could hardly have known whether they stood on their heads or their heels before the battle was won. He begins his account of the battle of Aboukir, by stating that the Bellerophon dismantled, and other English vessels horribly maltreated, were obliged to draw off,' and attributes the defeat of the French to the non-observance of a signal. At Trafalgar, he says, Nelson's ship, the Victory,' would infallibly have been carried by boarding from the Redoutable' (a two-decker), if 200 men, including the boarding-party, had not been swept away by a single discharge of grape from the Téméraire.' In describing what took place off Boulogne in 1804, he states that the Emperor, to set an example to his navy, got into a barge, had it steered right towards an English frigate, received a broadside, and got off with a splashing (était quitte pour l'éclaboussure).

In a Preface to the concluding volumes, he compares a perfect style to glass, through which we look without being conscious of its presence between the object and the eye. His own style is glass of whose presence we are occasionally made conscious by specks. One of his learned friends, when asked for his opinion after receiving a volume, replied that he thought it excellent, but that there were numerous negligences of style: he had found the word hélas repeated more than twenty times.* Is that all?' asked Thiers. No, it is also too loose, too free, too familiar.' 'That is nothing,' was the retort-no, truly, it is nothing, and gives me little concern: I have no literary pretension: what I dreaded is that I should be accused of having imperfectly embraced the entirety (ensemble) of the subject which I treat.'

6

The compliment to his authorship which touched him most, was the phrase adroitly introduced by Napoleon III. in the speech from the throne in 1867: Historien illustre et national. It was well earned, for the foundation-stone of the Second Empire was laid by the history. His book, entitled 'De la Propriété,' published in 1848, contains some admirable specimens of written eloquence, blending imagination with argument and thought.

It was impossible to know Thiers well without being impressed by his kindness of disposition, good-nature, and amiability. The number and quality of his attached friends are an all-sufficient answer to the calumnies that have been heaped upon him. His style of conversation in early life is thus described by Lamartine :

Modesty is a virtue of the North, or an exquisite fruit of education. He spoke first, he spoke last, he paid little attention to

* I did not say "Alas!" Nobody ever does that I know of, though the word is so frequently written.'-Eothen.

21 2

replies:

replies but he spoke with a justness, an audacity, a fecundity of ideas, that caused the volubility of his lips to be forgiven. It was clear that his disciples had accustomed him to be listened to. This talk, perfectly familiar and appropriate to the ease (abandon) of the hour and the place, was neither eloquent nor pretentious. It was the heart and mind that were poured out.'

This was equally true of him in after life, in the fulness of his fame. Modesty would have been misplaced, and Sydney Smith has laid down that there is no necessary connection between modesty and merit except that they both begin with an m. But Thiers was always simple, easy, and unassuming, and in one respect must have improved; for he was ready to listen. French causerie, however, is more continuous and less elliptical than English conversation, and a somewhat different test of excellence is consequently applied. When he was in England in 1852, a dinner (March 1) was made for him, at which were present: Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Hallam, Edward Lord Lytton, Lord Elcho, Lord Cardwell, Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, Mr. Henry Fitzroy, Lord Kingsdown (Pemberton Leigh), Colonel Damer and the host. The conversation was varied and animated: Thiers had the advantage of language and choice of subject; but the general impression was that Mr. Gladstone was (if anything) the better talker of the two.

We e hardly know a public character, ancient or modern, which it is more difficult to sum up or judge. He can hardly be called great; although (if influence be a test of greatness) a man cannot be far from it, when he paves the way for an empire or consolidates a republic: when the pulse of a great nation throbs at his touch: when, in a momentous crisis-with peace, order, and liberty at stake-his name is sounded through the whole length and breadth of his native land as a rallying cry, and his voice is listened to like a revelation as it comes charged with wise counsel and solemn warning from the tomb. But, considering his marvellous intelligence, his range, versatility and elasticity of mind, his sway over popular assemblies, his genius for the conduct of affairs, his power of rising to emergencies and (above all) the amount of thought and action he originated or impelled, we do not hesitate to declare him, with all his faults and errors, the most brilliant and distinguished of the illustrious band of writers, orators and statesmen whom France of the nineteenth century has produced.

ART.

ART. VII.-1. Correspondence between the Employers' Association and the Delegates of the Trades Unions, 1877, 1878. 2. The Fortnightly Review, July, 1878.

of

HE recent industrial contest in Lancashire has received an ample share of description and criticism in the columns of the daily and weekly journals, and has occupied the pens several writers in the Fortnightly Review,' whilst the lapse of time has lessened public interest even in its main incidents. Yet still the magnitude of the contending organizations of capital on the one side and of labour on the other, the tenacity displayed on both sides, the simplicity of the original issue contrasted with the complexity which the line of argument pursued during the progress of the struggle appeared to give to it, the disappointing reappearance of a temper and disposition which have been regarded as lamentable features of industrial history long since passed away, the signal act of furious and insane vengeance which disgraced its progress, and its decisive result in the end-all justify our recurrence to the subject. We will therefore endeavour, first, briefly to sketch its history, and then to criticize the economic, social, and political assumptions, which underlie the actions and have characterized the arguments of the contending parties.

