even there I think you are wrong. You may
rely upon it, that the best regulated families
of Lions and Lionesses don't dine every
day punctually at the same hour, in their
natural state, and don't always keep the same
kind and quantity of meat in the larder.
However, I will readily waive that question
of board, if you will only abandon the other.

The time of the sitting being out, our
friend takes his palette from his thumb, lays
it aside with his brush, ceases to address the
Zoological Society, and releases the Bulldog
and myself. Having occasion to look closely
at the Bulldog's chest, he turns that model
over as if he were made of clay (if I were to
touch him with my little finger he would pin
me instantly), and examines him without the
smallest regard to his personal wishes or
convenience. The Bulldog, having humbly
submitted, is shown to the door.

"Eleven precisely, to-morrow," says our
friend, "or it will be the worse for you."
The Bulldog respectfully slouches out. Looking
out of the window, I presently see him
going across the garden, accompanied by a
particularly ill-looking proprietor with a
black eye—my prototype I presume—again
a ferocious and audacious Bulldog, who will
evidently kill some other dog before he gets
home.

THE MANCHESTER STRIKE.

THERE can be no doubt that the judgment
to be formed upon a strike among the
operatives in a great factory district, if it is to be
worth anything, must be based upon a more
difficult chain of reasoning than usually goes
to the consideration of irregularities in the
appointed course of trade. Perfectly free
competition regulates all prices, it is said;
and, in most callings, regulates with certainty
the price of labour. A self-adjusting power
is introduced by it into the usual machinery
of commerce. So far as regards labour, the
working of it is that, as a rule, every man
goes where he can get most value for such
work as he can best perform; and every
man who wants labour will, to the extent his
capital allows, vie with his neighbours in
attempting to secure to his service the best
labour he can meet with of the sort he
wants. That is the ordinary course of trade.
Only the true price stands, and that price
being the lowest by which men of average
capabilities find that they can live, a poor
trade entails secret hardships; middling
trade a bare subsistence; and none but
a very brisk trade affords chance of wealth.
So it is with the price of skilled labour;
but, with the price of unskilled labour, it
is scarcely so. In each class of men
possessing special capabilities, there is a given
number only, and the aim of each of
their employers is to do what he can
towards securing for himself, out of that
number, the best. For the absolutely
unskilled, there can be no competition when a
mass of the population, ignorant and in
sore need, is pressing forward to receive a
dole of such work as it can perform; or, if
there be a competition, it is of an inverse
kind—a struggle among thousands for the
food of hundreds; each striving by the most
desperate offer of cheap labour—sometimes
even an hour's work for a farthing—to secure
a portion of the necessary subsistence.

Skilled labour is, with but few exceptions,
subject to an inevitable law, with which
employer and employed alike must be content
to bring their operations into harmony. But,
with unskilled labour, the compulsion set on
the employer is in no proportion to that
set on the employed. Wages in that case
are not regulated by a just regard to the
fair relations between capital and labour; the
question among competitors being not who
shall, by paying most, attract the most
efficient class of servants, and secure the heartiest
assistance; but who shall, by paying least,
take most advantage of the necessity of people
who are struggling for the chance of only a
few crumbs of the bread of independence. It
thus becomes notorious enough how it is that
cheap articles are produced out of the
lifeblood of our fellow-creatures. The evil
can only be corrected now, by the direct
interference of our consciences. Unwholesomely
cheap production is a perversion of
the common law of trade which will in
course of time be blotted out by the advance
of education; and there can never be in this
country a glut of intelligence and skill,
although we may soon have a glut of
ignorance. Parallel with the advance of mind,
there will run the advance of mind-work,
and the diffusion of a right sense of its value
will be increased.

Thus it will be seen, that while we believe
with all our hearts in the wholesomeness of
the great principle of free competition—
regard nothing as so really helpful to the
labourer, so sure to beget healthy trade and
bring out all the powers of the men engaged
in it—we do see that there is in society one
class, and that a large one, upon which, when
men look, they may believe that competition
is an evil. The truth is, that the existence of
that class, so helpless and so much neglected,
is the evil to remove; but while it remains—
as wholesome meat may kill a man with a
disease upon him—there is an unsound body
hurt by it, requiring, O political economist!
spoon-meat and medicine, not the substantial
bread and beef which doubtless theory can
prove and experience affirm, to be the best of
nourishment for human bodies. There are
fevers among bodies politic as among bodies
corporal, and we are disposed to think that
half the difficulties opposed to a distinct and
general perception of the truths which our
economists have ascertained, depend upon
the fact that they have not yet advanced—so
to speak—from a just theory of nutrition to