the system which makes a glut while the people are starving, and provides no better remedy than Bastiles and emigration, or than suspending production and diminishing wealth, while the people are in want, deserves not the countenance or support of any rational or saneminded human being. Over-population and over-production are not abstract, but relative questions. Population relates to the means of subsistence, and production to the wants of the people, and their ability to purchase. In the present state of things there is more produced in a given time, than those who have the means to purchase require for their own consumption; and more who require the commodities for consumption than have the means to purchase them. In plain language, the great body of the people require more commodities, but cannot buy them; and their remaining unsold causes the supply to exceed the demand, and, under the present system, is a pre-disposing cause in regulating the wages of labour downwards. In anything approaching to a natural or just state of society, the supply and demand would be regulated by the actual or real wants of the people. But when we have a superabundance of commodities on one hand, and a starving people on the other— when wages are reduced, because the supply exceeds, not the natural demand, but the purse -when, because the people have not the pecuniary means to purchase and supply their wants, a portion of the little means they have is taken from them by further reductions, --then one reduction clearly becomes the cause of another; but the primary cause is the error in the system of distribution. "As in nature, so in commerce, there are three mighty links in the immutable chain— production, distribution, and consumption. The former and the latter are in good working condition, but the distributive link is defective, and incapable of performing its proper functions, which is, to bind the car of consumption firmly to the engine of production, in order to keep these two powers properly balanced, until the wants of the whole people are fully supplied. But while we are continually inventing, constructing, and improving machinery to increase production on one hand, and display a niggardliness in the distribution of the commodities on the other, the supply must exceed the demand, competition will most assuredly diminish the wages of labour, and thus make the difference between the supply and the demand greater." The whole argument of Mr. Emery's pamphlet should be read, to be properly estimated. He is a young man of no ordinary powers of mind; and I am much mistaken in my estimate of him, or he will yet produce much to correct some unfounded theories, and to aid in ameliorating the condition of his order. I select the following sentences-though they are not consecutive in the pamphlet-in lieu of abridging Mr. E.'s argument : “In a tract, published by the Messrs. Chambers, Mr. James Smith, a factory millowner, is made to say: Let me assure you that nothing is more certain than that, taking the working classes in the entire mass, that they get a fair share of the proceeds of the national industry.' And this assumed employer also tells us, that before commencing business for himself, he realized in seven years the sum of twenty thousand pounds by investing in trade the sum of seven hundred pounds, and his savings from a salary of two hundred and fifty pounds per annum. An average of two thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven pounds a year was Mr. Smith's fair share of the proceeds of the national industry,' while Mr. Jackson, the operative, would receive his fifty or sixty pounds. I am not disposed to question that these respective sums are the fair share of the proceeds to each party in the conventional language of the trade-which means that that is fair' which each party can get in striking a bargain. Neither do I suppose that had the assumed persons changed places the result would have been different. But that Mr. Smith, the millowner, and Mr. Jackson, the operative, had equal advantage in making their bargains, I emphatically deny. Freedom of arrangement between capital and labour! The idea is preposterous. Nine-tenths of labourers are no more free to state terms to capitalists than they are to fly. The arrangement' is all on one side. The labourer says 'Give me work, or I perish.' He has no other alternative. The capitalist can bide his time,' and enforce his own terms. With the employer it is a matter of time and convenience: with the employed it is a question of life and death. "The capitalist and labourer act from opposing points. One is for buying cheap, the other for selling dear; and it is the tendency of capital to make the labour cheap it desires to purchase. The ever-increasing powers of production, through improvements in machinery, tend to drive the living labourer trom the market. The price of labour is in a great measure determined by hunger and destitution; and the labourer's difficulty is the capitalist's opportunity." "When the working classes shall be in the position necessary to make their present unions {nerally successful, they will see that the wages system they are now agitating for is rotten and ruinous. Wages! the very term implies dependence and poverty. It proclaims the fact that the labourer has been necessitated to pawn his labour, aye, and to sell the duplicate! He has been compelled to seek for an advance of the means of living and workTrades' unions, ing, from those who desire to get an interest from the deposit of his labour. designed merely to regulate and protect such advances, by passively withholding labour, may have the effect of checking, for a time, isolated cases of rapacity; but let us rest assured that such means will never avert that utter prostration of condition which awaits the working classes, unless some interposing intelligence and organization shall make that capital their servant which is now their tyrant." "Our political and social economy contain the elements of their own destruction. The necessitics of the age as well as the attractiveness of truth will impel a change. An extreme wealth-class, and an extreme poverty-class cannot go on to perpetuity. That capital which has elevated mankind from a state of barbarism, must not now annihilate its producers by retrogade processes of refined starvation and modernized cruelty. The public mind is awakening to the fact, that as the well-being of humanity is dependent upon the development and employment of its several faculties; so must labour minister to these ends, and become a recognized element in the social state;-for-in the language of Thomas Carlylethis that they call organising of labour is, if well understood, the problem of the whole future for all who will in future pretend to govern men. Notice.