preserved that a revolution was impending, and that, as Lassalle said, it was bound to come and could not be checked, whether it approached by sober advances from concession to concession, or flew, with streaming hair and shod with steel, right into the central stronghold. This was very much the keynote struck by Marx in his inaugural address. That address was simply a review of the situation since 1848, and an encouragement of his forces to a renewal of the combat. Wealth had enormously increased in the interval; colonies had been opened, new inventions discovered, free trade introduced; but misery was not a whit the less; class contrasts were even deeper marked, property was more than ever in the hands of the few; in England the number of landowners had diminished eleven per cent. in the preceding ten years; and if this rate were to continue, the country would be rapidly ripe for revolution. While the old order of things was thus hastening to its doom, the new order of things had made some advances. The Ten Hours Act was "not merely a great practical result, but was the victory of a principle. For the first time the political economy of the _bourgeoisie_ had been in clear broad day put in subjection to the political economy of the working class." Then, again, the experiment of co-operation had now been sufficiently tried to show that it was possible to carry on industry without the intervention of an employing class, and had spread abroad the hope that wage labour was, like slavery and feudal servitude, only a transitory and subordinate form, which was destined to be superseded by associated labour. The International had for its aim to promote this associated labour; only it sought to do so, not piecemeal and sporadically, but systematically, on a national scale, and by State means. And for this end the labouring class must first acquire political power, so as to obtain possession of the means of production; and to acquire political power, they must unite.