to the poor. The supporters of Grandmother Church are the enemies of all change. They claim the same in fallibility to the church as the Roman Catholics for the pope; and ascribe all the blame, all the national iniquity and offence against God, not to the rich and the learned, but to the poor and the ignorant, to whom alone they raise the call of repentance; whilst the poor re-echo the compliment, and call upon their spiritual and temporal rulers to turn from their evil deeds. It is wasting words to attempt to show that the power of repentance lies with the rich alone, for they only have the means they alone can make a sacrifice; the poor have no sacrifice to make. It would be an equal waste of words and time to attempt to prove, what has been demonstrated a thousand times, that their conduct has been all along condemned by their professions, and by the sacred book which they denominate the standard of right and wrong. It were useless to prove that their riches, their pride, their haughty demeanour and distance from the poor are merely a piece of infamous burlesque upon religion; that their magisterial prosecutions, their state religions, their fines, and their prisons, to keep their opponents in awe, are in direct hostility to the spirit of their Master, whose kingdom is not of this world. this has been done again and again; but their riches and political power have screened them from all the offensive weapons of reason and truth; and, as money can purchase justice at the bar, so they, by their political ascendency, have purchased a verdict of acquittal for themselves, and are regarded as the representatives of Christ and his holy Evangel the patterns for others to follow-the beaux ideal of moral worth.

All

Sel

If these men and their morals are the patterns of virtue, then the beauties and the excellencies of virtue have been sadly overrated; there are few redeeming qualities in her; she is neither just nor generous, fishness is her prevailing character; she is both a monopolist, a sectarian, and a persecutor; and it might make a subject for very tough discussion, whether the drunkard or the respectable moralist and legislator of the day is the most ruinous and obnoxious character. The one is the parent, the other the offspring. The legislator and moralist devises laws of inequality, which harass one porion of the community to aggrandize another. These laws degrade the poor; they reduce them to extreme wretchedness, and keep them in extreme ignorance; and in this state of mental degeneracy they abandon themselves to the guidance of depraved sensual propensities. How can it be otherwise? Man is an active being, a creature of strong passions, fond of everlasting excitement; and it ought to be the study of every legislator to regulate that excitement, by presenting temptations of a moral and refining character. It is not by penal enactments that the evil can be subdued. It is not by threats and stripes, by prisons, or by fines, that a moral charac ter can be purified. The passions of men are as elastic as the air we breathe, and equally subversive of the stability of all human institutions, if confined by force within too narrow a sphere of action. The air which is confined in the bowels of the earth, must somewhere find a vent; and in working it way out of its place of confinement it shakes the solid surface of the ground, tears up the strata of rocks beneath, and bursts asunder the everlasting mountains.

A

The lecturer proceeds to show that it is the same with the active spirit of man, which necessarily must be under frequent excitement. dull routine is unbearable to every one; and even our legislators themselves must have their recess, from the labours of law-making, at Christmas and Easter. They have also their great summer vacation. "Besides all their other private retreats," they can spend their evenings at social dinners, theatres, clubs, public assemblies, &c., and thus break the monotony of business, and regain the elasticity of the mind. "Can these men expect the poor to enjoy life, or even to spend life, without some similar variety of ex

citement and employment? It would be unreasonable to entertain such expectations." He contends that the legislature ought to provide some relaxation for all, instead of leaving it to individual caprice, or the necessitous choice of poverty," which only resorts to low brutality and drunkeness, because this is the only kind of excitement which comes within its reach." He argues that three-fourths of the debauchery of the common people might certainly be eradicated, if, "instead of spending the national resources in pampering the pensioned sons and daughters of the aristocracy, we were to employ that sum in providing diversions for the people, and the wasted revenues of the soi-disant great spiritual mother, in furnishing them with popular scientific instruction, &c."

