vieweth the proud and lofty ones afar off. Let us, in this respect, endeavour to approximate to the divine feeling; and regard the happiness of the poor and the rich, as not of importance in proportion to their wealth or poverty, but as of equal value. Let the happiness of every human being be dear in our sight. In what state, then, are the labouring classes at this time? The question is surrounded by none of the difficulties which beset us in the case of the middle classes. Men of the middle class may, for years, live upon their capital; be sinking steadily to poverty, and yet conceal their condition. But the poor man has little hoarded stock to resort to, and cannot conceal his wretched condition when his usual income ceases, or is diminished. There is no fact more generally admitted than that unusual and severe distress presses upon the working classes, both agricultural and manufacturing. One of the least satisfactory circumstances attending the late speech from the throne, is its making no allusion to that distress which the whole members of the House of Commons seem to admit pervades the country at this moment. Mr. Cobbett, a few days ago, stated in the House of Commons, that "in the district of Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, there are 40,000 persons, out of a population of 175,000, who have not more than from twopence to twopence halfpenny per day to live on ;"" that this was the case throughout Yorkshire and Lancashire ;" and he " read a paper, which had been generally circulated in Leicester, containing the particulars of five cases of workmen, whose average nett earnings did not amount to 4s. 6d. per week, although some of the unfortunate beings worked more than sixteen hours per day!" On the state of the Irish peasantry little need be said. It is wretchedness itself. According to Mr. O'Connell, two shillings per week is the common earnings of the people in the South of Ireland. In Scotland, the condition of the people, although not so bad as that of many of their English and Irish brethren, is yet one of suffering. The wages of labour are reduced nearly to the starving point; and poor miserable children are compelled, by their own wretched parents, to a degree of toil, the account of which, in the late voluminous Parliamentary Report on the Factory System, shocks every feeling of humanity. In point of actual present suffering, and permanent injury to the faculties, both physical and mental, the unfortunate young creatures in our manufactories may challenge the world. The Factory Report makes disclosures to which even Negro Slavery scarcely affords a parallel. Having now discussed the present state of the three great classes of society, we proceed to the next subject of inquiry: What is the present state of the Nation, as a community? The answer is fearful. Loaded with a debt of such enormous magnitude, that payment of the principal has long been considered hopeless, and the regular discharge of the interest, a matter of some doubt and anxiety; oppressed with an expenditure on supernumerary generals, admirals, &c.; useless ambassadors, immensely overpaid; pensioners, sinecurists, and functionaries of all kinds, whose services would be dearly purchased by an individual at tens of pounds for hundreds and thousands that they cost the country in salaries, to say nothing of the evil they do in return for their extravagant pay; involved in quarrels with Portugal and Holland, with which we never should have had any thing to do, and which ought to be instantly dropt; the West India islands almost in a state of revolt; Ireland almost in a state of civil war; with a degree of distress prevailing among the people of the most alarming description; with a House of hereditary VOL. II.-NO. XII. 3 H legislators of the most aristocratic character, having interests directly opposed to those of the people, and a power conferred by our matchless Constitution to nullify every movement of the people and the people's representatives towards a better state of things; with a House of Commons, which, although called reformed, is still very much after the composition of the old leaven, and in which there are not more than 130 declared friends of those radical reforms, to which alone the people can look for relief; and with a ministry at the head of affairs, which, although it contain most able and estimable individuals, as a whole, does not seem equal to the crisis, and totally unprepared for leading on that encounter of the principles of Justice and Democracy with Injustice and Aristocracy; which is as inevitable as the triumph of the side on which are found both might and right is certain to ensue. Such is the present state of the nation. Such is the result of Tory misrule. Such is the natural fruit of those institutions, which a still powerful faction ascribe "to the wis dom of our ancestors," and maintain ought to be held sacred from the touch of radical reformers; of those institutions which the antagonist faction, now they are in power, plead should be subjected to only partial and gradual reform! One of the most appalling circumstances of our condition is our debt. The nation is in debt the enormous sum of £800,000,000. And this is not