rst of all, this nineteen weeks' strike had torn the
miners of the North of England forever from the intellectual death in
which they had hitherto lain; they have left their sleep, are alert to
defend their interests, and have entered the movement of civilisation,
and especially the movement of the workers. The strike, which first
brought to light the whole cruelty of the owners, has established the
opposition of the workers here, forever, and made at least two-thirds of
them Chartists; and the acquisition of thirty thousand such determined,
experienced men is certainly of great value to the Chartists. Then, too,
the endurance and law-abiding which characterised the whole strike,
coupled with the active agitation which accompanied it, has fixed public
attention upon the miners. On the occasion of the debate upon the export
duty on coal, Thomas Duncombe, the only decidedly Chartist member of the
House of Commons, brought up the condition of the coal miners, had their
petition read, and by his speech forced the bourgeois journals to
publish, at least in their reports of Parliamentary proceedings, a
correct statement of the case. Immediately after the strike, occurred
the explosion at Haswell; Roberts went to London, demanded an audience
with Peel, insisted as representative of the miners upon a thorough
investigation of the case, and succeeded in having the first geological
and chemical notabilities of England, Professors Lyell and Faraday,
commissioned to visit the spot. As several other explosions followed in
quick succession, and Roberts again laid the details before the Prime
Minister, the latter promised to propose the necessary measures for the
protection of the workers, if possible, in the next session of
Parliament, _i.e_., the present one of 1845. All this would not have
been accomplished if these workers had not, by means of the strike,
proved themselves freedom-loving men worthy of all respect, and if they
had not engaged Roberts as their counsel.

Scarcely had it become known that the coal miners of the North had been
forced to renounce the Union and discharge Roberts, when the miners of
Lancashire formed a Union of some ten thousand men, and guaranteed their
Attorney General a salary of 1200 pounds a year. In the autumn of last
year they collected more than 700 pounds, rather more than 200 pounds of
which they expended upon salaries and judicial expenses, and the rest
chiefly in support of men out of wo