The party in England who think that masters have a
moral right to combine, but that workmen have not, have recently been crying up Belgium as a sort of capitalists' paradise. Trades' Unions do not flourish there, and consequently the workmen, being unable to influence their employers in any other way, descend when aggrieved into the streets. On the 2nd inst., the miners at Marchiennes rose to resist a reduction of wages of ten per cent., closed all neighbouring workshops, and resisted the troops sent against them. Some thirty persons were killed and wounded, and the example was rapidly followed throughout the mining district, troops everywhere being employed against the men, who on their side seem perfectly ready to fight. By the latest report the disorders are spreading rapidly. This is, we presume, the state of affairs which the Times, and those who agree with it, would like to see in Great Britain,—the Unions prohibited, and workmen therefore compelled to obtain redress of grievances by force.
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