Excerpt from Fors Clavigera, Vol. 1: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain WE begin to-day another group of ten years, not in happy circumstances. Although, for the time, exempted from the direct calamities which have fallen on neighbouring states, believe me, we have not escaped them because of our better deservings, nor by our better wisdom; but only for one of two bad reasons, or for both either that we have not sense enough to determine in a great national quarrel which side is right, or that we have not courage to defend the right, when we have discerned it. I believe that both these bad reasons exist in full force that our own political divisions prevent us from understand ing the laws of international justice; and that, even if we did, we should not dare to defend, perhaps not even to assert them, being on this first of January, 1871, in much bodily fear; that is to say, afraid of the Russians; afraid of the Prussians afraid of the Americans afraid of the Hindoos afraid of the Chinese afraid of the Japanese afraid of the New Zealanders and afraid of the Caffres and very justly so, being conscious that our only real desire respecting any of these nations has been to get as much out of them as we could. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.