called "skilled workmen," the effect of such combinations has often been sudden and extensive.

In attempting to raise and keep up wages above their natural rate, various methods have been used. The most obvious is that of refusing to work for less than a certain sum agreed upon; and where the combination is universal or very extensive, this is likely to have its effect in the case of skilled labour. Another method not much unlike this in its principle, is that of combining to lessen the hours of labour, the price remaining the same. A third is that of limiting the number of skilled workmen in any district; and this method has from time to time been imbodied in the municipal customs and statutory provisions of many coun tries. To this source we owe all the guilds or trade-corporations of England, the statutes of apprenticeship, the tours of journeymen (wanderjahre) in Germany, and similar expedients; the object being in every case the same, namely, to make labour more costly, by making it more difficult to be procured. Upon the same principle, in some of the Spice Islands, it has been customary to destroy part of the pepper crop in order to raise the price of the commodity.

The corporations of the middle ages were the basis of all our municipal privileges, as indeed they were the cradle of modern civic prosperity in general they were, in those rude periods, a necessary safeguard for the peaceful burgher against the ruthless and iron-handed barons and

their feudatories. But the state of things has greatly changed with the advancement of society. As the defences of established law have formed themselves around the mechanic and the labourer, those irregular and extraordinary provisions should have been abandoned; as being no less antiquated and no less dangerous than the famous Secret Tribunals of the dark ages; which nevertheless were almost demanded in a state of things where society was in a perpetual conflict:

"For why? Because the good old rule
Sufficed them; the simple plan,

That they should take who have the power,

And they should keep who can.'

But we have lived to see a new growth springing up in the rank soil of modern civilization. In the unexampled increase and mighty influence of Trades' Unions there is every thing to awaken the interest of the political and the moral philosopher. Viewing what has occurred within a few years, we can only say, with Talleyrand, It is the beginning of the end! No man can examine the influence of this organization of the workingclasses, without perceiving that, unless arrested, it must give origin to a state of society totally different from any that the world has ever seen; whether better or worse than that which has preceded, events will prove.

*Wordsworth

The early dissensions of republican Rome gave occasion to Menenius Agrippa to rehearse the fable of the Belly and the Members; an apologue which is no less instructive and appropriate now, than it was then. Nothing can fail to be disorganizing and ruinous, which tends to set the rich against the poor, or marshals these two classes into conflicting hosts. And such is the tendency of that fearful system which is beginning to spread itself among our happy yeomanry.

XX.

TRADES' UNIONS.

Continued.

"We see, we hear with peril: Safety dwells
Remote from multitude. The world's a school
Of wrong, and what proficients swarm around!
We must or imitate or disapprove;

Must list as their accomplices or foes."

YOUNG.

THE true way to judge of Trades' Unions is to see them at home; to examine their working in the place of their origin, and where their influence is most extensive. In this country they are still in their infancy, and we can scarcely see their ultimate tendencies; but in Great Britain and Ireland they have existed for a long period, and we may sit in fair judgment upon their results. Every year brings us nearer and nearer to the transatlantic pattern: we borrow their organization, their methods, their "slang-terms," and their men. Here, as there, we have our weekly contributions, our forms of initiation, our committees of vigilance, our flags and mottoes and processions. Perhaps in due course of time we may have our burnings, maimings, and assassinations. But be

fore we allow things to get to this pass, it becomes us to sit down and count the cost. Let us look into some of the reasons pro and contra.

If a contest were necessary between the rich and the poor, (which we heartily believe it is not, but on the contrary that, in the long run, their interests are identical,) if it were necessary that capital and labour should be placed in conflictwe should be ready to concede that every facility and aid should be allowed to the working-man, because he is under all sorts of disadvantage. This is less true in America, where, for the most part, labour and capital go together; but in Great Britain mechanics and other labourers need every species of lawful union to bear them up against the weight of capital and easy concert which is marshalled on the other side. No man who has a heart can become acquainted with the distresses which exist in the thronged manufactories of Britain, without being tempted to pray that this unnatural system may never become paramount in our own beloved country, where millions of untilled acres still invite the pallid and starving artisan. No wonder the working-classes desire to increase the rewards of labour; no wonder they take pity on their own flesh and blood, and combine to relieve them. And if wages, by any such expedient, could be made to rise and stand at an elevated point, we should say that the benefit had almost indemnified society for the dreadful losses sustained in the process. If, as has been held by