IN MEMORIAM. 



appears to be the outpouring of Mr. BARNES mind on an old subject, 

 but one at that time cropping up as a vital one for human society 

 in all ranks, and which has, as we are aware, become the question 

 underlying most of the other questions of the day the question 

 of the relations and respective rights of labour and capital. Mr. 

 BARNES here, as in all his poems, touching en the temporal 

 welfare of the labourer, is unmistakably in closest sympathy with 

 the sons of toil ; but as in his poems, so here, too, he is filled 

 with the conviction of the need of labour to man, and of its great 

 dignity. But while he extols labour, he is unflinching in his 

 severity upon labour for the mere sake of hoarding, and of labour 

 that injures body, mind, or soul. Some kinds of labour, he 

 observes, have " a painful reaction on the mind," and others " a 

 bad reaction on the conscience " (p. 33), and which, however easy 

 may be " their action, and however great their gain, are not to be 

 earnestly chosen by Christian men, since as they deaden the 

 conscience they likewise do harm to the soul." Weighty words of 

 truth which need to be much taught, and still more learnt, in 

 these enlightened days. As we might expect, Mr. BARNES is 

 severe upon capital ! Not by any means that he objected to the 

 prudent laying up for a rainy day, or the gathering of means 

 to carry out works impossible to be effected without stored-up 

 labour in the shape of gold or capital, but it was the ever-growing 

 " monopoly and tyranny of capital" against which he warns. A 

 chapter is devoted to this under the above heading. Mr. BARNES' 

 object is " to show the possible effect of the increase of great 

 working capitals and monopolies on the labourers' freedom or 

 welfare." And, is there a doubt but that the present labourers' 

 Unions and Trades' Unions, and the consequent strikes and 

 lock-outs, and other warfare between employers and workers i.e., 

 between " Labour and gold," have been the result of that 

 " tyranny and monopoly of capital " Mr. BARNES speaks of 1 He 

 humorously, but forcibly, illustrates the benefits asserted to be 

 conferred upon workers by capital when in the enlargement of an 

 already perhaps great business, scores of small businesses of the 



