render it possible, in some small way, where the principle could be tried.

"I dare say now" (and here the old man's eyes, that had from the first been, now and then, twinkling as roguishly as a young girl's, laughed outright) "you would like to know what place of worship I go to on Sundays, and whether we eat with knives or forks at our house, and how many pints of ale I drink in a month, so that you may tell me how much they would come to in twenty years. You don't?

Are you quite sure, sir, even about the place of worship? I'm glad you think you are, for I'm sadly afraid I could not tell you the texts all through one year as I could the names of vessels built in certain yards on the Thames for half a century. And as for the Well, well, let us leave it as it is."

I shall add nothing to the story of this fine old workman, but that England has reason to be proud of such a man; and that the clergyman or employer who could reach the hearts of men like him, in the right way (as some do), who could be a father to the young and a friend and brother-why not a brother?-to the old would do a work worthy of the highest ambition of a human being. The way in which the old man spoke of Mr. Pitcher's kindness to his father, and in many cases of the kindness of his own employers, showed what a grand basis there was there for confidence between man and man.

In this story, however, there is not much reference to the most saddening features of a workman's life. I had intended to take in more briefly, though still somewhat in detail, the experience of another man, an iron worker, a man of considerable artistic and other talent, whose life has been one of great sorrow and suffering, but I must only venture to give a few facts in bare outline. This man, with a large legacy of family misfortune, following a much brighter and happier state of things, came to Poplar about twenty years ago, and was employed, as an unskilled labourer, in an iron foundry, where three years later he

83

On

was made clerk. Up to this time his life was one unbroken series of mischances; now there seemed a prospect of happier days, but it was a transient prospect, for in a short time work fell off and he was discharged, among a number of others of whose after-doings I have no definite record. He found work in Wales, and was employed there two years, when he was compelled to return to London; and then, turning his knowledge of drawing to account, he earned a livelihood by taking likenesses, till he again found his way to the work that, without any regular apprenticeship, had become to him as a trade. This engagement was in a yard for iron shipbuilding, and here he was employed about four years, when the commercial failures of 1854 broke up the firm. "I had then been married," he said, "eighteen months, all which time my wife had been ill and attended by a doctor. the very day I was discharged from my employment she died; and then, when all was over, I went and got drunk, and drank away for several weeks, for the first and last time in my life." found other employment, and in time another wife, who has resolutely stood by him, with all womanly help, in sorrow quite as great as any that had gone before. In 1866, after many difficulties and long idleness, he was employed as a viceman, but he had not been an hour at work, when, as ill-luck would have it, he had a finger broken and the palm of his hand torn away by the machinery with which he was engaged. Long before these wounds were healed he was in the last two years of "East-end distress." When he had suffered, modestly and uncomplainingly (I have this from others, not from him), till very nearly the last of his household furniture was gone, he applied to the parish for relief, and then he said, "I was sent to the stoneyard at three shillings a week and a quartern loaf. I was there seven months, locked up, day by day, with five hundred other men, some of them the worst reprobates I ever met anywhere. I had worked previously at whatever I could get-with barrow, or pickaxe, or any

G 2

He

thing, but I never felt myself in the least degraded till I came to that stoneheap. With starvation before me and my family, I at last gave it up. My wife was ill, one of my daughters soon afterwards died (thank God, by the help of some kind friends I buried her without having to apply for a parish coffin); we are as poor as we can be, dependent on the few shillings I can earn in a week and on charity, but we have not again applied to the parish." These words, spoken gravely, and I think sincerely, need no application of mine, and they apply to many more cases than the one now before the reader.

cases

No one who has known anything of the poor parts of London during the last winter, or who has attentively read of them, can doubt that sharp remedies are needed for certain melancholy facts and conditions of life, in some temporary, in others chronic. There are wealthy employers and others ready to assert that the distress has been overstated; that there is a danger of encouraging vice and idleness under the belief that help is being given to honest poverty; that things were always so, and always will be so, &c. All this, however, does not alter the fact that there is a cry, like a wail of woe, among the poor of London; a cry powerful enough, where it can be heard, to silence all such bland assertions, and bring men face to face with solemn responsibilities. It would be utter quackery to attempt to state or define specific remedies for all the wants and woes involved in the term "Eastend distress," but no one need have any difficulty in finding sufficient of them to be made the means of much good. Only, are we in earnest in seeking for them?

Employers and workmen too often deal unfairly with each other, on system. When the workman can say "It is our turn now," the employer often adds, "It will be mine next." Surely it is for the employer, as the man of power, and to some extent the representative there of educated people, to set the example of better things; and if it took him a lifetime to make the ex

ample felt and understood, the life would not be spent in vain. If offences and misunderstandings, "chances" and "turns" of doing each other injury are to cease, the great work must begin among those who, from their wealth, and the vantageground that they possess, could begin it both with dignity and a fair prospect of success. Such examples are rare. Workmen are flattered-dishonestly flattered -as they never were before, but there is a conviction among them that they rarely have fair play, or upright and downright treatment, springing from pure motives.

There is also a conviction among them that they might as well be silent when capital is stating its case and theirs, for that, right or wrong, they are sure to be beaten. A wealthy shipbuilder tells the public that men who refuse to work in private yards at six shillings a day, accept work in Government yards at five shillings a day, forgetting to add that in Government yards there is maintenance in case of injury, and no broken time-facts which this gentleman had himself pointed to, on a previous occasion, for a different purpose, as sufficient to make the lesser wage in the one case better than the greater one in the other. Workmen, charged with all manner of unfairness, point to this, and ask, with excusable bitterness, "Is this fair play?"

