"Sometime am I
All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues,
Do hiss me into madness! Lo, now, lo!
Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me,"
we seem to hear the poor hell-bound rustic blindly groaning in his anguish, but not so blind but that he feels his misery to be chiefly due to that wily enchanter to whom, notwithstanding his vile brutality, he is indispensable.
"We cannot miss him : he does make our fire,
Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices
That profit us."
XI.
The First Faint Streak of Dawn.
"Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked they saw that the stone was rolled away; for it was very great." From 1834 to 1872 is not a long time in such a history as we have been pursuing; but how great the change! Day had broken; the shadows were flying.
In 1834, the Dorsetshire labourers, among the gentlest and most down-trodden of their class, formed a Trades-Union. The Government caused six labouring men concerned in getting it up to be indicted at the Assizes at Dorchester, under an obsolete statute made to prevent mutiny in the Navy. They were found guilty of administering an oath which this statute made penal, and were sentenced to seven years' penal servitude. Notwithstanding a burst of popular indignation, these six labourers were transported to Van Dieman's land, the Government being so determined about it as to make preparations to sweep the streets of the Metropolis with cannon.
In 1872 the South Warwickshire labourers formed a Trades-Union, and though the example soon spread through the country, thus showing itself to be a far more formidable movement than the Dorset one, not a hand was raised to stop its progress.
Few movements have been less the result of premeditation.
