pages which inculcate upon the labouring classes the necessity of the "prudential" check upon population. What! you bid the working man, by disciplining his will, by the severest self-restraint, for the sake of rendering his labour scarce, and, therefore, of gaining a higher price for it; you bid him, I say, bind down those family instincts which are, in one view, the very safety-valves of society; and you would fain discourage him from endeavouring, by every means which the like discipline and self-restraint can afford, to wring by combination the highest price for his labour without stifling those instincts! You insist upon the action of the will as the last and supreme resort in diminishing the supply of labour; yet, when it comes to a question of immediate demand, you afford him scarcely a glimpse of that action! Nay, you go further than this, -you make it almost a crime for him to bring into the world other men made in God's image, lest they should compete for the price of labour with himself and his fellows,--but when do you ever let fall a word of blame upon those who bring into the world to compete with him -fatally, inexorably to elbow him outmen of iron, and steel, and brass-cheap feeders upon water, and grease, and oil? They are no brethren of his, and yet you expect him to treat them tenderly when they are dashing the bread from his children's mouths; you punish him if he dare molest them; you lift up eyes and hands in scientific horror because he does not appreciate "the blessings of machinery." Of all hypoOf all hypocrisies which this century has seen go forth under high heaven, I know none more insolent than that of modern plutonomy, inculcating. "the prudential "check" upon the working man, and advocating the unlimited, unregulated, introduction of machinery. Evidently, the will of the capitalist has at least as much to do with the begetting of the one class of competitors, as the will of the labourer with that of the other. If there is a morality of the one action, there is also of the other; if the one current of production is to

go on unrestrained at the hands of the one class, why not the other too? But, above all, if the capitalist is to be allowed, for the sake of increasing his own profit, and contracting his demand for hu man labour, to flood the market with iron men in the shape of material machinery, why is not the labourer, for the sake of increasing his own earnings, and contracting the supply of human labour, to narrow the labour-market by any moral machinery which combination can afford to him?-I need hardly observe that I am not speaking here of the ultimate effects of machinery, which I believe to be beneficial, but simply of its immediate effects, which, with Ricardo and Mill, I believe to be often seriously detrimental to the working classes.

It is often objected, that whilst the endeavour to narrow the labour-market by combination may be successful in a given trade, yet it does not benefit the working-classes at large; that the limiting the number of competitors in one trade only tends to cause an overflow in others; that the high wages of the few only cause the low wages of the many; and writers and speakers on the subject, who deal in moralities, thereupon proceed to lecture trade societies on their selfishness. The trade society may well retort: Address your lecturing to your own class, first of all. Bid the merchant, the manufacturer, be content with the most moderate profits, lest by taking too much, he should depress the money demand for his neighbours' goods and wares; bid him abstain from enlarging his own establishment, lest by driving weaker men out of his own trade he should only be increasing the number of competitors in another. In your let-alone political economy,in your gospel of buy-cheap-and-selldear, there is no room for such moralities as you attempt to foist upon us, whilst you never recollect to quote them to our employers.

But apart from such tu quoque argumentation, I venture to say that, even if it were true that trade combinations, to use Mr. Mill's words, are to be "looked "upon as simply intrenching round a

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"particular spot against the inroads of "over-population," they would yet be beneficial. For it is not the same thing to the country that the same sum of 157. should be received in wages by ten well-to-do workmen at thirty shillings, or by thirty starvelings, at ten shillings. The higher wants of the former give a stronger impulse to the circulation of capital, secure its healthier and more beneficial employment, than the abject necessities of the latter, which throw them upon inferior and often unwholesome food, inferior and insufficient clothing, and such shelter as can be but a nursery of disease and infirmity. So strongly am I convinced of this fact that, much as I loathe slavery, I consider that there is a worse social state even than that robbery of the many by the few which slavery represents, a state of absolute universal wretchedness, in which self-sacrifice itself becomes impossible. But indeed it is obvious on a little reflection that the position, that trade combinations merely shift locally the rate of wages without being able to raise it generally, is a mere petition of principle. For it assumes that the circulating capital employed in the purchase of home labour is all that can be so employed; that the rate of profit has reached its minimum. Our enormous investments of capital in foreign funds, railways, &c. are as sufficient a practical answer to such an assumption, as the speculations of economists" on the tendency of profits to a minimum"-evidently not supposed to have been reached,—are a sufficient theoretical one. So long as there is accumulated capital to spend upon anything beyond labour, so long as there is profit realized in any trade beyond the minimum out of which to renew such accumulations, the trade society of that trade have the right to repel any accusation of selfishness towards their class at large, for seeking to raise their wages, their condition generally, at the expense of the profit-maker. No doubt the interest of one particular trade may often be opposed to that of another; thus, the interest of the working en

