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Untitled Article
editor ' s head can hold so much / How au fait he is at all things —• now the formation of a cabinet , anon the balance . of power , then the capacity of people ' s heads , and then again on the coverings thereof . Ergo , derives he the inference , a piece of hard felt is better and more convenient than a piece of soft cloth . The Turks and Greeks , it is true , think otherwise , like most of their Eastern neighbours , but then they
are all—scaramouches . And now a word to ye , good friends , ye of the trades' unions and combinations . It is quite true what the editor of the Heading journal ' has told you out of Mr . Wade ' s book , viz . that no combination can by any direct process raise the standard of wages , but , nevertheless , heed him not ; you know as well as I do that his mock thunder breaks no bones , and it would be a most useless thing to bandy coarse words with him . He would beat you at that , notwithstanding he belongs to Brookes ' s club in St . James ' s Street , and you meet at indifferent public-houses . When he next abuses your combinations by way of a sop to the middling classes , just as Edward Gibbon \ Vakeneld tried to set the householders on the poor , quote to him the maxim of your fast friend , Jeremy Bentham , * Only by making the ruling few uneasy can the oppressed many hope for a particle of redress . '
At the name of Jeremy Bentham , he will look at you as the devil is said to look o ' er Lincoln . If he inquire what redress you need , tell him , ' the removal of the taxes on knowledge , which serve to keep you in ignorance of many causes of your misery ; the removal of the taxes on food , which tend to prevent people from giving you employment ; the removal of the taxes on industry , which tend to impede production ; the removal of the restrictions on representation , which
tend to keep power in the hands of the ruling few for their own sinister benefit ; and sundry other things which you will detail more at leisure . Tell him , moreover , that the agricultural people burned corn-stacks , because they had no better means of calling attention to their wants , as the Luddites before them broke up cotton machinery . Tell him , that that very burning of corn-stacks gave rise to the commission to inquire into the state of the poor , which has done more good than the
increase of bayonets by the Whigs did evil . Tell hiln , that if ye remain in quietude , no government will pay any attention to your evils , and therefore that ye will go on agitating , without caring very deeply , whether ye be right or wrong in your notions , as truth is sure ultimately to spring up from the discussion . Tell him , that he reckons without his host , if he thinks to bully ye into quietude , as though ye were bond slaves at the beck of his masters . Tell him ., that ye have
made common cause with your fellows throughout Europe ; and that your voices will be responded to by their echoes . If he threatens force and whips , and chains and prisons , and soldier dragooning , show him your hard hands , and tell him that the handle of a saw or plane feels very like the small of a musket-stock , that the eye which can
look straight along a board edge for a glued joint , can also take accurately the si ghts on a musket-barrel . Tell him , that whoever can handle a pitchfork will not be very awkward at the use of the pike or bayonet if need be ; and that the sweep of a scythe is not very dissimilar to the sweep of a broadsword . Tell him that printers' types make exceeding good langrage for artillery , and will make holes in
Untitled Article
Trade Unions . 86 &
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 863, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/59/
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