municate truth. We have endeavoured to utter our honest convictions independently, manfully, but with kindness, courtesy, and urbanity. Of our shortcomings none are so painfully sensible as ourselves; but of the purity of our motives and the honesty of our intentions, we ourselves cannot doubt, neither can we hesitate to believe that in these respects we possess the full confidence of our readers.

While according to our opponents at all times a wide range for the independent expression of honest convictions, we have with deep regret observed the obtrusion of rancorous personalities on recent occasions, we trust that we ourselves may never become so heated by the exciting nature of any subject, as to forget the amenities and courtesies of literary elegance and respectability. Unmerciful severity against error, but kindness and respect towards persons, has been our rule; and we feel assured no opponent, who has entered the lists against us, has had his feelings wounded by our remarks, although he may not have considered our arguments as sound, or most conducive to the discovery of truth.

Deeply interested in the subject of labour, wages, and capital, we enter upon the study of the present question as truth-seekers. It is a question, to our thinking, of paramount importance, involving as it does the very existence and daily comforts of many millions of our fellow-countrymen. It is, then, incumbent upon us that we should study this question seriously and calmly, free from the excitement of partizanship, or the influence of party interests.

Man is God's chief handywork, a wonderfully ingenious microcosm in His great universe of existence. The creative power of Deity has endowed man with a mysterious nature, far-reaching intellect to discover, to know, to understand; emotional faculties, varied and delicate in their sensibilities, to desire, to love, to hate, and physical powers to possess, to do, to enjoy, and to suffer. With this gift God has imposed the moral obligation to employ this nature, with all its susceptibilities, rightly and truthfully. From the constitution of our nature, it is self-evident that man is an independent but responsible being, and is bound to employ all his faculties to secure the greatest amount of happiness in this his present place of abode. In the exercise of his faculties he is responsible to no other of his fellow-men; in them he has an indefeasible right; none possess the right to deprive him of them, nor to limit his exercise thereof, whilst that exercise of his own natural powers accords to his fellow-men equal rights and equal freedom for the exercise of their natural powers and faculties. He can be, do, and say as he pleases, at the dictate of his own unfettered will, with this limitation only, his will cannot authoritatively deprive others of the like freedom.

By the exercise of his powers, man possesses himself of those natural products with which a bountiful Providence has furnished this world, and by the exercise of his faculties, he adds new value to these, his acquired possessions, hence arises property; nature has given him the power to labour; nature and his own labour gives him property; and when this property becomes more abundant than is

requisite to supply his ever-recurring necessities, it assumes the nature of capital.

The simplest form of society wherein man is found has at all times presented a sufficiently varied condition of the desires, wants, and necessities of the separate individuals of that society, and of the possessions of those individuals, as to render some species of interchange of their respective possessions a matter conducive to their general happiness: hence barter or exchange has arisen as the mode by which mutual conveniences have been adjusted, and labour has been given for food, clothing, shelter, comforts, and luxuries; and these means of happiness have been exchanged for each other, according to the relative value set upon them by each individual possessor. Hence we observe the normal condition of those emphatic technicalities-labour, wages, property, and capital; to these elemental considerations we shall have occasion frequently to advert in our subsequent remarks.

In the present advanced and complicated system of society, so great are the supplies of and the demand for labour, that great bodies of men are found devoted to special kinds of labour: the generic appellation by which society designates this portion is-the working class. The members of this working class have for many reasons thought it prudent to form themselves into compact bodies, called Trades' Unions, with the design to afford protection to the whole class, and to its individual members. Whether such combinations, as they at present exist, and do operate, are beneficial to the working class, is the question we have to consider. We believe they are not beneficial, and entreat the reader's attention while we show reasons for our belief.

The objects which Trades' Unions seek to obtain, and by which they are commended to the working classes, are various, some openly stated, others only implied, and still more, secretly understood to be acted upon according to the judgment and discretion of the ruling officers of each society, or of the union with which it is associated. It will suffice for our present purpose to name a few,-relief to members during sickness, and to their families at death; relief when out of employment, and assistance to obtain employment. These are wise and prudent objects, worthy of union, and as such are adopted as the chief inducements for the establishment of Trades' societies; but others of a less wholesome character are united to them, which vitiate the whole system, and make it the curse of the working man.

For instance, Trades' Unions seek to regulate the number of labourers by limiting the number of persons educated and employed in each trade, and by prescribing the amount of initiatory labour necessary to fit a person to become a member of the trade. This is a direct infraction of the liberty of the citizen of any free state. As we have before seen, man has by nature an indefeasible right to that exercise of his natural powers which shall, in his own estimation, be most conducive to his happiness; and no one can with justice

authoritatively interfere with the exercise of this right. But the Trades' Union says, You shall not exercise your right to labour in any trade but by our permission." Therefore the Trades' Union deprives the working man of his birthright, and forbids him to sell his labour but at the will of others.

This will allow of further illustration. If it is right and just for the Trades' Union to forbid the workman to labour in one trade, it may with equal justice forbid it in another, and even in every other trade. Thus at the mercy of the irresponsible officers of the union, the worker seeking employment may be reduced, by his utter helplessness, to starvation and death. This conclusion is not affected by the age of the labourer seeking employment; he may be ten years old or he may be fifty, the principle and its consequences are precisely the same. The union assumes to limit the number of persons employed in any trade; it therefore arrogates to itself the power to drive the would-be labourer away from the labour market, which is to him virtually-death. By prescribing a fixed period of probation for any trade, it assumes a power which is contrary to natural right. The individual selling and the individual buying the labour are the only persons interested-they are the persons making an exchange of their natural rights, and it is for them to agree for themselves upon the terms they shall make in this respect. For a third party to impose conditions upon the seller or the buyer of labour is a species of tyranny unequalled under the most despotic forms of civilized society.

