to the gentleman who stands above him in rank
and education. It is a notorious fact, that
various bodies and individuals make large
fortunes by professing to minister to the
necessities, the conveniences, and the amusement
of the respectable classes; and it is
equally indisputable that the promises which
these professions imply, are, in the great
majority of cases, not fairly performed.
When we are impudently cheated of our fair
demands in religious or in political matters,
what do we do in the last resort? We right
ourselves by a combination—or, in plainer
English, we strike. On the other hand, when
we are cheated in social matters, what do we
do? We grumble, and submit. For the
sake of our faith, or for the sake of our
freedom (to borrow an illustration from the
anecdote at the head of this paper), we are
bravely ready to do without our fish. For
the sake of our every-day necessities,
comforts, and conveniences, we are none of us
individually ready to sacrifice to the common
cause so much as a single shrimp.

Let me make my meaning clearer by a few
examples. Take an example, first, of an
abuse, in the rectifying of which the interests
of all our lives and limbs are concerned—
take the case of the obstinate refusal of
Railway Directors to give us a means of
communication, in case of accidents, between the
passengers and the engine-driver. Does any
man, in his senses, believe that the granting
of this just demand will be procured by any
of the means which have hitherto been tried
for enforcing it? A few months since, a
railway carriage full of people was on fire.
Everyone of the passengers would have been
burnt alive, if a few labourers had not
happened to be working, on that particular day,
at a particular part of the line. This frightfully
narrow escape from the most horrible of
deaths, was published in letters to the Times.
The vital necessity of a communication
between the passengers and the guard was
urged by the very men who had been all but
killed for want of it. The same safeguard
has been petitioned for to Parliament. And
what good has come of taking this course?
What good ever does come of shifting
responsibilities, with which each man of us is
individually concerned, on the shoulders of
others? Have our letters to the Times—has
our Imperial Parliament—got us what we so
urgently want? On this very day, thousands
and thousands of people will be travelling,
with nothing but a screen of wood and cloth
between them and a fire which is rushing
through the air at the rate of from five-and-
twenty to sixty miles an hour.

What, then, in this case, is to get us our
fair demand? I answer, quite seriously,
nothing will get it, at once, but a Strike
on the part of the travelling public. Let
us combine to ruin the passenger-traffic;
and, in three months' time, the Directors
will be forced to give us what we
want. You, who read this, and laugh at
it, tell me how many times, in the course of
the year, you travel on business which it is
absolutely impossible to put off, and how
many times you travel for your own convenience
and amusement, which a temporary self-
sacrifice might well enable you to postpone?
If you want fair protection for your life, will
you put off attending to your own interests
—for three months—to get it? YOU are the
obstacle—not the difficulties of organising the
Strike. We are already subdivided, by our
professions, into distinct classes. Let us have
our consulting representatives of each class;
our delegates acting under them, with a
certain round of streets to visit; our public
meeting, when the delegates have made us
acquainted with the matter in hand; our
signed engagement which it is a point of
honour not to break—and the thing is done.
For three months we all engage to sacrifice
our individual convenience and pleasure, to
serve the common object of securing our own
safety; and to travel only in cases in which
the most serious interests are concerned. Is
this such a very Utopian idea? Is it so
absolutely impossible to organise ourselves in
the manner just suggested? The tax-
gatherer successfully subdivides us, reckons
us up, disciplines us, holds us, by
thousands and thousands at a time, in the
hollow of his hand, opens our
multitudinous pockets, as if they were the
pockets of one man. Does anybody tell me
that what the tax-gatherer can do for us, we
cannot, at a pinch, do for ourselves ? If I
wear a fustian jacket I can knock off work, by
previous arrangement and combination, in
three or four counties at once, on one given day,
at one given hour. But if I am a clergyman, a
doctor, a barrister, I cannot knock off travelling
in the same way—no, not although the
interests of my life depend on it. In the
one case—with Poverty and Hunger against
me—I can sacrifice myself at the word of
command. In the other case, with nothing
to dread but the temporary loss of some
country pleasure, or a temporary delay in
seeing the sights of London, I become utterly
incapable of making my individual sacrifice
for the public benefit: I let men, whose
pockets I am filling, endanger my life with
impunity; and, when I escape being roasted
alive, I think I have done my duty if I
pester the Editor of the Times with letters,
helplessly entreating him to save me the
trouble of redressing my own grievances and
protecting my own life.

Take another case. The other day, I met
my friend Smoulder. He was grumbling,
just as tens of thousands of other Englishmen
of his class grumble; the subject, this
time, being the disgracefully uncomfortable
condition of the metropolitan omnibuses.

"Here is a great Company," says Smoulder,
"which buys up all the London omnibuses;
which starts with the most magnificent promises