The so-called revolutions of 1848 were but poor incidents— 
smail fractures and fissures in the dry crust of European society. 
However, they denounced the abyss. Beneath the apparently solid 
surface, tney betrayed oceans of liquid matter, only needing 
expansion to rend into fragments continents of hard rock. Noisily 
aad confusedly they proclaimed the emancipation of the Pro- 
fetarian, i.e. the secret of the 19th century, and of the revolution 
of that century. That social revolution, it is true, was no novelty 
invented in 1848. Steam, electricity, and the self-acting mule were 
revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than even 
citizens Barbés, Raspail and Blanqui. But, although the atmo- 
sphere in which we live, weighs upon every one with a 20,000 lb. 
force, do you feel it? No more than European society before 1848 
feit the revolutionary atmosphere enveloping and pressing it from 
all sides. There is one great fact, characteristic of this our 19th 
century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there 
have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no 
epoch of the former human history had ever suspected. On the 
other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the 
horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman Empire. In our 
days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary. Machinery, 
sifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying 
human labour, we behold starving and overworking it. The 
new-fangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are 
turned into sources of want. The victories of art seem 
bought by the loss of character. At the same pace that mankind 
masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to 
his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to 

shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention 
and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with 
intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force. 
This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one 
hand, modern misery and dissolution on the other hand; this 
antagonism between the productive powers and the social 
relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming, and not 
to be controverted. Some parties may wail over it; others may wish 
to get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts. 
Or they may imagine that so signal a progress in industry wants to 
be completed by as signal a regress in politics. On our part, we do 
not mistake the shape of the shrewd spirit that continues to mark 
all these contradictions. We know that to work well the new- 
fangled forces of society, they only want to be mastered by 
new-fangled men—and such are the working men. They are as 
much the invention of modern time as machinery itself. In the 
signs that bewilder the middle class, the aristocracy and the poor 
prophets of regression, we do recognise our brave friend, Robin 
Goodfellow,* the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that 
worthy pioneer—the Revolution. The English working men are 
the first-born sons of modern industry. They will then, certainly, 
not be the last in aiding the social revolution produced by that 
industry, a revolution, which means the emancipation of their own 
class all over the world, which is as universal as capital-rule and 
wages-slavery. I know the heroic struggles the English working 
class have gone through since the middle of the last century— 
struggles less glorious, because they are shrouded in obscurity, 
and burked by the middle-class historian. To revenge the 
misdeeds of the ruling class, there existed in the middle ages, in 
Germany, a secret tribunal, called the “Vehmgericht.”” If a red 
cross was seen marked on a house, people knew that its owner was 
doomed by the “Vehm.” All the houses of Europe are now 
marked with the mysterious red cross. History is the judge—its 
executioner, the proletarian.