consumer, instead of consuming English cotton goods, will consume foreign cotton goods. The result of a cotton strike would be that there would be more foreign cotton consumed and less English cotton consumed. Now this is not an advantage to English operatives, but it is an immense advantage to foreign operatives; and how the leaders of the working classes counsel strikes, when their common sense must show them that in the face of unrestricted foreign competition a strike can only damage their clients, beats me entirely. If foreign competition was restricted, there would be some reason in strikes; in industries in which there is no competition, such as coal, building, &c., there is some reason, but in industries exposed to unrestricted competition they are absurd. But there is more than this. In attempting to meet a fall of wages by a strike, the operatives are merely treating the symptoms of the disease. They leave the disease itself untouched; still less do they treat the cause of it. Strike against the false doctrines of Mr. Bright and his school; strike against the ruinous theory of unrestricted foreign competition, against the folly of artificial cheapness, and they may save themselves from ruin, but not by keeping English goods out of the market in order that more foreign goods may take their place.

What the operatives should try to find out is the cause of the disease that is ruining their industry. Why is work uncertain, intermittent? Why do wages fall? Why are the silk and woollen industries nearly dead in England, but springing into vigorous life in Germany and America? Why is the cotton industry so sick in England, whilst it is extending marvellously over the whole of the industrial world? Because the price of silks and woollens and cotton have fallen below the price at which English operatives at their present rate of wages can produce them.

And why have the prices so fallen? Because an artificial cheapness has been forced on the country by

the continued competition of the whole industrial world; because, as Mr. Ashworth, chairman of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, says :- France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, America, have negotiated treaties whose purpose and intention is to place English manufactures at a disadvantage;' because foreign nations are boycotting English manufactures and English operatives; because, in fact, there is a widespread industrial conspiracy against England, to which Mr. Bright and the Cobden Club are consenting parties.

The only natural policy of England, as of every other industrial community, the policy of common sense, is reciprocity or retaliation; to hold out the hand of industrial friendship to those who will help you, and to have nothing to say to those who will not. But the hands of England are tied. Reciprocity and retaliation are equally impossible. Our foreign rivals laugh in our faces when we talk of reciprocity. 'Reciprocity!' say they; 'why you have nothing to offer! we have already got from you all you have to give, and in fact all we want!' And our free trade popes forbid retaliation, because, forsooth, it is contrary to the cosmopolitan hypocrisy that is just now England's greatest curse.

Let the English operatives realise their position; let them clearly understand how they stand. If they allow the present widespread industrial conspiracy, supported by Mr. Bright and the Cobden Club, to continue, they must either make up their minds to accept the wages that are paid to their foreign rivals, to work twelve hours a day, and often seven days a week, or they must emigrate. There is no doubt about it. It is absolutely true that the mad perseverance of English statesmen and economists in what M. Thiers so truly denounced as one of the puerile doctrines and illusions of mankind,' is 'low wages or emigration.'

I suppose during the next year we shall have an extension of the franchise, and I am glad of it. Some

people desire it because they think it will upset the Throne, the Church, the House of Lords, divide up the land and the capital of the country; others desire it simply because they think it will extinguish their political rivals and give them an indefinite monopoly of the sweets of office. I desire it for none of these things. I desire it because I feel certain that when the operative and labouring classes get political power, they will employ it, as every other industrial community in the world that enjoys the franchise does employ it, in 'protecting the rights of labour.' Mr. Bright and his party believe that an extension of the suffrage will result in a glorification of himself and his doctrines. I believe it will be their Nemesis. I believe the working classes, when they get the electoral power, will say to the theorists who have so long and so cruelly deceived them, 'Stand on one side; we have had enough of your silly nonsense; now let us have a little common sense.'

The operatives of England have not far to look for an example of what their fate will be if they follow the advice of the Cobden Club, and sit still whilst their markets are slipping from their grasp. Let them turn their gaze to the sister isle. What is the cause of the ruin of Ireland? Why is she the only nation in the world, actually the only one, that is steadily sinking in the scale of nations?

What is the cause of the ruin of Ireland? It is very simple. It is what we falsely style free trade, and nothing else. It is over competition. It is because England for fifty years has been able to manufacture everything cheaper than Ireland, and has forced her cheaper goods into the Irish markets, and at the same time excluded Irish goods from English markets. It is by that means she has killed every industry in Ireland. Irish industries were destroyed, and Ireland was ruined by unfair English competition, and this is exactly what is happening to English industries. English industries are receiving, at the hands of Europe

and America, exactly the same treatment that Irish industries received from England.

English manufactures are excluded from American and European markets; and American and European manufactured goods are forced into English markets. What reason is there to doubt-in fact, can there be any doubt? -that under similar industrial conditions England will suffer the same industrial ruin that has fallen on Ireland? In every country in the world, out of England, it is preached aloud, as the great canon of political economy, that in an industrial community the interests of consumers and producers are identical-both pull in the same boat; both must sink or swim together. It was for Mr. Bright and his followers to preach the fatal nonsense, that the interests of consumers and producers were not only not identical, but were actually antagonistic; not only did they preach-alas! with ruinous success-this evident economic heresy, but they actually persuaded the producing classes, those who earn their daily bread with the sweat of their face, that in every case the interest of the consumer should precede that of the producer.

In an industrial community there can be no hard and fast line between consumers and producers. It is impossible. All are in some way or another, directly or indirectly, consumers, and all are in some way or another, directly or indirectly, producers. It is folly to attempt to draw a hard and fast line between consumers and producers where such a line cannot exist; but if our economic philosophers will insist upon drawing this line, they can only draw it in one place, between those who have fixed incomes and those who have not. Well, then, how will their theory of the superior interests of the consumers bear this test? There are in Great Britain only 1,300,000 out of a population of 34,000,000 with fixed incomes of over 100l. a year, and there are 32,700,000 without fixed incomes, or with fixed incomes of less than 100l. a year; and therefore if you compare the relative numbers of those who are truly pro

ducers and those who are consumers, you will find there are thirty producers to every consumer. So much for the nonsense of sacrificing the interests of the producers to the interests of the consumers. 'The wealth of a nation is the value of what it produces,' says common sense. Protect, extend, encourage production in every possible way, has been, and is, the cry of every industrial community in the world, except England; but in England our economic Solons have replaced this universal axiom with the foolish paraphrase, 'Take care of consumption, and let production take care of itself.' For nearly forty years the working classes have bowed their heads to this ridiculous oracle. There are signs, I hope, that they are coming to their senses.

Cheapness, cheapness, cheapness and competitionthese have been the parrot cries of free-traders; and excellent cries they are for the 1,300,000 lucky individuals with their fixed incomes; but how about the 32,700,000 without fixed incomes? How does it affect them? What does competition and cheapness mean in their case? It means this-it means that when by home competition a starving needlewoman is found to stitch shirts at fourpence a dozen, straightway a starving foreign woman is found to stitch shirts at threepence per dozen, and her work is brought over here to drive the English woman below starvation point! This is competition! This is cheapness! And does it benefit the community?

The first condition of this much-vaunted cheapness, this panacea of the Cobden Club, is cheap labour; do not let the operatives forget this when they have dinned into their ears the virtues of mere cheapness. Is a low price of corn, that is secured by stimulating foreign production and discouraging home production, a national blessing? Is it a national blessing when the English and Scotch labourers are deprived of their employment in favour of the ill-paid labour of Russians, Poles, Wallachians, or Coolies? Are shirts stitched by starving women at fourpence a dozen a blessing to the community, or the cheapness of bricks