l morality of to-day. The two great
practical philosophers of latest date, Bentham and Godwin, are,
especially the latter, almost exclusively the property of the
proletariat; for though Bentham has a school within the Radical
bourgeoisie, it is only the proletariat and the Socialists who have
succeeded in developing his teachings a step forward. The proletariat
has formed upon this basis a literature, which consists chiefly of
journals and pamphlets, and is far in advance of the whole bourgeois
literature in intrinsic worth. On this point more later.

One more point remains to be noticed. The factory operatives, and
especially those of the cotton district, form the nucleus of the labour
movement. Lancashire, and especially Manchester, is the seat of the most
powerful Unions, the central point of Chartism, the place which numbers
most Socialists. The more the factory system has taken possession of a
branch of industry, the more the working-men employed in it participate
in the labour movement; the sharper the opposition between working-men
and capitalists, the clearer the proletarian consciousness in the working-
men. The small masters of Birmingham, though they suffer from the
crises, still stand upon an unhappy middle ground between proletarian
Chartism and shopkeepers' Radicalism. But, in general, all the workers
employed in manufacture are won for one form or the other of resistance
to capital and bourgeoisie; and all are united upon this point, that
they, as working-men, a title of which they are proud, and which is the
usual form of address in Chartist meetings, form a separate class, with
separate interests and principles, with a separate way of looking at
things in contrast with that of all property owners; and that in this
class reposes the strength and the capacity of development of the nation.

THE MINING PROLETARIAT.

The production of raw materials and fuel for a manufacture so colossal as
that of England requires a considerable number of workers. But of all
the materials needed for its industries (except wool, which belongs to
the agricultural districts), England produces only the minerals: the
metals and the coal. While Cornwall possesses rich copper, tin, zinc,
and lead mines, Staffordshire, Wales, and other districts yield great
quantities of iron, and almost the whole North and West of England,
central Scotland, and certain districts of Ireland, produce a
superabundance of coal. {241