men were not so short-sighted. Then he heard that there were rests used, the use of which was enforced by the trade, but the effect of which was to double up the man's arm and make it useless after a few years, while they had a rest which produced no such results, and which, if used, would enable a man to work ten, fifteen, or twenty years longer. If that were not true, let them contradict it. To his mind it was necessary that he should, in this great centre of trades-unions, where they had it nearly all their own way, tell them the plain truth; and in so doing he repeated, with regard to machinery, that if what he had heard was true, they had adopted a course by which they would gradually lose the confidence of the best part of their fellow-countrymen, and by which they would not hold their own in the great industrial race of the country. It required some courage to speak like this, and though a few of the men present were pushed forward by their companions to contradict some of these statements, no effectual answer was given to them. Nor were the practices which Mr. Hughes denounced, discontinued. They became intensified, and while the trades-unions denied that they were encouraged by their body, and asserted that the outrages were committed by violent and lawless men whose actions they were unable to control, they seemed never to have put forth the strong influence which they possessed for the purpose of denouncing and preventing such infamous offences. At length, after a number of crimes had aroused public indignation, the miscreants concerned in them proceeded to what appeared to be deliberate murder, and the officers of the unions becoming alarmed, utterly repudiated any connection with the offences said to have been committed at their instigation, and demanded that the charges made against them should be investigated by the trades-unions commission which had been appointed by Lord Derby's government, and was then sitting to inquire into the operations and effects of these associations. The investigations of this commission proved that not in Sheffield only, but in Manchester and other manufacturing towns, a number of atrocious offences had been committed, and in many instances had been planned or suggested by officers of trades-unions. Some employers who had hired non-union men to do their work were threatened and assaulted. Others actually gave up business in the dread of being maimed or murdered. One brickmaker had his shed burned down with naphtha and some valuable machinery destroyed. Brick-makers who were non-unionists found the clay which they went to handle, filled with needles. Watchmen employed to protect property were shot at, wounded, and even killed; in one case a valuable horse was slowly roasted to death in revenge against its owner. These dark places of the earth were full of cruelty. The number of the atrocities at Sheffield was appalling, and the worst of them were traced to the instigation of one man named Broadhead, the secretary of the saw-grinders' union. In many other instances the methods pursued by the unions were infamous and tyrannical; but even the worst of them were scarcely suspected of the crimes which were discovered during an inquiry instituted by Mr. Overend, Q.C., who had been appointed to investigate the working of the Sheffield societies. As he had authority given him to grant a free pardon to any persons who would fully disclose what they knew of the iniquitous transactions, a searching examination elicited details which were so horrible that the account of them affected even the witnesses themselves, and sent a thrill of indignation through the country. The actual perpetrators of these crimes came forward to confess them in evidence, as they thereby escaped the penalty that they had long feared; and the miscreant Broadhead himself took this way of escaping, and during his presence in the court adjured one of his companions to "tell the truth" and "tell all." A witness named Hallam disclosed several outrages, and at length confessed to having been concerned with another man in shooting a workman named Linley, who had incurred the displeasure of the members of the union by refusing to join them and to desist from working. Hallam became much agitated in giving his THE SAW-GRINDERS' UNION-BROADHEAD. evidence, and twice fainted in the court. He said, "Crookes joined with me in shooting Linley. I compelled Crookes to shoot him. He shot him with an air-gun." On being asked if any other person had set him on to do this, his reply showed with what fiendish cunning Broadhead had made these men his tools. "I asked Broadhead one day what he was doing with Linley, and he said he would have a conversation with me the next day. I saw him the next day, and he asked me if I recollected the previous day's conversation. I said I did. He asked me what I would do with him. I told him I would make him as he would work no more. He asked me what I should want for doing it; and I asked him if £20 would be too much. He said, No, he should think not. I said I would do it." Being asked if he had told Broadhead how it was to be done, he answered that he had not. "I saw Crookes on the following day, and told him I had got the job to do Linley. He asked me whom I had seen, and I told him I had seen Broadhead, and that we were to have £20. He said he thought we should not get £20. I saw him again the week