of our political economists. The facts which he brings seem
certainly overwhelming; of course, they can only be met by counter-
facts; and our knowledge does not enable us either to corroborate or
refute his statements. The chief argument used against them seems to
us, at least, to show that for some cause or other the working
classes were prosperous enough. It is said the Acts of Parliament
regulating wages do not fix the minimum of wages, but the maximum.
They are not intended to defend the employed against the employer,
but the employer against the employed, in a defective state of the
labour market, when the workmen, by the fewness of their numbers,
were enabled to make extravagant demands. Let this be the case--we
do not say that it is so--what is it but a token of prosperity among
the working classes? A labour market so thin that workmen can demand
their own price for their labour, till Parliament is compelled to
bring them to reason, is surely a time of prosperity to the employed-
-a time of full work and high wages; of full stomachs, inclined from
very prosperity to 'wax fat and kick.' If, however, any learned
statistician should be able to advance, on the opposite side of the
question, enough to weaken some of Mr. Froude's conclusions, he must
still, if he be a just man, do honour to the noble morality of this
most striking chapter, couched as it is in as perfect English as we
have ever had the delight of reading. We shall leave, then, the
battle of facts to be fought out by statisticians, always asking Mr.
Froude's readers to bear in mind that, though other facts may be
true, yet his facts are no less true likewise; and we shall quote at
length, both as a specimen of his manner and of his matter, the last
three pages of this introductory chapter, in which, after speaking of
the severity of the laws against vagrancy, and showing how they were
excused by the organisation which found employment for every able-
bodied man, he goes on to say:-