says in an account he has written of its operation,
was "oligarchical, with a dash of
despotism." This is very often the case in small
country towns and villages, where working men,
conscious of their want of experience in business
affairs, are glad to place themselves under
the guidance of the local clergyman or squire.
In some places, specific religious opinions are
required as an indispensable condition of
membership. But in others, the artisans and
labourers have taken the matter into their own
hands with admirable effect. A remarkable
instance of this is presented by the club recently
inaugurated and now flourishing at Wednesbury,
a little town in the iron manufacturing districts
of Staffordshire. The institution was first
proposed at the commencement of last year; but
the gentlemen who made the suggestion, or who
promised to patronise it, slumbered over the
work, and the mechanics, getting tired of
waiting, set their shoulders to the wheel, rented a
house on their own responsibility, furnished it
with everything necessary for such an undertaking,
and obtained so many members that,
although the rooms were only opened on the
30th of May, 1863, the club has for some
months past been entirely self-supporting, with
no other receipts than the subscriptions of its
members and the sale of provisions within its
walls. The subscriptions are twopence a week
and two shillings a quarter, the honorary members
giving a yearly donation of a guinea. The
number of members at the commencement was
a hundred, but they increased so rapidly that it
was soon found necessary to take larger and
better premises, and the club now rents the old
Town Hall at forty-five pounds per annum.
Judging from the information we possess, we
should say that a more perfect specimen of
the genuine Working Men's Club cannot be
found anywhere. The committee and all the
governing officers belong to the industrial
classes; members and subscriptions are
canvassed for every Monday morning at the
factories, and the rent of the building is guaranteed
by the men themselves. In other places such
undertakings have generally been set going by
some benevolent lady or gentleman of fortune,
and then handed over to the management of the
members, subject to a few general conditions.
This is the case at the village of Charlton
Marshall, Dorsetshire, where Mr. Horlock Bastard
inaugurated an institution for labourers,
contributed largely to the funds, and presently left the
men to govern themselves as they thought fit,
though with certain provisoes, which are to be
permanently observed. The patron of the newly-
formed club at Eastbourne (Mr. William Leaf)
stipulates that all intoxicating drinks, betting,
gambling, profanity, and dancing—a rather
strange assortment of offences—shall be strictly
prohibited, and that the lecture-room shall be
used for the advocacy of total abstinence from
intoxicating drinks two evenings in each week.
An attempt was made to introduce greater freedom
into the constitution of the club, but it
failed. The managing committee of this
institution is partly composed of the resident gentry.
It is curious to see how in these cases the peculiar
fancies and antipathies of the patron creep
out, with that craving which many excellent
people display for tying down all those over
whom they have any influence to their own
standard of right and wrong, even in matters
which are generally allowed to he debatable.
One gentleman looks upon indulgence in
fermented liquors as the root of all evil; so drinking
is not allowed on the premises. Another
thinks smoking the most deleterious of mortal
habits, and therefore tobacco is as strictly
prohibited as if James the First were the guardian
genius. Mr. Bastard sets his face against both
indulgences, and the labourers of Charlton
Marshall must go for their pint and their pipe
elsewhere. This is surely an error. A club so
founded is based on the mere whims of an
individual, and cannot successfully address
human nature in the general, or hope to last after the
novelty has worn out. To endeavour thus to
erect one man's practice into a rigid law for others is
as benevolently arbitrary as the conduct of that
gentleman in an eating-house who, seeing a
stranger disposing of his steak without mustard,
and having ineffectually offered the condiment
two or three times, with a remark that it was
usual to accompany all forms of beef with that
relish, at length roared out, as he dashed the
mustard-pot down before the astonished diner,
"Hang it, sir, you shall eat mustard with steak!"

The only way to avoid this species of dictation
(most kindly in its motive, and often
exercised by admirable men, but very
injudicious as it seems to us) is for the working
classes to establish their own clubs, and keep
the management of them in their own hands.
In large towns, artisans may do all that is
necessary for themselves, if they only resolve to
work in a spirit of cheerful brotherhood, and
to abstain from personal rivalry and exaggerated
self-assertion. It must be admitted that in one
or two instances they have failed, owing to a
want of the habits of cohesion and mutual
concession—a conspicuous fault of the working
classes, and the cause of much of their weakness.
A club established at Leeds was originally
managed by a committee of its own members;
but dissensions ensued, and the wealthy and
benevolent founder of the institution felt it
advisable to take the government into his own
hands. In many instances, however, these
clubs are really under the control of working
men, and are going on successfully. The great
difficulty is at the outset; for an undertaking of
this kind cannot be initiated without the
expenditure of a rather large sum of money.

To enable humble people to get over this
first stumbling-block, a body was established in
the autumn of 1862, under the designation of
the Working Men's Club and Institute Union,
of which the president is no less a man than
Lord Brougham, with a long list of notable
persons for the vice-presidents. The active
soul of this association (which has its offices at
150, Strand) is the secretary, the Rev. Mr.