Before 1872 the organizations of the trades unions connected with the cotton trade covered a much larger area and commanded a more ready allegiance than those of the employers. The latter possessed local associations, loosely banded together in single towns and their suburbs, but rarely acting with decision excepting under the pressure of extraordinary circumstances, such as excessive depression in trade or more than usually flagrant aggression.

It was found that the want of cohesion on the part of the employers exposed them to incessant and systematic attack from the different operative unions. The plan adopted was to take them in detail, to force up the wages first in one mill, then in another, and thus to raise the general average. This was done with great success by the card-room associations; but the most formidable development of the system, and that which threatened the most serious consequences, was revealed in the action of the spinners' unions, which were combined under one central committee throughout Lancashire and parts of Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Yorkshire.

The relations between capital and labour were kept in a state of continued disturbance in these districts; demands for higher

wages

wages were unceasingly made in one form or another upon individual millowners, and the workpeople withdrawn to enforce them. This continued until a strike of spinners occurred at the most extensive cotton mills in Darwen. The employers' and workmen's committees met according to the usual custom when disputes occurred. The mill was examined by a joint committee; it was found that the machinery and cotton were such as to enable the spinners with average industry to secure, at the standard list rate of wages, fair average earnings. According to the understanding existing between the committees, the dispute should, under these circumstances, have terminated, but the men struck work.

A meeting was then arranged between the two committees, and when it took place in September, 1872, the local spinners' representatives asked permission for two delegates from Manchester to be present at the interview, stating that they had come to Blackburn expressly with that object. The employers objected to having dealings with any but the representatives of their own workpeople, but they ultimately thought it prudent to admit the two strangers, for the double purpose of ascertaining the actual state of affairs and showing courtesy to the local operative committee. It then came out that the local operative unions were associated with, and subordinate to, a huge central association, which controlled their action.

The Manchester delegates announced that the system of payment by standard lists of wages, mutually agreed upon by representatives of the employers and working men, would have to undergo revision, and that in every mill where the weekly earnings were small-that is, less than the delegates regarded as an adequate weekly wage-the rate would have to be raised. The employers objected that one millowner might have industrious work people, who, producing a full quantity of work, would earn good wages, whilst another might have an idle set of hands producing much less from similar machinery and with other equal advantages; that the effect of the proposal would be to impose upon the latter the further disadvantage and loss of paying his inferior and less valuable workpeople a higher rate of wages than his rival paid for those more industrious and intelligent; that it would lead to absolute demoralization by giving a premium to inefficiency and idleness; and that it would be destructive of the trade of the district. The answer of the delegates was, that no such combination of circumstances as the one suggested could in practice arise; that the good and inferior work people were pretty equally mixed in the different establishments, and, in fact, that the employers must accept the condi

tions laid down or prepare for a struggle. The delegates, however, were not at that time prepared to enforce the terms they had advanced, for the strike at Darwen terminated shortly afterwards by the return of the spinners to work upon the old

terms.

It had now become evident to the spinners and manufacturers of the Blackburn district that their local incompact organization would be unable to cope with the solid array of the combined spinners' associations, or to resist demands ruinous in their tendency to the prosperity of the cotton trade. Measures were consequently taken to draw the employers of North and North-East Lancashire into closer union, and the North and North-East Lancashire Master Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Association was the result. Preston, Blackburn, Burnley, Darwen, and subsequently Accrington, joined the new combination; the first meeting of which, after the adoption of its rules, took place on the 7th of March, 1873. The capital represented was, in round terms, 7,500,000l., the number of spindles 4,336,000, and of looms 110,000; whilst the workpeople employed were 100,000, earning from 80,000l. to 90,0007. weekly. As the total number of spindles in the English cotton trade is 40,000,000, and of looms 500,000, it will be seen how important a section of this great manufacture, which supplies near a third of the national exports, the new combination embraced.

It was soon found that it would have ample sphere of activity. Its first work, in June of the same year, was to prevent a strike of weavers, and to settle a 'standard list' of weavers' wages for Burnley. It had to deal with repeated spinners' strikes at selected mills. As the object of these strikes was generally to promote the efforts of the trades unions to enforce an advance of wages, they lasted on some occasions until the employers were on the eve of closing the associated mills.

The new Factory Act, reducing the hours of work from sixty to fifty-six and a half, came into operation at the beginning of 1875, and found fresh work for the associations. The workpeople had been told by their leaders that reduced hours meant greater prosperity in trade--that fluctuations would disappear, and higher wages would follow. Everywhere there was hope and expectation of improvement; a great increase of investment in cotton-spinning was in progress. At Oldham more particularly, but in other places also-the work people invested their earnings in limited liability spinning mills, and the improved machinery introduced enabled the workers in the new mills to take larger earnings home at less cost to the employers. For the moment the prophecies of the delegates

seemed