paper from the Morning Chronicle, in which it was placed very conspicuously, and with a manifest design to mislead the public. On the 28th came, however, the following letter from Mr. WILLIAMS himself, which, when I have inserted it, will leave you very much divided in your opinion, whether Dr. BOWRING be greater fool or political mounteback. Here follows a letter, and a more complete exposure than it makes never was made in this world.

To the Editor of The Times.

Sir, My name having, in an article entitled "Pledges to Candidates," been introduced into your paper of yesterday, and in a manner tending to produce, especially amongst my brother liverymen and electors of London, an erroneous view of my conduct, and an impression injurious to my character as a reformer, I make no doubt that you will afford me an opportunity of placing the matter before the public in its true light.

rited pensions; 6th, a repeal of the Septennial Act; 7th, to act agreeably to the wishes and instructions of a majority of his constituents, or to resign his seat at their request.

I will not trouble you with any comparison between my propositions, and the vague set put forward at the same time, which leaves to. without end. The decision on them I gladly the candidate means of evasion and subterfuge leave to the meeting of all the electors of the city, which, by consent of the Lord Mayor, is to be held in Guildhall, as soon as possible after the dinner to the Ministers shall have taken place, the time for holding which meeting will be duly announced. But permit me just to add an expression of my opinion, that the meeting being, upon this occasion, held. in that hall, will show that the Livery admit ungrudgingly the new electors to a participation in their rights, and will thereby greatly tend to promote, amongst all classes in the city, that harmony and good neighbourhood which is essential to its character as well as to its peace, and which is, in the way of example, eminently calculated to produce the most beneficial effects upon the conduct of electors in every part of the kingdom. I am,. Sir, your most obedient servant,

WILLIAM WILLIAMS.

Watling-street, June 26.

Like Mr. WILLIAMS, I will not trouble

In the above-mentioned article you have published two sets of pledges,-one set is that which was proposed to the meeting in question by Dr. BoWRING, and the other is what I am represented as having proposed. With regard to the former, it should be known that there you with any comparison between his were two meetings before whom the matter set of pledges and that of Dr. BOWRING; was brought: one that of a sub-committee, Mr. WILLIAMS's being distinct, and and the other that of the general-commitee;

that in the former, Dr. Bowring's set was re- something that a man cannot shuffle out jected by a majority of two out of ten; but of; and the DOCTOR's offering to a that in the general-committee the Doctor's crafty candidate as many ways of getset was rejected by a majority of more than four to one; which circumstance is in this ting out of his promises, as a rat has article wholly kept out of sight. It should holes of escape from a granary or a also be known that the Doctor, having been defeated in the sub-committee, came before the general-committee with an amended set, into which he introduced, as one of the objects to be obtained," the abolition of tithes," which, from the set published by you, the author has carefully withdrawn, leaving the resolution relative to the church such as all the bishops, deans and chapters, and pluralists, in the kingdom, would agree to without a single dissenting voice.

barn, or a Greek bondholder ever had to get out of the danger arising from an indiscreet contract: I will not trouble you with any commentary on the Doctor's equivocal stuff. But here are questions of fact; and, as the smoothtongued Doctor BLACK gives us such wearisome chapters on WELLINGTON'S public immorality," let us see a little But it is of the gross misstatement with re-into the veracity of his friend and brogard to the set proposed by me of which I most ther tax-hunter, Dr. BoWRING. Here, loudly complain. The article above-mentioned

ticle observes that these were deemed "too

66

if Mr.

states that I proposed,-1st, the abolition of in the Doctor's article, there are, tithes; 2d, a modification of the corn-laws; WILLIAMS speak truth, two direct 3d, a repeal of the assessed taxes; 4th, a re-fasehoods, and one indirect falsehood by peal of the Septennial Act; and then the ar-suppression of truth. BoWRING says narrow." The truth, however, as recorded that his propositions were lost by only a in pour paper of the day before, is this,-that majority of one; Mr. WILLIAMS says my set pledged the candidate to these things, that it was a majority of two out of ten. 1st, an abolition of tithes; 2d, a repeal of BOWRING says that these were the prothe assessed taxes; 3d, a repeal of the malt and soap tax; 4th, a revision of the corn bill; positions of Mr. WILLIAMS; Mr. WIL5th, an abolition of all sinecures and unmeLIAMS asserts that they were not; and

we know that they were not, because Committee." That committee was now Mr. Williams's propositions had been at an end; but this little group revived. published before; and Dr. BLACK knew it in name, for the purpose of sending that they were not, for he himself had forth a disavowal of Mr. WILLIAMS's published Mr. WILLIAMS's propositions pledges. To this end, they put forth, the day before! But these two false- on the 26th of June, the following pahoods, though direct and clear, are ragraph, which appeared in all the nothing compared to BowRING's grand newspapers, paid for by us, the oppressed falsehood, namely, his suppression, in citizens of London!

