REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. EDITED BY GEORGE W. M. REYNOLDS, AUTHOR OF THIS FIRST AND SECOND SERIES OF " TH9 KTSTEEIEi Ol LOITOOK," " THE MTSTEEIM OF THE COURT 09 tOSBOK& C, & C. No. 15,— Vol, 1.] SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1850, [ PRICE ONE PENNY. JULIAN HARNEY. THE subject of our sketch belongs to the proletarian or- der, and is as proud of an ancestry of hard- handed workers as many are of their boasted descent from mailed brigands and Norman spoliators. Mr. Harney, although yet a very young man, at present only in his thirty- third year, has long been known to the industrial classes of England as a firm and energetic advocate of the cause of democracy and of progress. At an early age he plunged into the vortex of political strife, and when 110 more than sixteen or seventeen years of age, joined in the struggle, of which the late Henry Hetherington was a leader, to free the press and enlighten the millions. Julian Harney was several times imprisoned for vending " illegal, sedi- tious, & c. & c., publications," printed and published in defiance of the law, to try the power of right against might. Amongst the earliest advocates of the People's Charter we find the name of George Julian Harney; he sat in the first Convention of 1839, as one of the delegates for Newcastle- upon- Tyne, and in the course of the en- suing agitation, made a pedestrian tour in England and Scotland, disseminating in the principal towns, the glorious principles of the Charter. In 1842, Mr. Harney participated in the general pro- scription pronounced against the Chartist leaders, con- sequent on the celebrated " Plug plot;" and in March 1843, in company with Mr. Feargus O'Connor and fifty- seven other leading Chartists, he was arraigned at Lan- caster, on a charge of attempting by " conspiracies, riots, tumults, insurrections, & c. & c., to change the Constitution of these realms, & c." Some of the accused were de- fended by counsel; the majority, however, pleaded their own cause, and Julian Harney was appointed by his comrades to lead the defence. He did so: and delivered a speech which, for eloquence, energy, and manly feel- ing has seldom been equalled, even by the paid pro- fessors of the- forensic art. In the published report of the trial, edited by Mr. O'Connor, we find ( page 215) the following testimony in favour of Mr. Harney's eloquent address:—" It would, perhaps, he invidious to point particular attention to the address of any individual, where all acquitted themselves so well, but the speech of Harney will be read with peculiar interest, and fully justifies the position which he occupied as first speaker." This tribute to the exertion and talent displayed by Mr. Harney in the Chartist cause, coming from a man like Feargus O'Connor, cannot but be a subject of great pride and gratification to the enthusiastic proletarian whose life we are now sketching. Mr. Harney was one of the people's leaders, who in 1841, carried the Chartist question to the hustings, and for the first time, in opposition to long established pre- judices, and the brow- beating influence of wealth, rank, ! and position, asserted the proletarian's right to share the , hustings with the noble and the squire, as one of " the j candidates for the representation of the people in parlia- ! ment." The successful manner in which George Julian Harney met, contested, and annihilated the " splendid | sophisms" of Lord Morpeth, ( the present Earl of Carlisle) I and the aristocratic twaddle of that scion of the house of Wentworth, the noodle Lord Milton, is not yet forgotten in the West Riding of Yorkshire. But, perhaps, the greatest achievement in Mr. Harney's career, and the boldest stroke in the proletarian's life, was hunting up Lord Palmerston in his own den of Tiverton, and thera worrying the antiquated cupid in a style that sadly dis- composing the polite equanimity of the courtier's temper, called forth in the Times an acknowledgment that Mr. Harney had " put Lord Palmerston through his paces," and extracted from him confession, revelations, explana- tions, and admissions, never before drawn from the wily Whig by even foreign diplomatists, or Members of Parlia- ment. Mr. Harney did not for a moment entertain any expectation that he would be enabled to obtain the suf- frages of the pocket borough of Tiverton, but he opposed Lord Palmerston in order to expose the political duplicity and sham- liberalism of the Foreign Secretary. Friday, July 30, 1847, was the d; jy appointed for the nomination of candidates for the honour of representing the borough of Tiverton ; Lord Palmerston, Messrs. Har- ney, and Heathcote were the three gentlemen who pre- sented themselves before the worthy electors. His lord- ship was astounded at what he, doubtless, considered an extraordinary piece of presumption on the part of a prole- tarian invading the snug retreat of a ministerial nobleman, and audaciously defying him in his own strong- hold. Never before had the electors of Tiverton had their ears gratified by such a soul- stirring, eloquent, argumentative, and, to Lord Palmerston, an annihilating discourse as that delivered by the people's champion. He attacked his lordship from the commencement of his variegated career, and followed him through all his changes, tergiversations, and contradictions. The following piece of keen satire was highly relished aud enthusiastically cheered by the good folks of Tiverton; " I remember," observed Mr. Harney, " having lately seen an extract from a pamphlet, entitled ' The Claims of Intellect,' in which the severaf ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. members of the Whig ministry were set forth as the purest, wisest, best of statesmen ; and the writer urged in behalf of Lord Palmerston, that he had served in the ministries and enjoyed the confidence of Percival, Can- ning, Wellington, and Melbourne. As we may judge a man from the company he keeps, we may come to speedy conclusions respecting Lord Palmerston, who in the course of his political life has been like St. Paul, ' all things to all men.' To give you an idea of Percival, it will suffice to say that the night he was shot by Belling- hara in the lobby of the House of Commons, that very night he was to have brought forward a measure for the purpose of forming in the neighbourhood of London, a permanent camp of thirty thousand troops. These troops were to overawe the metropolis and stifle the just discon- tent of the people in blood. That scheme died with its projector; but no doubt the noble lord can inform us as to his share in its preparation." This cutting exposure, re- ceived as it was with enthusiastic applause, evidently disconcerted the astounded Foreign Secretary, and it is reported, but we can scarcely credit such a strange asser- tion, that his lordship for the first time during a long period of political strife, blushed, and appeared ill at ease. Be that as it may, Mr. Harney spared him not: he lashed the noble secretary unmercifully through the dif- ferent phases of his career, and taunted him bitterly with liis unceasing and unchanged love of place, pension, and power. Mr. Harney appears to be gifted ifcith a rare talent for discernment of character ; for even at that period ( 1847), before the wars of liberty had broken out in Europe, he indirectly foretold the treacherous, delusive policy subse- quently adopted by the Foreign Secretary in respect to the independence of Italy and Hungary. Lord Palmer- ston's reply was weak and ineffective; his assurance had forsaken him; the startling facts adduced by Mr. Harney as evidence against his political life confounded the hitherto brazen- faced statesman. On a show of hands taking place, an immense majority were raised in favour of Harney and Heathcote ; Lord Palmerston instantly de- manded a poll, and Mr. Harney then read a paper ad- dressed to the Mayor, setting forth his reasons for not, on that occasion, going to the poll. We venture to assert, that his lordship still smarts under the hearty badgering he received at the Tiverton election of 1847. In 1843 Mr. Harney became sub- editor of the Northern Star; and about two years subsequently, on the retire- ment of Mr. Joshua Hobson, assumed the chief manage- ment of that journal. It is understood that the able, powerfully- written letters which regularly appear in the Star, signed VAmi du Peuple, are from the pen of its talented editor. Mr. Harney is likewise proprietor and editor of the Democratic Review, a publication we have often had occasion to eulogise in the columns of the Instructor. His recent proceedings as an advocate of democratic principles are too well known to need descrip- tion j the hold stand he took and the efforts he made in support of the Hungarian cause, will for ever entitle Mr. Harney to the respect, admiration, and gratitude of every true friend to liberty. BED REPUBLICANISM. TIIE doctrines of Red Republicanism although reviled and repudiated by many, are neither properly understood nor rightly appreciated. Since the last revolution in France, an outcry has been raised by the friends of order that Red Re- publicanism is synonymous with spoliation, anarchy, and blood ; that its apostles are desirous of elevating the guillotine and gibbet upon the ruins of property, and the wreck of so- ciety. The days of blood that marked the revolution of ' 93 in France, are adduced as evidence of the sanguinary exploits of republican rulers when elevated to supreme power. But I affirm that more monstrosities, greater spoliation, and ten thousand times more sanguinary atrocities have been perpe- trated under the canting denominations of loyalty and order, than the republicans of France, or those of any other country, ever dreamt of perpetrating. Who, in the revolution of February, 1848, protected not only the property of the middle classes, but likewise the trea- sures of the nobility ? Who, with arms in their hands, de- fended the houses and valuables of the miserable craven aristocrats that lay tremblingly concealed in their hiding- places at Paris ? Who exercised summary justice upon the vagabond thieves that, profiting by the glorious insurrection of a people, would have sullied it by individual crime? Who, when the battle was finished, extended a brotherly hand to their con- quered opponents ? And, finally, who was it abolished that favourite abomination of tyrant kings— the political scaffold ? It was the belied, and exiled Red Republican party of France! And now, contrast such a noble example with the ruthless agents of ruffian royalty in all quarters of Europe. The legalized old cutthroat, Radetzki, when he captured Milan, owing to the dastardly conduct of Charles Albert, plundered the inhabitants of that city, by levying a forced loan upon them j the scoundrel Haynau, not only left traces of blood in every footstep of his sanguinary career, but likewise wrung ruinous and enormous fines from the crushed and vanquished people. The reptile aristocracy of France, shorn of their titles, but still intriguing and corrupting by the wealth their generous adversaries had allowed them to retain, when again arrived at power were the first that would have restored the political guillotine, and decimated the ranks of their opponents. Such were the doings and projects of the friends of royalty and order! Assassins themselves, the tyrants of a people strive to brand an entire nation with eternal infamy for periodically exercising justice upou their oppressors. Louis XVI and Charles I are considered as martyrs by the admirers of royalty and aristocracy; glorious and murdered patriots like Bobert Blum are denied all sympathy for their fate, and are denominated anarchists, destructives, and repub- licans ; their name is forgotten, or when mentioned, loaded with obloquy by the crowned and coronetted despots of the people. Cold- blooded murders and needless executions, when sanc- tioned by the sounding but frothy names of loyalty and order are considered lawful, requisite, and just. Look back into all the revolutions of the world, and you will find that under the government of the people humanity and lenity have marked a nation's victory; but royal and oligarchical triumphs have invariably been stained with the bitterest vengeance and the i'oftllest cruelties. Charles I suffered the penalty of his crimes and treacheries, a penalty that was ordained by the sovereign and sacred tribunal appointed by the nation to judge him, but with his fall no farther vengeance was