ent into another hemisphere, since
his life would not be worth a straw, if he told the truth about the
Trades in this one. His terms were accepted, and then he made some
tremendous revelations and, with these in his possession, Holdfast wrote
leader upon leader, to prove that the Unions must have been guilty of
every Trade outrage that had taken place for years in the district; but
adroitly concealing that he had positive information.

Grotait replied incautiously, and got worsted before the public. The
ablest men, if not writers, are unwise to fence writers.

Holdfast received phonetic letters threatening his life: he acknowledged
them in his journal and invited the writers to call.

He loaded a revolver and went on writing the leaders with a finger on
the trigger. CALIFORNIA! Oh, dear, no: the very center of England.

Ransome co-operated with him and collected further evidence, and then
Holdfast communicated privately with a portion of the London press, and
begged them to assist him to obtain a Royal commission of inquiry, in
which case he pledged himself to prove that a whole string of murders
and outrages had been ordered and paid for by the very Unions which had
publicly repudiated them in eloquent terms, and been believed.

The London press took this up; two or three members of the House of
Commons, wild, eccentric men, who would not betray their country to
secure their re-election to some dirty borough, sided with outraged law;
and by these united efforts a Commission was obtained. The Commission
sat, and, being conducted with rare skill and determination, squeezed
out of an incredible mass of perjury some terrible truths, whose
discovery drew eloquent leaders from the journals; these filled simple
men, who love their country, with a hope that the Government of this
nation would shake off its lethargy, and take stringent measures to
defend the liberty of the subject against so cruel and cowardly a
conspiracy, and to deprive the workmen, in their differences with the
masters, of an unfair and sanguinary weapon, which the masters could
use, but never have as YET; and, by using which, the workmen do
themselves no lasting good, and, indeed, have driven whole trades and
much capital out of the oppressed districts, to their own great loss.

That hope, though not extinct, is fainter now than it was. Matters seem
going all the other way. An honest, independent man, who did honor to
the senate, has lost his seat sole