Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/126

 By Mr. Burt's advice this sum, instead of being divided among the several collieries in the union, was made the nucleus of a central fund, which in a few years increased to eighty thousand dollars, while the membership of the union was quadrupled.

Though in Parliament, Mr. Burt is still the adviser-general and appellant-judge of the association, whose solidarity and wise counsels have done so much to inspire both employers and employed in Northumberland with feelings of amity and mutual respect. Recently there has been a sensible decline in the membership of the union, owing chiefly to the wholesale depopulation of certain districts consequent on the prolonged depression of trade and the enforced stoppage of the less remunerative pits. Within the last three and a half years the miners of Northumberland, to their credit be it recorded, have expended nearly eighty-five thousand dollars in support of brethren thus thrown out of employment. Indeed, that they should have hitherto been able to face the crisis so manfully and efficiently can only be regarded as another miracle of thrift and self-sacrifice worthy of the men who, by returning Mr. Burt to Parliament as their "paid member," were the pioneers of one of the most necessary and important political reforms of the future.

The circumstances attending the return of the member for Morpeth to Parliament have never yet received the general attention and commendation they deserve. They were most remarkable. Two pitmen, Mr. Robert Elliot (a poet of no mean merit) and Mr. Thomas Glassey, along with two brothers, Drs. James and Robert Trotter, local medical practitioners, did the heaviest portion of the electioneering, which, at the