embroiling us in war against the progress of civilization, which demand the instant attention, and the determined opposition, of the friends of peace and of mankind. War taxes have been reimposed upon us in time of peace; and the government began the session with a proposal, not for their diminution, but for their increase. Notwithstanding the long continued and general distress of the industrious classes, the armed power has been augmented. Every soldier who could possibly be spared from the colonies has been recalled to the three kingdoms. Great Britain, the ministerial journals declare, will uphold, if need be, the monarchy of Belgium by the sword. From all parts of the continent, complaints, are arriving against the provoking meddlings of the British Foreign Office, and its diplo. matic agents. The foreign secretary hints that a treaty a century and a quarter old, binds Great Britain to interfere, by force of arms, in the quarrel between the King of Prussia and the King of Denmark, respecting the Duchy of Schleswig. Fugitive aliens, of great abilities, and of despotic principles, have access to the court, and are openly influencing the deliberations of the senate, if not the policy of the cabinet. The premier has acknowledged in his place in parliament his departure from the principles of Fox, and has unequivocally avowed his approval of the policy of Pitt. Lord John Russell has publicly declared his approval, and has not denied his adoption of that policy which spotted Europe with the blood of many thousands of our countrymen, and by contracting a debt of £800,000,000. sterling, enabled a corrupt oligarchy to postpone, for five and thirty years, the enactment of even an instalment of parliamentary reform. Consulting neither their intelligence, nor their benevolence, nor their principles, but their passions, thousands of our countrymen are preparing to seek their rights, by rifles rather than by reason, forsaking their faith in the might of evidence and justice, and placing a desperate reliance upon pikes and barricades. Commercial panic in England, dearth in Great Britain, and famine in Ireland, co-operating with a government which, during two dark years, has neither adjusted taxation for the relief of the industrious classes, nor improved the relations of the peasantry to the land, have made insurrections and emeutes, if not civil war, probabilities, or possibilities, in these anxious days.

These are the circumstances in which the People's League have combined to secure the electoral suffrage for every man. Wherever we look, over the empire or beside our hearths, we see proofs of oligarchical misrule, and when we trace the sources of this malignant power, we find them chiefly resolving themselves into the manifold corruptions, deceits, and crimes,

of the representative system into which the British constitution has been successfully and fatally perverted. Every man and every home among us to-day, is suffering from the deceitful system embodied in the measure called the Reform Act. To this intricate coil of deceits it is, that we owe the rule of an oligarchy possessed of none of the conditions of legitimate power, for it is neither just, nor wise, nor able.*

The enterprise and the worth of our fathers have brought together an empire on which the sun never sets, and on which not one of his rays ever falls, without witnessing the marks of the injustice and of the incapacity of oligarchical legislation and administration. Canada displayed the fact by rebellion. The East Indies show it by taxation on production, and the West Indies by restrictions on labour. In New Zealand it took the shape of legal pedantries among savages. Sydney manifests it by a hideous accumulation of wickedness. It was oligarchical misrule which goaded the Caffres of the Cape of Good Hope into hostilities. It was the legislative ignorance of the oligarchy which caused the war with China; and it is their administrative incapacity which has robbed us of the fruits of the peace with China. If the planet Earth presents no region in which the heavenly lights do not shine upon the proofs of the greatness of the British people, this world also presents no quarter in which our possessions have not been marred, or blighted, by Oligarchical Misrule.

Government is necessary to protect society from the selfish passions of individuals, and representation is necessary to protect society from the selfish passions of governments. Rulers will prefer themselves, if they be not made responsible and punishable for the selfish preference of themselves. The interests of all will only be uniformly consulted by all. The responsibility of governors, whether legislative or executive, is essential for the protection of all from the selfishness of governors. Responsibility divides itself into eligibility, accountability, and dismissability. The suffrage which elects and which rejects, is, therefore, essential to good government, for those who are without it are left exposed to the selfishness of their rulers. Right' is the corollary of 'ought; it is, therefore, the right of all to elect or to reject the legislative body, because all ought to be protected. Danger from the selfishness

We are obliged to M. Gaizot for this description of legitimate power. 'Permanent and universal rights are all centred in the right of obeying only such dispensations as are just and wise.' .. If individual will be bound to submit to legitimate authority, no human power is exempt from the necessity of proving that it is, and that it shall remain legitimate, that is to say, just, wise, and expedient.'

of governors it is, which gives the right of responsibility to all exposed to the danger, and we deferentially submit, precisely in the degree in which they are exposed to it. On this account, the right to the suffrage is not least, if it be not greatest, in the class who have neither wealth, nor education, nor leisure wherewith to protect themselves from the selfishness of their rulers. This class are made still more defenceless, and are yet more exposed by the largeness of their numbers and the vastness of their productive powers. Exclusion from the suffrage is exclusion from protection against the selfishness of governors. In countries in which the working classes are excluded, the exclusion is of those who need the protection most. If every interest is to be represented, the interest of the least protected and the most numerous class has the best right. As for the plea of want of knowledge, it is a pretence; for the knowledge required is neither of science, nor of letters, nor of art, but knowledge of the interests of all, which must be greatest in the minds of all. But, we are told, the working classes will use the suffrage selfishly, establishing a tyranny of the many over the few, of the majority over the minority, and of ignorance over intelligence. The working classes, when supreme, will be irresponsible, and will prefer themselves. From the days of Zeno and Aristotle, down to Burke and Guizot, this has been the pretext for withholding political power from the most numerous class. It is maintained, that when they are the supreme class, they will be unjust, unwise, and incapable, and, therefore, an illegitimate power. For the sake of illustration, let us imagine the procedure of this dark and malignant power.