of the livery appointed at the last common "hall, proposing tests to candidates for the re"presentation of this city, this committee "thinks it right to record that such resolu-` "tions did not emanate from this committee."

this publication, of the fact that he LIVERY OF LONDON REFORM COMMITTEE. himself proposed an ABOLITION OF-At the final meeting of the Livery of London TITHES! You see, by looking at the Reform Committee, held yesterday morning second paragraph of Mr. WILLIAMS's at Guildhall, Mr. Fearon in the chair, preletter, that BowRING, having been devious to delivering in their report, and surrendering their trust to the general body in feated before the sub-committee, came common hall assembled, the following resolu before the general committee with an tion was agreed to, moved by Mr. Taylor, amended set of pledges, into which he and seconded by Mr. Hall,-"That certain introduced the abolition of tithes. But," might appear to come from the committee "resolutions having been published, which and I beg you to observe it, in this set of pledges which he publishes, he again leaves out the abolition of tithes! If that be not political cheatery,pray tell me, Dr. BARING, what political cheatery is. The truth is, that he has consulted his mas- Oh, no! nobody that knows them ters and received their orders, since he will believe that TAYLOR and HALL, laid the proposition before the general-two committee, and now he finds that he dares not propose the abolition of tithes. It is said that he had a parcel of public money given to him some time ago, to go to Paris to learn the best mode of keeping public accounts; and now he has been sent into the city to teach us how to demand pledges which would be like a net to catch sprats, through which a salmon would go without touching a fin.

common-councilmen, and that FEARON, the "slippery young man" (as my servant in Long Island called him), who so infamously misrepresented me and my neighbours, in order to curry favour with the Government here; nobody that knows them would have sus pected that they approved of Mr. WILLIAMS's pledges; and for my part I should every bit as soon suspect them of robbing the city exchequer.

Oh, no! Mr. WILLIAMS's pledges are So much of Dr. BoWRING; let us present death to all this tribe; present now come to his fellow-labourers, the death to the guttlers, who take from us city place-hunters. They know that twenty pounds a piece for their own these pledges are death to them, as com-guttling and guzzling, while they vote pletely as salt is to the thieving root of a a few pence a piece for the freemen from thistle, or to the devouring jaws of the whom they take the money. They snail. They know this; and they are well know that the men who would in a state of alarm as great as that of a take these pledges would never suffer band of pickpockets when a con-them to have another guttle at the exstable rushes suddenly in and catches pense of the people, with whose wellthem dividing the spoil. It will be being they are charged, whose rights perceived that BoWRING talks about they set at nought, and whom they treat meeting (in his article above quoted, worse than any set of men are treated which is dated on the 25th of June) to in the whole country. They are, as be held in the city on that day. There Mr. NICHOLSON told them the other was one held, but it consisted of a little day, precisely in the situation that the bunch of tax-hunters, who had belonged boroughmongers were in six weeks ago, to the "Livery of London Reform and their fall will be greater than that

of the boroughmongers has been, be cause their usurpations on our rights have been more daring, their oppression more cruel, and their insolence more outrageous.

