"There, that 'll do," stopped Trounce," in my hearing. Instead o' this flying in the face o' yer betters, you should be humbly thankful for two more hours a day to purge yourselves free o' wickedniss."

"With a daily loaf the less, eh?" winked Shuttle, “but we can't afford to lose flesh, Mr. Trounce, nor honest bread, nor let the masters' capital lie still, nor-"

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Quite enough, quite enough," wagged mighty beadledom, "I'se not a' come here to speak upon our glorious Consti-too-shon, but to tell you, Richard Lackbread, that your four children can't come to school o' nixt Sunday unless you put 'em in good frocks and shoes, for decency's a Kris-tin dooty, par-tik-lar when one hasn't to walk a mile to the shoe shop."

"And who robbed children of their work and their wages, eh?" asked Shuttle.

"Oh! dear, dear," groaned Trounce, "a riglar Slaughter o' the Innocents, did our blessed Con-sti-too-shon let yer. Why my blessed faith is, you'd eat your own children and pick their bones too, if the wisdom o' the Parliament didn't stop yer. No! not even spare 'em a 'our for the kat-a-kism afore it."

"What has made parents unfeeling," echoed Richard, “eating their own flesh as you say?-why, penury and ignorance. Let there be bread enough, let there be knowledge enough, and Nature and God are bountiful enough with glorious humanity. But when you brutify the parent, you crush the child."

"Fudge," said beadledom, "that's nothing to do o' this pint o' Sunday shoes and frocks."

"Well, as you insist on bleeding a post," helped Shuttle, “perhaps you'll be a Samaritan for once, and give

"He-m! he-m!" coughed the beadle, "public and private dooties is different things, and charity begins at home and not abroad. Well, I see I can't conwince, so I'll report to the westry, he-m!

With a skin less tense, this Frog walked off, O Phædrus, as many human frogs do at the name of charity, and then the business of the night proceeding, it was learnt, that Lord Honeysip, their representative, was about to proceed to London on the morrow to vote for the bill.

"Now, Sammy," said Shuttle, bringing Sam forward to the table, and informing the assembly that he was Lord Honeysip's footman, "how would your master like Parlimint to send him

to bed at one hour, and cat at another, and read at another, and"

"Lord!" hastened Sam, whose oratory had never been heard beyond a kitchen before, "when he's cramming for a speech, as Popp our butler says, he 's at his books eighteen hours at a time; and of course if you passed an Act for him to read only twelve, on course he'd break down o' the first sentence of his speech, and that Popp let out one night to the cook and me, when we've got a little champagne atween us, and was"

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Well," said Shuttle, "as a man can thus see the necessities of time towards speechifying, we may convince him of the necessities of time from Capital and Bread, and so I propose to this meeting that a deputation, headed by Richard Lackbread, wait upon Lord Honeysip to-morrow to remonstrate upon the purpose of his intended vote."-This proposition was unanimously agreed to.

"Now, friends," said Shuttle, when the petition was duly signed and the business of the night nearly concluded, "don't let this little cry of mercy deafen you to the right; it is but a penny whistle, which no man should listen to when it's to put a bond upon his sinews when young to bring him to the workhouse when old. Men, let labour be free, and all the rest 'll come. Now, young Fillover, we 've learnt enough o' good from our magazines and newspapers, to have a liking for better things, and we can't have 'em without good wages. Good wages and prosperity of the country go together. Now I ask one question of you Bob, which is the truest principle of human nature ?-Twelve hours' work, good wages, the six mahogany chairs, and-?"

"Maria and the twelve hours' work," answered Bob cheerfully, "rather than not have her; and with the hope o' getting on a bit in the world, I'd work twenty."

"You're right," said Spindlegold, a capitalist, who had watched the whole of these proceedings with much earnestness. "In crying for restriction, you forget our capital and machinery; a steam engine isn't like an old woman's spinning wheel, to be twirled only at the cry of every landlady and country squire. Wait, let us get cheap bread, and commerce free; let us have the market of the world for our woollens and our cottons ; let us increase the mighty power of every loom by new inventions, and without one glut, or single pound of raw material wrought up beyond the means of its disposal, we shall be able to give you more remunerative wages for eight hours' labour than for the twelve you work now. When

we can do this, when we can, at the end of your eight hours, place a new army of workers over mule and spindle, then this great question of Labour and Time, as connected with Rest, will be seen in its right view; till then, any Restriction Act is but strapping monopoly like a sloth upon your shoulders."

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Right, sir," cried Shuttle, lifting up his rusty coat collar with as much dignity as if it were a robe of ermine. "If we be able to make Lord Honeysip think in this way, then 'll be one vote the less. And so good luck be with us!"

"

The events of this night, after the meeting, were of divers kinds: First, a tremendous curtain lecture from Mrs. Shuttle, upon the sins of Dil-ligations," which Shuttle, from habit, bore in the fashion that a cow does a thunder storm-by turning his back upon it; next, the delivering of certain banns of marriage to the clerk of the parish; next, the schoolmistress's note, dictated by Trounce, to reprove frockless pauperism; and last, not least, Sam's shaken faith of the wisdom of aristocracy (in spite of its growth under the benign influence of nourishing chickens and Maderia), and his mighty victory over Popp the butler on the subject of Committee business, and the consequent vow in the heart of the applauding cook to treat him with the next spare jelly.

