hold of a minister's words, and last, come to something which who mouths them out in pom-he, I dare say, regarded as truth. pous accent to the haberdashers But you, a legislator, the prothat smoke their pipes with him. poser of a law to change the A division of capital! New very basis of civil society in branches of trade! Why, the England; you, who had devoted very idea of such causes, when years to subjects of political ecothere was a paper-money at work, nomy, to bring out, as a gravely was little short of proof of ab- delivered opinion, what had been solute imbecility. Poor Mr. laughed at from 1816 to 1821, JUDGE BAILEY one could ex- was a little too much to be excuse. He had been reading lawpected by any one who had not all his life time. He knew nothing of England but what he had seen in the streets and the -courts. That he should think a National Debt a blessing was not so very surprizing. I think, however, that he said, he had

taken your dimensions with as much accuracy as I had done,

However, when one looks at this speech, made to the Lancashirers, one cannot be much surprised at the bill. It is evident, that you never before saw the cause of the ruin and degradition

long thought upon the matter! But, one might excuse him. He of the labourers. You never saw strange confusions arising. read Two-penny Trash; not He saw that the people had got you, indeed! If you had, you upon the scent of the Debt; and never would have brought in this he thought that his opinions bill. You read the Trash now, might tend to quiet them. He I'll warrant; and, you will bear had, I will engage, never really it in mind when your genius thought upon the subject. He pricks you on to bring forward had read and heard the shallow another measure, involving such "thoughts of others; and had, at tremendous consequences.

Another proof of possessing no

It must be clear to every man

overstock of understanding, as to of common sense (and the Mi

ness. If they be well off, there is little to fear. But, if they consist of inflammable matter, who

tion actually taking place. Pro- complain of hunger and nakedperty is changing hands, and the profits of labour are changing hands. Things are in as much uncertainty as if an enemy had can think of the dangers without landed and taken possession of horror? And, what that ever one half of the country. Dying fathers scarcely know how to make their wills. People are afraid to borrow and afraid to lend. Nothing but the gold in hand is regarded as secure. Marriages are actually put off, in this once happy country; their order to see what is going to right to go to the land in case of happen. And, as to contracts need makes a part of their very between landlords and renters, minds, which is cherished, too, they are become nothing at all. by all the laws of settlements, Every thing portends some great vagrancy, and by all that is and terrible change in the whole dinned into the ears of every of the affairs of the kingdom. And, was this, of all others, the

entered into the mind of man could be so well calculated to in-` flame them as your bill passed into a law? The right of relief in case of need is so deeply rooted in the minds of the labourers of

moment for making a law such

as you would have had to pass?

beggar or poor complainant. To remove this impression you must sweep away the whole race. And, with this settled way of thinking in existence, to promulgate a pe

nalty, or, at least, a refusal of to worst, the married labourers relief, on account of marriage! save their children; but, never To make two sorts of poor, one was bastard in hay-loft born, entitled to relief and the other with a horse pond at hand, in not! To rouse the feelings and greater peril than the legislative set the tongues going of all the offspring of you, the two most women! To do this, and at such aspiring geniuses of the age! ¦ God forbid I should insinuate

a time too, and without any necessity, really does appear fully that you are deficient in parental to justify Mr. GURNEY in call-feeling! Never did the fondest ing it "a flagrant act of in- of the feline race more gallantly "sanity. guard its young; and what is to

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And yet, what is to become of take place if "any thing should this deplorable bill! Talk of happen" to it, I am wholly at a "improvident parents," indeed! loss to conjecture. That we shall There may be young fellows and hang our pages with black, as the girls that "rush into marriage," Liverpool papers lately did theirs but was ever thoughtlessness on account of the death of the more complete than has been Pitt-Club, there can be little evinced by the parent of this doubt; nor will the soul of friendhapless bill? Mr.. Brougham ship withhold monodies and episays, that it is neither honest nor taphs abundant; but, who shall politic to beget a child without pour the balm of comfort into the having provided support for it lacerated bosom of the afflicted before hand. We will leave the parent! To ask a favour of you honesty out of the question, but, at such a season; to bespeak surely, we may say it is as little before hand the salt testimonials pofitic thoughtlessly to beget of your sorrow, may seem unpoor-law improvement and edu-feeling; but, it is well known, cation-digest bills. Worst come that the tears of Mary Magdalen

were preserved for centuries and Bill, now before your Honourable used as a protection against thun-House, the object of which is to der and lightning; and, as the prevent the payment of any sums "kindly drops," which the news→ papers say you seemed to shed, upon a recent doleful occasion, had such wonderful effect in

out of the Poor Rates to save those able bodied men from starving, who

from the distress of the Agricultural Interest, or other causes, may make application for Parish relief.

That your Petitioners, can from their own experience,contradictthe statement made in support of that clause, that "such sums are given to cherish the "vices and the indolence of that class "of the Poor who are disposed to ex

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than to depend for their own bread

be secure from dungeons, andist rather on the charity of others from all the demons of the law, and you shall be consoled for the loss of your bill by the reflection, that your name will go down to posterity enrolled in the Register's Calendar of Saints.

WM. COBBETT

The Humble Petition of the several persons whose names are hereunto subscribed, being Inhabitants of the town of Holt in the county of Norfolk or the neighbourhood thereof; Sheweth,

That your Petitioners contemplate with sorrow the practical effbet of that clause of the Poor Laws, Amendment

on their own exertion "the prác tice of the neighbourhood, and of every other within their knowledge, being, to give no parish allowance to persons who are capable of working, without compelling them to labour as the means of obtaining a mainte

nance.

That the operation of the clause in question, if it pass into a law, will be to compel the charitable and humane, to establish a fund for the relief of the unemployed and able poor, by which means the reduction of parish allowances will save nothing to the public, while it will diminish the income of the generous to increase that of the sordid man.

That, under the present system, the

That if such a contribution be not amongst the poor will be found that made, the effect on the Poor will be, the loss of property will, therefore, be to enforce a division of the scanty pro-more than equivalent to the charge of fits of labour, or of the parish pit- the poor ratės-and that, that moral tance to the old, the infirm, and the turpitude, which now infects only a helpless (through compassion or the small part, will pervade the whole body powerful ties of kindred), to assist of the labouring classes, and be sancthose whom the rich will have destined tified by the appellation of a struggle to starvation :—that this division will against oppression. deepen the misery of the poor of all ages, and will increase their dissatis-parish offices for managing the Poor faction at the measures of those who are found to be filled with most adpossess property, whom they will look vantage to the country by men of upon as combined against their lives sound understanding and compassionate as well as their comforts:that the disposition, who under the cruel law allowances they have been accustom- which is now before your Honourable ed to received from time immemorial House, will be unable to bear the they will consider as their undoubted accumulated misery which will con right, and the seizure of them as a tinually present itself to their view, violation of their property :-that the being deprived of the ability to alle young and active will attempt to get viate it; and that those offices will by stratagem and force what will ap- therefore be exclusively filled by men pear to them to be withheld by a par- of the hardest hearts, whose power tial law, and that the Poor collective- being exercised without feeling, will ly will justify them on the plea only widen the breach between the sufof necessity, and. be led to aid and fering and irritated poor and their assist them in their attacks upon pro- richer townsman,and hasten the period perty-that if such a state of things at which the law in question will effect be suffered to continue, an organized the total demoralization of the lower system of depredation will spread orders.

throughout the country; against which no tangible property will be safe, and for the punishment of which the rich

will be afraid to seek, and no evidences

And your Petitioners, with great humility, suggest, that the present melancholy state of the working classes is mainly attributable to the immense