this Egyptian campaign be suffered to drag longer as it is now doing. Heavy taxes must paralyse industries. Therefore these foreign considerations, which seem to have such a far-away operation, are really of more importance to the working-men in London and Sheffield than all the confiscatory measures that can be devised, or all the interferences with trade, for the purpose of giving advantages to the artisan. It is of no use to decree the confiscation of capital or profits when both have been made to disappear: the oyster will have gone, and it will be idle to make laws about the shells!
Day by day the public prints contain sad information concerning the numbers of the working classes that languish in our cities and towns unemployed. These unfortunates are victims of the incapacity of the Government. They are out of work because our foreign affairs are so feebly and unintelligently conducted, – because there is such dread of further serious detriment to commerce and industry, that capitalists decline to embark their fortunes in business until they can feel some confidence in the Ministers who direct our concerns. Their numbers will undoubtedly increase unless we should have a change of Government. Leading men, to whom they have appealed for advice and help, are suggesting emigration – a sad finish this to all the nattering hopes that have been held out to workers. To emigrate is a serious thing to a workman, however little he may be encumbered; to a man with a wife and family, it is a step to be most carefully considered. We should say that the plunge into the emigrant-ship should not be taken until at least an attempt had been tried to make things better at home by displacing the Ministers who have brought us to this pass. Men who are already destitute of money, and of the means of earning money, cannot risk much if they bring about a change; and a change which may secure them bread to eat must be of far more consequence to them than all the ransoming of property or nationalisation of land about which agitators rant.
It is five years now since the present Government took office, promising peace, light burdens, and most beneficial reforms. We have had war ever since, we are cruelly taxed; let the unemployed and the workers at half-time and low wages bear witness of how much they have been benefited by reforms. There can be no question, after this long experience, that the promises made in 1880 have not been kept, and that the country is being rapidly ruined, instead of being guided into ways of prosperity and peace. And yet the sufferers cannot rouse themselves sufficiently to stop the downward course by overthrowing the cause of it. Thus the evil goes forward, our artisans intent upon confiscation and a redistribution of property, while they allow the property itself, which they are so anxious to appropriate, to be consumed and wasted by weak and stupid government. The cold fit continues. The hot fit will infallibly come again – but probably not till it is too late for prevention, and too late, too, for a prompt and thorough cure.
