the harvest of honest industry, that Mr. Burt is at war. In politics he is a very intelligent English Radical, and nothing more. lie is actuated by no Socialistic or subversive passions; and, if he gives the best portion of his legislative attention to the interests of his own class, it is simply because he thinks, and thinks justly, that these are the most neglected at St. Stephen's. We hear of "officers and gentlemen." If he is a workman, he is likewise a gentleman. Like the late Mr. Odger, he has succeeded in completely emancipating himself from the warping influences of class feeling; and by dint of a severe course of reading and reflection he has arrived at conceptions of the public good which may be truly called statesmanlike. There are not many men in Parliament regarding whom it would be honest to aver as much. But the politics of the pit are manifestly more enlightened, more national in scope, than those of church or castle, bar or barrack-room; and, if Mr. Thomas Burt be a fair specimen of "pitmen" politicians, I have no hesitation in saying that it is a misfortune for the country that there are so few of them in the House. Wonderful to relate, he represents his constituents in Parliament, not himself. In the path of such a man, if the truth were told, at least as many snares are apt to be laid at Westminster as at Washington; and, to my certain knowledge, Mr. Burt has, on more occasions than one, resisted the machinations of the tempter with scrupulous fidelity.
Mr. Burt was born at Murton Row, a small hamlet about two miles from North Shields, Northumberland, in November, 1837. His ancestors, needless to say, did not "come over at the Conquest." The fact is not recorded; but I believe they were in England long
