 Safety began to be a force in the country, and really represented the
producing classes. It began to improve immensely in the days which followed on
the acquittal of its members. Its old members had little administrative
capacity, though with the exception of a few self-seekers and traitors, they
were honest, courageous men, and many of them were endowed with considerable
talent of other kinds. But now that the times called for immediate action, came
forward the men capable of setting it on foot; and a new network of workmen's
associations grew up very speedily, whose avowed single object was the tiding
over of the ship of the community into a simple condition of Communism; and as
they practically undertook also the management of the ordinary labour-war, they
soon became the mouthpiece and intermediary of the whole of the working classes;
and the manufacturing profit-grinders now found themselves powerless before this
combination: unless their committee, Parliament, plucked up courage to begin the
civil war again, and to shoot right and left, they were bound to yield to the
demands of the men whom they employed, and pay higher and higher wages for
shorter and shorter day's work. Yet one ally they had, and that was the rapidly
approaching breakdown of the whole system founded on the World-Market and its
supply; which now became so clear to all people, that the middle classes,
shocked for the moment into condemnation of the Government for the great
massacre, turned round nearly in a mass, and called on the Government to look to
matters, and put an end to the tyranny of the Socialist leaders.
    Thus stimulated, the reactionist plot exploded probably before it was ripe;
but this time the people and their leaders were forewarned, and, before the
reactionaries could get under way, had taken the steps they thought necessary.
    The Liberal Government (clearly by collusion) was beaten by the
Conservatives, though the latter were nominally much in the minority. The
popular representatives in the House understood pretty well what this meant, and
after an attempt to fight the matter out by divisions in the House of Commons,
they made a protest, left the House, and came in a body to the Committee of
Public Safety: and the civil war began again in good earnest.
    Yet its first act was not one of mere fighting. The new Tory Government
determined to act, yet durst not re-enact the state of siege, but it sent a body
of soldiers and police to arrest the Committee of Public Safety in the lump.
They made no resistance, though they might have done so