following. We went to Broadhead's to see what we were to have. Crookes saw him alone. When he returned to me he said we were to have £15; that was all he would give. I then went upstairs to Broadhead, and he told me he would not give more than £15 for the job. I agreed to do it. I got £3 from him, and bought a revolver. Crookes got an air-gun." It was with that gun that the unfortunate victim was shot. The two wretches followed him about from place to place nearly every night for five or six weeks before they could get the opportunity they sought. They did not intend to kill him; but Crookes, who❘ was "a pretty good shot," and had been seen by his accomplice to shoot rabbits in Eccleshall Wood, was to aim at the man's shoulder, and so to disable him from working. At last, one night at dusk, having followed him to the Crown public-house, where he was sitting in a room with other persons, they remained in the yard. Linley was sitting near the window. At first Crookes refused to shoot him, but 243 Hallam declared that he would do it himself, and he had also found a way by which they might escape out of the yard. Crookes then raised the air-gun and shot the man just as he was leaning forward in earnest conversation. It was intended that the ball should strike him under the shoulder, but it glanced upward and wounded the back of the head, inflicting an injury of which he afterwards died. The assassins fled, and the money which had been promised was paid. Crookes, the man who committed the crime, came up to add his evidence to that of Hallam, and it was to him, as he passed into the court before the commission, that Broadhead called out, "Tell the truth, Sam, tell all." Broadhead himself had already come forward to save himself by confessing to a list of outrages for which it would almost appear he had no very deep remorse, or at all events no overwhelming shame, though he expressed abhorrence of his crimes and wept during his confession. The reason alleged for shooting Linley was that he had hired a number of boys to work, and was injuring the trade. Another man was "blown up" for having been brought into the trade contrary to rule. They expected if he was admitted a member they would "have him on the box," by which they meant receiving money from the support fund, and it was to drive him from the trade that he was blown up. Crookes had been hired to lame Helliwell by shooting him, but did not get an opportunity. Another man was hired to find somebody to shoot a person named Parker, the price for which was £20 to £30, a sum, to pay which, Broadhead embezzled from the funds. Somebody was to have £5 for blowing up the boilers of a manufacturing firm at Sheffield, to whom Broadhead wrote a letter, saying, "If I but move my finger you are sent into eternity as sure as fate." A man named Baxter, who had "held aloof from the trade" when Broadhead thought he ought to contribute, was punished by having a canister of gunpowder thrown down his chimney. Another man's house was to be blown up; the blowing up of the houses of those who employed non-society men; the flinging of canisters of powder down chimneys, hamstringing horses, cutting the bands or destroying other | portions of machinery, were all devices employed by these conspirators. The inquiry disclosed a systematic resort to criminal means for establishing the authority of the so-called unions, which for a time naturally aroused much public feeling against them. It was with something like reluctance that the promise to let these witnesses go free in return for their confessions was kept. Broadhead disappeared for a short time, and afterwards was heard of in various parts of the country as a lecturer on trades-unions or similar subjects; but he sank out of notice. The societies the reputation of which he had injured could not acknowledge him; those which had endorsed, or all events had permitted, his atrocities dared not, and even had they dared would not openly receive him, especially as he had exposed their complicity with his offences. The revelations made to the commission did much good; they enabled honest and reasonable associations for the purpose of advancing the interests of the men by regulating wages and hours of labour, to disavow all sympathy with violence, and to claim some support in their legitimate endeavours, and they directed attention to the illegal and injurious practices of those societies, which, even though they may not have countenanced deliberate violence or actual destruction of life and property, too often continued illegally to persecute, to threaten, and to punish workmen who declined to join their union, or employers who admitted to their factories, men who refused to part with the right to make their own contract for their own labour. It should be remembered, however, that the lawlessness and violence of some of the associations may have been the result of earlier declarations of the legislature, which denied to labourers the right of peacefully combining for the purpose of promoting their own interests. Where any union of workers for the purpose of influencing the operations of a particular trade, and of combining for the common purpose of obtaining better conditions of employment, is made an offence against the law, men who are brooding over their supposed wrongs and smarting with a sense of injustice will too often abandon efforts to act in accordance with