Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/43

 in favour of Free Trade in corn it is even possible that the Chartists and Socialists together might have achieved, at any rate, a temporary success for the cause of the people. As it was the Corn Law League drawing the people off on a false scent—for all can see nowadays that cheap food meant little more than increased profits for the capitalist class—the leaders were left almost without followers; and though in 1848 the renewed stir on the Continent of Europe gave the workers in this country every encouragement and an exceptional opportunity, they failed to resuscitate the energetic movement of 1842. In fact almost the only great result of all the long series of agitations for the benefit of the workers was the final settlement and consolidation in 1852 of the Factory Act of 1847.

But 1848 on the Continent of Europe was a far more important date than in England. Then first, it may be said, since Babœuf's conspiracy in 1796,—for the "Days of July" in 1830 in Paris or the outbreak at Lyons in 1834 were comparatively trifling—did the proletariat again show that it had interests which were not only not in accord with, but diametrically hostile to the interests of the middle class. All over Europe scientific, as distinguished from mere utopian, Socialism now began to be felt beneath the efforts for national independence. The famous Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels which first formulated in a distinct shape the great truth of the inevitable struggle of classes so long as classes exist, the agitations of Blanqui and the theories of Louis Blanc, Ledr Rollin, &c., all pointed to an international combination of the workers in the interests of the labouring class