to refuse to do anything further with him. Nor did we hear of fines imposed on a contributor to Mr. Murray's Dictionary for a delay in his work, or of gendarmes driving the volunteers of Garibaldi to the battle-field. Free agreements need not be enforced.
As to the so-often repeated objection that nobody would labour if he were not compelled to do so by sheer necessity, we heard enough of it before the emancipation of slaves in America, as well at before the emancipation of serfs in Russia; and we have had the opportunity of appreciating it at its just value. So we shall not try to convince those who can be convinced only by accomplished facts. As to those who reason, they ought to know that, if it really was so with some parts of humanity at its lowest stages—and yet, what do we know about it?—or if it is so with some small communities, or separate individuals, brought to sheer despair by illsuccess in their struggle against unfavourable conditions, it is not so with the bulk of the civilized nations. With us, work is a habit, and idleness an artificial growth. Of course, when to be a manual worker means to be compelled to work all one's life long for ten hours a day, and often more, at producing some part of something—a pin's head, for instance; when it means to be paid wages on which a family can live only on the condition of the strictest limitation of all its needs; when it means to be always under the menace of being thrown to-morrow out of employment—and we know how frequent are the industrial crises, and what misery they imply; when it means, in a very great number of cases, premature death in a paupers' infirmary, if not in the workhouse; when to be manual worker signifies to wear a life-long stamp of inferiority in the eyes of those very people who live on the work of their "hands;" when it always means the renunciation of all those higher enjoyments that science and art give to man—oh, then there is no wonder that everybody—the manual worker as well—has but one dream: that of rising to a condition where others would work for him. When I see writers who boast that they are the workers, and write that the manual workers are an inferior race of lazy and improvident fellows, I must ask them: Who, then, has made all you see round about you: the houses you live in, the chairs, the carpets, the streets you enjoy, the clothes you wear? Who built the universities where you were taught, and who provided you with food during your school years? And what would become of your readiness to "work," if you were compelled to work in the above conditions all your life at a pin's head? No doubt, anyhow you would be reported as a lazy fellow! And I affirm that no intelligent man can be closely acquain-
