THE DIGNITY AND RIGHTS OF LABOUR. A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE MECHANICS' INSTITUTION, LEEDS, ON THE 28TH JANUARY 1874. MR. MAYOR, When I received from your Secretary the invitation of the President and Committee of the Leeds Mechanics' Institute, I had great hesitation in accepting it; not that I doubted the kindness with which it was tendered, nor that I doubted my own entire will to do the utmost that I could to meet your wish: but I felt that the invitation called me to launch upon a venture so far beyond my ordinary navigation, and into a deep that I had not sounded, that prudence would have counselled me to decline the honour that you offered. Nevertheless I had rather do what I am about to attempt feebly, and I must say very imperfectly, than seem to be wanting to you in respect and good-will, and in the desire which I truly have to promote, if it be in my power, not only the good, but even the recreation, of my neighbour. And when I was assured that we meet upon what your President has called the neutral platform, it so entirely fell in with what I conceive to be a high dictate of our duty that I could no longer hesitate: I mean this-that in everything of private life, and everything of domestic and civil and political life, we have but one common interest the welfare of our common country. If there be divergencies, as there must be, as always have been, and as I fear there always will be, it seems to me that it is the duty of every one of us to strive that they should be suspended at least in every region of our public and private life wheresoever it is possible. When therefore I had ventured to accept your invitation, I was asked what subject should be put upon your programme, and thinking to choose an easy matter, I found I had taken myself in a snare. I thought that the Dignity and the Rights of Labour' would be a subject common to us all; one in which you and I are united, though in a different way; and that, as our interest is common, the subject would not be difficult. But I confess, when I began to examine what I had done, I felt that I had imposed upon myself a task of no ordinary difficulty; for the plainer and commoner a subject is, the harder it is to treat it in any other than a familiar and a commonplace way. And easy as it would be to heap up mountains of truisms and to spread out continents of platitudes on the subject of labour, it is very difficult, at least for me, to say anything with which you are not altogether familiar. Nevertheless what I can do I will endeavour to do. Now Lord Macaulay, in his History of England, tells us that in the reign of Charles II. the town of Leeds was already a town of clothiers and clothmakers; but, he said, it had only in the time of Charles I. received its municipal privileges; it obtained the power of electing a member to Parliament in the time of Oliver Cromwell. It was a town of 7000 inhabitants. It had a cloth trade, which upon a brisk market-day, as he says, might sell in the open air upon the bridge some thousands of pounds' worth of cloth, and the men of Leeds were well satisfied with such a market. The oldest inhabitants of that day could remember the building of the first brick house, which was called for a long time after the Red House: which, as I am told, still exists. Now I suppose at this moment there are single firms in Leeds that turn over a larger capital than the whole town of Leeds at that day. At that time Norwich was a far greater town in importance than the town of Leeds. Norwich was a city of eight or nine and twenty thousand people. It had already a flourishing trade. What is the relative condition of things now? Leeds has from two to three hundred thousand people. It has a manufacture which is amongst the most renowned in England, perhaps standing at the head of its kind. The capital of Leeds I will not venture to conjecture. It has become the sixth or seventh great city or town in the British Empire. While Leeds has grown to this vast importance in commerce and in wealth, the whole of the British Empire has increased likewise. There has been a development of its commercial power, of its productiveness, of its labour, its skill, its capital, which is almost fabulous. I will give but one fact, which will be sufficient. A French gentleman, well conversant with commercial subjects, gave in evidence before a committee of commerce in France that at this time Great Britain, with its population of some |