272 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



employers, and set tliem against those under wliom 

 their forefathers for centuries had lived contentedly 

 and remuneratively, and, in many cases, dying 

 rich for their calling' in life. 



All the activity, all the feverish demand for 

 change, has been on one side, and it seems as 

 if the other side stood still, in an apathetic 

 attitude, leaving any fool or dangerous dema- 

 gogue to grasp the rudder of the national 

 craft, to roar and lie his full without contra- 

 diction, and to give the ship of Great Britain, 

 in the trade winds, as little way as possible. 

 Among what once Avas called 'Hhe industrious 

 population," there are now nothing but '^strikes." 

 In a strike every idle and ill-disposed labourer is 

 sure to join, because mischievous iniions in other 

 quarters advance money; and the idle drunkard, 

 of course, would sooner be kept on bread and 

 water, with a drop of gin, when he had the 

 power to pilfer, and a possibility to steal and sleep ^ 

 than work and eat and drink good meat and beer. 



The Avorst, the weakest, and the most mis- 

 chievous tiling that master-men could do, was, 

 in the first instance, to give in to a strike, and 

 a robber-like demand for liigher wages, to men 