The above is only a fair general specimen of the intellectual character of the Crisis; and if it be not calculated" to unite all hearts," we consider that it makes good our previous position as to the superior kind of writing which appears in some of the Unstamped. Whatever may be said of Mr. Owen's parallelograms, and however he may be ridiculed as a visionary, by those who do not understand anything of his system, it is a fact that he has done more-and with success -to promote intelligence among the working classes, than any man of his time, or of any preceding time. The Crisis had, at one period, a circulation of 15,000 in the week; but in consequence of Mr. Owen withdrawing himself from the editorship to pursue other labours, and from various causes, it has gradually fallen, and is now at a very low ebb. We will make one more extract from another number, (as the paper is not unlikely ere long to cease entirely,) wherein the writer has the moral courage to stand forth as the advocate and admirer of physical cowardice! Had he not possessed courage of both kinds, he could never have "afforded it:"

In our old world, courage, that is, martial courage, has generally been reckoned a virtue of a very high order; but be it a virtue or be it a vice, it has been a mighty tyrant from time immemorial. A meek and gentle disposition is more to be commended for its good effects, if not more splendid in its outward appearance. Martial courage has been the bane of human society; it has been the prime mover by which armies were conducted, and tyrants waded through blood to lordly dominion over their own species; and the mildest and the most inno cent of men were always sure to be trodden under foot, because they made the least resistance.

What men in general call timidity or cowardice, is, in my own opinion, as much of a virtue as a vice. A man is called a coward, and branded with the name, if he refuses to accept the challenge of a madman or a fool who wishes to have a shot at him; and many a poor fellow forces himself, with trembling knees, to stand the fire, merely to save his character. Another is called a courageous fellow who clears a five-barred gate, or a hedge and ditch, and outstrips his companions in the hunt:-these are probably mere fools: whilst there are thousands of industrious mechanics and literary men who have scarcely courage to mount a horse, or who would catch the mane or grasp the animal round the throat in a fright as soon as it began to trot. These may be called cowards by a jockey; but they are patient, industrious men ; and if they would make worse soldiers, they make better producers, and will save as many lives as the other will kill. There is more virtue in cowardice than it gets credit for; and

the cowardice of a soldier is frequently the courage and perseverance of a producer. Good soldiers are bad producers, and good producers are bad soldiers. Taking this view of the subject, martial cowardice is a virtue, it is merely a peaceful disposition; and it is to bere gretted that there is not more of it in society.

The words "martial cowardice" must have rather a comic effect on the ears of all those who are of the old world. These extracts are made from an argument in favour of vegetable diet. The writer, however, advises the people not to leave off animal food at present; and the reason he gives, though there may be truth in it, is very amusing. He says it causes a diminution of the tithes. The more animal food that is consumed in this country, the worse for the state clergy; for if, on the contrary, the people all took to a vegetable diet, "it would force a vast quantity of land into tillage, which is now lying in grass for fear of the tithe." Without gainsaying the probable consequences, to all parties, of the people going to grass, and learning to ruminate, our risible faculties are yet more excited by having just ascertained that the writer of the article is himself a clergyman, and a Master of Arts. He goes on to illustrate his subject from history,and reminds us that the Romans were very fond of rats, rearing them for the table as we rear poultry, but always feeding them upon vegetables, which makes their flesh nice and tender; that Hippocrates mentions dogs, and even foxes, as very fit for culinary purposes, providing they were previously made ready for the knife by a course of vegetables; that lion's flesh was eaten at Algiers, and Dr. Shaw found its taste similar to veal; that the Jews, who were a disobedient people, were very much addicted, in spite of the prohibition, to eating mice; and that "the prophet Isaiah reproaches them for going behind the trees in the garden, and eating the mouse in secret!" If we must eat animal food, he argues that it is a superstitious prejudice not to extend our carniverous patronage to dogs, horses, cats, rats, mice, and many more animals than we do at present, which would be attended with far less expense in obtaining,-premising always that they are to be reared upon a vegetable diet. All this is very well for China; but we have not only a religious prejudice against eating such things-(vermin and insects included)we have also a national prejudice; and either of these would be found unconquerable by any arguments.*

We now come to The Pioneer, or Grand National Consolidated Trades' Union Magazine. We here find, occasionally, the same violence of language as in the Poor Man's Guardian; but differing in style, more definite of purpose, and

A friend of ours, who was attached to one of the embassies to China, gave us an account, some time since, of the "rich gusto" of these singular people in their Four guests made-dishes. We shall never forget it. were placed at each table, with a Mandarin as president and interpreter. "That," said the Mandarin, observing their doubting looks, "is a fricasseed mole; this is a dish of stewed worms; those are fried locusts." what is that ?" "That," replied the courteous Mandarin," is a bird's nest,-accounted a great delicacy."