the claims of order, and will disregard the demands of common humanity beyond the pale of which they conceive that they have themselves been removed. While these disturbances were exciting much attention and some dismay, public curiosity was aroused by reports of the remarkable ability for organization manifested by the commanders of an expedition which had been ordered to Abyssinia for the purpose of insisting on the liberation of a number of Europeans, several of them German missionaries, who, along with Captain Cameron, the British representative, had been treacherously made captive by the half-savage tyrant “King” Theodore, whose successes against the chiefs of other tribes had given him control of the country. People here knew but little of Abyssinia except that it was an almost unexplored country bounded by the Red Sea, Nubia, and Senaar, and spreading on the north-west to unknown tracts inhabited, where they were inhabited at all, by the Gallas, the Shoans, the Wanikas, and other wild tribes. Missionaries and a few enterprising travellers, who had penetrated the arid plains and dense thickets of that vast territory, informed us that the whole country formed a great irregular table-land, projecting from the high regions south of the line into the comparatively level tracts bounding the basin of the Nile, and forming a succession of undulating plains of various altitudes deeply cut into by numerous valleys and water channels, which often descended 3000 or 4000 feet clear down below the level plains that reached the great height of 8000 or 9000 feet. The population consisted chiefly of three races-one resembling the Bedouin Arabs; another, the Ethiopians; and a third representing wild tribes distinct from each. There were also numbers of negroes held as slaves. The majority of the Abyssinians professed a religion which was a peculiarly corrupted form of Christianity, or rather appeared to be a strange mingling of Islamism with some of the observances of the Romish Church. The people were of debased character; the two KING THEODORE THE ABYSSINIAN WAR. principal tribes were the Shoans and the people of Tigré, both of whom were hardy and warlike; but the chieftains of all the tribes were jealous and distrustful of each other, and though Ras Ali, a powerful leader, held the title of Emperor of Abyssinia in 1848 and 1849, when our consul, Mr. Plowden, contracted a treaty of commerce with him, a great change took place two years afterwards, when Dejajmotch Kasai, a brave and able chief of another tribe, gained decisive victories over the Gallas, the Shoans, and the men of Tigré, and assumed the sovereignty under the title of "Theodorus, king of the kings of Ethiopia and Emperor of Abyssinia." This man, Theodore, as he was called here, had the cruelty and tyranny of the semi-savage, and an overweening ambition which, combined with arrogance and personal vanity, rendered him almost insane. He claimed to be the descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and imagined that he could demand an alliance with France and England on equal terms. But what he most coveted was the recognition of equality from England in the form of a letter from Queen Victoria and an amicable treaty. He had refused to identify himself with the Church of Rome or with its priests, to whom his own Abuna or bishop had a great objection, and he professed to rely on an ancient prophecy which declared that a king named Theodorus would reform Abyssinia, restore the Christian faith, and become master of the world. He made his capital at a rocky fortress called Magdala, a lofty and almost inaccessible height, and he displayed great anxiety to attach Englishmen to his service. In 1860 Mr. Plowden, the British consul, while on a journey, was attacked by a band of one of the rebellious tribes, and received a wound of which he afterwards died. Theodore, who had a great regard for him, signally avenged his death; but this and all his assumed liking for the English appears to have been a part of his ardent ambition to conclude a treaty with this country. In 1861 Captain Cameron went to Abyssinia as consul; but, as it was understood, only for the protection of British trade, and, as he was afterwards reminded by Lord John Russell, holding no 245 representative character in the country. The English government distinctly refrained from interfering in the disputes of the tribes on the frontier of Egypt and Abyssinia, but the object of Theodore was to secure such an interposition as would enable him to claim support against the Turks. At the end of October, 1861, he addressed a letter to the queen, declaring that it was his mission to overthrow the Gallas and the Turks, to restore the country with himself as emperor. He acknowledged the arrival of Captain Cameron with letters and presents, and requested that the queen would give orders for the safe passage of his ambassadors everywhere on the road, that they might not be molested by the Turks, who were his enemies. This was a crafty attempt to endeavour to secure what would have been, in effect, an alliance with England against the Islams. The letter was forwarded by Captain Cameron, and Theodore waited for a reply. Meantime, however, the consul paid a visit to the frontier province of Bogos, an injudicious step for which he was afterwards rebuked; but his excuse was that the Christian inhabitants there were under