Songs of the Army of the Night Part 20

{80} This explanation of these curious arborial growths is Mr Alfred Wallace's (_Malay Archipelago_, chapter v.), and in this matter also we may perhaps be content to rely on that "innate genius for solving difficulties" which Darwin has a.s.signed to the ill.u.s.trious naturalist whom Socialism is proud to number among her sons.

{84} The Australian Seamen's Union, after defeating our most powerful s.h.i.+pping company over the question of Coloured Labour, after compelling the companies that used Coloured Labour to abandon all coastal trade, in alliance with the Miners, faces the craft that was once the brutality of the sea-capitalists with the same dauntless determination, the same n.o.ble self-restraint, that made it long ago the protagonist of Australian Labour.

{87a} His attack on Carlyle, for instance, of which the prose part is the fouler, the verse part the more virulent.

{87b} Poems and Ballads. (1st Series.)

{87c} Songs before Sunrise.

{87d} The picturesque Italian gentlemen who struggled so heroically for Italian Nationalism represent to-day a tyranny deeper and more dark than that of the Austrian foreigners, the tyranny of _caste_. The certainty of popularity was the bait held out by the greasy respectability of the _London Times_, and poetical vanity swallowed it, making Mr Swinburne also among the panders in his denunciation of Irish Nationalism.

{89} To Mr Zox is chiefly due the formation of the Union of Female Workers, Servants, and Shop-girls in Melbourne. There is no cla.s.s called upon to endure more petty tyranny and injustice, more hard work and insult, and there is no cla.s.s which finds less real sympathy and help.

Cannot stupid Sydney follow suit?

{95} This was one of the most horrible crimes of our time. A band of young ruffians a.s.saulted, violated, and frightfully maltreated a young girl of rather dubious character. Nine were arraigned, seven condemned to death, and four hanged. The trial was most indecently hurried by a Judge who seemed determined to make the affair, from the aspect of law and justice, as evilly noteworthy as from other aspects of it.

{110} Charles I. and Stafford, _e.g._