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BOOK THIRD.

A VIEW OF THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE BRITISH PEOPLE AND THE BURDENS WHICH OPPRESS THEM.

In England, the empire of despotism has not yet passed away. The monarch and the privileged classes are still born to opulence, luxury and power, while want, suffering and oppression, are the bitter heritage of millions of the people. Successive generations have been robbed of their liberty by laws, in the making of which they have had no voice, and over whose administration they have had no control. This state of things still continues. When the people ask their rulers for equal, humane, just legislation, they receive the same answer always given them-"the swinish rabble have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them."

In the House of Lords there are but five men found to vote for the repeal of those barbarous laws which tax the bread of the poor. In the House

of Commons, on whose table, so late as February last, had been piled up within a few weeks the prayers of one million three hundred thousand men, that they might no longer be compelled to pay one third of their toil-purchased wages into the pockets of the rich, a majority of three hundred and three voted not to grant them relief. And when three and a half millions of people sent up their great petition on the shoulders of sixteen men to the doors of Parliament, praying that they might be suffered to tell their grievances to the representatives of the nation, by an overwhelming majority their request was denied, and they were sent back to their cheerless hovels to hunger on. And to show the feeling that prevails not only among the Tories, who have always been the enemies of the people, but the Whigs themselves, it is necessary only to state, that this immense petition had no sooner been brought into the Commons, and a motion introduced by Mr. Duncomb, to hear the counsel of the petitioners at the bar of the House, than Thomas Babington Macauley led off in a long and powerful speech against the motion. It is well known he was one of the champions of the Reform Bill, and has been regarded as the warmest and most eloquent advocate of popular rights in the British House of Commons. Shielded as was his bitter attack by numerous and bland expressions of sympathy for the people, yet in opposing the petition of the Chartists, he spoke like a Tory-advancing the

same arguments against universal suffrage that the enemies of Republicanism have always done— the incapacity of man for self-government, the danger of committing power to the people, and the ruin that would desolate the land if they ever gained possession of these rights declared by the founders of the American Republic to be inalienable.

And further, to show that the great Reformer, in his opposition to liberty, was governed by the same spirit that has always obstructed its advancement, he boldly told the petitioners to give up all hope that the day would ever come when their prayer would be granted. "I will not," he said, "go into the minor points contained in the petition, because there is one point so important-a point which in my judgement forms the very essence of the charter-which if withheld, will have the effect of creating agitation, and which, if granted, it matters not one straw whether the others are granted or not, and that point is UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. Having a decided opinion that such a change would be utterly fatal to the best interests of the country at large, I feel it my duty manfully to declare that I cannot consent to hold out the least hope, that I can EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, support such a change." He said he was 66 in favor of the admixture of the aristocratic element in the constitution of the country." It was quite unnecessary to say this after so fully committing himself to the aristocracy.

He thought "universal suffrage would be fatal to all the objects for which a monarchy existed, an aristocracy existed, or even a well-ordered Republic existed, and that it was incapable of co-existing with the extension of civilization."

This ground was certainly bold enough to satisfy the most ultra conservatives, and it did satisfy them. Their leaders were in ecstasy, and rose in quick succession to eulogize the man they had pronounced a Jacobin in the Reform days of 1832, for thus "manfully" defending the time-honored principles of the aristocracy of the realm. Although Macauley had in this speech virtually surrendered the ground on which he fought and conquered in the troublous times of the Reform agitation, yet the great majority of his party went with him, uniting with the Tories in an attempt to crush the hopes and the determinations of more than two millions of wronged, suffering, but goaded and resolute men. The future will show what success will crown an effort so hostile to the spirit of the age.

An impression has gone abroad over America, that the Reform Bill effected the political emancipation of England. The British people themselves were, for a time, deluded into this belief. But they have since discovered their mistake, and gone about rectifying it, with an earnestness and determination which leave no room for doubt, that the heavy burdens which have been accumulating upon them for ages, are soon to be thrown off for

ever.

It will be necessary here to glance at some of the circumstances attending the Reform Bill. It is well known that the corruption of the government, in all its branches, had become too intolerable to be borne any longer. George the IV., one of the most dissolute and tyrannical monarchs who had filled the throne since Charles the II., had incensed the people by a life of crime and profligacy, and they felt more joy than sorrow when death put an end to his debauchery.

It was a gala day in London, and throughout all England business was suspended, when George the IV. was buried. The Thames was covered with pleasure boats and steamers, carrying dense gay crowds into the country. Parties were fitted out to every resort of pleasure, and the nation gave vent to its unfeigned joy, that a heartless tyrant, who had persecuted the beloved Queen Caroline to the grave, and outraged the liberties of his subjects, had at last been called to give up his account at the bar of the King of Kings. "There was reason for hope," says an English writer, "but no cause for sorrow. A vain, self-engrossed old man had at last found his true level, in 'dust to dust, and ashes to ashes!' One more obstacle to the changes essential to progress was removed, and a better future appeared in prospect."

A crisis had now been reached by some of the principal nations of the continent, and their affairs were afterwards to flow in a different direction. "The bell on St. Paul's, when it tolled to announce

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