asked for by the people. Charles II, on his restoration, not only deluged the country with blood, but carried his vindictive animosity to the frightful extent of disturbing and disfiguring the remains of the dead. The rebellion against James II was followed by the most hor- rible butcheries ever perpetrated upon this earth: the people were hung up in every part of the country, as though it were a pleasing sight for royalty to gloat upon. When James and his party were overthrown by the uncontrollable indignation of an offended people, neither cruelty, torture, or murder, disgraced their triumph. And thus it has ever been; the victories of a nation have been followed by mercy; those of a faction by vengeance and blood. The Republicans of Frauee, at the period of the great revolution, were irritated and enraged by a long series of oppression and persecution; they, however, at first treated their impotent sovereign, Louis XVI, with leniency and con- sideration, and even maintained the external appearances of power and dignity previously enjoyed by the fallen mo- narch; but when it was discovered that the treacherous king and his arrogant despotic wife were intriguing with foreign powers to overrun the country with mercenary hordes of savage soldiery,— when it was evident that the weak and wicked Louis had taken an oath to maintain the amended constitution with a firm resolve to violate it on the first and fittest occasion, then, the concentrated wrath of an outraged nation broke forth in overwhelming fury, spurned with derision the pretended sacredness of anointed sove- reignty, and summoning the king to the bar of a natioual tribuuai— solemn, majestic, and legal— accused him as a traitor, sentenced him as a traitor, and condemned him to a traitor's fate. Often had that instrument of death, which executed the will of an injured and infuriated people, fallen upon victims to royal revenge. The knife that had severed the heads of patriots was, in turn, destined for the neck of a tyrant king; but, thank God, the Red Republicans of France have abolished the political scaffold— a barbarous abomina- tion— and I firmly believe it can never be re- established under republican institutions. But, should monarchy unfor- tunately again achieve au ascendancy in France, then will royalty aud its followers, thirsting with diabolical wrath for bloody vengeance, erect once more the instrument of horror, aud, as in days of yore, let loose a sanguinary torrent of bitter, demonaical revenge. The ultra- democrats of the world are true friends to order, humanity, prosperity, and liberty; the despots of the earth exists but by encouraging the worst and basest passions of men, and striking terror into tbe hearts of the timid by the severities, cruelties, and atrocities practised under the delusive names of law and loyalty, maintain their unholy pre- eminence. la the ultra- republican crusade of 1848, when Democracy rose in all its splendour,— grand, powerful,, aud humane,— when kings like miserable, frighted, yelping curs, sped in dismay from their territories,— when day by day victory upon victory was gained by the Re- publican troops of Europe over the paid legions of des- potism, in Italy, Germany, Hungary, and France,— when the large towns and capitals of countries— Milan, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and all the cities of Hungary— were at the mercy of democracy,— did we then hear of forced loans, scourging of women, shooting of men without trial, and other atrocities equally barbarous and revolting? No! it was only when the generals and armies of enraged ties- pots re- possessed themselves of these towns and cities, that a long catalogue of foul murders, heartless extortions, and unparalleled cruelties, was commenced, continued, aud not yet completed. And now that these pretended friends of order have obtained a temporary direction of affairs in France, what, I ask, have they achieved? Have they won the confidence or affections of the people ? Have they followed the example of the ultra- democratic party for the short time it was in power, by bringing forward measures calculated to destroy existing abuses and raise up a more healthy and vigorous system of government ? No 1 instead of advancing the cause of humanity, the pre- sumed friends of order have retrograded all approaches to enlightening, improving, or freeing the community. Order has been converted into a mere bye word for re- action, and is a pretence for returning to the bondage of past times, the hideous slavery of king- craft and priestcraft. Under the monarchies that have endured for centuries in Europe a system of order is not yet achieved, whilst in the Republic of America, not yet a hundred years old, order is firmly and securely established. A proof that it is not a spirit of turbu- lence or disorder that causes the political commotions in the countries of the old world, but the rotten, corrupt, and ineffi- cient system by which they are governed. During the brief period of ultra- democratic rule in France, during a time of almost unparalleled excitement and univer- sal exultation, order was maintained, property and persons were protected, although no regularly organized force was at the disposal of the executive; and now that the friends of order are all- powerful in France, upon what do they depend for prolonged tranquillity? Upon General Changarnier and his armed Legions 1 The government of democracy was up- held by the devotion and affection of a people; the so- called government of order is dependent upon the will of an African sworder I February ith, 1850. A CHARTIST. PRISON DISCIPLINE- NO II. THE only method by which we can arrive at certain know- ledge upon any subject, is the careful observation of facts in connexion with it, and a correct generalization of, and de- duction from such facts. In the application of these means to the subjects now under consideration,— a subject which has engaged the serious attention of the most enlightened philanthropists and legislators of all ages,— I shall in the first place endeavour to lay before the readers of the Political Instructor, au exact account of the treatment I have myself experienced while awaiting my trial, and while suffer- ing under a sentence of two years' imprisonment, for having been present at a public meeting, which by virtue of an old resuscitated Act of Parliament was construed to be an illegal one. After the perusal of this account I feel confident all will be ready to exclaim: " Is it possible that after all the at- tention which has been paid to a subject of such importance, such absurd, cruel, aud inefficient laws can be enacted, or enforced at the present day." The most complete answer would be found in an analysis of the preseut mode of electing law- makers, by which a majority of men perfectly ignorant of the principles upou which true legislation ought to be based are chosen, and who have no recommendation or qualification for the performance of the onerous duties en trusted to them ; but tha accidental possession of a certaiu amount of money, and a willingness to part with some of it tor the gratification of their vanity, or some other equally egotistical feelings, by becoming members of parliament, and hence the partial and inefficient way iu which these mis- called representatives of the people perform tha duties which they undertake. But the consideration of the question of the suffrage, or of tha way in which the business of a great nation is and ought to be conducted, would be beyond the immediate sphere of the subjects now under consideration. I shall therefore endeavour to give a more general answer to the above question, by quoting the words of the celebrated La Place, who, in writing upon a similar subject, says, " Let us apply to the political and moral science that same method which, founded upon observation and calculation, has so happily served to produce such splendid results in the na- tural sciences." To having followed this method, we are indebted for all the vast revolutions and discoveries in science which have taken place since the days of Lord Bacon, who may justly be regarded as the discoverer and promulgator of the sys- tem of inductive philosophy; a system which has so fiappily tended to the advancement of civilization throughout the- world, and to disseminate the knowledge of the means bv which happiness may be secured to all. To our not having followed this method do we owe the present existence of the absurd and anomalous laws which disgrace our statute books. Without any exaggeration, it may be declared that law- making in the 19th century is merely a series of experiments made in the dark. In scarcely any instance do we find that laws accomplish the object for which they have been enacted. A great portion of the period of each session of Parliament is expended in rectify- ing, or rather we may say in trying to rectify the mistakes aud blunders of preceding sessions: it can scarcely be ne- cessary to quote instances to prove this position— all who read, or observe, must be able to satisfy themselves from their own experience of its truth. In the treatment of physical disease, who would trust himself to the care of any one whom he knew to be ignorant of the physical laws of his nature ? Who that has occasion to employ assistants in his business, or iu the cultivation of a field or garden, or in the production and rearing of stock for the cattle markets of the country, but requires that they should have studied and be cogDizaut of the laws upon which the production and healthy growth of a plant, a cabbage, a pig, turkey, or bullock depends ? Are then the intimate re- lations which bind man to man, in communities of families, countries and nations, the production and healthy cultiva- tion of man's faculties of less consequence than the rearing of a fat pig or a fleet horse ? There is but one plain aud distinct answer to be given— no! Yet among all who are engaged in the regulations of these vital questions, that is to say, in making laws upon which man depends for the healthy development of the germs of life and well being, the education and training . of a human being through the various stages, from infancy to adolescence, and his main- tainance in adultage in a position calculated to produce the highest development and manifestations of his natural ca- pacities. Alas 1 how few have any broad and well defined principles by which they may judge and regulate the systems which they adopt and promulgate, for the accomplishments of these purposes. The consequences are just what we might " a priori' declare they would be; for while we see daily improvements taking place in the physical sciences, vin the cultivation of land, in the sanitary regulations, in the production and rearing of stock, improvements which are productive of the most wonderful and beneficial results, man himself, if not deteriorating, is not advancing in any- thing like the same proportion. " 1 will a round, unvarnished tale deliver" of the treat- ment, suffering, and privations I have endured from the time of my arrest to my liberation, embodying the whole of my personal experience of PBISON DISCIPLINE. I wish it to be distinctly understood that I have no idea of exciting tho slightest sympathy for my own particular case; for, in tact, I have suffered little beyond pecuniary loss, and the derangement of the pursuits whereby I have been wont to live. Shakspere makes one of his popular characters say, " You take from me my life when you do take from me the means whereby I live." Thisis so far from being realized in my case, that I may truly say in spite of all the severities prac- tised in Tothill Fields Bridewell, I was never in more robust health in my life; and thanks to the kindness of my private and political friends, I never anticipated mora hopefully the good times which 1 see coming on with giant strides. The very object I have in view by giving at all a personal character to my account of the present system of Prison Discipline, is, because that which I have known and proved I can vouch for with confidence; and having passed through the ordeal myself, no one can accuse me of theorizing on a subject I am not practically acquainted with. Any exaggera- tion on my part may be easily refuted; but I venture to say the atrocities of the system are so monstrous, that to induce full credence to my statements, it will be more advisable for me to keep under, rather than even up to the mark. No exaggeration or flourishing is required, I am confident; the bare and naked truth will be scarcely believed as possible by those who are labouring under the mistaken notion that anything like a rational or moral system of treatment has yet been adopted in the prisons of England. The test by which I propose to judge the present system, is by showing the utter impossibility of its producing the effect which alone justifies a government in depriving any indi- vidual of his natural and imprescriptable rights, viz., the re- form of the offender, or the prevention of his abusing the possession of his liberty by violating the natural laws and encroaching on the rights of others. I. declare it as my conviction that it is not merely absurd, but positively crimiual for a government to subject auy one to the slightest amount of privation or suffering which has not been proved by reason aud conscience to be necessary for the benefit and improvement of the individual ar. d society at large. I was arrested on the night of Wednesday, June 7th, 1848, at my own door, and taken to the Vine Street station- house, and from thence, between twelve and one o'clock, to Bow Street, After being searched, I was locked up in one of the back cells till the following day at noon, when the form of an examination was gone through before Mr. Ileury, to afford him the opportunity of committing me to Newgate upon the charge of being present at aa illegal meeting, and of open and advisedly speaking sedition. They kept me in a cell at Bow Street until six o'clock in the evening, when 1 put into the prison- van, and was conveyed with the common felons to Newgate to await my trial. W. J. YERNO. V. ( To be continued in our next.) ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. THE ARISTOCRACY: ITS ORIGIN, PROGRESS, AND DECAY. To suit the ambitious designs of a ministry, the insane obstinacy of a wicked old king, and the violent hatred evinced by the German Princess Charlotte, his wife, towards all approach at freedom or independence,— a sanguinary, desperate, and expensive warfare was carried on at the instigation of the Aristocracy against the American colonists. A more tyrannical and op- pressive contest, as that on the part of England against America, has never disgraced the annals of a nation: commenced in arrogance and obstinacy, it ended in utter defeat and degradation. The incompetence of our noble statesmen at home was only equalled by the ridiculous inefficiency of the Aristocratic generals and other offi- cers who were sent out to be defeated by the republican commanders of America. Lord George Germaino, late Sackville, the convicted coward of Minden, through the influence of his family, was appointed to the direction of American affairs; a dastard in battle, and a syco- phant tyrant in the cabinet, his constant advice to the Government was to. shed the blood of the colonists « nd subdue them by force of arms and measures of tlte most infamous and sanguinary kind. The Aristocracy of England were goading the American colonists to des- peration. The Duke of Bedford, a most unpopular nobleman, was at the head of the ministry; Lords Sandwich and Egmont, were also in the cabinet, and proposed raising a revenue from the colonies by the im- position of a Stamp Act; and, upon resistance being dis- played by the Americans to this impost, the government unwisely determined to entrust the execution of its orders to naval and military officers, who acted with the most cruel rigour. lu all ages of the world, sovereign states have assumed the right to tax their dependent colonies; and in ancient " times Athens involved herself in many dangerous wars, which proved highly prejudicial to her interests, and which reads a powerful lesson to modern statesmen and Icings on this subject; but British kings and the British Aristocracy have, like the Athenians, had many lessons both from experience and from the pages of history; but, alas! they have in no ways profited by them. The fatal effects of the Stamp Act was soon made manifest. The House of Assembly in Virginia was aroused by the eloquence of Patrick Henry, who rose up and indig- nantly denounced the measure, exclaiming,—" Ctesar had his Brutus; Charles I his Oliver Cromwell; and George III ;" here the orator was interrupted by cries of " Treason." After pausing a moment, he con- tinued: " and George III may profit by their example. If that be treason, make the most of it." Rendered desperate by tyranny and contumely, the colonists broke out into rebellion. Lord North assumed the direction of affairs in England, and he, a minister after the king and queen's own heart, determined to prosecute the warfare against the Americans with all the resources he could squeeze from this country. North was a type of his order, cringing, suppliant, and selfish; he cared not two straws for popular opinion; his whole and sole endeavour was to ingratiate himself into the favour of royalty. He pandered to their blood- thirsty obstinacy, squandered the wealth of the nation in an unjust and hopeless struggle, laid the foundation for that infamous policy which terminated in a general European war, was the author of a long series of the most calamitous events, and was eventually raised to the dignity of an earl by the style and title of Earl of Guild- ford, besides creating for himself enormous church and other patronage. His eldest son, the present nobleman, is both a peer and a parson! His rapacity has been lately exposed, and is now undergoing legal investiga- tion. Lady Lindsay, in the memoirs of her father, Lord North, tells us that, for several years before the termina- tion of the American struggle, he was thoroughly con- vinced of its impolicy and hopelessness, but unwilling to thwart the known wishes of Ilia sovereign, he continued to advocate its continuance. What a scoundrel minister must this man have been, thus to have sacrificed the best blood and treasure of his country merely to gratify the insane obstinacy of a bedlamite monarch, and the inveterate hatred of an illiterate, lying, and treacherous German queen? This war, the favourite hobby of George III and his grovelling Aristocracy, cost the country nearly one hundred and forty millions of money, besides one hundred and five millions borrowed to maintain it, the interest of which sum we have paid for sixty- eight years, and are still continuing to do so. Most of this enormous amount of money was squan- dered by a minister, all the while conscious that it was uselessly expended! The judgment of heaven fell heavily on both the ruffian king and his miscreant minister; the former was plunged into hopeless insanity; the latter years of Lord North were afflicted by total blindness; but we, the people, still suffer, and bear the burthen of their iniquities. When the rebellion broke out, its consequences were little dreaded; the Aristocracy ridiculed the idea of a half- starved rabble opposing for one moment the regular troops of an anointed king, commanded by the flower of his Aristocracy. Lord Sandwich declared that the Ame- ricans, if having four times the number they could bring into the field, must be eventually subdued; and he pro- phesied that " if they did not run away before the army of their lawful sovereign, they would starve themselves into compliance with government measures." But the folly of the Aristocracy fully equalled their wicked obstinacy. The American colonies had long furnished sinecure but lucrative situations for pauper sprigs of nobility; governments, with all the absurd pageantry of courts were established, and my lord and lady from England strutted it gloriously in their own estimation, but disgusted and displeased the American colonists with their ridiculous bombast and vexatious stupidity. At the first outbreak of insurrection, most of these noble placemen either ignominiously bolted or were kicked out of the country. Troops were sent from England under Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne, generals whose only recommendation to their commands was be- ing closely connected with the Aristocracy. These men soon displayed their utter incompetency and insigni- ficance when opposed to the republican generals, not- withstanding the former were backed by regular and disciplined troops, whilst the American force was an unclothed, unfed, and mostly unarmed multitude; but the glory and grandeur of republican ardour swept from the earth the trained armies of rotten and effete royalty. At the battle of Bunker's Hill, one of the first triumphs of American prowess, the obstinacy and aristocratic indolence of General Howe exposed our army to an ignominious and complete defeat. A soldier remarked, " We were kept on the Neck, twisting our tails and powdering our heads, whilst the Yankees were gather- ing in front and flank like clouds." The army of Burgoyne was surrounded and captured, the general laying the blame of his misfortune to the home- government of Lord George Germaine. Fox, on an inquiry into the state of the nation, remarked of that lord, " For two years that this nobleman has presided over American affairs, the most violent, scalping, toma- hawk measures were being pursued; bleeding has been his only prescription. If a people, deprived of their ancient rights, are grown tumultuous, bleed them; if attacked by a spirit of insurrection, bleed them; and if their fever rises into rebellion, bleed them!" cries this state- physician. " More blood, more blood,— still more blood!" This denunciation of the Aristocratic phlebo- tomist, by Fox, reminds one of Dr. Sangrado's constant prescription for blood- letting, and the doctor's reply, when remonstrated with on its evil effects: " I believe," said Sangrado, " we have carried the matter a little too far; but you know I have written a book on the effi- cacy of the practice, and, though every patient die, for the book's credit, continue bleeding." A similar prin- ciple governed the actions of our ministry with respect to the American Independence; they were long con- vinced that the struggle was hopeless and forlorn, that the arms of royalty were blunted and worthless against the energy, activity, and devotion of republican ope- rations; but loth to part with such a fair and extensive region for quartering their pauper connexions, the nobility persisted in taxing the people to maintain a wicked, unnatural, and senseless struggle, in hopes of recovering the lost Eden. Our domestic affairs were in a state of turmoil, owing to the constant and unrelenting persecution of the king and court towards Wilkes: the fury of the Aristocracy against him knew no bounds; and, in the excitement of arrogant passion, one of the peers, Lord Marchmont, in his place in the House of Lords during the debate upon Wilkes' expulsion from parliament, audaciously declared, that " popular delusions and turbulent assemblages must be suppressed; that the opinion expressed by an entire nation in face and ill contradiction to the king, his peers, and the law, must be put down by aid from without;" coolly winding up his oration by proposing that foreign assistance should be called over to subdue the people, and quiet restored by means of mercenary cut- throats. The Earl of Egmont, with equal impu- dence and audacity, declared that " the people had no right to petition iu the way they had, and were guilty of treason in presenting such petitions to his majesty!" What a glorious idea ! A great, powerful, and en- lightened people guilty of treason to a crazy and igno- rant king? The nation was edified in the course of the year 1769 by one of those interesting tales of scandal periodi- cally recorded iu the annals of royalty and aristocracy. A member of the virtuous family of George, his own brother, the Duke of Cumberland, became intimate with the young and lovely wife of Lord Grosvenor, a lady whose beauty was a theme of admiration amongst all who were acquainted with or who beheld her. The foolish husband, flattered by the distinction shown to liis family by a profligate prince, assisted, it is to be hoped unconsciously, in his own dishonour. He encouraged the visits of the duke at his house, and often allowed him to accompany Lady Grosvenor alone in rides and drives, which afforded the royal voluptuary an oppor- tunity of ingratiating himself with his intended victim, and ultimately effecting her ruin. He promised that, should anything happen from their illicit intercourse, to cause a divorce between herself and husband: he sacredly promised that he would himself espouse her. The young woman, dazzled