wickshire, in the end of the last and the beginning of the present century. The account of his wife-the mother-is a suitable companion picture.

The mother added to the income of the family what she could by outfield labour. She did all she could to keep whole, or mended, the clothes of a large family, where all the earnings might have gone for food without their having too much. The rent of their cottage was paid in work. A shearer for the harvest, a stack carrier whenever the thrashing mill was going, a bondager summer and winter, she worked for the farmer, and by her work paid the rent. The mother carried the stacks besides shearing in the harvest time.

Should you ever be in Scotland and see Springfield, you will find a row of shabby looking tiled sheds, such they continued to be when I was there last, the centre one of which is about twelve feet by fourteen, and not so high in the walls as will allow a man to get in without stooping. That place without ceiling, or anything beneath the bare tiles of the roof; without a floor save the common clay; without a cupboard or recess of any kind; with no grate but the iron bars which the tenants carried to it, built up and took away when they left it; with no partition of any kind save what the beds made; with no window save four small panes on one side,-it was this house, still a hind's house at Springfield, for which, to obtain leave to live in, my mother sheared the harvest and carried the stacks.

'How eight children and father and mother were huddled in that place is not easily told. The worst of it was, that food was so very dear, clothes were so very dear, as to us not to be obtainable, and national glory was so very dear-that glory which Europe was mad about at that time, and for which we, like others, had to pay, that even those bare walls, for which so much of my mother's labour had to be paid in rent, were less comfortable than they might have been.'—p. 10.

We must not dwell on the portraits of the brothers and sisters. Margaret was always helpful, and after becoming the mother of five children, caught her death while assisting an afflicted family. She made her brother William's old corduroys into clothes for Alexander. William, when he came home at night, mended the shoes of all the children. Brother James seemed to have most talent of all the family, and his father used to lay his hand on his head and say, 'Ah! if I had siller I wad make my Jamie a minister.' It was the lot of James, however, to become a cooper, and thereby Mr. Somerville tells us the world has lost a writer and a philosopher.

There are many thousands of families like this one in Scotland. But the present political system gives the fathers of these families no political status. Instead of the franchise being lodged in the virtuous hands of these men, lawyers, and their

clerks from the large towns, possess it, without residing in the county, and without having any property in it. They are enfranchised merely by a readiness to swear falsely, that they have the property they have not, and the qualification they never had. Morally viewed, instead of the extension of the franchise to every man being a lowering of the franchise, it would be a raising it from the degradation of dependent and bribe-taking electors to the more elevated level of―

'A virtuous peasantry, their country's pride.'

At

We follow the fortunes of Mr. Somerville with interest. school the farmer's sons played with the labourer's sons, in mimicry of what was then, in 1819, publicly going on in Scotland, taking themselves the part of the soldiers, and giving the poorer boys the part of the ragged radicals.' One day of this rough play sufficed to send our young radical home in a condition so tattered, that his mother exclaimed, 'What shall I do with those rags?' The good mother worked nearly the night through at them. Next day 'soldiers and radicals' was again the play. The boy who assumed to be king of the school seized the ragged radical,' and ordered him to be carried off to be hanged and beheaded. But this was beyond patience, and, says the narrative-'I amazed the king of the school by giving him a blow in the face, which laid him flat upon his back.' Those who took his part shared his fate. Some one ran to the schoolmaster to tell him that the 'ragged radical' was thrashing 'Master' Somebody. Soon a court was held, and complainants with bloody noses, stated their charges against the bloody-nosed defendant. Alexander Somerville was denounced as the party who began the fight, and immediately received six cuts or 'skults,' with the 'taws,' on each hand and then as many on the places made bare by rents as could be laid in until he reached the coal-hole, where he was confined in the bitter cold until evening. Though he read his lesson from the top of the coals that day, most correctly of all his class, he was told his place was at the bottom of it. The soldiers' he had defeated resorted to the usual weapon of the worsted, and calumniously told their parents that the ragged radical was as dirty as he was quarrelsome. Unless he was separated from them, they would be taken from the school. For six weeks he sat on a form by himself, on the middle of the floor. But this form had moveable legs, and to take these out became the sport of the son of the rich farmer, who was the proprietor of the school-house. He did this thrice in one day, and then, when the school was out, snatched Somerville's bonnet off his head and threw it into a pool. Pride in a suit of new clothes made the boy thus mis

chievous. He thought Somerville would follow his bonnet into the puddle, instead of which Somerville pitched him into it after the bonnet, new clothes and all. This affair brought his sufferings to an end. Certain weavers took his part, and stated his case, and, says the autobiographer, 'this dismal period of my life passed over.'

While we are writing, the newspaper brings news that titles of nobility have been abolished, and equality established in Vienna. Class distinctions are always felt by those who have their superiorities as if they conferred rights of tyranny. What was the farmer's son called Master' for, if he could not torment a labourer's son with impunity, or a teacher dependent on his father?' There must, therefore, we submit, be less tyranny in all its forms in countries in which equality is established.

Space forbids our following the events of the life of Mr. Somerville until he entered the army. But those who wish to realise the life of a youth in his circumstances, will peruse his volume with satisfaction. He worked in a nursery near Edinburgh for some time, and afterwards became a labourer to masons. Of the tyrannical conduct of masons to their labourers he draws a revolting picture, and we have no doubt with truth and accuracy. The poor are the greatest tyrants to the poor. Were they just, kind, true, and honest, to each other, there would be a mitigation of their lot effected superior to any political or social revolution conceivable. It were a sign of only a limited knowledge of mankind to believe in any class of the people. The Book does not tell us to believe in man, nor in woman either, and experience will correct the mistakes of those who indulge in the superstition which denies the depravity of human nature. The position which a wise man ought to take is, not that of advocacy of democracy against aristocracy, of the working classes against the bourgeoisie, or of republicans against kings; but of right, truth, and love, against injustice, hatred, and falsehood, for the sake of each and of all.

