THE REVOLT OF THE TAILORS.
A CIVIL war is raging among the fashioners of male apparel, which threatens to subvert, for a time at least, the reign of BRUMMEL'S successors upon earth. The whole body of journey- men tailors have struck, to a fraction. All the shop-boards arc forsaken ; the goose lies cold and neglected; the thimble no longer wards off the nimble thrust of the needle; and the sar- torius muscles of fifteen hundred who sit cross-legged from Mon- day till Saturday are simultaneously relaxed. If the journeymen are all flints (though we suspect many a face of .flint conceals a heart of dung), the masters are stanch as steel ; tend the collision of the two bodies bids fair to throw a striking light upon the pro- fits of the masters as well as the loss of the men.
The time is happily chosen by the rebels. They know that of all months in the year, men dislike shabby habiliments most in the smiling month of May. They rely upon the genius of Cox- combry as their guardian angel, who will lead them on to victory. But here it is possible that they may find themselves mistaken, For the first time for centuries perhaps, every penurious and poverty-stricken person in the land is furnished with a genteel ex- cuse for threadbare and ancient-cut clothes. Every provincial beau, whose Spring finery has hitherto been provided by the awk- ward practitioner of his native town or village, will complain of the impossibility of getting his orders executed by STULTZ or NUGEE, and curse the disorganizing spirit of the age, as he views with secret satisfaction his rusty coat and trousers, and contem- plates with the savings of this season the purchase of a t eal town- made garment for the next. Many an " out-at-elbow Peer, and desperate dandy " of the Metropolis, will quote the chivalrous speech of Sir HENRY HARDINGE, and declare his readiness to walk through Bond Street in his shirt, rather than be begirt with the handy-work of the rebellious brotherhood. His resistance to the tyranny of the journeymen tailors will be comfortable to his spirit and a relief to his pocket. Even the prosperous PETERSHAMS of the day will take pride in appearing in the dress which their valets have most particularly stretched and soiled at the select parties given by the family fishmongers and tallow-chandlers. In short, the difficulty of obtaining new clothes will be an accommo- dation to so many—patriotism will be so economical instead of so expensive a virtue—that there is little doubt of the result.
And then, what a spirit actuates the masters ! What a deter- mined front their phalanx of five or six hundred offers to the enemy. Their speeches and resolutions betoken the most invinci- ble courage. At the meeting held on Tuesday, Mr. REID called upon the "fractions of humanity " around him to behave like full- grown men at this crisis.
" The eyes of England were upon them—almost the fate of the country de- pended upon their conduct. Let the operatives all turn masters, and take all the responsibility upon their shoulders, and they would soon have a very different opinion of the matter. One hardly knew what they wanted, indeed tiny hardly seemed to know themselves; but if they did obtain their demands, the conse- quences would not be ruinous to thentsdres and to the masters alone, but to so- ciety in general. In conclusion, he hoped the meeting would not merely pass the resolutions, but each individual would feel when he went home as if the wellbeing of the cause and their country depended upon their own individual firmness."
Mr. STUART hoped the masters would be firm :
" If they succumbed, it would not be long before this mighty empire would be prostrated at the feet of the Trades Unions, to the utter ruin of all."
Mr. SPRAGUE entreated the meeting to recollect, that
... "the eyes of the whole country were upon them. It had fallen to their lot to be placed first in the gap ; and he trusted that by their conduct that day they would show, whatever might have been said of them, that they were nu longer the ninth part of men, but 900 in one." (Tremendous cheering.) After reading these extracts, we hope that all who have been trembling for the fate of their country at this particular juncture will feel reassured. The pilots at the helm will yet weather the storm. The country may place firm and sanguine reliance on the efforts of the master tailors to preserve the balance of the Consti- tution, and this "mighty empire " from ruin.
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