in the metropolis of the Black Country. To this rallied men of all ranks and professions and occupations—members of Parliament, peers of the realm, clergy and ministers of all denominations, and the rank and file of the foundries, factories, and workshops of the district. The means were not only worthy the end but of equal worth in moral value. On that grand march to political right and power, the masses stood shoulder to shoulder with their leaders. It was a great copartnership and fraternization of the classes. They showed to European Christendom a spectacle it never saw or conceived before; what had never been seen or imagined in England before. That was a mighty mass meeting of the people, which could be counted by ten thousands, and nine in ten belonging to the working classes—a waving sea of faces, with 100,000 eager, listening eyes turned towards the speaker; gazing at principles and resolutions which no human voice could utter in the heaving of the vast multitude, but which were raised in great letters on standard boards, one to each half acre of men. That was about the grandest sight ever witnessed. It is computed that full 100,000 men—and three-fourths of them stalwart men of the hammer and pick, spade and file—were numbered in some of these outdoor meetings, who were swayed with indignant emotion, and listened with wrathful eyes and clenched
