produced fluctuations in the market. The extreme sensitiveness of the money-market barometer is affected by the slightest pressure or touch of disaffection, whether at home or abroad, and this reacts upon the entire trade of the country. Eastern affairs for the last two years have deranged commerce and trade, and the repudiation by Turkey of her financial obligations has added to the embarrassment. Nor can it be forgotten that the investigation into foreign loans, and the discoveries brought to light by the committee; the exposures of fraud and embezzlement; the trickery of companymongers, and numerous other things equally discreditable, have produced a want of confidence which time alone can restore. When 'the friends of order' in France cease to disturb her internal peace, and no longer cause disquietude to Europe by their insane attempts to destroy liberty, and plant a despotism in its stead, and when peace has been restored in the East, we may confidently look for a revival of trade such as will possibly satisfy those alarmists and croakers who now prognosticate our utter ruin.)

§ 38. In estimating the growth of our trade, the development of the internal resources of the British Empire must not be left out of the calculation. Since 1861, the annual value of land has increased from 60,305,285% to 66,911,4637.; houses from 61,924,1787. to 94,637,5767.; mines from 4,436,110., to 14,107,990/.; ironworks from 1,079,5897. to 7,260,802/.; railways from 14,814,1497. to 27,545,103.; canals, gasworks, quarries, and other profits, from 5,141,463, to 8,354,9137. The total annual value of property and profits assessed has risen from 335,654,211, in 1861, to 571,056,1677. in 1875, or a total annual increase of 235,401,9567, as the growth of home investment alone, in fifteen years. There is ample scope for still further development within the area of

the United Kingdom. If the rate of interest is not quite so large, the security is greater; and consequently as a permanent investment it offers advantages not always to be found elsewhere.

$ 39. In addition to the foregoing, Prof. Leone Levi has estimated that British capitalists have 300,000,000l., or more, invested in foreign loans of one kind and another. In a paper recently read before the Statistical Society, Mr. Robert Giffen stated that the total capital of the country in 1875 amounted to 8,500,000,000l., in relation to which the National Debt was a mere fleabite. Dealing with the accumulations of capital, he said the gross income assessed in Great Britain at the beginning of the century was 105 millions; in 1815 it rose to 130 millions; and then in the United Kingdom, in 1843, to 251 millions; in 1855 to 308 millions; in 1865 to 396 millions; in 1875 to 571 millions. The increase in the income assessed from 1865 to 1875 amounted to 175 millions-equal to 44 per cent. on the total income assessed in 1865. The writer continued, 'If the capital of that portion of income derived from capital has only progressed at the same rate, the annual increase of capital all through must be enormous. Leaving out altogether capital not yielding income, a similar increase of capital would give us, for 1865, a total of 5,200 millions, on which the increase at 44 per cent. would be 2,288 millions per annum.' 'Our national estate,' he continued, 'had increased in value in ten years at the rate of 240,000,000l. per annum.' This had exceeded the proportionate increase of population by 1,800 millions, or twice the total amount of the National Debt, the whole of which the nation could afford to spend and still be as rich individually as it was ten years ago,

CHAPTER X.

I. THE FEDERATION OF TRADE-UNIONS.

II. TRADES'

COUNCILS. III. TRADE-UNION CONGRESSES.

I.-Federation of Trade-unions.

§ 1. (There is, in the mind of the general public, a kind of undefined dread lest the whole of the trade-unions of the country should resolve to federate themselves into one vast organisation, constituted on a permanent basis, with the object of effecting an alliance for offensive as well as defensive purposes, and of amalgamating their funds so as to make them available for every possible emergency in case of labour disputes.

§ 2. This 'undefined dread' operates with a far greater force on the minds of those who form the outside public than it does on the minds of those who are employers; although the latter are sometimes seized with a vague fear almost amounting to a panic, which in effect seems to imply that in the future, and possibly at no far distant date, they will have to deal, not merely with the individual unions representing the separate and distinct trades, but with a powerful confederation em bracing every trade in the United Kingdom.

§3. It was this hazy dream of 'social democrats which, so it was alleged, led the employers in 1873 to form The Federation of Associated Employers of Labour.' In their 'statement as to formation and

objects,' they say that 'it has been formed in consequence of the extraordinary development, oppressive action, far-reaching but openly avowed designs, and elaborate organisation of trade-unions.' The reasons given by the masters for creating this vast organisation, with its elaborate machinery, and its own special organ, called 'Capital and Labour,' were no doubt, in so far as it appeared to them, honest and fair; but in reality it was chiefly due to a panic which had led them to exaggerate the dangers, real and supposed, arising from the existence of trade-unions, and the influence exercised by them in labour disputes, whose action, as they conceived, was both violent and aggressive; and also to a mistaken notion as to the objects and aims of such unions, to whose evil influence they attributed all the disasters which from time to time arise in connection with labour and capital, and especially the frequent antagonism of those two social forces.

$ 4. The project with regard to the federation of trade-unions is by no means a new one. In the past history of labour it has often been dimly shadowed forth, and on more than one occasion it has been broached in a definite form, and has taken even a tangible shape, but it has never yet assumed formidable. proportions, or taken such deep root as to render it dangerous to capital, or to occasion real anxiety in the public mind.

§ 5. The first great and methodical attempt at such a federation of labour was the National Association of Organised Trades, which was inaugurated on March 25, 1846. This association was very active during the two first years of its existence, but for many years previous to its final dissolution in 1861 its efforts were chiefly directed towards the establishment of Courts of Conciliation and Boards of Arbitration for the purpose of

dealing more effectually with trade disputes. The Bills introduced into Parliament by Lord St. Leonards were chiefly due to the efforts of this body, supplemented in later years by the action of the London Trades' Council, and the personal efforts of some few of the leading members of the Metropolitan trades. The final shape and form of the Bill introduced by Lord St. Leonards was the result of an interview which took place at Boyle Farm in 1867 between the noble lord and two representatives from the London trades, and especially that portion of the Bill which related to the constitution of the courts to whom the several questions in dispute were to be submitted. 7

§ 6. In 1865 another attempt was made to effect a federation of the trade-unions of the whole country into one vast organisation by the inauguration at Sheffield of the United Kingdom Alliance of Organised Trades,' whose object, like its predecessor, was to unite the several unions of the country into one compact and powerful body. At its first conference, held in Sheffield in 1865, a scheme was submitted in furtherance of this object; several proposals were laid before the meeting and discussed with a view to promote such an alliance of the trades as would in the future produce something like harmony of action between the members of the several unions, and in effect create a central fund with which to 'resist the aggressions of the masters,' and aid those who were engaged in a strike, or who were 'the victims of a lockout on the part of the masters.' But a dark cloud began at this time to throw its shadows over the very town which was anxious to take the lead in this ambitious project; rumours were in the air' having reference to heinous crimes, hitherto concealed from public view, and which had baffled the police and courts of law, and pointing unmistakably to the principal