oke to its
work--to an invocation to the Eternal Maker to bless them in their day's
labour, and help them to do it well. Now, all England--shopkeepers,
workmen, all manner of competing labourers--awaken as with an unspoken
but heartfelt prayer to Beelzebub,--'Oh, help us, thou great Lord of
Shoddy, Adulteration, and Malfeasance, to do our work with the maximum
of sluriness, swiftness, profit, and mendacity, for the devil's sake.
Amen.'"

Fortunately, there is not a great deal of truth in this letter, nor in
the "heartfelt prayer" to Shoddy. The Right Hon. Mr. Forster ought to
know something of labour and capital, and at a recent meeting of the
Cobden Club he stated that "they were often told that they had a war
within their borders between labour and capital; but as an employer of
labour ever since he came to manhood, he would only say that he never
knew a time in which employer and employed were on better terms."

The late Sir Francis Crossley observed that there was a good deal of
unreasonable feeling abroad. It was held by some that it was wrong for
working men to sell their labour at the best price; but it must be
remembered that their labour was the only thing they had to sell; and
the best thing to do was to leave those matters to take their natural
course. It was a great mistake, on the part of employers, to suppose
that the lowest-priced labour was always the cheapest. If there was not
so much desire to run down the price of labour, and the masters showed a
more conciliatory spirit, there would be fewer strikes and outrages.

"What a contrast between now and say only a hundred years ago!"
Certainly there is a very great contrast. England was not a
manufacturing country a hundred years ago. We imported nearly
everything, except corn, wool, and flax. We imported the greatest part
of our iron from Spain, Sweden, Germany, and Russia. We imported our
pottery from Holland, our hats from Flanders, our silk from France, our
cloth and carpets from Belgium. Our cotton manufactures, our woollen and
flax manufactures, our machine manufactures, could scarcely be said to
exist. Coal could scarcely be had, for the coal-pits could not be kept
clear of water.

A hundred years ago, we could not build a steam-engine; we could
scarcely build a bridge. Look at the churches built a hundred years ago,
and behold the condition of our architecture. A hundred years ago, we
had fallen to almost the lowest condition as a nation. We had