the master-builder who has contracted to build the Duke's splendid new house overlooking the Thames; and the Duke is said to have declared, without attempting to hear both sides, that he will support his builder, and wait ten years sooner than he should yield. It is to be hoped the men will make allowances for dukes, and return good for evil by building his house as soon as the present dispute is over.

But, to return to the two associations having this common object, why is it that, wherever one goes, one finds the one applauded and the other condemned in the middle and upper classes?

It is true that we have run into great extravagances in the line of societies for the improvement of all mankind. except ourselves, and have thus got into the way of liking to help people, and being somewhat jealous of their attempts to help themselves. But there is enough of English feeling amongst us still to make us like, in a general way, to see independent men standing up for their own rights, if they don't interfere with our interests. Here is a body of men doing this resolutely, quietly, legally (for, be it remembered, there has not been a single case of assault or intimidation since the men went out). approve, and are ourselves advocating, the principles on which their claims are founded; and yet all the high-class journals, with the exception of the Spectator and the Daily News, speak of them and their cause with monstrous bitterness and unfairness, and nine out of ten accept their statements without inquiry.

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But what claim are these masons, who are fighting the battle for the whole of the building trades, putting forward, which is not included in the "objects of the Early Closing Association? The present single point in issue is, whether the old and universal custom of a fixed working day of ten hours shall be retained or not. The ten hours' day is from 6 A. M. to 5. 30 P.M.-out of which the men get one hour and a half for meals. The circuit within which they work is six miles from St. Paul's; so

that many of them have to walk four and five miles to their work and home again, thus making their "day" away from home fourteen or fifteen hours. They find this already too much, and they say that, under the hour system which the masters are trying to force on them, (besides losing positive advantages in the shape of extra pay and privileges, which are serious enough, but beside the simple question) they will be driven to work even longer hours, whenever it suits the master's convenience. They may be mistaken; but, assuming them to be So, is or is not this day's work enough for a man? If it is, why are the men not to be supported? Take the masters' own statements. They say that they will not try to make their men work longer under the hour system, and that their only object in the change was one of conciliation. They have wholly failed in their object of conciliation; so, if they do not really mean to work longer time under the hour system, they can gain nothing by insisting on the change. All other questions are virtually compromised, for the present at any rate. They only embitter the struggle by prolonging it.

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They would probably answer, "Yes; we might give up the hour system, if we thought it would end the dispute; "but the men have not really given up "their claim for a nine hours' day in"stead of ten hours for the old wages." I believe that the men have bona fide given up that claim for the present; but, suppose they have not, what then? The claim is in exact accordance with the public feeling of the country. The country is quite ready to pay for it in the building trades (as it has done without grumbling in many others); why should the masters be so anxious to

protect us? It is not easy to see, unless indeed it be, as the men say, that they have already discounted our readiness, and have been charging larger prices for brickwork, &c., without sharing the rise with their workmen.

But there is another way of accounting for the masters' resolution. They may be really meaning to break down

the trades' unions, as they have of late been exhorted to do in the Times and other journals. And this I take to be their real meaning; and the fear of trades' unions, which have been always held up as a bugbear to us, has, in fact, turned away all the sympathy of the public from the men's side.

As to breaking up trades' unions, we may as well save ourselves the trouble of talking and thinking about it. The thing cannot be done. They are spread all over the kingdom. They are the strongest organized bodies amongst us. They include and faithfully represent a large majority in numbers of the largest class of the community. As a rule, the best workmen and best men in every trade belong to them; and, of the minority of good men who do not, you I will find almost all-even those who have quarrelled with them-admitting that they do good, and are absolutely necessary to the independence of the men in the present state of things.

But, if trades' unions cannot be broken up, cannot they be improved? Surely. They are improving themselves, and that rapidly; but they are by no means what they should be yet. How can we help them?

But,

Teach the schoolmasters political economy, says Mr. Lowe. By all means. It is just one of the things which schoolmasters and pupils need most. what political economy will you teach? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? Who shall instruct our schoolmasters, and, through them, our working people? Shall we set those who believe themselves most able to teach-the professors of the pure gospel of free trade-to the work? The few real truths which they have brought out are already fully acknowledged by their proposed pupils ; and, on the deep questions which these feel and know to affect their own daily lives, and not to have been solved in any even approximately satisfactory manner, what sort of teaching are they likely to get from this quarter?

They will be told probably first of all that their unions are wrong in principle. They see and know that these unions

have supported them and theirs in sickness and sorrow, have enabled them to maintain their independence against the pressure of masters and foremen. They will be told that the unions must ruin every trade in which they are strong. They see and know that in every trade where there are no unions, or where the unions have been broken down and are feeble (e.g. agricultural labour, the sloptailors in the East of London, the Northampton shoemakers, &c. &c.), there wages are the lowest, and the workpeople in the greatest misery. Very probably masters may have a different tale to tell in these same trades. Moses and Son may make large fortunes in them, but the men somehow obstinately refuse to be thankful on this account.

