Help yourselves, and Heaven will help you. Combination among ourselves is the only chance. One thing we can do—sit still.' "'And starve!' said some one." Crossthwaite is represented as having preferred to endure want rather than work under the sweating system. But there are few men who possess such spirit and determination. Men with families are compelled, by considering those who are dependent upon them, to work for whatever prices the masters choose to pay. They are free labourers—if they do not choose to work—they are perfectly free—to starve! The government took the initiative in the sweating system. It set the example by giving the army and navy clothes to contractors, and taking the lowest tenders. The police clothes, the postmen's clothes, the convict's clothes, are all contracted for by sweaters and sub-sweaters, till government work is the very last, lowest resource to which a poor, starved-out wretch betakes himself, to keep body and soul together. Thus is profit made from the pauperism of men, the slavery of children, and the prostitution of women, in Great Britain. Some years ago the following announcement appeared in the Village Gazette:— "Peter Moreau and his wife are dead, aged twenty-five years. Too much work has killed them and many besides. We say—Work like a negro, like a galley-slave: we ought to say—Work like a freeman." Work like negro slaves, indeed! There is no such work in America, even among the slaves; all day long, from Monday morning till Saturday night, week after week, and year after year, till the machine is worn out. American slaves and convicts in New South Wales are fat and happy, compared with the labourers of England. It frequently happens that Englishmen commit crimes for the purpose of becoming galley-slaves in New South Wales. They do not keep their purpose secret; they declare it loudly with tears and passionate exclamations to the magistrate who commits them for trial, to the jury who try them, and to the judge who passes sentence on them. This is published in the newspapers, but so often that it excites no particular comment. The parish apprentices are the worst-treated slaves in the world. They are at the mercy of their masters and mistresses during their term of apprenticeship, without protectors, and without appeal against the most cruel tyranny. In the reign of George III., one Elizabeth Brownrigg was hanged for beating and starving to death her parish apprentices. In 1831, another woman, Esther Hibner by name, was hanged in London for beating and starving to death a parish apprentice. Two instances of punishment, for thousands of cases of impunity!