"And pray

varied by articles of singular ability. The fol. lowing is taken from an account of the grand procession of the Trades' Unions, to petition the King in favour of the six industrous men who were so cruelly transported :

Last Monday was a day in Britain's history which long will be remembered; for Labour put its hat upon its head, and walked towards the throne. Labour has been a thing of late which politicians thought possessed no soul; a thing of nerves and muscle,-without morality, and void of intellect. But wherefore did its footsteps shake the judgment seat, and why did warriors put their bucklers on, awaiting its approach? Its heavy tread made statesmen tremble; and as it shook its locks, ferocious scribes grew tremulous.*

We will now select an extract of a different tone and quality. It is from an article headed "On the Pretended Ignorance of the Working Classes."

First, as to our ignorance and incapacity. Those who wish us to be blind, who have done, and still do, all they can to put out our mental eyesight, are, it must be allowed, extremely kind. In the old-fashioned mills, where blinded, to prevent the poor animals becoming giddy, and horses were used, they were frequently bandaged or

because in that state, as I have been told, they would work harder. Our task-masters, upon the same principle, blind us as much as they can; and when they find that they cannot altogether put out our eyes, they endeavour to persuade us either that we cannot see, or that we are giddy and deluded. Kind and considerate souls! how much we are obliged to them! They lay a heavy tax upon the windows of intellect; they do all they can to cover every pane of mental glass with obscure and distorted figures, like the chalk and water dauberies in the kitchen windows at the west end of London, and then they tell us we are too blind to manage our own concerns, while we must be thankful to them for managing our affairs for us. Under this pretence, they rob us, and almost work us to death; and yet these are persons who really mean well to us, crying out, Ah, this is but too true! the majority of the people are not sufficiently in. structed to be entrusted with power: we must illuminate their minds, before we can venture to advocate their elevation in the scale of society!

Brethren, there is an immensity of benefit in what is called education; but do not suffer yourselves to be tricked and bamboozled out of your rights, under the notion that you must have education, before you are fit to have justice. Education is a very good thing; but men and children must live as well as learn; besides, there is such also such a thing as knowledge without education; and a thing as education without knowledge, and there is of these two things the last is much better than the first. Perhaps, after all that can be done in the busi

The writer is evidently unaware that nearly the whole of his article is an irregular blank verse. We will put the first paragraph into form, and without altering, transposing, or omitting a word:

Last Monday was a day in Britain's history
Which long will be remembered;
For Labour put its hat upon its head,
And walked towards the throne!

Labour has been
A thing, of late, which politicians thought
Possessed no soul; a thing of nerves and muscle,-
Without morality, and void of intellect !
But wherefore did its footsteps shake
The judgment-seat,-and why did warriors put
Their bucklers on, awaiting its approach?
Its heavy tread made statesmen tremble;
And as it shook its locks, ferocious scribes
Grew tremulous! Law held its jaws aghast,
And showed its teeth, but offered not to bite!
Doubt, wonder, and suspense, made many hearts
Uneasy; and far and near an anxious people
Awaited the result.

The sun cast down its eyelids for an hour,
While labour gather'd up its strength, then look'd
Upon its majesty in full magnificence, &c.

ness of education, the common-sense of mankind will remain pretty nearly at the same level. There are many learned men who are very great fools, and there are men who do not know "a B from a bull's-foot," and yet are very sensible and intelligent members of society. All useful knowledge consists in the acquirement of ideas concerning our condition in life; and there are few men of common observation who do not get into their minds, whether they can read and write or not, the ideas that are most serviceable to them. The position of a man in society, with its obligations and interests, forces ideas upon him which all the theory of education would not have impressed upon him as long as he was not called upon practically to make use of them.

