susceptible of indefinite extension. From local association to national federation is but a single stage, and from thence to alliance with foreign federations is but another. Already preparations for both movements are being made, and every step taken in either direction will plainly be so much ground gained. With such capacities, present and prospective, trades' unions are only too certain to have an important part to play in the drama of the immediate future, and upon their mode of acting must greatly depend the general character of the performance. Heaven forbid, then, that they should go through their part as ill as some alarmists expect. One thing pretty certain, with respect to the coming age, is, that it will be either very much better or very much worse than any that has for centuries preceded it; and if the first of these alternatives be, on the whole, the more probable of the two, it is chiefly the growing good sense and good feeling of the classes which trades' unions represent and guide, and whose prevailing sentiment reacts in turn upon trades' unions, that make it For my own part, making a virtue of necessity, I am content to rely on the progress, moral and intellectual, of the working classes, inasmuch as, now that they have been invested with a preponderance of political power, there will, whenever they may choose to exercise their new privileges, be little else to rely upon. But those who, as I am about to do, stand forward in behalf of unionism, need not rest its defence on its probabilities of future improvement. I am myself disposed to go a good deal farther. Even in its present unregenerate state, I am prepared to maintain that its influence is much more beneficent than pernicious. I assert, confidently, that its principle is sound and just; that most, nay, that all, of its objects are perfectly legitimate, and that though, in the pursuit of those objects, means have often been resorted to which cannot be too vehemently reprobated, there is at the disposal of trades' unions a sufficiency of perfectly legitimate means to allow of their accomplishing as much of their ends as even in the interests of labour it is desirable should be accomplished. So I say boldly, and in the eyes of those readers whose patience holds out through the next book, I hope to be able to justify my boldness. |