BOOK THE THIRD.

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

In the sense Adam Smith uses the word poor, "living from hand to mouth," nine tenths of the English people are poor.Edinburg Review, Oct. 1841.

In the road which the English labourer must travel, the Poorhouse is the last stage on the way to the grave.-Quarterly Review, No. 29.

There is a mighty evil connected with the condition of the working classes in this country, which has to be met, exposed, and overcome.-Westminster Review, Jan. 1842.

The men of England are treated by the landed interest worse than their dogs and horses, which are fed in proportion to their toil.-Mr. Cobden's speech in Parliament, Feb. 22, 1842.

Under the present Corn Law, aided by the Poor Law, which is expressly intended to beat down the standard of comfort, and so degrade the labourer, the bulk of the working classes, both in the agricultural and manufacturing districts, are reduced on ordinary occasions to the lowest stage of existence, and a bad season is a sentence of death to many of the suffering poor.London Sun, Nov. 17, 1841.

The Corn Law is the master infamy of the world—the landlord's curse on the poor man's industry. There is, however, no hope of relief for the people, unless in a Reform of the Reform Act, so that the working classes may be represented in Parlia ment.-Mr. Wakley's speech in Parliament, Feb. 18, 1842.

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