The description which Mr. Somerville gives of his trial by a court martial, and of his being flogged, is one of the most powerful passages of its kind in the whole range of literature. The cat was weak against his skin, compared with the force of his pen against the present system of discipline in the army.

Our readers will feel little interest in the adventures of Mr. Somerville in Spain, where he served in the Legion under Sir De Lacy Evans. But the feelings excited by the exposure of the spy system in the recent Chartist trials, and the illustrations they afford of the folly of physical force Chartism, invest with unusual interest the portions of this 'Autobiography' which relate to the conspiracies of the working classes.

With a condensation of his account of the political conspiracy under cover of the trades' unions in 1834, we shall conclude our notice. At the first election after the passing of the Reform Act, the analysis of the returns divided the 658 members into 509 Reformers, and 149 Anti-Reformers. Experience proved this estimate to be incorrect,' Mr. Somerville remarks, somewhat innocently. Incorrect undoubtedly! The case of the six Dorsetshire labourers, who were transported for combining to raise the wages of their district, made a profound impression of dissatisfaction among the working classes. On the 13th of May, a body of police dispersed a political meeting in Coldbath Fields, and one of them, Robert Colley, was stabbed with a dagger. 'Justifiable homicide' was the verdict which the coroner's jury returned, and which the Court of King's Bench set aside. In tap-rooms, and in workshops, violent talkers wished the dagger had reached Lord Melbourne, the Home Secretary. Meetings were held to memorialise the king to dismiss his ministers, and Mr. O'Connell denounced the authors of the Irish Coercion Bill, and Mr. Attwood reprobated the enemies of liberty who had interfered with the meeting at Coldbath Fields. In the year 1834, the non-electors felt themselves to be a slave-class. The unpopularity of the New Poor Law was at its height. Though the Combination Laws had been repealed, the trades societies still administered their secret oaths, amidst skeletons, blocks, hatchets, rattling chains, and burning brimstone, and blue lights in skulls. Everything was a farce, except the collection of the money. The strike at Derby commanded most sympathy in London. But the mere talkers had the management of most of the societies, and were selected as officebearers, leaders, and guides. One of the men who acted for Derby decamped with as much money as he could collect. The chief leader of the tailors in their strike filled his pockets and carpet-bag from the treasury, and took shipping for the Continent. But the tailors had their eyes upon him. They pursued him. Ere the packet had left the English coast their boat reached it. They laid the orator upon his back on deck, and they took all the money they could find, except enough to convey him to a foreign country, there to conceal the shame of his dishonesty, and of their gullibility. As the result of their strike, the tailors were compelled to return to work at lower wages than ever, after being starved into signing a declaration that they no longer belonged to any trade's union. The bakers seeing that strikes were useless, resolved, at a public meeting, to spend their funds in a series of jollifications in the publichouses. But there was a minority in the trade who resolved to wipe out this disgrace, by establishing a mutual assurance and

benefit society. This they did in co-operation with their masters, and have maintained it successfully. Of the born gentlemen' who took up the cause of the trades' unions, Mr. Somerville is preeminently suspicious. One he remarked especially who came into notice in 1834, because he was most enthusiastically applauded for saying in his speeches, no matter how far the other gentlemen upon the platform might go, 'he would go further.' At the spring assizes of 1834, the Dorchester labourers were sentenced to seven years transportation, for being members of a trades' union and administering illegal oaths. There was a general feeling that they had been hardly dealt with, and petitions in their favour were preparing in every town in the kingdom, when they were hurried out of it.

On the 21st of April, there was to be a grand assemblage of the trades in London, to march from Copenhagen Fields to Kennington Common, calling on the way at the Home Office, and presenting a petition for the release of the Dorsetshire convicts. But the display of numbers to overawe the government, was more the object of the leaders than the liberation of the convicts. Daily and nightly meetings, open and secret, of large numbers and secret committees were held to prepare for the great demonstration. News arrives from France of the success of the trades' unionists of Lyons. They had rescued a member from trial, they received bullets and bayonets bravely, defeated the garrison, and held the town. 'Slaves that we are, knaves let our names ever be, if we suffer our brothers of union to be transported. Death to the tyrant Whigs! Death to ourselves! Destruction to London, and all that it contains, if we be not amply revenged for their wrongs and our own.' Such were the speeches and resolutions of the trade's unionists! An insurrection was expected in Paris. Private information said the men of Leeds were to attack the mills. Two unionists had been rescued from the police at the cost of life, in Oldham. Birmingham, Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, were 'ready to rise.' The news came-' Paris had risen.' But next post brought word that the Parisian insurrection had only been a riot, speedily suppressed by the military; and after four days' fighting in the streets of Lyons, the unionists had been crushed amidst the corpses of seventeen hundred soldiers, and five thousand inhabitants. But the London talkers made light of these defeats. The insurrections in Lyons and Paris had failed because they had not supported each other, and the Parisians had fought in the streets of the poorer inhabitants. It must be a blow to the hearts of the tyrants-a stroke on the head, that shall not only do its work effectually and at once, but