by the attentions and devo- tion of the duke, and placing implicit confidence in his royal word, in an evil hour surrendered herself to his wishes, and from a spotless wife became a royal concu- bine. The details of this intercourse are too disgusting to narrate; the evidence that was produced on the trial not only proved the royal profligate to be an ignorant fool, but also a lying, base, and unscrupulous scoundrel. For fear of detection, this religious scion of a virtuous family procured the keys of the Chapel Royal from the person to whose care they were confided, and intro- ducing his mistress within the sacred walls of the edifice, after locking the door, there passed many hours in amorous intrigue with his fair companion. Discovery at length took place, the whole fashionable world was in a terror of excitement: what a scandal must fall upon the royal family and the Aristocracy by a disclosure of the disgraceful circumstances attendant upon this interesting affair ? Lord Grosvenor ( the Gros- venors have ever been a thrifty family) cared not for the exposure that must ensue, and still less for the de- gradation of that young wife whom, when innocent, he had placed in the way of temptation. He brought an action of crim. con. against his royal highness, the Duke of Cumberland, and laid the damages at 100,0002. This trial came oil before Lord Manstieid, and the evidence proved facts of such cool, deliberate, and heartless treachery, duplicity, and pofligacy on the part of the royal duke, that would for ever have driven, with ignominy, an humble plebeian from all decent and repu- table society. During the time he was prosecuting his scheme of seduction or. the Countess of Grosvenor, he had debauched the wife of a respectable man, anil was maintaining her in prostitution in a house near Hatton Garden. The letters read on the trial proved the duke to be a perstm whose education had been entirely and lamentably neglected; grammar, orthography, and punctuation seemed never to have troubled the royal understanding. Accounting to his mistress for failing in an appointment the duke thus beautifully expresses himself, " I couldn't come to the apointed time because I was gone to Windsor, were I am to return to London from, so my dearest lady I prey pardon," & a., & c. Several letters from the Countess of Grosvenor displayed a levity and innate want of virtue that considerably tended ta deprive her of public sympathy, She would oftentimes, in her correspondence with the duke, adduce instances, apparently in extenuation of their illicit in- tercourse, of different aristocratic female friends who were notoriously intriguing with certain gentlemen, either unknown or countenanced by their husbands; and why should not she " enjoy the love and passion of her royal and loving Cumberland?" The trial raked up such a mass of royal and Aristocratic filth as both as- tounded and disgusted the nation. Mr. Dunning was counsel for the duke, and urged every point in his favour that ingenuity could devise; but the jury found a verdict against his royal highness with 10,0001, damages. The young, lovely, but frail Countess of Grosvenor, was driven from society in disgrace; her scoundrel seducer transferred his affections to another lady, Mrs. Horton, the widow of a Derbyshire squire. He endea- voured to entice this lady into his clutches, but being too wary, she resisted all his endeavours at seduction, and he was at length induced to marry her. The ruin of an innocent female might be tolerated; but for royal blood to degrade itself by marriage with a woman whose descent was not so exalted, alarmed and shocked the king, court, and Aristocracy. The Royal Marriage Act was brought in and passed in the year 1771, people facetiously styling it " an act for encouraging fornica- tion and adultery in the descendants of George the Second." This act has been fraught with many evils to the British nation; it has induced our royal family to seek for alliances amongst the petty, pauper courts of Germany, the adherents to which we have been com- pelled to pension, subsidize, and support. The princes aud princesses of these beggarly territories having learnt from experience the ease with which the English people are squeezed by tlieir king and aristocracy, demand exorbitant revenues for the honour they confer upon us in quartering their ragged persons upon our pro- ductive soil. At this period of the reign of George III the Aristocracy was at the climax of its power,— an insane monarch; an ignorant, cruel, and intolerant queen; a corrupt ministry, with increasing taxation,— these were admirable means for increasing its influence and satisfying its rapacity. ALMA. { To be continued in our next.) THE PEOPLE'S OPPORTUNITY. " BIDE your time: the morn is breaking, Blest svit. il freedom's glorious day; Millions, from tlieir trance awaking, Soon shall stand in bright array. Man shall fetter mail no longer; Liberty shall march sublime: Every moment makes you stronger Firm, unflinching, bide your time 1" SHAKSPERE, the bright genius of dramatic literature, has said, that there is a current iu the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; but if neglected, leaves their hopes ever after wrecked amid the rocks and shallows of difficulty and disappointment. This part of the philosophy of human action was long known to the sages of the world ero it received the con- firmation of the immortal bard. We find Solomon ex- pressing the same idea ia phrase less imaginative where he says, that " to every thing there is a season and a time." The success of most of the world's great enter- prises and achievements may be ascribed to the fact, that the auspicious hour for commencing them was used with promptitude and propriety. The season for essay- ing a great work is a matter of the utmost moment to all who desire success as the reward of their exertions. Its selection requires considerable knowledge of those springs in the human heart which, when touched by the skilful hand, never fail to develop thought in healthy action. Circumstances should be seriously considered, auxiliaries should be fairly estimated, and difficulties should be steadily pondered. These preliminaries being properly taken, should reason and experience pronounce the fitting time arrived, then to the work, and hurrah for the victory. A large portion of the British working community have, for a series of years past, made great efforts to rive those debasing chains which a barbarous feudalism has rivetted upon them. They have laboured with a devotion and perseverance which reflect lustre upon the English name. But, as yet, those engaged in the good work have found the combined power of the lords of rents, profits, and taxes so great, as to baffle every en- deavour to establish the ascendancy of right and justice. The time of the oppressor's discomfiture is yet to come. The happy hour of human exaltation lies yet away in the future; but the strength of truth and the force of justice must accelerate its advent. Our era may be ranked among the most eventful in the history of this country. We are living amid vicissi- tudes and crises fraught with consequences the most momentous to man. We are living, thank God, amid , the ruins of that feudal power which for ages has blatted ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. the interests and prostrated tfee energies of a noble people. What, then, are the lessons which the signs of our times teach? Why, evidently that the season for living energy and strenuous effort upon the part of the op- pressed has come, and that that man who remains be- numbed with lethargy, or who looks with indifference upon the passing scene, is nothing less than a traitor to the sacred cause of human progression. Liberty, the grace and charm o'f civilization, is attainable on demand; • we now wait to hear whether the people have the virtue to apply for it. That inestimable blessing is at length within their reach; we wait anxiously to see whether they have the courage to extend their hands for it. Yes, the great tide of politics is on the flow— the gale is on the rise— the movement is launched— the gallant crew are embarking— they will soon be under weigh; and, • with our glorious Charter as the Polar star of their navigation, they will soon be enabled to anchor at that happy destination — the liberty of the whole people. But leaving metaphor and coming to simple matters of fact and business, the present time appears to me, for a multitude of reasons, to be peculiarly propitious for the revival of the struggle between our oppressed de- mocracy and those arrogant sections of { he community - who lord their dominion over them. We now discover, I am sure, to the infinite satisfaction of all who watch the advances of popular progression, that the enemy's house is divided against itself, and the sooner the scrip- tural prediction relative to edifices thus circumstanced be fulfilled in the present instance, the sooner will the measure of the people's happiness be filled up. A righteous retribution may be recognised in the angry discords of the dominating factions. " Divide et impera " has in all ages been the magic device which has sustained usurped power. It has also proved the lamentable source of the people's weakness. When the day shall arrive when this baleful principle shall ceaso to operate, then will there be solid grounds of hope, that the day of human • deliverance is at hand. An intelligent people, united to advance the cause of right, will, as surely as knowledge and justice are more potent than ignorance and wrong, at length triumph over every obstacle. The first pre- ventative to the exercise of the " divide and ride " policy by the people's enemies, consists in the dissemination of sound political knowledge. To attain this great end no labour should be spared by those who seek to raise the slaves of this land to the dignity of free men. That man who, by reasoning either oral or written, convinces a brother of a wrong endured, or a right to be attained, • who dispels a single error, or imparts a single truth, acts no inconsiderable part in accelerating the approach of " the good time coming." But with respect to the seasonableness of recom- mencing the battle between right and might, and of arousing the people to a development of their moral power, and of directing it to wrench from the iron grasp of feudalism their rights, I think we may exclaim in the inspiring words of Scotia's brightest bard, " - Vote'} the day, and now's the hour !" This conclusion seems warranted from tha position which the factions, that have hitherto dominated, occupy in relation to each other. Toryism, the inveterate and sworn foe of progress, is no longer that compact and consolidated phalanx which it was iu days of yore. Canute- like, it placed itself upon the sands, defying the tide of civilization till the flowing waters compelled it to shift its untenable position. Sir Robert Peel has given a " heavy blow and sore discouragement " to this anti- progressive faction— this Marplot to social meliora- tion, or political advancement. By the enactment of his tariff, and subsequently by the repeal of the Corn Laws, he has driven home the wedge and has split up the old knotty block into the fragments of violent church . and queen Tories, moderate Conservatives, and modern Protectionists. Division, thank God, is in this part of the enemy's camp; the elements of cohesion are crum- : bling away; let therefore the people be " up and at them," • and thereby turn the enemy's weakness to the advance- ment of the cause of justice. i Another phase in the horizon of politics, which in- dicate that now is the time for action, is the signal failure of Corn Law repeal as a panacea for the people's wrongs. Experience, that stern testor of theories, is exhibiting to the country the fallacies foisted upon popular credulity by the eloquent exponents of free trade in corn. It is true that bread is cheaper now than anteri- orly to the abrogation of the Corn Laws; but it is equally true that concurrently with the fall in the price of provi- sions the wages of labour have fallen in almost every do- partment of British industry. Go into that manufacturing section of the metropolis, Spitalfields, teeming with its miserable wrecks of half- famished humanity; go to the gloomy court, the filthy alley, and fcetid garret of the hopeless slop- worker; go into Lancashire and Yorkshire, the great hives of our textile industry; go into the agricultural districts, as the