About the supposed omnipotence of the Charter, I have found out my mistake. I believe no more in "Morison's-Pill-remedies," as Thomas Carlyle calls them. Talismans are worthless. The age of spirit-compelling spells, whether of parchment or carbuncle, is past--if, indeed, it ever existed. The Charter will no more make men good, than political economy, or the observance of the Church Calendar--a fact which we working men, I really believe, have, under the pressure of wholesome defeat and God-sent affliction, found out sooner than our more "enlightened" fellow-idolaters. But at that time, as I have confessed already, we took our betters at their word, and believed in Morison's Pills. Only, as we looked at the world from among a class of facts somewhat different from theirs, we differed from them proportionably as to our notions of the proper ingredients in the said Pill. * * * * * But what became of our protest? It was received--and disregarded. As for turning us off, we had, _de facto_, like Coriolanus, banished the Romans, turned our master off. All the other hands, some forty in number, submitted and took the yoke upon them, and went down into the house of bondage, knowing whither they went. Every man of them is now a beggar, compared with what he was then. Many are dead in the prime of life of consumption, bad food and lodging, and the peculiar diseases of our trade. Some have not been heard of lately--we fancy them imprisoned in some sweaters' dens--but thereby hangs a tale, whereof more hereafter. But it was singular, that every one of the six who had merely professed their conditional readiness to sign the protest, were contumeliously discharged the next day, without any reason being assigned. It was evident that there had been a traitor at the meeting; and every one suspected Jemmy Downes, especially as he fell into the new system with suspiciously strange alacrity. But it was as impossible to prove the offence against him, as to punish him for it. Of that wretched man, too, and his subsequent career, I shall have somewhat to say hereafter. Verily, there is a God who judgeth the earth! But now behold me and my now intimate and beloved friend, Crossthwaite, with nothing to do--a gentlemanlike occupation; but, unfortunately, in our class, involving starvation. What was to be done? We applied for work at several "honourable shops"; but at all we received the same answer. Their trade was decreasing--the public ran daily more and more to the cheap show-shops--and they themselves were forced, in order to compete with these latter, to put more and more of their work out at contract prices. _Facilis descensus Averni!_ Having once been hustled out of the serried crowd of competing workmen, it was impossible to force our way in again. So, a week or ten days past, our little stocks of money were exhausted. I was down-hearted at once; but Crossthwaite bore up gaily enough.