-The Purchasers of "Cooper's Journal" Are respectfully informed that with No. 9, (the number for the week ending March 2nd,) Will be CIVEN AWAY, No. I. of 66 OR CAPTAIN COBLER; LINCOLNSHIRE INSURRECTION:" An Historical Romance of the Reign of Henry VIII. By THOMAS COOPER, Author of The Purgatory of Suicides.' The succeeding Numbers will be published weekly, at ONE PENNY, until the Romance is complete. Each Number will contain Sixteen Pages. JAMES WATSON, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. WORKS OF THOMAS COOPER, Already Published, to be had of JAMES WATSON, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. s. d. THE PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. A Prison Rhyme. In 10 Books. (To be had also in 18 numbers, at 2d each; or in 6 parts at 6d.) 3 6 WISE SAWS AND MODERN INSTANCES. A series of Tales illustrative of Lincolnshire and 5 0 THE BARON'S YULE FEAST. A Christmas Rhyme. In 1 volume, sewed,.. 1 6 THE MINSTREL'S SONG AND THE WOODMAN'S SONG. The Peotry and the Melody by 0 6 1 0 Two Orations against taking away Human Life under any circumstances,. Eight Letters to the Young Men of the Working Classes. (Collected from the 'Plain Speaker,') WORKS OF THOMAS EMERY, OF LEICESTER. 0 6 Penny Publications for the Leading Thoroughfares, To be had of J. Watson, 3, Queen's Head Passage, In Christ and all Good Names. Which Church will Paternoster Row. ultimately contain the Universal Religion of Human Nature. 1850, ITS WOMEN, MEN, AND MANNERS. THE FOUR Ps. Princes, Peers, Priests, People. London; Printed by SHIRREFS AND RUSSELL, 190, High Holborn ; and Published by JAMES WATSON, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. OR, UNFETTERED THINKER AND PLAIN SPEAKER FOR TRUTH, FREEDOM, AND PROGRESS. "AND though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple! Who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?-Milton's Areopagitica. No. 7.-—Vol. I.] FOR THE WEEK ENDING SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1850. [Price One Penny. RESOLUTION OF WHIGGERY TO TAKE ITS EASE. We have it our own way! Our foes they dare not meet us, boys; And if the grumblers blame us, boys, Let them, if grumbling please them, boys, 6 Old Song of The Red Coats.' LORD JOHN has solved his own riddle with wondrous haste, this time. Joseph Hume put the question, and was answered at once "We intend to do nothing for the extension of the Franchise this year." Ministers, it is evident, are in raptures with the discovery that Protectionists can do nothing but bark, either in Parliament, or out of it: trade, in all the more populous parts of the country, is good: the revenue is declared to be an overplus; and the Whigs think that they have nothing to fear. So they are determined there shall be no dissolution-no extension of the Franchise, this year. There can be no doubt, however, that both dissolution and extension of the Franchise were under consideration by them, previous to the opening of Parliament. They have been pleasingly disappointed in seeing that they are secure in their places another year, without either. And their security is manifest-unless some unexpected event should arise to “ confound their politics." The Session will go dreamily on-only enlivened by Disraeli's sarcasm, Cobden's 'decorous' hints at Financial Reform, a division and defeat on Hume's motion, and a few other trivialities; and it will depend on what Reformers do out of Parliament, as to what kind of 'New Reform Bill'—(for that is now talked of)—the Whigs propose in the Session of 1851,-in order to dissolve upon it, if necessities then press them. One cannot but entertain one hope; namely that Lord John's curt answer to Hume, will rouse the old reformer's mettle, and incline him to listen to those who are advising him to declare for Manhood Suffrage, and so raise a cry from the millions that shall snub the pert confidence of the little Premier. The new Reform party have put off their Conference till the last week in April; so it is most likely intended that Hume shall bring on his motion about the beginning of May. The Conference will serve to bring to a head the ripeness of public opinion on the Franchise; but individual petitions should be poured into the House of Commons to show that working men have a will of their own, and do not ask for the Franchise merely because a few M.P's. are now beginning to agitate for it. And let none despair because of successive delays. The question of the Suffrage is gaining ground, daily. Even the Times, although affecting to talk coolly about it, is compelled to confess that we shall have it. Another change on the Continent-(and the President-Pretender is just now thick in the plot for effecting a change-which may leave him on the losing side, though Changarnier seems sworn to aid him with his 'African' butchers!)