Let the Government open its eyes to this, and make the rational deductions. When the working classes are addressed in this strain, and when we know they pay the deepest attention to it, let the Government draw the right conclusions, and have foresight enough to hasten the process of Reformation, before the work is taken out of its hands.

It is thus that those who have no political rights never think of the manner in which such rights may be rendered beneficial to themselves, their families, and their neighbours. But, bestow on them those rights, and there is no doubt but they will soon learn how to turn them to account. Where a man must do nothing but labour hard and long, with very short intervals of rest and relaxation, it is useless to pretend to implant upon his mind ideas that belong to a different condition of life; and it is the very height of cruelty to say that his condi tion shall not be improved until his ideas are more numerous and more enlarged. Alter his position; connect him, not merely in practical labour, but in practical rights and duties, with his fellow-men, and you will be apt to wonder at the ease with which he will adapt him. self to his new situation. Upon an average, brethren, in our class of society, measured or weighed with equal numbers in the other classes, we are as good husbands, as good fathers, as good neighbours, as other men. We have our follies and our vices, and so have they. They have more opportunities of concealment than we have; they have cloaks for their shame, which we cannot afford. They have more of the decencies of life, but we have quite as much of the virtues. Our indulgences are short, and they are, therefore, apt to be violent; and, as we too often want the art and means to disguise the consequences of them, they shock the delicacy and hypocrisy of those who call themselves our betters. There are some among these betters of ours, who will not hesitate to class the common thieves and harlots along with us, brethren, as making a part of what they are pleased to term the "lower orders." Let them look to themselves-let them look to the gamblers and the swindlers, the demireps and the prostitutes, the intrigues and the corruptions of polished society; and then, even with all the strumpets and pickpockets which they insolently reckon among us, we should still be the most virtuous and best-conducted class of society. But we, brethren, who constitute the laborious productive class, do not deserve the stigma.

The writer argues that the operatives want no high-flown acquirements; no new powers of mind; no new doctrines: all that they want is a conviction that their own affairs are their own only, (for they have no real representatives ;) that they must act for themselves, and have confidence in their own rights, and the power of obtaining them; and that they need only to exert common sense, and be resolutely determined to look straight forward.

Even in point of book-knowledge or literature, of which so much is thought at the present day, the barons and the first representatives of the commons, five hundred years ago, were far more ignorant than the majority of ourselves, brethren, are at present; but they depended

upon their perception, their common-sense, and the rights which they acquired and exercised with unshaken firmness, and with much discretion. They took every advantage of the expensive ambition of Edward I., and Edward III. At every demand of the sovereign they strengthened the foundation of that power of property which it was long the fashion to call liberty; though to you who compose the great productive power, in which that power of property had its birth, it has been, indeed, the very reverse of liberty. But they, the barons and the wealthy commons, who, under a nominal monarchy, actually ruled the land, had their wants also; and your forefathers, your untaught, brutalized, enslaved forefathers, had sense enough to rise from the state of serfs,from the state of feudal bondage, of hereditary labour, fixed and bound to land on which they had their birth, by means of the wants of their enslavers,-into a more liberal condition; and they attained the right, not previously known generally, or even extensively, to any part of the globe, of selling their labour by the year, the month, or the day, to any master or employer they might gradually, in a condition the most humiliating, and unchoose. Talk of ignorance, indeed! They effected this der circumstances more oppressive, than you, under the most abject of your distresses, can possibly conceive! But, good Heaven! this is not to be the term in the career of the emancipation of the great productive power of labour. They advanced themselves and you, their descendants, one degree in the scale of society; but it is for you, by their example, and with far greater advantages, to advance yourselves and your immediate posterity the next degree.