gineers, as machine-makers, is prima facie antagonistic to that of most at least of their fellow craftsmen, and it is logically absurd for the Amalgamated Society to make grants, as it has done, for the support of a strike against machinery. But the working men have a full right to say that the question is one that regards themselves, and to claim to meet it simply by a further application of their own machinery of combination. The "National Association of United Trades "-a body now very much dwindled from the importance it once possessed, but which still numbers some 6,000 affiliated members in various trades-represented an important step in this direction; other local ones are indicated by the Trades Committees of Glasgow and Liverpool, formed of delegates from the various trade-societies of their respective towns, from both of which the Committee of the Social Science Association received hearty and intelligent assistance.

The sticks, in short, claim the right to be bundled together as they please, without limit as to number, as to the shape of the bundles, or as to the tightness of the ligature. The working man claims to fix for himself by combination, from trade to trade or in any number of trades, the conditions which he shall demand, and, if he can do so, obtain for the sale of his labour. He does so at the bidding of that political economy, which teaches him to look upon wealth as the ground and subject matter of a nation's ouκo-voμia or house-law; to look upon the relation of employer and employed as the mere result of a struggle between hostile interests; to recognize, in his employer's "rate of profit," the rival force which is always endeavouring to outweigh that of the "cost" of his own "production;" to recognize the dependence of "price" on the relation of demand and supply; to study the effects of a scarcity of labour in raising its price'; and in the effects of a combination of labour to note the means of increasing its productiveness. In other words, that political economy teaches him that his class-life is a bat

I was rather disappointed, if the truth must be told-so indeed we all were at home-at his scanty flow of words, when he returned to us from that grim Crimean campaign.

As for the general story of the war, we did not want that from him, as they might have done whose kinsman should have returned to them from so distant a scene of warfare in the old days when electric telegraph and express trains and steamers were not, and when the Times had not invented its "Own Correspondent." We used to send him that general story, in comprehensive chapters on that journal's broad sheet, and with the pictorial panoramas of the London Illustrated News. He and his comrades read it thus, so I have heard him say, with curious, eager, and intense delight. I think his heart must have beat quick one day upon reading, in one of its very, noblest chapters, his own name, scored under by my pen as I had read it proudly, before sending him that paper.

But what we wanted were particulars of what had personally befallen him; for we knew that, though it was hard, indeed, to be preeminent in discharge of duty or daring of danger amidst that flower of the world's soldierhood, he had been noted as noteworthy, even among such, by those who had the best means of appreciating his courage and his industry. In explanation of the latter word, I may remark that his arm of the service was one of those which our then allies designate as " Armes savantes," or "Scientific Arms."

I have found this modest manly silence, touching personal exposure and achievement, an almost invariable characteristic of our noble fighting men. My reader will, therefore, kindly bear it in mind that the detailed and continuous narrative I put under his eyes here is of my writing rather than of his telling, short as it is. But I have interwoven in it, so far as I know, nothing but authentic threads of recollection. I picked

the matter for the spinning of them bit by bit out of his conversation, as an old woman might pick out of a long hedgerow, at great intervals, wool enough to furnish worsted for her knitting needles to work up into a stocking or a pair of mits.

He had been under fire continuously, for seven hours and more, on one of the most hard-fought days of all that hardfought struggle, and, as he rode away at evening towards the camp, rode bareheaded, in reverent acknowledgment to Heaven for the marvel that he was riding out of that hail of iron himself unhurt.

As for the unobserved incidents of that day's danger, from which so merciful a preservation had been vouchsafed, they would be hard to reckon ; but upon three several occasions during those seven exposed hours, it really seemed that the messengers of death avoided him, as in some legend they turn aside from the man who bears a charmed life. There was a six-pound shot, which he saw distinctly coming, as a cricketer eyes the projectile which threatens his middle wicket. It pitched right in front of him, and rose as a cricket-ball when the turf is parched and baked, bounding clean up into the air, and so passing right over his untouched head. It fell behind him, and he looked at it more than once that day, and, but for its inconvenient bulk, thought of carrying it away for a memento. There was a fourand-twenty-pound shot next, a sort of twin-brother to that which, some three weeks before, had actually torn his forage-cap from off his head; but it came too quick for sight. He was at that moment backing towards the shafts of an ammunition eart a horse, whose reins he held close to its jaw, as he spurred on his own to make it give way in the right direction. Smash! came the great globe of iron, and as the bones and blood and brains bespattered him, he almost himself fell forward; for the poor brute was restive no longer: headless horses don't strain against the bit, although 'tis just as hard as ever to back them into the shafts.