Preferring themselves in the levying of taxes, they will tax their own permanent incomes, much less in proportion to their value, than the precarious incomes of others. Using themselves the finest qualities of all goods, they will tax commodities according to quantity, and thus make in relation to value, the coarse qualities of goods which others use, pay manifold more than the fine qualities which they use. This illegitimate power will prefer themselves, with respect to the taxes on the transmission of property. When the white blinds darken the suburban villa of retired industry, and indicate the transmission of the savings of toil, from the dead to the living, there are probate and legacy duties to pay, which amount to several millions a-year, levied from such homes at such times. But when the heraldic escutcheon on the mansion is the sign of the descent of wide domains and ancestral estates, there are no regrets excited in these proud homes respecting the payment of probate and legacy duties. This imaginary illegitimate power will use their supremacy to make their property only partially

liable for their debts; while the property of a'l other men is completely at the mercy of creditors. Not content with protecting themselves as debtors, they will privilege themselves as creditors, coming next after the taxman in distraining for the rents due to them. After protecting themselves as debtors, and privileging themselves as creditors, they must favour themselves as borrowers; abolishing usury laws with respect to trading people, but keeping up usury laws in favour of landowning men, that they may be able to borrow cheap. But, indeed, the selfish preference of themselves by this despotic class, is strikingly displayed in reference to the land. They seize it, not merely as a possession, but as a property entailed upon their blood. Elevating their pleasures above the morals of their countrymen, they make four thousand of their neighbours criminals per annum, that they may shoot over their preserves, on an average, half a dozen times a year. Receiving the land on condition of bearing the expense of the armed power, they shift the expense of it upon the community, reserving for themselves its best pay and best promotions, and giving to the sons of the rest of the community the worst promotions, the lowest pay, the flogging, and the press-gang.

The frown of public opinion fails in making them suppress the flogging or the empressment; but they multiply marvellously the high commands which give them large pay and bedizen them with honours. They grow wheat, malt, and hops, and compel others therefore for their benefit to eat dear bread, and drink beer instead of wine. When commons are enclosed, which are pieces of land said to be for the benefit of the poor, they divide the enclosures among themselves, and give the compensation not to the poor but to each other. In the portions of the three kingdoms, peopled by the descendants of the Celtic tribes, they evict sometimes by burning down their cottages,the descendants of the men who won the land by their swords, and allow them to perish of cold and starvation. But it is not enough for this illegitimate power, denounced by a virtuous philosophy, to prefer themselves in these ways, to make their interests supreme over the interests of all other men, and their pleasures superior to the morals of their countrymen. They make their rights to their land dominant over the rights of other men to worship God, by refusing to sell sites for religious edifices, and compelling the inhabitants of extensive districts of country, either not to assemble together for Divine worship at all, or to worship the Almighty in the open air, amid rain and snow. But the lust of this illegitimate power, so unfit to be entrusted with political supremacy, is not satisfied with making their interests superior to the interests of others, and their property

lord it over the consciences of others; they make the lives of other men subordinate to their fancies. There are millions upon millions of acres of land in the empire, which are doomed to sterility, and there are millions upon millions of labourers compelled to want work and to want bread, because these unjust, unwise, and incapable holders of political power, fancy it to be their interest to keep the earth barren, and the labourers

paupers.

By an alliance with the law, they secure for themselves the decision of a majority of all causes, civil and criminal. They make sure of the administration of all the other causes by dependents, whose biases, conscious and unconscious, are all towards their persons and their interests. Their creatures are distributed throughout the whole legal system, from the lowest catchpole up to those who sit on the judgment-seat, and hence a legal system in which every one of the practitioners has an interest in obscure law and dear justice. Hence, Courts of Equity, which are a hye-word; and bankrupt laws, which made the estate the stock in trade of commissioners, assignees, and solicitors. By a hybrid alliance with the church, and the law, they produce Ecclesiastical courts, where judges preside who are responsible to nobody but the bishop of a sect, whose causes against all other sects the judge decides; courts which confine relief from matrimonial wrongs to the rich; courts which administer unintelligible, arbitrary, mawkish, obsolete, and oppressive law, and in which the business is a monopoly of a family compact, including judges, bar, and proctors. Making the laws which regulate the transfers of property, they are absorbing rapidly nearly all the small estates into their own large ones, and extinguishing the yeomanry of England. So rapidly is the absorbing process proceeding, that the land of England, which in 1775, belonged to 250,000 families; in 1815 belonged to only 20,000 proprietors, or, including estates belonging to the church, and 6,000 incorporations, to 32,000.* They make themselves magistrates in virtue, not of their proficiency in law, but of their property in land, and thus locally decide most of the causes, vote all the taxes, command all the constables, and spend all the money. Asserting their mere wills against the personal liberty of other men, any one of them assumes the power to imprison any poor man as a vagrant, for being homeless, and for walking upon a public path, and any two of them together may, on the merest pretence, shut up a footpath, on which the

Passy, p. 9, as quoted in The Emancipation of the Soil and Free Trade in Land.' By a Landed Proprietor. Edinburgh: John Johnstone, Hunter-square. 1845.