Mr. Gladstone at Aberdeen, and Mr. Bruce in Renfrewshire, •
have both expressed their complete disbelief that the Inter- national Society is likely to gain any dangerous political influence -in England, whatever it may do abroad. They held that the working-men of England are quite satisfied with the share they 'have gained of political power, and believe that they can, by using that power, obtain all legitimate political objects in the legi- timate way, through the action of the Legislature ;—and that the efforts of such able foreigners as Karl Marx to divert the Inter- national Society in England from trade purposes to political 'conspiracies will fall utterly dead. And they are no doubt right. The conduct of Mr. Odger and Mr. Lucraft has shown pretty clearly that so it will be, though these working- class leaders have not always separated themselves from the political programmes of the International with 'the prompt- ness and distinctness of action that might have been wished. The truth is, English working-men are apt to express, and to believe that they feel, a sort of vague, general admiration 'for revolutionary violence, without making up their own minds very clearly as to how much of it they would be ready to partici- pate in themselves. But directly they come to feel anything like personal responsibility for such violence, they are startled, and show themselves the genuinely cautious and moderate Britons they really are.
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