t masses of working-men who
now fill the whole British Empire, whose social condition forces itself
every day more and more upon the attention of the civilised world. The
condition of the working-class is the condition of the vast majority of
the English people. The question: What is to become of those destitute
millions, who consume to-day what they earned yesterday; who have created
the greatness of England by their inventions and their toil; who become
with every passing day more conscious of their might, and demand, with
daily increasing urgency, their share of the advantages of society?--This,
since the Reform Bill, has become the national question. All
Parliamentary debates, of any importance, may be reduced to this; and,
though the English middle-class will not as yet admit it, though they try
to evade this great question, and to represent their own particular
interests as the truly national ones, their action is utterly useless.
With every session of Parliament the working-class gains ground, the
interests of the middle-class diminish in importance; and, in spite of
the fact that the middle-class is the chief, in fact, the only power in
Parliament, the last session of 1844 was a continuous debate upon
subjects affecting the working-class, the Poor Relief Bill, the Factory
Act, the Masters' and Servants' Act; and Thomas Duncombe, the
representative of the working-men in the House of Commons, was the great
man of the session; while the Liberal middle-class with its motion for
repealing the Corn Laws, and the Radical middle-class with its resolution
for refusing the taxes, played pitiable roles. Even the debates about
Ireland were at bottom debates about the Irish proletariat, and the means
of coming to its assistance. It is high time, too, for the English
middle-class to make some concessions to the working-men who no longer
plead but threaten; for in a short time it may be too late.

In spite of all this, the English middle-class, especially the
manufacturing class, which is enriched directly by means of the poverty
of the workers, persists in ignoring this poverty. This class, feeling
itself the mighty representative class of the nation, is ashamed to lay
the sore spot of England bare before the eyes of the world; will not
confess, even to itself, that the workers are in distress, because it,
the property-holding, manufacturing class, must bear the moral
responsibility for this distress. Hence the scornful