But the bourgeoisie will not take warning.  The resistance of the miners does but embitter it the more.  Instead of appreciating this forward step in the general movement of the workers, the property-holding class saw in it only a source of rage against a class of people who are fools enough to declare themselves no longer submissive to the treatment they had hitherto received.  It saw in the just demands of the non-possessing workers only impertinent discontent, mad rebellion against “Divine and human order;” and, in the best case, a success (to be resisted by the bourgeoisie with all its might) won by “ill-intentioned demagogues who live by agitation and are too lazy to work.”  It sought, of course, without success, to represent to the workers that Roberts and the Union’s agents whom the Union very naturally had to pay, were insolent swindlers, who drew the last farthing from the working-men’s pockets.  When such insanity prevails in the property-holding class, when it is so blinded by its momentary profit that it no longer has eyes for the most conspicuous signs of the times, surely all hope of a peaceful solution of the social question for England must be abandoned.  The only possible solution is a violent revolution, which cannot fail to take place.

THE AGRICULTURAL PROLETARIAT.

We have seen in the introduction how, simultaneously with the small bourgeoisie and the modest independence of the former workers, the small peasantry also was ruined when the former Union of industrial and agricultural work was dissolved, the abandoned fields thrown together into large farms, and the small peasants superseded by the overwhelming competition of the large farmers.  Instead of being landowners or leaseholders, as they had been hitherto, they were now obliged to hire themselves as labourers to the large farmers or the landlords.  For a time this position was endurable, though a deterioration in comparison with their former one.  The extension of industry kept pace with the increase of population until the progress of manufacture began to assume a slower pace, and the perpetual improvement of machinery made it impossible for manufacture to absorb the whole surplus of the agricultural population.  From this time forward, the distress which had hitherto existed only in the manufacturing districts, and then only at times, appeared in the agricultural districts too.  The twenty-five years’ struggle with France came to an end at about the same time; the diminished production at the various seats of the wars, the shutting off of imports, and the necessity of providing for the British army in Spain, had given English agriculture an artificial prosperity, and had besides withdrawn to the army vast numbers of workers from their ordinary occupations.  This check upon the import trade, the opportunity for exportation, and the military demand for workers, now suddenly came to an end; and the necessary consequence was what