Chronicle's commissioner has recently done, and it will be found, in every instance, that capital has mulct labour to an extent more than proportionate to the depreciation in the price of bread consequent upon recent legislation. How, then, is the poor man benefitted? If the price of his loaf is dimi- nished in a greater ratio than his means of purchasing it, then is he a gainer? if in the same ratio, then is his position unimproved ? if in a lesser ratio, then is he an injured man? Now, unfortunately for the prescience of Adam Smith's modern disciples, the last of those three conditions is fast becoming the lot of the labour- ing community. This ominous fact should speak trumpet- tongued to the people, and teach them to look deeper than hitherto for the cause of their wrongs; and that the effective means of its removal consists alone in the sound and practical legislation of a House of Commons spring- ing spontaneously from themselves. And although Corn Law repeal is operating little or nothing to the social advancement of the workers, it is doing much in pre- paring the way for that great change, which, in the management of our national concerns, must give the as- cendency to the people. That the present is the time for the masses to be on the alert is again shown by the battle now being waged by Richard Cobden and the Corn Law repealers upon the one hand, and by Benjamin D'Israeli and the Protec- tionists upon the other. These belligerants are at dag- gers drawn, and we have an old aphorism which says, that, when persons of a certain unpolite designation quarrel, honest men may get their own. Young England yearns for the halcyon days when haughty and impe- rious oligarchs flourished and fattened upon monopoly; while the mere free traders are unusually sedulous in the strengthening of their position to save their cause from the destruction with which it is menaced. By watching the progress of these rival agitations, these friends ef order and the people, we discover that violent,', indecorous, and inflammatory language is not the peculiar characteristic of the Chartist orator. We find Lord Stanhope reported in the Times the other day to have said at a meeting in Surrey, that if the present state of things was not speedily altered, anarchy and revolution would be the inevitable consequences; while Mr. Cobden, in several of his recent speeches, in the most ominous language menaces the Protectionists with a storm of agitation which shall sweep every vestige of aristocratic power from the land. Let the people at once speak out and tell these belligerants what value they set on their respective movements. From the con- temptuous manner in which Mr. Cobden ha3 lately spoken of agitation having for its object organic changes, the people must not expect to become debtors to that gentleman for any great exertions on their be- half. Indeed, it is very apparent that the labours of the great Corn Law repealer will be directed through the medium of his Land Society to the creation of an electoral power in the counties sufficient to counteract the growing influence of the Protectionists, and thereby to preserve the laurels of his recent triumph from ttie blight with which they are threatened. The circum- stances of these parties call at once for the bold and sensible interposition of the people. Young England must be taught that the nation has no predilection for retrogression, while the mere free trader must be made to understand that the necessary changes should be at once commenced to secure the abolition of those mon- strous Excise and Custom duties which stand as impass- able barriers between the labourer and the necessaries and comforts of life. The idea of restoring that system of protection under which our landlords and capitalists have grown great and insolent, while our people have become poor and degraded, is the most Quixotic and preposterous imaginable. No, no: onward must be the people's motto. New social and political arrangements must be at once commenced. Property must supply the fiscal exigencies of the state in proportion to its individual possession. The monopoly of the land must share the same fate as the monopo. y of its staple pro- duce. Industry must be tree from every fetter ot taxation, and above all, and before all, the great pri- meval right of self- government must be made the basis of all legislation. Let the men of progress, the veritable people, seize upon every legitimate opportu- nity to enlighten all aristocratic or plebeian brawlers of these factions as to the contempt which they enter- tain for them and their nostrums. Let them be assured, in unmistakable language, of the firm resolve of the masses at last to participate in the enjoyment of liberty in common with every other class of the community. That now is the time for the people to be up and doing is proved by the cheering fact, that the progres- sive section of the middle- classes, led on by influential members of the aristocracy, now recognises the justice of our principles. These reformers labour strenuously to secure a large concession of political justice. This is a fair subject of complacency for all those who have for the last teu years struggled for the establishment of the Charter. Now, then, is the time for every honest democrat to be astir. The voice of liberty proclaims that this is the accepted season. Let no honest man turn a ( leaf ear to the warning; but let all who have hearts that yearn for freedom, and minds that appre- ciate its blessings, rally with renewed fervour and devo tion round the banner of the People's Charter once more unfurled; and let each perform a man's share in the glorious work of accelerating the advent of '•' the good time coming." JUWDS. THE TOOR PAUPER AND THE TITLED PAUPER. THAT we have two classes of paupers in England, each of them draining the industry of the community, is no longer a matter of doubt. The first are paupers absolutely, who cannot by any possibility help being so, because they have no house, or money, or ground ( five acres being each man's right, of mountain- side, or of moor- land); the latter are so because they like to be so— because they are " clothed in flue linen and fare sumptuously every day," and are titled into the bargain. These are the younger sons, and the younger brothers of a blessed aristocracy, without whom, it will be asserted by blatent Protectionists, that we, the people can " neither be, nor move, nor have our being;" because they are descended from Norman robber- nobles, and have their filthy honours descended to them by harlot- mothers;— because they are the offspring of court- intrigues, adulterous amours, and the spawn of cast- off mistresses— and so on. It is a theme so sickening to us, that were it not for the neces- sity of laying the axe to the very root of this tree of evil, and of every one striking a blow at it, we would choose one much more to our satisfaction. The first unhappy class of beings, we are willing to support, and do our best to maintain them; the latter we hate and cordially detest, and exert ourselves in every legitimate way to be rid of them, because they are a pest and a disgrace to the nation,— because being non- producers in every shape and way ( while the pauper does earn his bread by breaking stones or grinding bones or flour); and because we are sick and weary of their insolence and intolerance; for their infatuation is so great that they will not " let well alone," but con- tinue to goad and annoy us day by day till human patience having arrived at it3 extreme limit will endure no , longer. It is in the sacred name of justice that we are tempted to show to our readers, by contrast, the bitter misery so many experience, and the iniquitous robbery which is daily being committed upon them,— an iniquity which grows year by year more gigantic. . The insatiate ava- rice that grasps at all, that will not even share with its poorer brethren placed in the same category, that turns its back upon them and insolently treats us, who support them, until, at last, they will not leave us even the satis- faction of being able to do it longer, even while we re- tain the privilege of grumbling beneath the weight of over- burden,— this avarice enrages us. During the past year we have paid to something like from three and a half to four ' millions of paupers, up- wards of six millions of money— a tremendous amount, if we imagine for a moment what, in comforts and else; this six millions would have brought us. And we have also paid to the titled paupers, in the shape of union idle- houses, not workhouses, in the neighbourhood of St. Stephens, and in out- door relief to placemen, pen- sioners, and hangers- on included, about a million of gold as mare sinecures and retiring pensions, leaving out the cost of the royal family and the naval and military services! The English civil list, the Irish ditto, super- annuations, & e. amount to more than six millions more! The diplomatic staff, containing among its numbers soma o the idlest vagabonds that the aristocracy can boast o.', have a salary that in the aggregate amounts to one hundred thousand pounds!— but we must admit that these latter work very hard indeed for the good of the country. In order to negotiate a terrible intrigue, such a3 whether th » Emperor of Austria went out of one door and in at the other, and vice versa; whether the Porte smiled or frowned; whether the Emperor of Rus- sia did or did not give the French ambassador a diamond snuff- box, and such like matter, so imminent, so impor- tant to us, to our welfare ai home; all the agonizing fatigues of dressing, dancing, making love, flattery, worming frightful secrets out of court mistresses, in favour or out; dangers great beyond all telling are braved by unexceptionable young gentlemen in kid gloves, who obtain on their return home offices and re- wards which are become more infamous than the doom of felons, if We are to take as evidence the instinctive loathing' wo feel for such, when reading the annals of the past, where so many name3 figure aud are per- petuated. The industry of the people yields a tax amounting to nearly sixty millions u- year, and their property ten millions more! The ingenuity of our robber- nobles and rapacious rulers have exhausted invention almost in finding perpetually new and fruitful sources of still in- creasing income. The more we have tacitly submitted to these absurd larcenies, the greater has become their contempt for us; the more the humility of the people, the greater the insolence of the nobility. It ever has been a struggle between two factions, the high and the low; but when pauper comes iu competition with pauper, a new order of things may arise. Four millions of the real proletarian class against not much more than as many thousand, would overweigh them, methinks, and we may stand aside and behold the issue of the struggle. Let the reader contemplate for a moment this immense difference— this discrepancy. As much, if not more ( for we cannot at this moment obtain the exact amounts), money is lavished, wasted upon the vile dregs of the court prostitutions of the time of the Charles', as go now to keep famine from eating the flesh off the labour- er's bone. The ploughman, the artizan, the weaver, the producer in every sense has gone with a sick heart and weary frame to the wall; he has given place by- thousands to one of these " forked radishes" who, made a man by his tailor, drives his juggernaut- car over the misery of destitute fellow creatures; headless, smiling, crying, with that cupidity which has been fatal to so many, and will be so one day to him, " Give! give!" It is a known fact that those who are in power, those who can put their hand into the pocket of the nation and rob without fear of check, give liberally on either side, but always with an ulterior object. There is con- servatism in this. Places in the civil, the naval, or the military departments of the service are, if not already existing, created in order to reward some tractable and influential friend. But this following is a fact, too, that in order to place some thousands a- year in the pockets of an unprincipled swindler of the people, apiece of wood in the Portsmouth dock- yard ( or Plymouth, no matter which), was dubbed with a ship's name, of so many guns, with such aud such anumberfor crew, officers, & c., and a captain was placed in the navy list as commander of this apocryphal war- vessel. He could not only pocket his nice salary, but could obtain supplies for his vessel, provisions, canvass, timber, & c., that is, he could exact the money for these apocryphal goods, and thus un- blushingly be guilty of an act which, upon a smaller scale, would have sent a brother pauper to the penal settlements. There is an infatuation in the rulers of the people which at times is the cause of hurrying on their own doom. We need scarcely lift up hand or voice against, them. The latter we will not; but the former we will, and lustily, too. It was said at a recent public meet- ing, " We do not want physical force to overthrow the aristocracy, is is perishing by a suicidal process." We assent to a truth which is self- evident. ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. A NEW HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER XIV. HENRY V. HENBY, surnamed of Monmouth, because he was born there, was the son of Henry IV, born in 1388, and as- cended the throne in 1413, being; then twenty- five years of age. Whether Prince Henry's inordinate ambition had in anywise openly manifested itself during the later years of liis father's reign, so as to create legitimate grounds of sus- picion in the mind of the king, or not, certain it is that Henry looked with a jealous apprehension upon the ap- proaching manhood of his son; and, by his uneasiness and doubts, made all about him comprehend that he was a man living upon the mercy of those from whom he might have expected the right to live in security, but was not assured of it. His ruling idea certainly was that his son wished him dead, in order that he might wear the crown. Thus was the restless legacy which a monarchy obtained " by violence, sustained through barbarities and cruelties that sicken by their detail, a throne cemented with blood, bequeathed to a king who would seem never after to have slept in peace. The headlong career of profligate de- bauchery into which the young prince plunged was, to the alarmed Henry, as indicative of his son's being under the governance of the vilest and the wildest passions as that this might have arisen from his own querulous and groundless complainings. Be that as it may, the licen- tiousness, the excesses, the amusing princely villanies which he and his companions exhibited, have been so great and numerous as to compel historians to notice them. A bit of dramatic humbug has been sublimed into a kind of virtue which would have become Cyrus. Henry is said to have insulted Chief Justice Gaseoigne on the bench, and the justice, it is related, ordered him into custody— that is to say, in order to crown the nonsensical inconsistency of the whole, Henry is made to have bowed himself before the majesty of justice, and to have ex- pressed his contrition for his conduct. A piece of par- donable hypocrisy, if true; if false, a still more ridiculous mode of softening the colossal depravities of his youth. Not being over easy of belief, and looking upon this amiable fable from this distance of time, we give the in- vention of the chronicler great credit, and doubt much more than we believe. Henry's repudiation of his old associates in his acces- sion to the throne is amplified upon by his admirers with great felicity. ' Certainly the cool and audacious effective- ness of the cut direct is worthy the notice of those who have hearts arid enough to forget those they have been instrumental in ruining. Where is the merit of this un- gracious act ? Where lay his right to be thus presump- tuous with those who were led and encouraged by his own example t We are the very last to say that of his old associates he ought to have made ministers, officials, and dignitaries of them. It is the Mentor's tone that he as- sumes, the consciousness of rectitude, the virtues that are ( seemingly) inherent in the mantle which descends upon his shoulders, that annoy and disgust us. Has he be- come more virtuous because also he is at once become king ? The same traditions, however, which have made him so virtuous, also bear testimony to vices equally great. He is said to have been a gamester, a drunkard, a debauchee, in the wildest latitude of the expression ; and a highway robber! The Prince Hal, of Shakspere, is a very fro- licksome youth who sometimes oversteps the bounds of discretion; but if either spectator or reader had constituted one of the Canterbury pilgrims robbed at Gad's Hill, he would have no hesitation in consigning the prince to cus- tody, and a voyage over the water. The crown which the fourth Henry had filched, sat on the brows of his successor without any danger of its being plucked off by any other daring hand. It seems to be a custom with all new comers to the throne to do exactly the reverse of what their predecessors have done; heaven knows why. Henry V bemoaned the death of Richard II, as if he had been his father; he repealed laws, made and unmade certain others. Virtue is for a time in the ascendant, till a certain odour of sanctity sheds a halo around the few good deeds done, and then the monarch, fixed on his throne and secure in his possession, finds time to cultivate those attractive social vices which are so much admired by a certain highly dignified class. To do Henry justice he did not act with the same base and narrow policy of his father, because perhaps there was no necessity for it. Men generally suffer by con- trasts, and here Henry IV is at a depth below all respect. The young king received his unpretending rival, the Earl of March, at court with open arms, made him a friend, and restored to the fierce and warlike Percys their honours and their fortunes. The attachments of opposing parties was certainly a great compensation for the nume- rous favours he granted, particularly to the Lancasterian faction. The Lollards, who were increasing in power and influ- ence, became an obstacle to the king. They were as for- midable to the church as they were in some respects opposed to the interests of the civil authority. Persecu- tion gives importance to trivialities even, and the late king had given an impetus to these principles by his cruelty that bore corresponding fruit, and the name of the victor of Agincourt, the conqueror of France, the mag- nanimous, the chivalric, the " observed of all observers," is stained with the blood of the martyrs which he exe. cuted. V The head of the Lollard sect was one Sir John Old- castle, Lord Cobham ; and the malignant Arundel, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, beheld in him a proper victim whereon to exercise his ecclesiastical severity, and make an example. Cobham was indicted and confined in the Tower, after being sentenced for refusing to give up his heretical opinions. The day before his execution he escaped, and a strongly organised conspiracy was formed, the chief object of which was tu seize the king's person at Eltham. Henry, who obtained information of this, surprised them, and several were executed. Lord Cobham was not taken for four years after, when he was hanged as a traitor, and his body burnt. This severe check re- strained the impetuosity of the Lollards, and the severity of the laws put in force against them left the ecclesiastical abuses, which they sought to correct, to grow and increase, till it became a task almost hopeless. Henry's attention was now turned towards France, and the awful disorders then rending that country asunder offered an opportunity which he did not think should be lost. The injunctions of his dying father were that he should perpetually keep his subjects engaged in war, or in some broil or other; as, by allowing them to remain at peace, time would be given them to look into his claims upon the throne, and some fine day might find him de- posed, like Richard II, his rod of power shattered into fragments. The quarrels and assassinations of the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy in France had risen to such a height as to have divided the people into two factions, and Burgundian and Armagnac enacted the most horrid scenes of butchery daily, in the very streets of Paris. Henry sent over to demand from the King ( Charles VI) the hand of his daughter Catherine in marriage, two millions of crowns as her dowry, a million and a half of arrears, and the full cession of Normandy and the other provinces which had been wrested by the superior arms of Philip Augustus. France was willing to agree to the greater part of these terms, but not to all ; and Henry, having assembled a fleet and army at Southampton, prepared himself to embark. In the meantime a plot was discovered for the placing of the Earl of March on the throne. The chiefs of the conspiracy, Sir John Grey, Lord Scrope, and the Earl of Cambridge, were executed, but the Earl of March was pardoned. Henry then set forth, and landed 30,000 men at Harfleur. After a short siege it was taken, and garrisoned by English soldiery, and Henry led the re- mainder of his army towards Calais. As he was traversing the country, having forded the few rivers in his way, he found the French army, well- ap- pointed, fresh, vigorous, and four times his number, assem- bled to dispute his progress on the plains of Azincourt, or, as it is commonly called, Agincourt. The English, by the si- milarity of position, were reminded of Creecy and Poictiers, and enfeebled as they were by heat and the fatigues of their long march, they prepared themselves to fight des- perately, or to die where they stood. The battle was fatal to France; and more of her princes and nobility fell than had ever been slain, either previously or after. This victory is tarnished by the cruelty of the king, who ordered his prisoners to be killed at a particular mo- ment ; and hundreds were, in a few moments, wantonly butchered in cold blood. Nothing can excuse or palliate so atrocious an act. It was worthy of the most savage tribes, and the usages of warfare cannot parallel a deed so dastardly. The victory was, however, complete ; but the poterty of Henry's exchequer prevented him from follow- ing up his successes. France, in addition, was exposed to the horrors of civil war, and the Armagnac faction suffered most severely. Henry, who, after the battle of Agincourt, had re- turned to England in 1417, once more landed in Nor- mandy at the head of twenty- five thousand men. He made himself master of the most considerable towns in the province, and attempted the siege of Rouen. He was now beginning to grasp at the crown of France, but made a treaty with the opposing parties in 1419. He offered to marry the Princess Catherine, to accept those provinces ceded to Edward III; Normandy being added to the number. The Duke of Burgundy and the Dau- phin who had been at variance; made, in the meantime, a secret treaty together, and agreed to unite their arms ill order to drive Henry from the country. A quarrel and an assassination, which took place be- tween them, was favourable to the ambition of Henry. The latter had at last taken Rouen, after a most obstinate resistance, while his foes were so busy with their own quarrels, that they offered no opposition to him. A treaty was entered into ( as Henry was able to threaten Paris), by which he was to wed Catherine, and that, on the death of Charles, he should also inherit the mo- narchy; that it should pass to his heirs for ever; that England and France should be under one king, and that the princes, peers, and people of France should swear to observe the foregoing conditions. As for the justice or the right of Henry's claim, it would be too great an absurdity to entertain the idea for a moment. Fortune favoured his ambition, whether for good or evil; but his claim to France is admitted to be " still more unintelligible than the title by which his father had mounted the throne of England." The marriage with Catherine took place. Henry car- ried his bride to Paris, and reinstated his father- in- law in his capital. The treaty of Troye, as the foregoing was called, was ratified by the French parliament. He turned his arms against the rebellious Dauphin, who had assumed the title of regent, and took Sens, Montereau, and, after four months of famine, Melun gave in. In 1421 Henry was under the necessity of returning to England, in order to obtain fresh supplies, and he there- fore left his uncle, the Duke of Exeter, Governor of Paris. He raised, with some difficulty ( for the English did not now look with so much favour upon Henry's success), twenty- four thousand archers and four thousand ho « semen. His conquered provinces supplied him with provisions, otherwise he would never have been able to maintain