Then there was a moment, one of those of direst confusion, of what other than such soldiers as fought that fight would have reckoned a moment of dismay, -a moment wherein regimental order itself was in part broken and confused; guardsmen mingled with linesmen, linesmen with blue-coated artillery.

There had been fearful havoc among those noble servants of the deep-voiced cannon, and men were wanted to hand out the shells from a cart he had himself brought up, replenished, to a breastwork.

men.

He called in some of the lines One of them stood by him foot to foot, almost or actually in contact. They were handing ammunition, from one to other, as men do fire-buckets when fires are blazing in a street. He leant in one direction to pass on the load he had just taken from the soldier's hand; the soldier was bending towards the next man in the chain; a Russian shell came bounding with a whirr, then burst and scattered its deadly fragments with terrific force. One of its great iron shreds passed-there was just room for it-between his leg and the soldier's that stood next him. They looked each other in the face.

long day's fighting-men were in sore need of it.

It was dusk, and he was lighting a candle to sit down to his meal, when the voice of a French soldier called something like his name from the outside. He was himself a perfect master of that language, as the "Soldat-du-train" who stood outside found to his great relief upon his first utterance of inquiry.

The Frenchman held a mule by the bridle, and across the creature's back lay something which looked like a heavily filled parti-coloured sack. It was a far otherwise ghastly burden. The body of an officer, stripped bare all but the trousers, the dark clothed legs hanging one way, the fair skinned naked shoulders and arms the other, the face towards the ground.

"I was directed, mon officier, to bring this poor gentleman's corpse to you. They say you were a friend of his-his name is Captain X

Even at that early stage of the campaign such shocks had lost the startling effect of novelty; nevertheless, there were few names among those of his friends and comrades which it could shock and grieve him more to hear pronounced under such circumstances. The

light was fetched. He raised the poor body; then, with a sigh, let it once more gently down. There was a small round hole in the very centre of the forehead, whereat the rifle ball had darted into the brain of his hapless friend.

He called an orderly, and directed him to accompany the Frenchman to the dead man's tent. He would himself soon follow and see to his receiving a soldier's obsequies. His weariness and exhaustion were such as to render it imperatively necessary that he should first take his food, to which he returned, with what increased weight at heart, who shall rightly tell? It needs not that the tension of a man's nerves should have been strung tight by the hand of battle, for him to know, from his own experience, what is the strange, and awful, and weird feeling of the first relaxation of them in the early afterhours of responsibility, danger, or im

portant crisis of decision. If apparitions and visions of things unearthy be indeed mere fictions of men's brain, such afterhours are just those wherein the mind is readiest to yield to the power of illusion. Illusion or reality more startling, more unaccountable by far than it? Whether of the two was this?

There entered at the curtain of his tent the dead man, towards whom, in some few minutes more, he should have been showing the last sad kindnesses. The light fell full and clear upon his face.

He took off his forage-cap as he

came in. The broad white forehead showed no longer any trace of the murderous incrash of the ball which had slain him. Into the poor dull glazed eyes the gleam had returned-could it indeed be the gleam of returned life? Or do the eyes of ghosts gleam life-like so?

"What made you send that Frenchman with my corpse to me? At least, he would insist that it was mine." "X! Good heaven! Can it be indeed?" "Who should it be? What ails you, man? Why do you stare at me so ?"

you,

"I cannot say what ails me; but I am surely under some strange delusion. It is not half an hour surely, since I saw you stretched lifeless across a mule's back, with a rifle bullet between your eyes.

What can this mean? You are not even wounded."

"No, thank God! nothing has touched me for this once; but that French soldier-did you then send him up, indeed ?"

"Indeed I did."

Hideous comico-tragic episode in the awful drama of war! They discovered byand-by that their slain brother soldier was no comrade of their own corps, but a brave officer of another arm. Neither of them had known him personally, nor had they heard before that between him and X- existed, in his lifetime, the most remarkable and close resemblancesuch an identity of feature as is rarely seen save in twin-brothers. Now, it has struck me sometimes as I have turned over in my mind this strange but true