smile which
intelligent Englishmen (and they, the middle-class, alone are known on
the Continent) assume when any one begins to speak of the condition of
the working-class; hence the utter ignorance on the part of the whole
middle-class of everything which concerns the workers; hence the
ridiculous blunders which men of this class, in and out of Parliament,
make when the position of the proletariat comes under discussion; hence
the absurd freedom from anxiety, with which the middle-class dwells upon
a soil that is honeycombed, and may any day collapse, the speedy collapse
of which is as certain as a mathematical or mechanical demonstration;
hence the miracle that the English have as yet no single book upon the
condition of their workers, although they have been examining and mending
the old state of things no one knows how many years. Hence also the deep
wrath of the whole working-class, from Glasgow to London, against the
rich, by whom they are systematically plundered and mercilessly left to
their fate, a wrath which before too long a time goes by, a time almost
within the power of man to predict, must break out into a Revolution in
comparison with which the French Revolution, and the year 1794, will
prove to have been child's play.

THE INDUSTRIAL PROLETARIAT.

The order of our investigation of the different sections of the
proletariat follows naturally from the foregoing history of its rise. The
first proletarians were connected with manufacture, were engendered by
it, and accordingly, those employed in manufacture, in the working up of
raw materials, will first claim our attention. The production of raw
materials and of fuel for manufacture attained importance only in
consequence of the industrial change, and engendered a new proletariat,
the coal and metal miners. Then, in the third place, manufacture
influenced agriculture, and in the fourth, the condition of Ireland; and
the fractions of the proletariat belonging to each, will find their place
accordingly. We shall find, too, that with the possible exception of the
Irish, the degree of intelligence of the various workers is in direct
proportion to their relation to manufacture; and that the factory hands
are most enlightened as to their own interests, the miners somewhat less
so, the agricultural labourers scarcely at all. We shall find the same
order again among the industrial workers, and shall see how the factory
hands, eldest children of the