Continental and especially American competition, which I then
foresaw--though in too short a period--has now actually come to pass. In
this respect I can, and am bound to, bring the book up to date, by
placing here an article which I published in the _London Commonweal_ of
March 1, 1885, under the heading: "England in 1845 and in 1885." It
gives at the same time a short outline of the history of the English
working-class during these forty years, and is as follows:

"Forty years ago England stood face to face with a crisis, solvable to
all appearances by force only. The immense and rapid development of
manufactures had outstripped the extension of foreign markets and the
increase of demand. Every ten years the march of industry was
violently interrupted by a general commercial crash, followed, after a
long period of chronic depression, by a few short years of prosperity,
and always ending in feverish over-production and consequent renewed
collapse. The capitalist class clamoured for Free Trade in corn, and
threatened to enforce it by sending the starving population of the
towns back to the country districts whence they came, to invade them,
as John Bright said, not as paupers begging for bread, but as an army
quartered upon the enemy. The working masses of the towns demanded
their share of political power--the People's Charter; they were
supported by the majority of the small trading class, and the only
difference between the two was whether the Charter should be carried
by physical or by moral force. Then came the commercial crash of 1847
and the Irish famine, and with both the prospect of revolution

"The French Revolution of 1848 saved the English middle-class. The
Socialistic pronunciamentos of the victorious French workmen
frightened the small middle-class of England and disorganised the
narrower, but more matter-of-fact movement of the English
working-class. At the very moment when Chartism was bound to assert
itself in its full strength, it collapsed internally, before even it
collapsed externally on the 10th of April, 1848. The action of the
working-class was thrust into the background. The capitalist class
triumphed along the whole line.

"The Reform Bill of 1831 had been the victory of the whole capitalist
class over the landed aristocracy. The repeal of the Corn Laws was
the victory of the manufacturing capita