We shall leave everybody to make their own comments.on the above. Its matter, the source whence it emanates, and the class to whom it is addressed, who read these papers with avidity and faith, are worthy of deep consideration. The effects they will eventually produce are manifest from what we know already.

The style of the "leaders" of The Pioneer is generally that of a military despatch, and they are calculated to excite the habitual readers to the utmost. The following is a fair specimen :

BROTHERS!-Make ready, now, for active warfare ! The masters are in league with one another, and form a hireling band, hallooed on by the rich to crush the poor. This hostile union, though a present evil, will work a future good; the knaves are far too selfish to fight the battles of the money-changers with empty pockets for any length of time; and, when they bring their arbitrary heads together, their polished skulls may knock against each other, and strike a spark of truth out. Discussion sobers down men's minds, and makes them less Quixotic in their enterprises.

Their only strength consists in our division: that truth they seem to have a glimpse of. Their chief ambition is to scatter us, and take advantage of our weakness. Be stedfast to each other, and they are powerless; divide, and we are slaves,-slaves not to them alone, but to each other.

Derby has fallen; but she will rise again, healed of her bruises, and resolute in strength. Leeds is struggling, and gasping in the struggle; but unity will give her breath. All Britain groans against her money-changers' heartless tyranny. Away, then, with all petty striv ing, and let all Britain be as one! Let every lodge be asked the question, Will you sign that scrawl of ignomi. ny? that insult to humanity—the seal of slavery, and signature of your debasement? If any one says, ay! then let him wear the brand for ever; treat him as a loathsome thing; shun him as you would a pestilence; make him a bugaboo to fright your children; and, when you hear his voice, imagine him a rattle-snake, consider him unclean, and startle from the hoof-marks of his cloven feet.

This is all very spirited and apt to the purpose of the writer, though the "cloven foot" of

a "rattle-snake" is somewhat too original.. The energy of its vituperations and denouncements is not greater than that of its exhortation, while its illustrative power is frequently of a primitive character.

Our cause is just, our means are honourable, and all our actions guided by the love of peace. Union makes men strong, and those who sow division but wish to take advantage of its weakness. Cheer up, then, Brothers! the virtue of our cause should make us dauntless; our struggle is for food, and raiment, and other comforts. God surely has not made the world too narrow to yield his creatures food enough to live on. The earth, the sea, the sky, abound with nourishment. Then wherefore is it mankind reaps it not? Has Nature placed her fruits beyond man's reach? Not so! for he brings the pearl from the deep, deep sea, and gathers the herb from the mountain-top. The tenant of the sky falls at his feet, and he fills his net with ocean produce. On burning sands and in the midst of rigid snow he leaves the traces of his step; he strips the wild beast of its skin, and plucks the plumage of the lofty warbler; he creeps into the bowels of the earth, and hides himself among the clouds. All nature yields unto his enterprise but man! His fellow man buys up his sweat and leaves him, after all his labour, to hunger and to thirst!! By what misgovernment is this, that one man preys upon another? and who perpetuates the heartless fraud that makes so many poor and needy?

Dear Brothers, the world would fain persuade us that we were born too late; for Heaven, it seems, gave all the land to Peter, and Peter let it to the Pope, and the Pope sublet it to the Holy Fathers; and, lastly Kings and Nobles robbed them of it, and left it to their own dear heirs and heiresses!

We will conclude our notice of the Pioneer, by giving a few miscellaneous extracts, taken at random in glancing over three or four numbers.

Your position in society, brethren, is one of great difficulty, and there is nothing in the history of past times parallel with the struggle you are called upon to make; for at no times and in no country did the great productive power of labour stand forward to demand its full remuneration, as it does at present in this country.

The contest now going on, apparently between profits and wages, is actually a contest against ruin on the part of the capitalists, as much as it is a contest against direct starvation on the part of the working class. The editor of the Times insists that the powers of production are still, and ever must be, beneath the wants of the community, and that you, brethren of the working classes, get more than your share of the whole produce. Will nothing teach this man the plain principles of commonsense?