the protection of the British consul, and that he had been commissioned by the foreign office to report on the suitability of Sonakin and Massowah as a consulate station, and also on the trade of the latter place. But this visit roused the jealous suspicion of Theodore, who was already furious at not having received any reply to his letter to the queen, which, by some strange oversight, had been mislaid or left unnoticed in the foreign office. Earl Russell (then minister of foreign affairs) wrote to Consul Cameron, but did not mention the "emperor's" communication, and this slight, together with the journey of the consul, who, he said, "went to the Turks, who do not love me," so incensed the savage conqueror that he took revenge by making prisoners of Mr. Cameron, his secretary and attendants, and all the Europeans he could lay hands upon, including missionaries, and several artisans and workmen, who had been induced to remain in the country. Several of these captives were placed in irons and shut up in squalid comfortless huts or stone buildings language with Theodore against his treachery and cruelty. In vain the Armenian patriarch at Constantinople endeavoured to interpose by asking for clemency towards the prisoners. In vain did he send an archbishop named Sahak to endeavour to obtain by a personal interview the favour which had been denied to a letter. This was early in 1867, and by the time the Derby administration had taken the place of that of Earl Russell in England, armed interference seemed to have become inevitable. At length Lord Stanley sent a letter, saying that unless the captives were released within three months, war would be declared. Either this letter never reached Theodore, or, like other semi-savages, he thought that he could terrify the English government by threats and outrages, holding the lives and safety of innocent people as hostages against retribution. He had become famous as a successful warrior, and still believed in the courage and determination of the troops which were left him, though his tyranny and the cruelties he had perpetrated had caused numbers of the tribes to fall away from him, and his army was dwindling. When he became convinced that the British forces were advancing to invade his territory he was for a short time boastful, but soon relapsed into a condition of gloomy foreboding, watching for auguries of his fate in the clouds. carefully guarded, and most of them were treated with alternate severity and kindness according to the half-insane whim of the tyrant, who caused them to be removed from place to place, retaining some of them in durance in his camp that he might summon them to his presence either to threaten them, or to reassure them of his good intentions. Occasionally he would visit them in a free and easy manner, taking with him wine or some kind of feast, and after having caused them to be released from their fetters, would sit and drink, and be familiarly merry. At other times he would have them before him, and with boding face seem to gloat over the sufferings which he had in reserve for them. It appeared as though the first attempt to enforce the release of the prisoners by sending an invading army would be the signal for their torture and execution, and the government therefore determined to authorise a messenger to open negotiations for their liberation. The envoy chosen was Mr. Rassam, who was partly of African descent, had held the office of assistant British resident at Aden, and was known to have aided Mr. Layard in his explorations of the remains of Nineveh and Babylon. Dr. Blanc, a French physician, and Lieutenant Prideaux accompanied the embassy, which arrived in Theodore's camp in January, 1866, and was received with some pretence of consideration; but Mr. Rassam and his companions were then added to the number of the prisoners; Theodore was almost entirely given up to the idea that the English government and the queen were intentionally neglecting him, and full of jealous suspicion and sullen fury he remained with his army and the captives in the fortress city of Magdala. Among the prisoners were the wives of two of the missionaries and of a few of the workmen, and several children. The sufferings of some of the men were extreme, for the climate was exhausting, they were kept in close captivity in wretched quarters; the fetters became almost imbedded inventions. Elephants were brought from India; their swollen limbs. Mr. Stern and Mr. Rosenthal, two of the German missionaries, were treated with great severity, presumably because they were not disposed to display abject terror, and remonstrated in emphatic Preparations for the expedition were rapid and effective. The sum of two millions was voted by parliament to pay the cost. It actually cost above four millions, with contingencies which brought the amount eventually to nine millions; but though there was some grumbling at this expenditure, there was on the whole a sense of satisfaction, for there had seldom or never been a more prompt, decisive, and complete organization than that which distinguished the army that landed in Abyssinia. Advantage was taken of new appliances and in mules for transport were bought in Egypt and in Spain; hospital ships were fitted out; apparatus for distilling sea-water was provided in case the supply of fresh water should run short. Forage, food, saddlery stores, and ma |