and there is not a single man in the kingdom that does, not believe this. "Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike." Did you never see a catlying curled up in such a way as for the magpies not to I perceive by Mr. WILLIAMS's letter know whether she was alive or dead ▸ that the Lord Mayor has given his con- Did you never see them hopping round sent to hold the general united meeting about her, now and then approaching, of the Livery and the new electors in the now and then recoiling, now seeming Guildhall. That will be a memorable bold, now seeming in a fright; and conday: on that day sentence will be passed stantly squalling out their mac, mac, upon the tyranny, under which the mac, mac? If you have ever seen this, people of PORTSOKEN-WARD are groan-though when in your petticoats, it will ing. It will be the day of the emanci-now rush back into your mind. I hate pation of us all in this city; on that to see people so anxious about anything, day we shall see the figure that Dr. and especially if I myself be the subject BOWRING will make, though with of the anxiety: and, as pledges are the printer TAYLOR and hatter HALL and fashion, I hereby pledge myself most gin-spinner FEARON, at his back. Bow-solemnly, that if they will pass a bill to RING is a liveryman of London merely by shut me by name out of Parliament for purchase; he has neither business nor life, they shall never hear from me residence in London; and if he were either by PETITION or COMPLAINT. resident seven miles from the city, I will leave the law to take its free the law would stop his tongue, and course, and to be received as it ought bid it not to meddle with our matters. to be, and to produce the effects which However, we shall see the figure that it ought to produce; and I apprise he will make before the united Livery them at the same time, that unless they and electors. In the meanwhile, if do this, they will not keep me out of BOWRING and BLACK be disposed for Parliament; and that if they do not betting, I will bet them twenty so- keep me out of Parliament, the system vereigns, that every candidate for the of taxation and of tithing will be shaken city will either take the pledges of to its very foundation. Mr. WILLIAMS, or lose his election ! I thought, some weeks ago, of pointThe pledges do not go so far as I would ing out by name, such men as I knew to go; but since they contain that substan-be fit to make good members of Parliative pledge, the abolition of tithes, I will ment. Upon reflection I have come to be content with them: knowing well, the decision, that to do that would that if that pledge be faithfully adhered savour of presumption. The more to by only fifty men in the new Parlia- advisable way. is for me to make a ment, every thing good will follow; and general OFFER OF MYSELF. There that, if that pledge be not taken, and are many thousands and hundreds of adhered to, no good will come. Of the thousands of men who think, that if I other workings of the Whigs I have not be not elected, the reform will be protime to speak in this letter; but I do ductive of little or no good; and, I beseech my readers to look at their bills myself am convinced, that if I be not that they have coming forward about elected, the affairs of the country will the QUALIFICATIONS OF MEM- not be peaceably settled. Whatever BERS. I do beseech my readers to body of electors shall be of the same look at their various tricks; and if they opinion may elect me, without any risk do look at them they will perceive that of prejudice to the public cause. If I the imaginations of the tricksters are be elected for MANCHESTER, for MANabsolutely upon the rack, to find out CHESTER I will sit; because from MANsomething or another that may operate in a way to shut me out of Parliament! What every one believes must be true,

CHESTER I received the first application for the purpose; but nothing but good can arise from my being also elected for

To the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled. The petition of WILLIAM COBBETT, of Kensington, in the county of Middlesex,

Most humbly shows,

other places; because, besides the security which that gives to my return, there will be a positive benefit in a second election, which will give time for reflection and inquiry; while to be elected for three or four places, would give great weight to every effort that I should make. In perfect sincerity I That your petitioner perceives, that there is again a bill before your Right Honourable repeat, that, as far as concerns my own personal taste and interests, I shall un-House, which will make it legal to be posdertake this arduous task with reluct- sessed of dead human bodies, to cut them up, ance. By Michaelmas next I shall have without the sanction of any court of justice, and even to sell and traffic in them, as in the a farm; and somewhere in my own native county. A FARMER I WILL carcasses of the beasts that perish. LIVE AND DIE. But God has been pleased to give me great health and great strength yet: I am convinced that I am able to render the greatest services to my country; that country has a right to those services at my hands; and the more perilous her state, the more base it would be in me not to do my utmost to rescue her from her perils.

WM. COBBETT.

DEAD-BODY BILL.

THIS bill, which authorises THE SALE of dead human bodies, has been read a second time in the Lords. I cannot express my opinion of it in a better manner than I have done it in the following petition. I sent this petition to the Bishop of London, who sent it me back again with a letter of excuse. This letter, with my answer, will be found after the petition.

That your humble petitioner has too high an opinion of the understanding and of the sincerity of your lordships to believe, that you will not at once perceive and avow that this horrid traffic must necessarily be confined to the bodies of the poor, seeing that those of the rich will never be exposed to any of the causes from which that traffic must arise; and, being of that opinion, he hopes that your lordships will not agree to a bill, which, if it were, unhappily, to become a law, would fill the minds of the poorer part of the people with inextinguishable resentment against those, hitherto been cordially disposed. to respect and reverence whom they have

That it is with inexpressible disgust that

your petitioner has heard this horrible bill justified on the score of what its defenders have dared to call humanity, pretending that, without allowing a free trade in human bodies, the Legislature has no means of preventing such bodies from being killed for sale; that, in answer to this hypocritical pretence, the poorer part of the people observe, that the law has always found the effectual means of protecting the dead bodies of cattle, sheep, swine, and poultry, of punishing with death the purloiners of those bodies; and that your lordships have, alas! passed laws (which are still in force) for transporting beyond the seas, men having, in the night-time, and in or near a cover, the dead body of a hare, pheasant, or partridge, in their possession.