his ground. It must be remembered that the young King of Scots was still in custody in England, which was in some degree a security for the preservation of peace on the northern borders. The regent of Scotland, however much he might have been inclined to take advantage of Henry's absence from England, still was awed by his having the lawful prince in his possession. Fearful that Henry's growing power in France might prove in- jurious to himself, a body of seven thousand Scots led by the Earl of Buchan, were landed in Franco lur the service of the Dauphin. The troops of the iatta. opposed the Duke of Clarence, in Anjou. The two armies met at Bauge. The English were here totally defeated, and their leader slain. This was the first battle that turned the tide of success against England. Victory upon vic- tory had made them insolent. They were now to chafe under the mortification of a defeat. The appearance of Henry with fresh troops, once more turned the scale of victory in his favour. He was re- ceived in Paris with acclamations and rejoicings from the people, that either bespoke infatuation and servility, or else even under the rule of a foreign monarch, they must have hoped for greater blessings than they had for some time past enjoyed under their own rulers. From Paris, Henry led his troops to Chartres against the Dauphin, who was besieging the place. No sooner did these succours appear than the Dauphin raised the siege, and declining a battle led his army from the reach of danger. The several towns and citadels against which Henry led his forces either submitted without a blow, or else gave in without making it necessary to use extreme means. All the places in the neighbourhood of Paris that had held out for the Dauphin submitted. The surrender of these destroyed the power of that prince who retired beyond the Loire, thus abandoning the whole of the northern districts. The English joined to the Burgun- dians, chased him with such unrelenting assiduity, that nothing but a total destruction seemed to await him. Nowithstanding the desperate valour with which he an his army fought, he found that he was utterly unable to cope with Henry. He now had recourse to that dernier resort of princes and leaders of armies when in a predica- ment where ruin and disgrace on the one hand, and a questionable advantage resulting from a short truce on the other, may offer. He temporized, avoiding every thing like an engagement while Henry was in the field. Henry's queen, at this time, was delivered of a son, whom he called after his own name, and the festivals which took place over this event; were carried on in Paris, to a pitch bordering on extravagance. Anything that cornes to that volatile and joyous people in the shape of a fete, a rejoicing, is ever welcome. This infant was at the time regarded by all as the heir of both monar- chies. Their expectations were not, however, destined to be realized. Thoughtful men in England began to see the disunion and the destruction which vyould ensue be- tween divided interests, and with two capitals, one of which must be held as the chief seat of empire. England would not be willing to receive laws from a dictator residing at Paris, and the people of France would have discovered full soon that it would be at a sacrifice of dignity and national honour for them to bow to laws dated from St. James's. In the midst of this full and flowing tide of honour and unparalleled successes, Henry's career was cut short by the hand of death. A fistula which seized him, baffled the poverty of skill, then possessed by the best physicians of the age. Compelled to know that his end was approach- ing, however greatly this unwelcome attack discommoded his majesty, lie sent for his brother the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Warwick, and a few other noblemen, and dictated to them his last will. He entreated them to conduct themselves as faithfully towards his son as they had behaved towards himself. To Bedford's care he left the regency of France, the regency of England to his younger brother the Duke of Gloucester, and his son personally to the Earl of Warwick. He enjoined them to cultivate the friendship of the Duke of Burgundy, and to keep still in captivity, the princes taken at Agincourt, till the younger Henry was of age himself. A few other wishes of a like kind followed, and then Henry, having done with the world, turned him to his devotions, in the midst of which, the strength with which men still cling to life exhibited itself in the monarch, for he made a vow that he would take arms and go to the crusades, after totally subjugating France, provided he recovered from this attack. He died, however, on the 31st August, 1422, in the tenth year of his reign, and in the thirty- fourth of his age. His widow, soon after his death, married a gentleman named Sir Owen Tudor, who was descended from the ancient princes of Wales. This family was in time des- tined, in the person of one of its sons, to fill the English throne. In summing up the character of Henry, we find one or two good qualities, almost annihilated beneath that boundless insatiate ambition which is, and has been ever, the fruitful mother of so many crimes. Every step that Henry took was marked with blood, and the burnt vil- lages of France, the dead left on the battle- fields, the im- poverishing of his own subjects, attest full sufficiently the misery and despair which characterised his reign. It is the curse of kings that their very office plunges them into situations where every bad passion, having unrestrained liberty, riots uncontrolled to the sacrifice of all human good. Whatever inclinations Henry might have had to rule his people in peaceful tranquillity, they were neutral- ized by the very tenure on which he held his crown. His father bequeathed to him a stolen power, and more blood was required to be shed ere the tottering diadem could sit securely upon his brow. We are not of the number o£ those who are dazzled by the false hues of glory, or can see merit in a ruinous ambition. It required all the skill of the king to keep what he had obtained, and the people were called upon for fresh sums in order to pay the troops in his command. One advantage accrued to the people while under the dominion of the House of Lancaster. As each dreaded an inquiry to his right and title to the crown, so also were they compelled to conciliate their parliaments to a degree that destroyed much of their prerogative. No taxes weie levied by them without obtaining the consent of the par- liament ; and the constitution, having thus in a manner become an independent power, the liberty of the subject was also more assured. Those who, in after days, had 118 REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. the temerity to assert their " divine right,' and likewise their prerogative in defiance of these precedents, paid the penalty by being beheaded or being driven out of the kingdom. It is true that a parliament could be bullied and mti- midated, and be compelled to sacrifice much of its inde- pendence to the despotism of some two or three tyrants; but it is also true that they were pursued with the indig- nation of the people, and their names branded for the infamous cowardice they displayed. It would be hard indeed if out of the evil so plentifully committed by the kings of England, some little good should not eventually result. By a parade of their vices, and by becoming themselves frightful examples of that infatuation which deludes men to their own ruin, each becoming a moral suicide, we have learned to despise the elements of monarchical grandeur, and to place value only on those things by which the happiness of the greatest number is secured. EDWIN ROBERTS. THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND PHASES OF HUMAN SLAVERY: HOW IT CAME INTO THE WORLD, AND HOW IT SHALL BE MADE TO GO OUT. LETTER XIV. OUR last concluded with an instructive passage trans- lated from the work of M. Granier de Cassagnac, showing how the pure spiritof primitive Christianity had operated the manumission of slaves in such masses that the Ro- man empire was soon overrun with proletarians of the several conditions described. What 4,000 years of Paganism had not effected, to any sensible extent, was the work of less than 300 years of Christian propagand- ism. But, alas ! how different was the result aimed at by Christ and his successors! Those emancipations which the early Christians had fondly hoped would bring about the reign of universal liberty and fraternity, tiut introduced a new form of slavery infinitely worse than the old: they became, under Constantine and his successors, a curse to the emancipated, whose fatal consequences have never since ceased to be felt by three- fourths of Christendom. A few of the manu- mitted prospered, in the old Roman guilds or corpo- rations, as burgesses, employers, or administrators: and a similar class, more extensive and more opulent, still obtains in our own times. But the vast majority being without land, capital, and the patronage of masters, had to seek a precarious subsistence by casual labour, or else by theft, beggary, or prostitution. The passage from Cassagnac, quoted in our last, shows how fearfully these unhappy proletarians had multiplied before the end of the fourth century. Immediately following it, there is another which bears so authoritatively upon the sulgect- matter of our inquiry, and which so strongly corroborates what has been advanced in these letters on the relative merits of chattel and wages- slavery, that we cannot forbear giving it a place here. We translate from pages 304 and 305 of the work referred to:— " In Pagan society few slaves desired to become free; and the reason is very simple. As slaves, they had, in their masters' homes/ all the necessaries of life. They were sure of never having to suffer cold, nor hunger, nor thirst, and to be comfortably housed and well taken care of, in old age as well as in youth, in sickness as well as in health. As freemen (' independent labourers!') they would have to provide not only for their own wants, but" also for those of their wives and children. And this, not only during the vigour of life, but also in old age and during their infirmities, without taking into the ac- count that, poor and weak as they must necessarily be when emerging from slavery, they should have to en- counter all the chances of a perpetual struggle with society— a struggle in which even the rich and the strong not unfrequently succumb." This account of the ancient Pagan slaves corresponds exactly with Mr. Edward Smith's account of the slaves he met with in the Southern States of America last year. The latter would not give yon " thank ye" for their liberty, " feeling the protection of their masters to be an advantage;" and because the " mere hirer has not the attachment for the hired that the master na- turally feels for his slave." It may be asked, then, how came the ancient Pagan slave to appreciate the boon of liberty, when gratuitously given to him by his. Christian master? M. de Cassagnac, we think, answers the question with great force and truth:—" But in the new Christian association the slave felt a new motive and attraction towards liberty. In the first place, the enfranchised Christian was not, as in Pagan society, repulsed by the remorseless prejudices of caste. Without refusing to take nobility of race into account, it showed no extravagant preference for it, as Paganism did. The apostles and the early fathers had freely extended the hand of fellowship to the enfran- chised, and to the lower orders in general— a race of men whom the Gentiles, that is to say, the genteel society of Paganism, had up to that time scornfully flouted. St. Paul wrote to the Romans that' before God there is no exception of persons;' and St. Gregory and St. Ambrose have filled their works with philosophical as well as Christian raillery, levelled against the pride of pedigree and the right of domination founded upon it, which was a direct onslaught upon the Pagan nobility, whose principle was the tradition of power and rank according to blood. The enfranchised slaves and their offspring were always welcome amongst the Christians, to share with them every social advantage. They might pass through all the degrees of clerical ordination, become deacons, priests, bishops,— in short, leap that hitherto impassable gulf which, under the old Pagan regime, completely separated the humble from the higher ranks of society. Accordingly