NEWS OF THE WEEK.
la every part of the disturbed districts, turbulence appears to be subsiding, and the rioters themselves show signs of being almost as
tired of the contest as the police and soldiery whose vigilance they have fatigued. Of the mining-strike, which began in Staffordshire, we hear little this week ; the most activity being shown, and that with considerable moderation, at Merthyr Tydvil in Wales. The patience of the miners of West Scotland is exhausted. The manu- facturing-strike, of which Manchester has been the centre, begins to fall to pieces, and nowhere more decidedly than in Manchester itself. The Chartist movement, which it was attempted to graft on the strike, is defunct and abandoned by its promoters. The Trade Delegates, whose numbers had dwindled down from a gross
to a dozen, suffered a coup de grace in the arrest of their chairman ; and they broke up, bequeathing to their party the advice to postpone the strike for "the Charter," which they had recommended, because
of the embarrassment which the wages-strike had caused to them. Still the mills do not generally resume work. In many places the workpeople are free to enter the mills if they please ; others are sufficiently protected against violence from without ; many trades have relinquished their organized resistance and their corporate
resolution not to work ; but the individual workpeople do not go back to business. They seem to be sulky ; and that is one of the worst symptoms of the time. Hopeless discomfort seems to have made them reckless of increasing their own misery by staying away from work. That too is at a time when there are signs and reports of reviving trade. Moreover, statistical facts have come out occa- sionally which prove that, whatever may have been the " starva- tion " wages of those who were always on the verge of destitution for years past—as the hand-loom weavers of Bolton—the wages received by many of those engaged in the strike would be called princely income in the South of England. The wages for labourers on the Bolton and Preston Railway are three shillings a day, for ten and a half hours' work : the wages at Merthyr Tydvil have only been reduced twenty-five per cent since times of pros- perity, and some figures given show a mean of nineteen or twenty shillings per week. What, it may be asked, did the workpeople do with their money, when they received so much that their present receipts are accounted mere beggary ? was their condition then quite comfortable? did they save money ? And if they are now so destitute and hungry, why do they not go to the employment and wages which await them ? It might almost be guessed that they profited so little by "prosperity," physically or mentally, that they are sick of life—ennuyle.
The Chartists, as we have seen, have withdrawn from the endea- vour to convert the strike to their own purposes, confessing that they are not equal to cope with it; a confession which stamps them and their leaders with a much lower degree of capacity and power than they arrogated to themselves. As a political sect, they have hitherto been unable to put the country fairly in motion; and when now it is in motion to their hand, the movement arising among their own class-fellows, they are unable to guide it, or even to make it feel an impulse beyond that in which it originated. As when a heavy anvil is laid on a man's chest, it may be struck might and main with a hammer and he feel nothing, so the Chartists have been unable to make their blows tell upon the country through the mass of the discontented workpeople. They may hereafter have as much influence as before in the propagation of opinions; they may grow in physical power ; but for the present, as an organ of force, their strength has been gauged by themselves and found wanting.
Two other parties have coquetted with the strike — worthy JOSEPH STURGE and his Complete Suffrage Association, and the Anti-Corn-law bodies ; and both have been busy issuing docu- ments. Mr. STURGE, like many honest and earnest folks, is sur- prised that people do not at once do what it is right to do ; and he exhorts the middle and working classes to be reasonable without delay, and unite to agitate for Complete Suffrage. He might have chosen a better time for his exhortation to the middle class, just recovering from a fright brought on by agitation. What political energy or intelligence have they shown ? how have they stepped forward, as middle class, to mediate in the contest ? They have- principally manifested their zeal in acting as special constables to protect their own property ; and they have on the other hand, ex- hibited their weakness in suffering themselves to be frightened by mobs into surrendering, in one way or other, the very means of keeping up the strike—giving provisions or credit. The great prac- tical lesson taught to them by the late events is, that the working classes are prone to disorder, but that they can be suppressed by military force ; that disturbance interrupts trade, and that its sup- pression is most to be desired by the men of trade; and ergo, mili- tary force and the authority of central government are the real reliances of the shopkeeper. It must be confessed, however, that Government have not seized the occasion to put that lesson in its most distinct and imposing form : they have wisely abstained front military display or the ostentation of superfluous "energy." The Anti-Corn-law agitators are tantalized with the desire to eschew the discredit of having fomented violence or been the in- stigators of a dangerous sedition, and with the almost equal desire of using the tumult as an argumentum ad metal's: : hence divers turgid and offensively-worded recriminatory addresses to or at the Prime Minister. It does not appear that the party has done any thing besides voting those very objectionable compositions. On the whole, the characteristic of the insurrection has been moderation. Considering that anger has been roused—that blood even has been shed—and that there has been' as some magnilo- quent persons aver, "servile war "—the people have evinced much careless temperance in rebellion : the injury to property has been trifling ; life has not often been menaced; to a remarkable degree those who have not actually engaged in the conflict have enjoyed personal safety ; plunder has not been extensive, and has generally been discreet; the leaders of sedition have preached submission to authority ; and a bad railway accident would almost rival the casualties in a conflict where a regular army has been opposed to hundreds of thousands. Upon the whole, too, it may be said that the military have been forbearing : they have not been hounded on to indiscriminate slaughter ; but have displayed their strength rather than used it. The moral of this tame rebellion appears to be, that there is no party in the country just no which has sufficient strength or influence to breed anarchy ; none which hag such a lust of power as voluntarily to maintain it by bloodshed and strife. It may be noted, too, as the first occasion on which the working-classes of the country have been brought into physical ac- tion since they have learned to read and think by favour of the " march of intellect."