Trades' Unions seek to regulate the rate of wages and the hours of labour. These two points are only different phases of the same principle. An increase of wages is equalled in its effects by a decrease of labour. A decrease of wages is the same as an increase of labour. We shall consider this principle under the one formula, that unions claim to regulate the amount of wages for a certain duration of labour. In the first place, this is unjust and tyrannical to the workman, for it deprives him of his natural right to dispose of his labour as he pleases; it deprives him of his free will and of his power to dispose of his only possession; it limits the value of his labour, by excluding him from the full benefit of open competition in the labour market, and virtually says that he shall not sell his labour as dearly as he can, but only at the stereotype price fixed by the union tyrants. The practical evils of this principle are legion; the clever and industrious man cannot earn more than the fixed wages; hence his aspirations for a better condition are restrained, his superior ability is repressed, his energies are forcibly subdued, and he must drag on a miserable existence of unrequited toil, or sink into irrecoverable idleness and stolidity. Such flagrant injustice, such oppressive tyranny, is only endurable, when self-imposed, through the medium of a Trades' Union. This oppression is, if possible, more insufferably felt by the less-gifted workman, the poor man who, from inefficient education, want of physical strength, or intellectual ability, or the necessary expertness demanded by his

calling, falls below the average of his fellows, becomes of necessity a pariah, an outcast from society, his only refuge being the cold, but still more just and charitable poor law union. He, with his known deficiencies, presents himself for employment; the employer is willing to give him employment at the full value of his labour, but the starving wretch dare not receive less than the fixed rate of the Trades' Union; his labour is deficient either in quantity or in quality, the employer cannot give the full rate without sustaining loss, because he has to enter into competition with other producers whose workmen are of the average skill; hence he is obliged to refuse the workman, other employers do the same. The workman dare not enter another trade, as such a course would incapacitate him from again working in his own trade-he would become "a black leg," or a "rat," and a worse mark than that of Cain would banish him from his fellows, a more fearful anathema than "bell, book, and candle," or the terrific inventions which a dark superstition, hurled at its victims, would rest upon him, till a pauper's grave closed over his emaciated frame.

It has always appeared to us that a law beyond the power of human control regulates the rate of wages and the relations of wages and labour.

It is a law of nature that he who will live must labour. The elemental condition of wages is the actual necessities of the labourer. Nature does not spontaneously offer to man food, clothing, and shelter; these he acquires by his labour. Unremitting industry gives an excess beyond the necessities of the day; this excess forms a capital for the future supply of the labourer; this excess is a constantly increasing quantity, and becomes the fund which in its natural and legitimate use influences the future productiveness of labour. The laws influencing its increase are beyond the control of man, equally with the primal law which necessitates labour. Hence the nature of these laws, and their influence in determining the rate of wages, are of vital importance to the labourer.

The greater the produce from any given amount of labour, the greater the excess beyond man's necessities, which form not only capital, but means of comfort and luxuries; and the greater the proportion of this excess to the necessities of the labourer, in like ratio is the prosperity of the labourer; but should the number of labourers increase faster than the production by which their necessities are supplied, their prosperity decreases, want and destitution ensue; hence population, or the number of labourers to be supplied with the products of labour, becomes an important factor in this social problem.

Let us categorize these observations. All men must labour to live; the greater the surplus of labour's products or capital, the greater the prosperity of the labourer; and the more numerous the population, the less the prosperity of the labourer, other things being equal. Hence, when capital increases more rapidly than population, wages will be higher; and when population increases faster than capital

wages will be lower. The former of these conditions is evidently that most beneficial to the working class; and how any Trades' Union or any other body of men can by the mere aggregation of numbers, or the fulmination of edicts, accelerate so desirable a consummation, we are at a loss to imagine; for these are laws as far beyond the control of any man or number of men as the laws of gravitation or cohesion. Cold and heartless these laws may be designated, by the unthinking partisan of a vicious system of chicanery and fraud; but we can in justice no more quarrel with them than with any other of Nature's laws: it is our duty to study them, to trace out their workings, and, by an accurate knowledge of them, adopt their influences for our own good and the amelioration of the sad lot of the sons of toil, upon whom presses so heavily the consequences of our first parents' fault, "By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread."

We have seen that Trades' Unions are unjust, because they infringe the rights of labour by depriving man of his free will, his personal liberty, and his right to sell his labour wherever he pleases, when he pleases, and to whom he pleases; that they are false in principle, and pernicious in their operations; that they are opposed to the laws of nature, and therefore weak, futile, and inoperative for good; that they repress ability, cramp energy, annihilate industry, and starve the indifferent workman. Space precludes our proceeding to illustrate their bearings upon the social life of the nation, their political inconsistencies, their contrariety to sound justice and true morals; these topics we must reserve for future occasions. Meanwhile, we hope to have done some good service to the cause of those least able to save themselves from the tender mercies (!) of enemies who, wearing the mask of friends, lead their too successful dupes into the strange belief that the operations of Trades' Unions are, or can be, beneficial to the working classes. L'OUVRIER.

The Essayist.

THE OBJECTS AIMED AT IN A DISCUSSION SOCIETY. DISCUSSION Societies are co-operative associations, in which each member is expected to give his quota of thought if he can,-of silence, if silence be better than his thought. They are visible expressions of the law of mutual self,-not media for personal display. In them, the miserable vanity of those who pretend only to be teachers is out of place; whilst it is equally wrong, though not offensively so, to appear only as the taught. Those who care only to improve themselves scarcely comprehend their duty; whilst those who aspire solely to improve others are wanting in that salutary modesty which it is well ever to cherish with respect to our own knowledge. There are no limits to the increase of wisdom