English, and especially the working-men, are cowardly,
that they cannot carry out a revolution because, unlike the French, they
do not riot at intervals, because they apparently accept the bourgeois
_regime_ so quietly. This is a complete mistake. The English working-
men are second to none in courage; they are quite as restless as the
French, but they fight differently. The French, who are by nature
political, struggle against social evils with political weapons; the
English, for whom politics exist only as a matter of interest, solely in
the interest of bourgeois society, fight, not against the Government, but
directly against the bourgeoisie; and for the time, this can be done only
in a peaceful manner. Stagnation in business, and the want consequent
upon it, engendered the revolt at Lyons, in 1834, in favour of the
Republic: in 1842, at Manchester, a similar cause gave rise to a
universal turnout for the Charter and higher wages. That courage is
required for a turnout, often indeed much loftier courage, much bolder,
firmer determination than for an insurrection, is self-evident. It is,
in truth, no trifle for a working-man who knows want from experience, to
face it with wife and children, to endure hunger and wretchedness for
months together, and stand firm and unshaken through it all. What is
death, what the galleys which await the French revolutionist, in
comparison with gradual starvation, with the daily sight of a starving
family, with the certainty of future revenge on the part of the
bourgeoisie, all of which the English working-man chooses in preference
to subjection under the yoke of the property-holding class? We shall
meet later an example of this obstinate, unconquerable courage of men who
surrender to force only when all resistance would be aimless and
unmeaning. And precisely in this quiet perseverance, in this lasting
determination which undergoes a hundred tests every day, the English
working-man develops that side of his character which commands most
respect. People who endure so much to bend one single bourgeois will be
able to break the power of the whole bourgeoisie.

But apart from that, the English working-man has proved his courage often
enough. That the turnout of 1842 had no further results came from the
fact that the men were in part forced into it by the bourgeoisie, in part
neither clear nor united as to its object. But aside from this, they
have shown their courage often enoug