That the poorer part of the people thus see, that even when these wild and insignificant animals, these mere objects of the sports of the rich, are to be guarded; when new poor-laws, new trespasses, 'new misdemeanours, new felonies, new treasons, new and more severe modes of imprisonment and punishment, are to be enacted; that, when to

t

buried Saul, blessed them for their kindness, and said the Lord would reward them; that the Psalmist, in describing the desolation of Jerusalem by the hands of the heathen, says that these latter had given the dead bodies of the Israelites to be meat unto tle fowls of the heavens, that they shed their blood like water, and that there was none to bury them, which, he adds, has made the Israelites a reproach to the other nations; that in ECCLESIASTES, chap vi., verse 3, it is said, that if a man have

tax, to restrain, or to punish them, is the object, there is no want of power in the Legislature; and that it becomes impotent only when called upon to yield them protection; and your humble petitioner begs to be permitted to assure your lordships, that the people clearly perceive all this, and that the ultimate consequences of that perception, especially if this act, authorising an open traffic in their bodies, were to become a law, must of necessity be such as your lordships, above all men, would have reason most bitterly to de-ever so prosperous and long a life, if he have plore.

That, with regard to the assertion, that this horrible profanation of the tomb is necessary to the perfection of surgical and medical science, while your humble petitioner firmly believes the contrary to be the fact, and is fully warranted in that belief, not only by the experience of all former ages, but by the declarations of the most eminent surgeons and physicians of our own day; while he is convinced that ignorauce, and not science, is promoted and kept in countenance by this cutting up of human bodies; while it is his firm conviction, that this butcher-like practice does not at all tend to the preservation of human life, he hopes that your lordships, and more especially the lords spiritual, will see, even in the affirmative of that proposition, no justification of the proposed measure, and he confidently trusts that the Most Reverend and Right Reverend members of your Right Honourable House will never give their assent to a bill, which has a direct and manifest tendency to root from the minds of men those religious opinions, which make a distinction between the future state of human beings and that of brutes, and which opinions can never long continue to exist after the sauction of your lordships shall have been given to this brutalizing bill,

no burial he had better never have been born; that we find by EZEKIEL, chap. xxxix., that even enemies were to be buried, and that if a human bone was found above ground, it was to be deemed a duty to inter it; that the prophet ISAIAH, chap. xiv., says that the King of Babylon shall be kept out of the grave, like an abominable branch, and shall not be buried, because he has been a tyrant; that the pro phet JEREMIAH, chap. vii. and viii., at the conclusion of a long and terrible denunciation against the Jews, tells them that they shall not be gathered nor be buried, and that they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth;. that the same prophet, chap. xiv., says, that. the people who listen to false prophets shall die, of famine aud the sword, and shall have none to bury them; that the same prophet, chap. xvi., foretelling the ruin of the Jews, says that they shall die of grief, that they shall not be lamented, neither shall they be buried, but shall be as dung upon the face of the earth; that the same prophet, chap. xxii., pronounces judgment on JEHOIAKIM, king of Judah, for covetousness, for shedding innocent blood, for oppression and violence, that he shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and. cast before the gates of Jerusalem; that in the New Testament, we find that devout men carried STEPHEN to his burial; and finally, that That all nations, even the most barbarous, by our own burial-service and canons we are have shown respect for the remains of the taught, that to be buried in consecrated ground dead; that the Holy Scriptures invariably is a right belonging to every person who has speak of the rites of burial as being honour-been baptized, who is not, at the hour of death, able, and of the refusal of those rites as an excommunicated, and who has not killed him infamous punishment and signal disgrace; or herself. that in the 15th chap. of Genesis, 15th verse, That seeing that such is the language of it is recorded, that amongst the gracious pro- Holy Writ, your humble petitioner has waited mises that God made to ABRAHAM, on account until now, hoping that the bill in question of his faith, one was that he should be buried would be zealously and effectually opposed by in a good old age: that DAVID (2 Samuel, the clergy of the Established Church; that chap. ii.), when the men of Jabesh-Gilead had if human bodies can be legally sold and cut up