creating and extending the sphere of productive industry, must be regarded as amongst the most effective benefactors of the lower orders, as they unquestionably are among the principal sources of our power and wealth as a nation. Without the capital accumulated by their thrift during many generations, the lot of the artisan would be most precarious. There is not a mechanic but has the use of the money of the master who employs him. When the unskilled labourer lays down his spade, he leaves idle a capital worth eighteen pence; but when a skilled artisan or mechanic leaves his mill or his workshop, he leaves idle a capital of from 80%. to 150%. per man. Nor does the skilled workman run any risk what ever as regards the sums invested, though he virtually shares the profits in the shape of the wages paid for his labour. The profit which remains is the master's return for his management and his risks. It is well known, however, that the risks are not always covered, as the Gazette in bad times abundantly demonstrates. But the workman in good employment is not liable to losses by bad debts; he has no obsolete machinery from time to time left useless on his hands: and he has no anxiety about finding a market for his goods, nor fears respecting fluctuations in the price of the raw material. These are important advan

It has been urged that great good would be derived from workmen becoming actual partners with their masters, or entering into partnerships amongst themselves, for the purpose of manufacturing and selling their own goods. It is, indeed, most desirable that every encouragement should be given to work-people to save money and invest it in productive industry. Nor does any obstacle exist to enterprises of the kind. On the contrary the Limited Liability Act has been framed mainly with the view of enabling partnerships to be formed on this principle whether amongst working men or others. The history of the Rochdale Pioneers proves that such associations can be successfully conducted; and we are gratified to learn that the labouring classes of the same town have recently accumulated a sum of about 12,000l., which is being invested in a mill and ma chinery, to be worked for the benefit of the members.

The movement commenced in 1844 with a capital of 287., which in 1857 amounted to 15,1427., whilst the annual profits divided among the members increased from 327. in the former year to 5,4707. in the latter. The institution appropriates a portion of its profits to educational purposes, and, better still, is training the members to habits of thrift, frugality, and economy, with the object of improving their social condition, and building up their individual independence.

We must not, however, expect too much from this proceeding. There will always remain a large number of persons dependent upon weekly wages; and whether these may be disposed to enter into co-ope rative associations or not, it is within their power, as it is their duty, to practise the virtue of individual economy. When it was proposed, during the Preston strike, to solve the difficult problem of the relation between capital and labour, by providing that workmen should be partners with their masters in the operations of trade, Mr. Ashworth took the trouble to ascertain what would be the dividend of each, and he found that it would amount to only sevenpence-halfpenny a Whether it would be worth the artisan's while to share the risk which the manufacturer runs in bad times for this trifling