My Lord Honeysip (forewarned by Sam) was found by the threadbare-coated deputation, headed by Lackbread and Shuttle, next morning in his study, weighing with nicety (my lord was a just man) that humble, excessively humble thing, called poor man's time, against the solemn wisdom and consequent will of heaven-born, hereditary legislators.

My lord heard Lackbread's introductory statement through, with much suavity.

"One question you will pardon," said Lackbread. "Suppose we working people were to send a bill to Parliament for taking a sixth of your property "

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But, but," hurriedly said Lord Honeysip, "the estate is mine by the law of the land, and the gift of the king.

"And our estate, called Time, my lord, is one of the laws of Nature, and the glorious gift of God."

"You take the matter too seriously," smiled his lordship; "my intended vote arises from feelings most charitable. I do assure you, I'm wishing you to have rest, games, instruction, religious and moral, and "

"Give us bread, my lord, first, and then all these things will

follow easily. But it is of no use talking to a hungry man and his starving children; I say hungry, because if by this bill you take away a sixth of our wages, and set fast a sixth of masters' capital, we shall come to the scanty loaf. Now, suppose you lost a sixth of your money, a sixth of your estate, a sixth of your church advowsons, a

"I've certainly not looked at the question in this light. the bill itself, I thought all operatives were in favour of it."

As to

"A few who don't see far. Now, my lord, I sincerely believe 'your philanthropy in this matter, but it is as impossible for a rich man to know the poor man's value of Time, as it is for the born blind to sec. This is where the harm is in the rich legislating for the poor; it's Fiction playing a mistaken game for Truth. Keep to the few broad principles, and leave us to the development of the general rights of the community. The people wish to get rid of monopoly in every form; no Restriction Bills under the guise of charity, we've had enough of them. Then when we shall have sufficient wages to satisfy propensive necessities, and to raise us beyond grinding want, when we can see our children fed and clothed, our hearths cheerful, then we shall work less and rest more, for Nature seeks repose. When we shall through better education perceive the mighty agency and worth of machinery, when we shall have newer Arkwrights, newer Hargraves, newer Lees, newer Watts, then we shall begin to see clearer the now involved question of Rest; which is that steam, and perhaps some mightier agent yet undiscovered, shall be the worker and the willing slave, the hewer of wood, the drawer of water,-leaving man to the mightier labours of direction and progress. This is the question, but the Ten Hours' bill is no step towards it." "You speak powerfully, Mr. Lackbread; and I certainly will see the masters before I leave the town."

"Think a bit, my lord, added Shuttle, "words ain't like thought for the matter o' that. The best thing is to know that babies' food, and babies' frocks, and babies' shoes, are scarce enough already, and if the father's wages

I really will consider the matter

"If you do, my lord, it 'll be the first time the Lackbreads of the earth have persuaded the Honeysips of a truth." So, after another promise, and a generous reception of the petition, my lord bowed the deputation from the room.

"Well!" said Sam, who came popping into the hall from a

side door, "I've had my ear to the key-hole all the time, and you may jist tell naut that the blessed aristocracy, in spite o' chickens and Maderia, was dead-beat by plain bread-eaters, and so I'm no longer elewated by that side o' the question."

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Well, Sam," added Shuttle, "it isn't the first time that an ear to a key-hole has been persuaded of strange truths. Stick to your opinions, my boy, and recollect that the shuttle and the loom, the spade and the hammer, the press and the have yet to show Labour and Time to be things worthier of honour than all the milk and honey in the whole aristocratic land of unworking Goshen. This is my verdict, Sammy."

pen,

E. M.

THE ADVANCE OF THE MASSES.

THE difficulty of conceiving truths or things as possible which contradict established experiences, though such even be acknowledged the experience of error, is powerful in proportion to the ignorance of the mind the conception affects. Where once however you have educated this single mind, or the aggregated minds of a community, you have increased the power of comprehension, and virtually laid those sequences of truth, which evolve and show themselves not to be dependent on the various contingencies of time, but upon the light of nature which is eternal; for it is a natural law of truth to generalize and simplify itself, whether in connection with ethics, jurisprudence, government, or the more exact sciences; in this simplification following out the harmony of nature, whilst the shallow conceptions of ignorance particularize only to be more steadfast in error, and more obstinate in dogma.

Towards this simplified generalization of causes, it appears to us the social organism of progressive civilization tends. A harmony of cause is in action, operating on the leading public mind, and will operate universally when education has enlarged the extent of comprehension; for, passing by the once all-powerful particulars of a dogma or a party-cry, the foremost minds who lead society see only those mighty points of generalization which tend to the perfecting legitimate truth, or the eliciting some social phenomenon of advance. No point has shown this more clearly than the great measure of the corn laws; for granting that some few of its advo