◆¹ Let him consider the situation well. Let him realise what that system has already done for him. In spite of the sufferings which, owing to various causes, were inflicted on the labouring classes during the earlier years of the century,—many of them of a kind whose recurrence improved policy may obviate,—the income of Labour has, on the aggregate, continued to rise steadily. Let him consider how much. I have stated this once, let me state it now again. During the first sixty years of this century the income of the labouring classes rose to such an extent that in the year 1860 it was equal (all deductions for the increase of population being made) to the income of all classes in the year 1800. But there is another fact, far more extraordinary, to follow; and that is, that a result precisely similar has been accomplished since in one-half of the time. In 1880 the income of the labouring classes was (all deductions for the increase of population being made) more than equal to the income of all classes in the year 1850. Thus the labouring classes in 1860 were in precisely the same pecuniary position as the working classes in 1800 would have been had the entire wealth of the kingdom been in their hands; and the working classes of to-day are in a better pecuniary position than their fathers would have been could they have plundered and divided between them the wealth of every rich and middle-class man at the time of the building of the first Great Exhibition. I repeat what I have said before—that this represents a progress, which the wildest Socialist would never have dreamed of promising.