contest, so organized, ensue, we need hardly say what must be its issue a contest in which men with capital, talent, and influence, upheld by the support and sympathy of all other classes of their fellow-citizens-cheered on, too, we might add, by the friends of liberty and good order throughout the world, are arrayed against those who have no capital, who are without sympathy even in their own families, and who have no power but the reckless power of a mob. There may be violence and wasting destruction. The torch of the incendiary may be applied to the shop, and even to the dwelling of the master. It may become unsafe for him to go forth by night, or even by day. Still the issue is none the less certain. Workmen cannot long subsist without food. Outrages, such as we have referred to, cannot be perpetrated often, and yet escape the arm of the law. In a country where four-fifths of the people belong to the agicultural class, and find themselves injured by the proceedings of Trades' Unions-where cities, too, are not yet so vast and so corrupt as to place all law at defiance, combined workmen have little to expect in the way either of victory or of immunity. Defeat, punishment, and abject submission must be the result of a protracted and organized contest. Nor will that be all. The men will, by that contest, have taught their employers the fell power of a combination. They will have extinguished whatever kindly feelings were once cherished by them, and transformed them from friends into foes. The public, weary at last of the din of conflict, may turn away, and leave both parties to seek mutual redress and retaliation, in one unending series of wrongs. Is this a consummation to be wished? Is it well that different orders of our people should thus be arrayed in deadly feud-a feud which must make the poor poorer, and teach the rich to riot and glory in oppression? Of all states of society, we can imagine none more lamentable and fatal. Let it once arise and continue, and servile classes must be formed, servile wars ensue, castes, priviliged and unprivileged, be established; and this, the chosen land of freedom, become the land of bondage and degradation. We do not contend that all these evils are to be the consequence of the present struggle between workmen and their employers. But we do say, that such a struggle cannot perpetuate itself, and be extended, till it comes to embroil men of all classes and pursuits, without ending in a catastrophe too dreadful to think of. It may be said, however, that all these evils might be avoid "It is difficult, we believe, to find any advocates of Trades' Unions among the wives of the members. ed, if Trades' Unions could embrace both masters and men, and thus arrange, by mutual agreement, the rate of wages. In this way all collision of interests might be prevented, and both parties participate in due proportion in the profits of business. And such, we apprehend, is the hope and expectation of the more reflecting and conscientious members of the Union, who have joined it, not from factious motives, but from the honest desire of advancing their own order. But even to such a plan there are insuperable objections. All history testifies that such combinations will, in the end, prove to be combinations of one class against the rest of the community-plans to advance the interests of a part at the expense of the whole. The experiment was tried for ages in Europe. Boroughs, corporations, and guilds, were all so many Unions of masters and journeymen in order to regulate the hours of labour, the number of workmen, and the rate of wages; and the consequence was, that they "felt power and forgot right;" exacting prices from the purchaser, and placing restrictions in the way of industry, which proved intolerable. The rise of Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and other great trading towns, is to be traced directly to the oppressive power wielded by neighbouring boroughs-a power which, in effect, levied contributions on all the rest of the community, and suffered no man to engage in trade except as it suited their pleasure. Nor are such combinations objectionable merely on account of the injustice done to those not comprehended in them. In the course of time they call down retribution on themselves. By enhancing the cost of articles to the consumer, they impel him to dispense with them if it be possible, and thus tend directly to diminish the value of the labour which is employed in producing them. Take the following case, in which the whole power of the British Parliament was invoked to sustain such a combination, and invoked in vain :-" The mechanics, connected with the mystery of drapers, incorporated in the town of Shrewsbury, complained that artificers, neither belonging to their company nor brought up to their trade, had of late, with great disorder, upon a mere covetous desire and mind intromitted with, and occupied the said trade, having no knowledge, skill, or experience of the same; and do buy, commonly and daily, such Welsh cloths and flannels as is defective, and not truly made, to the impeachment and hindrance of 600 people of the art or science of sheermen or frizers, within the said town; whereby as well they as their poor wives and families are wholly maintained.' The legislature listened to this representation, and expelled the rival artizans. (8 Eliz. c. 7.) c. Six years after, the act was c. 12.)" repealed, with an avowal that it is now likely to be the very greatest cause of the impoverishing and undoing of the poor artificers and others, at whose suit the said act was procured; for that there be now, since the passing of the said act, much fewer persons to set them to work than before.' (14 Eliz. We have thus spoken of the influence which Trades' Unions are likely to exert in lowering the wages of workmen, involving them in contests with their employers, and preparing the way for their permanent depression. There is another evil resulting from them, which merits solemn consideration. It is the moral debasement to which they lead. They congregate workmen, night after night, in tumultuous assemblies, where their passions are inflamed and their principles poisoned. Possessed with the notion that the working classes are oppressed -that their sufferings are not the consequence of their own errors or misconduct, but of the injustice of others-these clubs make it the interest and the duty of every member to strengthen such impression in his own mind, and to communicate it to others. Hence come discontent and insubordination. From discontent and