The objects which artizans have long sought to achieve by their private organizations, they would, had they adequate political power, seek to achieve by public enactments. If, on points like those instanced, their convictions are so strong and their determination so great, that they will time after time submit to extreme privations in the effort to carry them; it is a reasonable expectation that these convictions, pushed with this determination, would soon be expressed in law, if those who held them had predominant power. With working men, questions concerning the regulation of labour are of the highest interest. Candidates for Parliament would be more likely to obtain their suffrages by pandering to their prejudices on such questions, than in any other way. Should it be said that no evil need be feared unless the artizan-class numerically preponderated in the constituencies; it may be rejoined that not unfrequently, where two chief political parties are nearly balanced, some other party, though much smaller, determines the election. When we bear in mind that the trades-unions throughout the kingdom number 600,000 members, and command a fund of £300,000—when we remember that these trades-unions are in the habit of aiding each other, and have even been incorporated into one national association—when we also remember that {367} their organization is very complete, and their power over their members mercilessly exercised; it seems likely that at a general election their combined action would decide the result in many towns: even though the artizans in each case formed but a moderate portion of the constituency. How influential small but combined bodies are, the Irish Members of our House of Commons prove to us; and still more clearly the Irish emigrants in America. Certainly these trade-combinations are not less perfectly organized; nor are the motives of their members less strong. Judge then how efficient their political action would be.