Mundella the support of Broadhead and the criminal Unionists was offered, and by him it was decisively rejected. The public mind has been filled with hideous fantasies, on the subject of Unionism, by sensation novelists like Mr. Charles Reade and Mr. Disraeli, the latter of whom has depicted the initiation of a working man into a Union with horrid rites, in a lofty and spacious room, hung with black cloth and lighted with tapers, amidst skeletons, men with battle axes, rows of masked figures in white robes, and holding torches; the novice swearing an awful oath on the Gospel, to do every act which the heads of the society enjoin, such as the chastisement of "nobs," the assassination of tyrannical masters, and the demolition of all mills deemed incorrigible by the society. People may read such stuff for the sake of amusement and excitement, if they please; but they will fall into a grave error if they take it for a true picture of the Amalgamated Carpenters or the Amalgamated Engineers. Besides, the Sheffield outrages were several years old at the time of their discovery. They belong, morally, to the time when the unions of working men being forbidden by unfair laws framed in the masters' interest were compelled to assume the character of conspiracies; when, to rob a union being no theft, unionists could hardly be expected to have the same respect as the better protected interests for public justice; when, moreover, the mechanics, excluded from political rights, could scarcely regard Government as the impartial guardian of their interests, or the governing classes as their friends. Since the legalization of the unions, the extension of legal security to their funds and the admission of the mechanics to the suffrage there has been comparatively little of unionist crime.