There are times when they ask the same question on less reasonable grounds. They are sometimes, like other people, decidedly in the wrong, and when they are so, they work at the wrong as earnestly as if they were making a temple of it, for sacred duties resting on both faith and will; but even then one good breeze of reason and kindness would blow the temple to the ground. In the recent interview of several representatives of trades' unions with Mr. Gladstone, the words of the great statesman were not more pointed and telling than those of the workmen, for here the men were met with kindness, and a desire to know the exact facts they wished to state. Had it been otherwise, had their words been twisted and turned into meanings they were never intended to convey,

Mr. Gladstone might have triumphed over his poorer fellow-countrymen, might have shown them how little qualified they were to compete in dialectics with a great dialectician, but the interview would have been useless, and indeed baneful, instead of being creditable to both workmen and statesman, as it was.

A stern political economist, standing on exact science, and applying "data" to the case of "starving" men will always fail to comprehend the position of workmen. Allowances must be made for circumstances calculated to distort the views of the calmest minds. The men who would restrict the number of apprentices are men who have been "out of work." The men who, like madmen, destroyed machinery, were men whom machinery had brought from comfort to abject poverty. Let that man or woman be loud in condemnation of them who has known what it is to have an empty cupboard and children crying for bread, who has looked upon a blank hopeless future, while fortunes were being amassed by his or her branch of labour turned into new channels. The exact science and unerring data, without an allowance for the life histories, are as likely to lead to erroneous conclusions as any claim of workmen would be, even when made in defiance of data and science, and without regard for the lessons of general history.

There are those who tell us that in emigration alone there is hope for the poor of England; and it cannot be doubted that emigration has done and is doing what nothing else could have done. It is not pleasant, however, to admit that in England all is hopeless, and that the sole hope of an Englishman is in finding his way to a foreign shore. Surely, the time has not come to forget this home of freedom-this mother of free men-and think only of escaping to the refuge of a strange land. Surely, it is the interest of men of all classes to try to do something to show that England, while founding new na

tions abroad, can still be more than a foster-mother to her poor at home.

The hope is in labour. All the kindness in the world without that would be merely supplying means of temporary relief, and even the labour itself on an eleemosynary basis would be no more. The workmen on the Thames think that their employers are now anxious to "take their turn," and make of the very distress a means of profit. I do not say that this opinion is correct; as applied to many cases I am sure it is the reverse; but it is believed, and the workmen's history excuses, if it does not justify, the belief.

One thing, however, workmen must make up their minds to do, if they would better the condition of their trade. They must take small wagesin fact, any reasonable wages-the first time they have an opportunity of beginning work on any fair and reasonable principle of co-operative labour. There should be no higgling or hesitating, no foolish jealousy, for of every pound saved here they would have a share. They have good reason for hesitating now, but they should shrink from no sacrifice they should work all hours, and "out at elbows" if necessary, to carry that noble idea into life.

The money that one kind lady has given to Bethnal Green, would have set on foot some branch of co-operative labour, which, treat it as we may, and blink the facts as we may to meet the wishes of interested persons, is one of the most promising rays of light ahead of the East-end distress. National Education, on a broad basis, is another. The winter of 1868 is distant. There is time for real work while the days are long. If that work is done, the distress will be fairly faced, and may be stemmed. If that work is not done, on some high national ground-above all party and sectarian aims-the distress will return again in winter, unchanged in character, unless, indeed, the change is for the

worse.

II.

THE MARCH FROM SENAFÉ TO ANTALO

(HALF WAY TO MAGDALA.)

WHEN Sir Robert Napier landed in Annesley Bay, and took command of the Abyssinian field force, in the beginning of January, there were two courses open to him in the conduct of the campaign. Teodoros was still at a considerable dis

tance from Magdala, advancing at the rate of two or three miles a day, and impeded by all his moveable effects,

some guns, and, above all, by a heavy

mortar which his European workmen had succeeded in casting for him.

It might, therefore, have been decided that the great object of the campaign was to reach Magdala before Teodoros could arrive and get the captives into his clutches again. Senafé is twentyone easy marches from Magdala; and, even if the march had not commenced

until the end of January, a small force pushed promptly forward, with two months' provisions, would have attained the object in view. But the general commanding it must have relied on the resources of the country, to a considerable extent, both for supplies and transport; and temporarily, until supports could be brought up, on the friendliness of the people for keeping communications open

with his base. The success of such a

course would have brought the campaign to a conclusion in the shortest possible time, and at the smallest possible cost. Whether it was feasible; whether reliance on the resources of the country and the friendliness of the people, to the extent required, would have been justifiable; and finally, whether this course, though not absolutely free from risk, was not the only one by which success was

:

possible are questions that may be decided more correctly and more profitably when the results of the campaign are finally discussed at its conclusion. Suffice it that this first course was not even attempted.

which the campaign is actually to be The alternative plan-the plan by conducted-gives the first move to the adversary with a vengeance. While the English player moves a few pawns one square to the front, the Abyssinian is allowed time to castle his king, and take The enemy is permitted to reach Magdala the pieces for which the game is played.

and get the game into his own hands, while the English general is maturing arrangements on so large and complete a scale as to leave no room for any possible mischance to his troops, except through inexcusable neglect or incompetence. This course involves an enormous outlay, great loss of time, and desperate risk for the captives. recommendations are that, setting the object of the campaign on one side, it ensures the health and comfort of the troops, and is emphatically a safe and prudent course. The force will be, as much as possible, independent of the Advances resources of the country.

1

Its

will not be made unless ample means of transport are previously secured; three safe depôts will be formed at the chief places along the line of march, and the whole campaign will be conducted as if the line was through an enemy's country, and Teodoros was a formidable European foe.

The state of the transport-train when the Commander-in-chief landed was such that, for the conduct of a campaign on this plan, serious delays were un

1 Senafé, Adigirat, and Antalo.