the sort of debt which occurs when one man of skill and industry borrows the money of another man, to use it in trade for a time, and then restore it; or to purchase or create a capital with it, of a different sort, in which the money is to be sunk for ever. In these cases, the sum lent remains in existence, either in its own form of a moveable capital, or in the form of lands, buildings, machinery, or goods, But the £800,000,000 which the nation owes are sunk into a gulf-gone for ever; expended on "just and necessary wars," overgrown salaries, pensions, and sinecures. The money has been blown into the air, to the sound of "The Downfall of Paris," "God save Great George, our King," and other loyal and patriotic tunes; and has not left a wreck, nor even the half-burnt paper of a cartridge, behind. The interest of this debt amounts to nearly thirty millions; and the expenses of our government are twenty millions more. To meet these two sums, nearly fifty millions are taken from the people. And how is this sum taken? From the rents of lands? The landlords have often said so, and claimed the Corn Laws as a "protection from the foreign grower," necessary to enable them to pay the large share of taxation which falls on them. They have called themselves "The class which pays the Taxes." So far is that from being the case, however, that the share which they pay is comparatively trifling. Why, the whole rental of England, Scotland, aud Ireland, does not amount to fifty millions; and the rents have much to pay besides a share of the taxes. They have to maintain the proprietors and their families, pay heavy poor's rates and other local burdens; also jointures and provisions to brothers and sisters. Moreover, the rents have to pay, in very many cases, large sums of interest of mortgages, not incurred on account of money borrowed to expend on improvements, but to be spent like the National Debt-to be consumed, leaving nothing behind. The landholders pay the taxes, forsooth! Had the chief part of the burden of taxation fallen upon them, the burden would have been a lighter one. It was they that voted away the money; it was they that laid on the taxes; and they took care that the burden should chiefly fall on other shoulders than their own, viz., those of the middle and the working classes, upon which two classes the sums raised by means of the Excise, Customs, Stamps, Post Office, and even the Assessed Taxes, chiefly fall. If the national burdens are grievous in amount, and most unequal in their pressure on the rich and the poorer classes, the indirect manner in which most of the taxes are levied adds additional weight to the already sufficiently oppressive load. The person who consumes the taxed article pays, in addition to the article's natural price, not the tax merely, but also the same number of per centages upon it, according to the number of hands the article passes through, as upon the original cost of it to the person who paid the tax. In the catalogue of the national grievances, the corn tax must not be overlooked. It has the remarkable property of being not a tax for the sake of revenue, but for the purpose of raising the rents of the landholders. This atrocious tax costs the people, it is calculated, about nineteen millions annually; while it is supposed not to benefit the landholders to more than the extent of five millions. But it is difficult to calculate how much injury to the nation the corn tax causes. This country possesses advantages for manufactures and commerce which no other nation can approximate. Our capital, our coal, our machinery, our skilful and industrious artisans, our intelligent and enterprising merchants and shipowners, are admirably adapted to make Britain the wealthy emporium of the world; and our insular situation protects us from the necessity of any interference with the quarrels of the Continent. Our powerful navy yields us complete protection, and enables us to dispense with an army, except for the purpose of keeping, in forced subjection to bad laws, a suffering and indignant people. All we want is bread. The foreigner has it in abundance, and is anxious to exchange it for our manufactures. But the landholders, those who make the laws for this manufacturing and commercial nation, step in, and say to our artisans, "You shall not exchange with foreigners the works of your hands; you must buy your food of us. We cannot supply you except at a far higher rate than the foreigner's charge, it is true; nor can we, like him, purchase from you in return the large quantity of goods which you are able and anxious to manufacture. There is no denying the hardship of your case; but we must be protected from the foreign grower, although at your expense, otherwise our rents will fall." How long will this oppression be endured! Verily, our landholders are like the rich men we read of in the sacred Scriptures; they lay heavy burdens on the poor, while they themselves scarcely touch them with the tip of their finger. It would be tedious to do more than allude to the East India and China monopoly, by which, along with the tax, our tea is made to cost us more than double its natural price; and the West India monopoly, which, besides making us