one single
session upon the proletariat. One from the session of 1844 must suffice.
An obscure member of Parliament, a Mr. Miles, proposed a bill regulating
the relation of master and servant which seemed comparatively
unobjectionable. The Government became interested in the bill, and it
was referred to a committee. Meanwhile the strike among the miners in
the North broke out, and Roberts made his triumphal passage through
England with his acquitted working-men. When the bill was reported by
the committee, it was discovered that certain most despotic provisions
had been interpolated in it, especially one conferring upon the employer
the power to bring before any Justice of the Peace every working-man who
had contracted verbally or in writing to do any work whatsoever, in case
of refusal to work or other misbehaviour, and have him condemned to
prison with hard labour for two months, upon the oath of the employer or
his agent or overlooker, _i.e_., upon the oath of the accuser. This bill
aroused the working-men to the utmost fury, the more so as the Ten Hours'
Bill was before Parliament at the same time, and had called forth a
considerable agitation. Hundreds of meetings were held, hundreds of
working-men's petitions forwarded to London to Thomas Duncombe, the
representative of the interests of the proletariat. This man was, except
Ferrand, the representative of "Young England," the only vigorous
opponent of the bill; but when the other Radicals saw that the people
were declaring against it, one after the other crept forward and took his
place by Duncombe's side; and as the Liberal bourgeoisie had not the
courage to defend the bill in the face of the excitement among the
working-men, it was ignominiously lost.

Meanwhile the most open declaration of war of the bourgeoisie upon the
proletariat is Malthus' Law of Population and the New Poor Law framed in
accordance with it. We have already alluded several times to the theory
of Malthus. We may sum up its final result in these few words, that the
earth is perennially over-populated, whence poverty, misery, distress,
and immorality must prevail; that it is the lot, the eternal destiny of
mankind, to exist in too great numbers, and therefore in diverse classes,
of which some are rich, educated, and moral, and others more or less
poor, distressed, ignorant, and immoral. Hence it follows in practice,
and Malthus himself drew this conclusion, that charities and poor-rate