Capital is, under the present unnatural system, set at enmity with labour; and swaggering Profit, with his greasy chin and swollen belly, is taught to ill-treat his poor, miserable father, Labour, and give him as many kicks as half-pence for his wages. There are two interests in the state where there ought to be but one; and the editor of the Times is fomenting the differences between them.

No wonder, then, that the cry for universal suffrage has been at times loud and fearful. I have heard its deep, hollow mutterings, like thunder over the waves previous to a storm; and I have felt myself impelled by a resistless impulse of all the best feelings within me, to respond to the tone. Yet, as I looked at the condition of my fellow-beings; as I looked closely into the state of dependence in which myself, and men dependent, like me, for their daily bread on the sale they can obtain for their weekly labour in a market of which the profit-mongering capitalists have the control, and of which their House of Commons is the market-clerk,-I have paused, and exclaimed, "No: not yet! social liberty must precede political liberty."

Among one of your earliest resolutions must be the declaration, that "Labour, the Creator of property, is su

perior in its rights to property, which is nothing more than its creature, and the work of its hands!"

Your object must be to change your wages into a fair share of profits of the productive concern in which you are employed. This is the object of Trades' Unions, if they have any rational object at all and I do not see why it is not at once openly avowed. I would banish the word wages from the language, and consign it, with the word slavery, to histories and dictionaries. Wages is a term of purchase; it means the piece-meal purchase of your blood, and bones, and brains, at weekly payments; it is the present name for the Saturday's market price of man, woman, and child!

Is not the writer cavilling, in this instance, about a word. If wages are sufficiently high to be considered a fair remuneration, what is that but a fair share of the profits? Wages are never paid out of a continual or average loss. The next quotation is from an article "On Revolution, as it regards the Working Classes."

You must help yourselves; and it is sometimes the best position that a man or body of men can find themselves in, to be thus thrown so entirely upon their own exertions. Every thought is summoned up, every energy is upon the stretch; when a man is obliged to be his own friend, nothing is left undone; he is a true friend to himself and such, brethren, we must be to ourselves.

State revolutions are, in fact, of no concern whatever to us, brethren, as long as we are shackled with social dependence, as long as we are obliged to sell ourselves by the week, instead of sharing in the products of our toil. You remember the old fable of the beast of burden and his driver. "Make haste, you lazy, heavy-heeled brute," exclaimed the stupid clown, beating his poor ass over the head at the same time; "make haste, or we shall fall into the hands of our enemies of the opposite party." "Twas at the time of one of those revolutionary freaks called civil wars, which are always so full of high public spirit and bloodshed. "What are your parties to me?" said the wretched ass, shaking his ears, that felt as well as heard the impatience of his alarmed driver. "What shall either I or you, you servile lout, be the worse or the better, whether we belong to this party of state plunderers or the other? We cannot labour more than twenty hours in the twenty-four for either party; and I must have provender, and you must have bread of some sort; and that of the opposite party, as you call them, can't well be coarser or less in quantity than what we get now!"

We consider it of the highest importance for us to see what the working classes would be at ; if their Unions really have a definite object, to discover what it is, what they do, and what they do not wish to effect? The above goes a great way to help us to the knowledge. Our last extract is from a paper "On the folly of looking to Government for social aid."

Where is Mr. Martin to get a clause appended to his bill, including working men among his animals ? It is plain to any man who thinks upon the subject, and reads the debates in the newspaper reports for one week together, that Government as it is at present circumstanced, is reduced to a mere stand-still. Before they can do a little they must undo a great deal. It is no benefit to tell a man who is bleeding from wounds in all his limbs, that you have wrested the weapon out of the hands of his assassin, and thrown it into the sea. No, we must seek for remedies; we must stop the flow of blood; we must close the wounds; we must bandage the members; we must calm the fever; we must strengthen the vital powers, and renovate those energies which are both the causes and the consequences of life. This would indeed be undoing the evil that has been committed; but this, brethren, neither Whigs nor Tories are capable of effecting. It is a task of labour