The Sun.
London, England, 1825-10-07 00:00:00

[BRITISU PRESS.]

We would willingly hope that, in the interval
between this and the meeting of Partia,ment,
the
workmen in the different trades will have re-
turned to the regular pursuit of. their, true. inte-
rests,anq will have come, round to the convic-
Itnittl4t weekly pittanCe that can be 'doled Out
tiiti)eiPlll:o:te Union into whiCh they_have been
persuaded to enter, can cOmpensate for the entire
loss of that independence which is to belourid in
their own honest earnings. r The wiser-among
thent,'we have no doubt, Will, ere long, disclaim
the treacherous influence by which they have
been betrayd. There: is. always a lingering
attachment • tAi the principles of justice and fair
dealing in the •hearis of the common people

of this country, which, if they are left to
themselves, will bring them- back to the right
path when they have °nee discovered that they are
widely straying away from it. They are at pre-
sent misled—:-we are adverting, of course, to the
working classes—by a few designing men, who,
under the mask of a zeal for the improvement of
their•' condition, are daily stimulating them into
new' follies, and goading them to excesses of
which they throw the reproach upon them, while
they take the profit to themselves. No doctrine
can be more untrue or more pernicious than that
which represents the profit of the capitalist as the
idle man's share of the industrious man's earnings.
Yet this is the doctrine which is now indus-
triously propagated throughout all the manufac-
turing districts of the kingdom, for the purpose
of alienating the labouring classes from their em-
ployers, and exciting them to carry the system of
combination to the full extent of all its pre-
posterous consequences. The union system
may invest them with a shadowy power,
but it will strip them of all substantial
energy. We would support the workmen in
all their claims so long as they are confined to their
legitimate and acknowledged rights. The instant
they begin to invert the order of things, there we
leave them. We cannot support them in strug-
gling against the institutions of nature, because,
in so doing, either they are mischievously mis-
led, or they sin against their better knowledge,
and in both cases society is only safe by arming
itself against their pretensions. To suppose that
the operatives in the different trades can, by
forming a union, however extensive, among them-
selves, procure permanently the means of subsist-
ing with ease and comfort in a state of disunion
from their employers, could never, one should
think, have entered the mind of any man relieved
from a strait-waistcoat. And yet this is the sup-
position which the present system of separation
acts upon ; but to what result will it lead ? To
a state of remediless confusion, afflictive alike to
the workman and the- master. Let the workman
better his condition to the utmost of his means,
but do not let him fancy that, under any com-
bination, he can level the natural inequalities
of human condition. It is sheer infatuation.
In vain will he endeavour to produce fruit
from any other stock than that on which God
has appointed it to grow ; but by cultivating
that stock the fruit will be produced, and abun-
dant enough, for the most part, fully to reward
the industry employed upon it. An attempt is at
present making to reverse all the received notions
of property which have hitherto prevailed in the
world.