ease to be the slave of the bourgeoisie in his thoughts, feelings, and
the expression of his will. And to this end manufacture on a grand scale
and in great cities has most largely contributed.

Another influence of great moment in forming the character of the English
workers is the Irish immigration already referred to. On the one hand it
has, as we have seen, degraded the English workers, removed them from
civilisation, and aggravated the hardship of their lot; but, on the other
hand, it has thereby deepened the chasm between workers and bourgeoisie,
and hastened the approaching crisis. For the course of the social
disease from which England is suffering is the same as the course of a
physical disease; it develops, according to certain laws, has its own
crisis, the last and most violent of which determines the fate of the
patient. And as the English nation cannot succumb under the final
crises, but must go forth from it, born again, rejuvenated, we can but
rejoice over everything which accelerates the course of the disease. And
to this the Irish immigration further contributes by reason of the
passionate, mercurial Irish temperament, which it imports into England
and into the English working-class. The Irish and English are to each
other much as the French and the Germans; and the mixing of the more
facile, excitable, fiery Irish temperament with the stable, reasoning,
persevering English must, in the long run, be productive only of good for
both. The rough egotism of the English bourgeoisie would have kept its
hold upon the working-class much more firmly if the Irish nature,
generous to a fault, and ruled primarily by sentiment, had not
intervened, and softened the cold, rational English character in part by
a mixture of the races, and in part by the ordinary contact of life.

In view of all this, it is not surprising that the working-class has
gradually become a race wholly apart from the English bourgeoisie. The
bourgeoisie has more in common with every other nation of the earth than
with the workers in whose midst it lives. The workers speak other
dialects, have other thoughts and ideals, other customs and moral
principles, a different religion and other politics than those of the
bourgeoisie. Thus they are two radically dissimilar nations, as unlike
as difference of race could make them, of whom we on the Continent have
known but one, the bourgeoisie. Yet it is precisely the other, the
people, the prol