insubordination, come strikes; and strikes take men from their proper pursuits, to spend whole days in the streets or at the alehouse. Thus, habits of industry are weakened or destroyed; and the mechanic, accustomed, meanwhile, to draw subsistence from the treasury of the Union, loses that lofty spirit of independence, and that provident concern for the future, which are the best security against both oppression and want. Tippling and gambling, of course, are called in to fill up the vacant hours; and it is a fact, that men pass through but one or two strikes before they become careless in regard to their families, neglectful of their business, and dissipated in their habits. On this point the tendencies are so evident, and the facts so numerous and incontestible, that we need not enlarge. We have dwelt, at such length, upon the character of Trades' Unions, because they appear to us to represent some of the most striking tendencies, and to embody some of the most dangerous heresies of the age. They exhibit, on a small scale, the disposition so widely prevalent in this country, to substitute the power of associations or parties for the authority of law, and to gain unrighteous advantages by means of disciplined and confederated numbers. They exhibit, too, the alarming tendency, which prevails among us, to excite and foster jealousies between those who ought to be perfectly united, and who, according to the theory of our government, are all working men and all gentlemen. Their whole strength they derive from the notion, that there is an essential opposition between the rights of capitalists and labourers; and that the one class can be sustained and advanced only by crippling the other. And this error, in which they take their rise, they contribute fearfully to strengthen and extend. We would hold it up, therefore, to the consideration of the philanthropist and patriot. If they would see the spirit of misrule and licentiousness exercised, they must labour more strenuously to let in light upon its dark retreats. They must themselves strive, and incite others to strive, that the knowledge of correct principles and the influence of Christian morality may be spread among all the people. The zeal for monopolies has been shaken among the mercantile class, because they have gradually acquired more just and enlarged views of their own interests. Could such views be more thoroughly dissemminated among the labouring classes, they too would discover that they need no protection from organized Unions; and that they best consult their own prosperity, when they most respect the rights and prosperity of others. But, above all, should redoubled efforts be made to spread among our countrymen the influence of pure and undefiled religion. Without this, we are inevitably lost-we may be lost soon. Even now there is much in this young and favoured land to awaken melancholy forebodings. Loaded with blessings, which make us the envy and admiration of labouring men throughout the world, we are yet discontented and factious. Clamorous in the praise of our peculiar institutions, we yet seem to understand but poorly their true nature or value, or the dangers to which they are exposed. Dependent for all our order and future welfare on the due administration of law, we are yet constantly taking or submitting to measures which tend to prostrate the influence of courts, and to overthrow the authority of magistrates. Allegiance to party is getting to be rewarded, we had almost said, honoured, before allegiance to country; while independ ence of individual opinion and feeling is crushed under the ruthless car of popular passion and prejudice. Is there nothing in such a state of things to excite alarm? Is it not time, more than time, that all who love their country should combine to stay the progress of dangerous errors, to allay the violence of faction, to promote kind feeling among the various classes of our people, and to build about our lovely heritage the sacred defences of piety and truth! ART. II.—Letters auxiliary to the History of Modern Polite Literature in Germany. By HEINRICH HEINE. Translated from the German, by G. W. HAVEN. Boston: James Monroe & Co. 1836. pp. 172. ALTHOUGH We begin with thus making use of the name of Heinrich Heine, yet there are more reasons than one why we do not purpose just now to enter into all the merits of that notorious worthy. Our first reason, indeed, will be nothing in the eyes of those who are familiar with the ways of the "ungentle craft." We have read nothing of Heine's-and he has given to the public some volumes of poetry as well as proseexcept the original work, from an earlier edition of which Mr. Haven has made his nervous and expressive, though not always correct, translation.* To back up a reason so weak, we may add, that our cotemporaries have long been beforehand with us, and, what is more than all, that we took up the volume of Heine while another subject was in our thoughts; and in gratitude for the help which some of his sayings by the way gave us, we now connect our observations on that main subject with his name. But can we, after all, dispose of our Heinrich so cavalierly? Shall we be so ungentle, as, after deriving much pleasure and some profit from his book, to pass him by with the selfish use of his name at the head of our article, and not one word about the many and various new thoughts of his—πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ μεμιγμένα, πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά—which have so struck us in the reading? Nay, we cannot choose but pause a moment, while we do something to express our sense, not of Heine's merits as the historian of later German Literature, but of the peculiar intellectual character which he has exhibited in the only work as yet accessible to English readers. It seems to us that no fair judgment can be made of the good or the evil in Heine's work, without feeling, and bearing it always in mind, that he is a poet, exhibiting many of the boldest features of the poetic temperament, along, indeed, with some peculiarities of his own. He is a poet! We shall not be more convinced of it, we are persuaded, when we shall have met with his Reisebilder and his Book of Songs, than we have been by this little work in prose. That one beautiful imaginative passage, in which (according to his * Die Romantische Schule, von H. Heine. Hamburg, 1836. This edition contains a third more than that which was used by Mr. Haven. It has since been made (we should judge) the second volume of the still larger work-" De L'Allemagne," in 2 vols. |