Originally published in The Labourer (Northern Star Office) vol.1 #1 (Apr 1847).
We are fortunate in being able to say that our Preface is warranted in being short. We have no lengthy explanations to give with regard to pledges broken, or promises not realized. We have set ourselves a task—we hare performed it honestly and to the best of our abilities, and, in issuing this First Volume of "The Labourer" to the public, we look back with pleasure to the hour when we first became acquainted with our Readers, and with confidence as to the results of our future intercourse.
Our object has been more instruction than amusement—we, however, had one great goal before our eyes—the redemption of the Working classes from their thraldom—and to this object we have made the purpose of each article subservient. Yet, convinced that all which elevates the feelings or heightens the aspirations, can but strengthen the political power of a people, we have placed poetry and romance side by side with politics and history. In the "Insurrections of the Working-classes" we are shewing how the People were mastered and oppressed in former times; in the "Romance of a People," how they are injured in the present day; in the "Confessions of a King," how they may be used as the tools of ambition; while a series of political articles has been the connecting link of bringing these lessons to bear on our present prospects and position.
We are not of those who boast of what they have done, or of what they will do, but in acknowledging the success which has attended our undertaking, we may, perhaps, be permitted to observe, that "The Labourer" is one of the very few magazines which supply their readers with entirely original matter—and the only one which fully and fearlessly stands forward as the advocate of democracv—and the exponent of popular grievances and popular rights. We have devoted a considerable portion of our space to the Questions of the Land and the Bank, convinced that in these we behold two of the levers destined to remove the dead weight of monopoly from the shoulders of the people; and we now conclude these prefatorv remarks, with which we lay the fruit of our labours before the Reader, in the hope that we may be cheered and encouraged in our onward course by the best stimulant to exertion that we can receive: that of beholding democratic spirit and democratic power spreading and prospering among the ranks of the oppressed.