make my way out as I best could before the
close of the proceedings, none of the people
whom I put to inconvenience showed the least
impatience; all helped me, and all cheerfully
acknowledged my word of apology as I passed.
It is very probable, notwithstanding, that
they may have supposed from my being there
at all—I and my companion were the only
persons present, not of their own order—that
I was there to carry what I heard and saw
to the opposite side; indeed one speaker
seemed to intimate as much.

On the Monday at noon, I returned to this
cockpit, to see the people paid. It was then about
half filled, principally with girls and women.
They were all seated, waiting, with nothing to
occupy fheir attention; and were just in that
state when the unexpected appearance of a
stranger differently dressed from themselves,
and with his own individual peculiarities of
course, might, without offence, have had
something droll in it even to more polite
assemblies. But I stood there, looking on,
as free from remark, as if I had come to
be paid with the rest. In the place which
the secretary had occupied yesterday, stood a
dirty little common table, covered with five-
penny piles of halfpence. Before the paying
began, I wondered who was going to receive
these very small sums; but when it did begin,
the mystery was soon cleared up. Each of
these piles was the change for sixpence,
deducting a penny. All who were paid, in filing
round the building to prevent confusion, had
to pass this table on the way out; and the
greater part of the unmarried girls stopped
here, to change each a sixpence, and subscribe
her weekly penny in aid of the people on
strike who had families. A very large
majority of these girls and women were
comfortably dressed in all respects, clean,
wholesome and pleasant-looking. There was a
prevalent neatness and cheerfulness, and an
almost ludicrous absence of anything like
sullen discontent.

Exactly the same appearances were
observable on the same day, at a not numerously
attended open air meeting in " Chadwick's
Orchard"—which blossoms in nothing but red
bricks. Here, the chairman of yesterday
presided in a cart, from which speeches were
delivered. The proceedings commenced with
the following sufficiently general and discursive
hymn, given out by a workman from
Burnley, and sung in long metre by the
whole audience:

"Assembled beneath thy broad blue sky,
To thee, O God, thy children cry.
Thy needy creatures on Thee call,
For thou art great and good to all.

"Thy bounty smiles on every side.
And no good thing hast thou denied;
But men of wealth and men of power,
Like locusts all our gifts devour.

"Awake, ye sons of toil! nor sleep
While millions starve, while millions weep;
Demand your rights; let tyrants see
you are resolved that you'll be free."

Mr. Hollins's Sovereign Mill was open
all this time. It is a very beautiful mill,
containing a large amount of valuable
machinery, to which some recent ingenious
improvements have been added. Four
hundred people could find employment in it;
there were eighty-five at work, of whom
five had " come in" that morning. They
looked, among the vast array of motionless
power-looms, like a few remaining
leaves in a wintry forest. They were
protected by the police (very prudently not
obtruded on the scenes I have described), and
were stared at every day when they came
out, by a crowd which had never been large
in reference to the numbers on strike, and
had diminished to a score or two. One
policeman at the door sufficed to keep order
then. These eighty-five were people of
exceedingly decent appearance, chiefly
women, and were evidently not in the least
uneasy for themselves. I heard of one
girl among them, and only one, who
had been hustled and struck in a dark
street.

In any aspect in which it can be viewed,
this strike and lock-out is a deplorable calamity.
In its waste of time, in its waste of a
great people's energy, in its waste of wages,
in its waste of wealth that seeks to be
employed, in its encroachment on the means of
many thousands who are labouring from day
to day, in the gulf of separation it hourly
deepens between those whose interests must
be understood to be identical or must be de-
stroyed, it is a great national afiiiction. But,
at this pass, anger is of no use, starving out
is of no use—for what will that do, five years
hence, but overshadow all the mills in
England with the growth of a bitter
remembrance? —political economy is a mere skeleton
unless it has a little human covering and
filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and
a little human warmth in it. Gentlemen are
found, in great manufacturing towns, ready
enough to extol imbecile mediation with
dangerous madmen abroad; can none of them
be brought to think of authorised mediation
and explanation at home? I do not suppose
that such a knotted difficulty as this, is to be
at all untangled by a morning-party in the
Adelphi; but I would entreat both sides now
so miserably opposed, to consider whether
there are no men in England above suspicion,
to whom they might refer the matters in
dispute, with a perfect confidence above all
things in the desire of those men to act justly,
and in their sincere attachment to their
countrymen of every rank and to their country.
Masters right, or men right; masters wrong,
or men wrong; both right, or both wrong;
there is certain ruin to both in the continuance
or frequent revival of this breach. And
from the ever-widening circle of their