THE THIEF AND POACHEK. 107 



111 nine cases out of ten, if this question was 

 put to a union victim, he would make a very 

 natural but stupid reply, and say, ^' more money 

 and less work," the very two things that cannot 

 go together. As to the Improvement of their 

 dwellings, they would ask for some straw to 

 thatch their dwelling, and not for a gaudy stack 

 of chimneys, very necessarily inducing an in- 

 creased outlay of fuel. The really worthy and 

 hard-working labourer, if quietly left to explain 

 himself, would simply ask to 1)e paid in hard cash 

 for his luork, and not to have the amount of that 

 hard cash staved off with very sour cider or 

 other supposed benefits, which really are to the 

 labourer and his family no benefits at all. 



Whatever mischiefs may have been achieved 

 Ijy these strikes and unions, they must consume 

 tliemselves, from their very want of reasonable 

 or well-arranged foundation. You may, I regret 

 to say, delude the English masses for a time, 

 and induce its component heads ^^ to imagine a 

 vain thing " ; but as the gloss of the false gar- 

 ment thrown over them wears off, the heads will 

 cease to cling to vain, unjust, and sedulously 

 inculcated deceits, and come back once more to 