abettors of negro slavery, raises the price of our sugar. These monopolies, and that of the Bank of England, we must, on this occasion, content ourselves with simply mentioning in the list of grievances. When we call the whole to mind, the immense sum taken from the people in taxes, the additional sum paid in consequence of the indirect mode of levying them, the effects of corn laws, of monopolies, of tithes, of local assessments; and, to crown the whole, the unequal pressure of the Excise duties, the bread tax, &c., upon the poor man and the rich, the existence of great distress among the poorer classes, can excite no surprise. We proceed to inquire into the present state of political feeling among the middle and lower classes of the community. In times of prosperity, men are apt to give little attention to the sys tem of government under which they live. If they are pillaged only under form of law, and their personal liberty be not interfered with, they are seldom disposed to question the acts of those in authority. They may be both heavily and unequally taxed; but if the amount taken from them be concealed by indirect taxation, few murmurs will be heard. It is otherwise when distress comes on. The sum abstracted from a man's earnings, and the restrictions on the freedom of trade, then become objects of keen regard; and if injustice be detected, a watchful eye is directed to the proceedings of that government by whose authority the injustice is maintained. Such an eye is now turned by the people to the proceedings of the Reformed Parliament and Earl Grey's administration. Every indication of the feeling of Ministers and the Parliament for the distress of the people is narrowly scrutinized. The ministerial organs of the press are read with eager attention. Not a single political article in the Edinburgh Review, not even a paragraph in the Times or the Globe, but is the subject of universal and anxious comment. There will not be a motion respecting any important measure in Parliament that will not be as keenly discussed by the people as by either House. Indifference, on the part of the people, to the conduct of their rulers, need not be hoped for. If the Ministry and the House of Commons show a sympathy with the sufferings of the people, and set earnestly about the redress of their grievances, all will be well. The people will endure the evils of their lot in patience, however great the pressure of calamity may be. But, if no sympathy with the national distress be shewn, the consequences may be terrible. Much has been hoped from the Reformed Parliament and Reforming Ministry-perhaps more than can be performed. If little be done, and that little with evident reluctance, great will be the people's disappointment. If that best security for the good behaviour of the present or any future Parliament, short Parliaments, be not granted; if the ballot, in favour of which the working classes are unanimous, and the middle classes very nearly so, be refused; if those odious monopolies, which were so eloquently opposed by the men now in power, be retained; above all, if taxation be not reduced, and sinecures wholly abolished, there need be no expectation of quiet, nor of commercial prosperity in this country. One of two things will assuredly happen. Either the middle classes and the working classes will combine in Political Unions, to cause their voice to be heard by the Legislature, in a potential mood; or the working classes, on whom the iron hand of poverty presses with the greatest force, will, in a moment of frenzy, caused by some deeply-felt wrong, break out into acts of outrage against their employers, whom, on account of their apathy, they may suppose to be in league with those who have given them insult for redress. Either event would be productive of much evil. The Unions have been long quiescent; and we speak from knowledge when we declare that, if the Ministry and the Reformed House of Commons be true to the popular cause, the Political Unions will never be aroused from their present state of expectant repose, unless to lend their powerful aid to that House of Commons and Ministry, in an encounter with the House of Hereditary Law-makers, if their aid be required against so weak a foe; or to carry triumphantly back into power, a Ministry whose devotion to the cause of the people may have a second time deprived them of office. Such a duty the Unions would perform with right good will. But if the Unions should be called into activity against Ministers and the House of Commons, the least evil that BRITANNIA COME OF AGE! A NEW SONG. Inscribed to the Awkward Squad of the Rejected, at the Election of the "No one can read Sir Robert Peel's Speech, without knowing that it expresses the feelings of a great party in this country, which ought to be represented in Parliament,” GLOBE NEWSPAPER WHEN School-days were o'er, And Lord Borough no more Could keep me under lock and key, As they flock'd round to woo, That none of 'em would do for me-for me That none of 'em would do for me. The first of the breed Was a big-wig indeed Great bug-bear of Chan-ce-ry. I sent him with a bug, And a flea in his lug, Since he would never do for me-for me Since he would never do for me. |