AND ON THE CONTINENT.

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tives that bath of blood oil “ Peterloo ” Field, where the yeomanryof Cheshire had charged the cotton operatives of Manchester .

To my question—What, then, had been the meaning ofChartism ?—the aged man answered: A Labour party in Parlia-ment, State rule by the general vote, in order to evolve from thelaw against the poor a law for the poor. With Chartism , anilafter this had stepped above its height as a political movement,there name a time of larger and distressing strikes, lie remem-bered especially the Christmas month of 1812, and the great strikeat Preston in 1853, which had lasted 10 weeks, and for which,from Blackburn alone, £700 per week had been contributed. Thestrikes had brought in their train formidable distress and greatbitterness. There were at that time no trade unions, and thosestrikes had been more eruptions of the heart than the result ofthought.

Since then a tremendous reversal had taken place. The youngpeople we saw joined together around us for the joyful holiday—those girls, of which every one spent £3 and more during theholidays, those youths, who let out in football and other sportsthe surplus of their muscular energy—shook their heads in un-belief if he told them that never a. thought of holiday and sporthad entered into the imagination of their grandparents. Thechange to a ten-hours and nine-hours day’s labour instead ofthirteen hours; subsistence wages, co-operative societies, tradeunions, and political freedom, in place of the suppression of thelabour movements, mar ked the progress. “ But if you wish to seethe true sign of this change,” continued the grey-haired veteran,witli beaming eye, “ it lies before you on the table, the strengthcf Lancashire, ” as he raised with triumphant bearing a piece ofwheaten bread. Cobden was a sacred being to the old man. “ Wefought the battle, anil we have won.” With these words heclosed his story.

Very interesting was the opposition which he received on thepart of the clergyman in his admiration of Cobden, as well as inhis defence of trade unions. This gentleman, like many of hisclass, described himself as a Socialist , and attacked the tradeunions as conservative institutions. They retarded progress andobscured that ideal which mankind, and especially the Christian,has to strive for—to help forward the kingdom of righteousness onearth ; to build up on earth a representation of the heavenly Sion;