-another change on the Continent may soon renew the flight of Kings, Princes, and Premiers; and even the stout heart of little Lord John may feel some misgivings, when the second act of the great democratic drama of the nineteenth century opens on the European stage. The 'reaction' contributes to make him pert and saucy. He will lower his tone if Democracy begins soon to recover itself abroad. THOMAS COOPER. GOOD NEWS: THE 'ORGANISATION OF LABOUR,' COMMENCED IN LONDON. THIS week commences an enterprise, in London, which is of far deeper importance than all that is likely to be done in Parliament, for the whole session. Its aspect is humble; but none whose hearts are sore with the wrongs of society will treat it with contempt-though it will receive plenty of that kind of treatment from the scoffers who thrive on the wrongs of their fellow-creatures. During the summer and autumn of last year, a few clergymen, barristers, and London tradesmen, met a company of workingmen, in a public room near Leicester Square, on stated evenings in the week, for the purpose of learning the real condition of the working-classes, and also of hearing what were workingmen's own opinions concerning remedies. On these occasions, the chair was usually taken by Professor Maurice, late of Cambridge, and now of King's College, London. On the part of workingmen, my esteemed cousin, Walter Cooper, (whose fervid eloquence thousands of the men of Manchester and Newcastle have lately heard, and whose large-heartedness has long won him the affection of thousands in London,)—was most constant in his attendance, and, perhaps, contributed most powerfully to confirm the philanthropic projectors of these meetings in the good design with which they entered on them. During the winter, their frequent conversations with M. Jules Lechevalier—one of the highminded Frenchmen, at present resident among us-have served to strengthen their benevolent purposes; and the result is,-that capital is provided, premises are taken at 34, Castle Street, Oxford Street, and on Monday in the present week, a start is made by the "WORKING TAILORS' ASSOCIATION," to try what can be done, by the Organisation of Labour, towards redeeming some portion of the suffering workers of our beloved old England from their misery I have not space to enter into all the details, this week. But I may briefly state that Professor Maurice; Rev. Mr. Hansard; Rev. Mr. Kingsley; Messrs. Ludlow and Hughes, barristers; Mr. Mansfield, chemist; Mr. Lumley, bookseller; and M. Jules Lechevalier-are among the philanthropists who engage to start the undertaking with the necessary capital: that Walter Cooper is entrusted with the practical management, on the part of these benevolent persons: that three months' probation is to test the social qualities of the workers; and that every worker is to share in the profits of the entire concern, in proportion to the amount of capital at which his labour is valued-that is, the amount of what are called 'wages' under the competitive system. In future numbers I will more fully detail the items of agreement; and my readers may depend on it, that I shall watch this experiment with anxious interest. If it succeed, a grand intelligent struggle must be made by workingmen, in every part of the country, to urge partnership, association, organisation of industry (as friend Thomas Goddard calls it) or organisation of labour (in the phrase of noble Louis Blanc) upon the consideration of employers' as they are now called. If it succeed, the glorious hope dawns upon British toilers that the obnoxious terms 'Master' and 'Servant' shall pass out of use; and toilers toil together, by brain and hand, on the footing of partners and brothers. And why should it not succeed? In Paris, one hundred and fifty associations of workers exist: in France, one thousand! The Times' does not tell this. It only hints in obscure and condemnatory language at the shocking spread of socialism throughout France! Ay, and it is spreading, and will spread. Intelligent workingmen there are heart-sick of the old slavish system, and are determined it shall pass away. Thomas Goddard was wrong about the Tailors of the Rue de Clichy: they flourish still, and are a thousand strong. The association commenced this week in London has not been formed without the strictest and most correct information, as to what is doing in France. Let success crown one experiment in London, and the example will spread. Let the Organisation of Labour' once begin to prevail among our trades and handicrafts; and it can then scarcely fail to find its way into our great manufacturing enterprizes. And if it take root there-can any one doubt that the soil of Old England, of which so many millions of acres how lie waste, shall not soon be occupied by happy colonies of brother workers ? May the day soon come! THOMAS COOPER. PEN AND INK SKETCH OF LIFE. [A REMEMBRANCE.] Ir was early in the month of September of the year 1849, on a rather cold drizzly day; the writer had journeyed some six miles on foot, over the up and down roads of a somewhat remote part of Yorkshire. Having passed through sundry villages, more noted for factories and ragged children than for architectural beauty, he found himself on the side of a moor: the fading blossoms of its heather still beautiful. Looking round half bewildered, and not knowing whether to turn to the right or left, he heard close by the sound of voices; strayed leisurely thither; and in due time, found himself by the side of an immense stone quarry. It was the dinner hour, and about a dozen of workmen, men and lads, were enjoying their dinner. Reader, I say enjoying their dinner; for they seemed to eat their bread and bacon, or bread and cheese, as it might be, with a right hearty appetite-each, squatted on a small square tool box, or sitting on a folded jacket, with no footman or penny waiter at hand, and neither fruit-knife nor silver fork, and some without a fork at all, holding bread and cold meat in the left hand, with a clasped knife in the other. They seemed to eat their homely fare with a relish for which a half-sick lady of Bath or Cheltenham would have given gladly enough more than a doctor's fee. Fresh from London-with all its show and glitter, its plate-glass fronts, cabs, omnibuses, city merchants, parliament men, poodle dogs, gentry, and waddling calf flunkies,-it was impossible for me not to think of the contrast. The houses of Oxford-street and Regent-street are built |