They will be told probably that, when wages fall in a trade, the evil cures itself, for the workmen will leave it. They see and know that, instead of this result, the actual fact is that here in England when wages fall, men do not and cannot leave their trades, but have to bring in their women and children to help to earn the old wage-with what result let the neighbourhood of the Minories and Spitalfields say.

They will be warned against improvidence, against marrying, and so glutting the labour-market by over-production of what it is the fashion to call "hands." They will point at their masters, and ask whether they are not over-producing in every direction, shouldering one another at every turn, and recklessly glutting every market which opens to them. They will maintain that, at any rate, there is more to be said for marriage than for hasting to get rich by unwise means. They will tell their would-be teachers to apply this doctrinefirst at home.

They will be told that it is contrary to the doctrine of free trade that they should try to limit the number of apprentices. They will answer that they are doing no more than their betters in the learned professions, and that it does not lie in the mouths of those who warn them against glutting the labour-market in another way to urge against them this attempt of theirs to limit the supply.

They will be told that "buy cheap and sell dear" is the eternal law of trade. They will answer that they have suffered too much already under it to believe in it, and will cry out for a "just price," a "fair day's wages for a fair day's work." This has been their war-cry as long as I can remember, and a nobler one it would be not easy to suggest to them.

They will be told that an enlightened selfishness in each individual works the good of all. They will answer that they have never found it so in their line of life, and don't want to have that doctrine get into their unions.

In short, not to go on multiplying instances, the accepted political economy -that "law of the State's household," which sets before itself the accumulation of capital as its highest result—is a law which for them leads to bankruptcy, and they will not listen to its professors. But I know that they are not only ready, but most anxious, for teaching on the matters which Political Economy should deal with if it were true to its name. If any reader doubts this, I can only ask him to attend some of their trades' meetings, or to buy and read a number or two of the few papers which really represent them, such as The Workman, price 1d., published at 335, Strand; or, better still, to get some of their trade reports and circulars and study them. There is a prospectus of a trade journal at present circulating amongst the working classes which will show in a few words what subjects are really occupying them. The name of this journal is to be, Weekly Wages, the Organ of Associated Labour. The prospectus sets out shortly the want felt by the working classes of a newspaper to represent them truly. "Fair-play," it states, "is "all that labour needs, and all that was

"hours' movements the health of

working men-the education of working men- -trades usages-the character " of working men-what they want and "what they don't want-passing words "to their friends and their enemies"hints to apprentices-and explanations "to employers.

"For the wars of political faction, or "the personal strife of party, it will care "little and say less.

"Secretaries of trade societies, who "have useful matters to report, will be "able to show to the various trades "through the columns of a trade journal "what has been done by each society in every town; what is doing-and what "might be done-for the general advantage.

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"At present, when trade disputes "arise, men and societies know too little "of each other's doings, and, losing the help which could be had if the trade were known and understood, are dis"heartened by unmerited failure. This fighting in the dark is the Inkerman "of labour, where victory is rare, and "often costs more than it is worth.

THERE are two separate classes of information fitted to engage our attention and call into exercise and occupy our mental faculties. The one of these consists in the communication of facts formerly unknown, such as are adapted to fill up a region of the intellect and imagination which had been lying vacant and blank like a sheet of paper, and is at length to be replenished for the first time with an amount of substantive knowledge. Of this nature are all the discoveries or inventions in the department of the empirical sciences; for, if a new planet be discovered, or some traveller give information concerning the character and state of hitherto untra

1 Some of our readers may remember an ingenious and eloquent little treatise which appeared in an English form some years ago (Baillière, London), under the title of "The Stars and the Earth: Thoughts on Space, Time, and Eternity;" the effect of which was to show how, by an original treatment of certain physical conceptions furnished us by Sidereal Astronomy, some metaphysical notions of a high and abstruse character might be made familiar and interesting to the popular understanding. The author of that treatise, Dr. Felix Eberty, of the University of Breslau, having placed at our disposal this other Essay of his, of which the first portion appears in the present number, we have much pleasure in presenting it to our readers. Whatever may be thought of the soundness of the speculation, it is sure to attract, by the novel trains of thought which it suggests, those who have any taste for such philosophical discussions.Editor.

No. 23.-VOL. IV.

velled parts of the globe, and describe unknown varieties of plants, minerals, and animals, we open our mind to receive his intelligence, because we could not previously have any idea of things of the existence of which we were wholly unaware. The communications of such an authority find in our mind an unoccupied space, ready to be stored with images and ideas with which every hearer was entirely unacquainted. All the facts in chemistry, natural philosophy and medicine, are of this kind. The first reports of Daguerre's pictures, of the electro-magnetic telegraph, of the wonderful operation of chloroform, produced the same effect upon our minds as the accounts we receive of new discoveries among the islands of the ocean. take delight in learning something totally new to us, so new that we could have had no idea before that such things could be.

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Quite different is the effect of another kind of intellectual communications. For there are certain provinces within our mind, and certain regions of understanding, which no man, who is not quite destitute of thought and feeling, can let remain unfilled and void, waiting for some stranger to give him the solution of the questions comprised therein; but our human nature compels us to render an answer to those questions in our own minds, with such measure of complete

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