the Christian slaves who became free were sure to have no moral prepossession or prejudice against them, while all religious ones were in their favour. They were certain not to be insolently scouted as of the lower orders, and also, to be succoured and relieved in ease of need, as fellow Christians. It was, therefore, they precipitated themselves into the re- gime of liberty, and that, so imprudently and in such immense masses, that, suddenly becoming their own mas- ters, and responsible for their own maintenance, the vast majority were soon overtaken and overwhelmed by a misery of which they had had no foresight,— a misery till then unheard of— an appalling misery, the recol- lections of which, as handed down to us from the fourth century, present a veritable picture of horrors." It is only those who have felt the insolence of rank and power who can appreciate the motives which im- pelled the slaves and the lower ranks of citizens to em- brace the new Christian code of liberty, in the days to which the foregoing passage refers. One more passage illustrative of this view, we shall translate from another part of Cassagnac's work. And in this passage what a true but frightful picture is presented to us of the wrongs inflicted by the self- privileged few upon the despised many— wrongs as old as the world, and yet as green in the present day as though they were but of yesterday's growth. It is a fearfully significant pas- sage:— " The proletarians are, then, the progeny of the an- cient slave- class, of the ancient junior branches of families, given, bartered, or sold by the Fathers of the heroic period— the age of gods and heroes. This great, active, terrible, poetic, and calamitous race has been marching onwards since the beginning of the world, struggling to conquer repose for itself, like Ahasuerus, and mayhap, like him, will never attain it. It has still the old malediction on its head which dooms it to move incessantly without making progress. All it has gained from its fatigues of ages is, that Homer and Plato say to it, ' March on! You will never reach your destination in this world;' and that St. Paul says to it,' You will reach it in the next world.' It marches on, then, and has been so marching for sixty centuries, covered with obscurity, opprobrium, and contempt,— obtaining no credit for its virtues or talents, none for its labours, none for its sufferings. It is not accounted more beautiful for having produced an Aspasia, more illustrious for having given birth to a Phedon, more brave for having turned out a Spartacus from amid its ranks. Whatever may have been its intelligence, its patient endurance, its wisdom, its parts,— it was never honoured with the title of ' sons of the gods,' like the noble race; and Plato himself, though he had felt what slavery was under King Dionysius, cast in its teeth the famed Homeric verse in which it is told that the slave has but the half of a human soul. Singular fa- tality ! In vain did manumissions and enfranchisements break the chains of this doomed race. The mark of the collar is still on their necks ( as with the dog in the fable), and one of their own caste, Horace, the son of a freed man, in the very golden age of antique philo- sophy, poesy, and civilization, threw in their face the eternal aspersion, ' money alters not the race, changes not the blood.' Though they had gained this money by fatigues of body or fatigues of mind, by manual or by intellectual excellence; though they had been merchants or soldiers, senators or philosophers,— still was the cry rung in their ears, ' money alters not the race.' This malediction of race or blood was implacable. In vain had Ventidius Bassus become a consul. He was told, ' you have been a scavenger and a muleteer.' In vain had Galerius, Diocletian, Probus, Pertinax, Vitellius, Augustus himself, become emperors. Galerius was told, ' you are but an upstart;' Diocletian, ' you have been a slave;' Probus, ' your father was a gardener;' Pertinax, ' your father was an enfranchised bondsman;' Vitellius, ' your father was a soap- maker;' and they were very near writing upon the marble statue of Augustus, ' your grandfather was a mercer, and your father was a usurer, or money- lender.' If this eternal and universal reprobation of the slave and enfranchised caste did not spare the most exalted heads and the most illustrious, imagine what the wretched proletarian was to expect in his lowly, poverty- stricken, and degraded state. The gentlefolk repelled him from the family hearth; civil society made him an outcast from all its prerogatives. He was born, and he lived, and, he died apart from other men. And, as we are told of certain rivers which flow together in the same bed or channel without once com- mingling their waters, so proletarianism and gentility, enfranchised slavery and nobility, touched and elbowed each other, and even lay down in the same bed, but without ever combining or losing themselves in each other by amalgamation." Had Christianity operated no other good in the world than breaking down the barriers of rank and pedigree, — those barriers which up to Christ's advent had effec- tually divided the human race into two irreconcileable castes,— it would have done enough to entitle itself to be regarded as the most important event that had till then occurred in the world. Until that most stupid and in- veterate of all prejudices, the prejudice in favour of race or blood, was effectually rooted out, no real pro- gress could have been made by humanity. The early Christians felt this, and so did the few freed men and proletarians of their day. The latter, ousted from the family circle and from the rights of citizenship, rejected at once from private and from public society, must na- turally have yearned for some new society in which their wounded feelings might find a refuge from the barbarous pride of their fellow men. Such a society they found in the new Christian brotherhood. Hence the ardour with which the slave and proletarian class embraced the new dispensation, and hence its first fatal but un- forseen consequence,— the myriad pauper population which soon after overrun Italy and the whole Roman empire. But no sooner was the character of Christianity altered and debased— as it became after its legal esta- blishment under Constantine— no sooner did the wealthy and ambitious portion of the Christians abandon their religious obligations for worldly advantages, and lose all sympathy with their poorer brethren,— than the latter found themselves in a worse condition, in respect of social intercourse, than was the lot of the old slaves— their forefathers. They had then to endure the pangs of destitution, superadded to the insolence and pride of race and riches. Before the epoch of Christianity the only refuge society offered to the few manumitted slaves and prole- tarians, from the withering pride of social disparage- ment, was what Frenchmen call commune, or what we in England would call municipal institutions. AH ancient history goes to show that communes, or munici- palities, of some kind or other, existed from a very re- mote period. In these communis, or municipalities, the progeny and descendants of slaves formed a sort of society amongst themselves, in which they were governed by their own bye- laws, according to the charters they held, or the amount of privileges conceded to them by the governments under which they found shelter. The enormous mass of proletarianism caused by Christianity necessarily enlarged and greatly altered the character of these municipal bodies. One portion of the members became in time opulent burgesses, growing rich by manufactures, commerce, and the professions allied with them. The remainder — the vast majority — became wages- slaves, or else fell into the other degraded sec- tions of proletarianism, already described. In our modern society the pride and exclusiveness o£ the upstart burgess- class towards their proletarian brethren, is not less insulting and obdurate than were the same qualities in the ancient nobles towards the slave class, from which these burgesses are derived. If our modern middle- classes have still to endure an occa- sional humiliation from aristocratic morgue— from the exclusive pretensions of noble blood and ancestral ho- nours— they take care to indemnify themselves largely by similar insolence, at the expense of their less fortu- nate brethren— the working- classes. Indeed, were the latter to be asked, which of the two classes the ( higher or the middle), they ordinarily experience most courtesy from, they would unhesitatingly make answer, from the higher. Nor is this class- insolence,— this twofold pride of blood and riches,— confined to monarchical countries. It is as rife in Republican America as in purse- proud, aristo- cratic England. In Spanish America both kinds of pride exist in full vigour; but that of caste, or blood, is carried to such excess as must render the exploded classes perfectly miserable all their life. In the free States ( as they are called) of Republican America, a man of colour dare not sit in the same part of a church or a theatre with the whites. Intermarriage between the two races is regarded with horror, and with difficulty could a clergyman be found to officiate at such a cere- mony. In travelling, the people of colour must not enter the same carriages; nor ( if in steam- boats) must they be seen in the same cabin as the whites. The nigger- class, male and female, must travel in inferior trains by land, and sleep in inferior berths, or upon deck, when at sea, or in excursions up and down the rivers. At places of public amusement they have their " coloured" seat; and in the house of God their " coloured" gallery. In New Orleans, and other cities in the south, there are great numbers of coloured ladies of excellent education, — ladies highly accomplished, and possessed, too, of great wealth,— who live in concubinage with white men, because they cannot be legally married to them. There is, at this moment, a distinguished American general in the States who has several children— the offspring of such concubinage— and, with all his influence, ho cannot find admission into society for the members of this family. They, and their like, find barriers everywhere opposed to them. It is true, these are not so much distinctions of wealth and pedigree as distinctions of blood and race. But the principle of exclusiveness is the same. It is the exercise of injustice by the strong against the weak— the oppression of one class by another— a par- ticular form or phase of slavery, which, under any and every phase is anti- Christian and anti- human. Liberty and Christianity do not require a black man to marry a white woman, nor vice versa; but both liberty and Chris- tianity forbid coercive laws against such marriages, and more especially, do they repudiate and reprobate the sys- tem of exclusiveness, and unnecessary insults so universally exercised by the whites against the people of colour: Had the Christianity which overthrew pagan- ism in the three first centuries, continued to prevail iu the world, and succeeded in assimilating the laws and institutions of nations to the law of the Gospel, it is certain, slavery must have, long since, become extinct in anity knows no distinction between black men and white men— between noble and peasant— between proletarian and millionaire. Wages- slavery is as incompatible with its spirit as is chattel- slavery. Were that spirit to pre- vail, our laws and institutions would be such that neither form of slavery could, for an instant, raise its head any- where. It is true, great efforts are being made by a certain class of soi- disant Christians to procure the abolition of chattel- slavery. Societies exist for that purpose in every State of the American Union; and our own famous temple of rant and cant ( Exeter Hall) is regularly consecrated to such missions. We must, however, regard all such efforts as the fruits of folly or hypocrisy, so long as we lind no efforts made by the same parties to abolish wages- slavery — a slavery which we have shown to be immeasurably worse for white slaves, than is chattel- slavery for the blacks. If it be said, ( hat to abolish wages- slavery would be impossible— we answer, no! We shall show, before we dismiss this inquiry, that wages- slavery is wholly and solely the work of tyrannical laws, which oae set of men impose upon another by fraud and force ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. — and which they have no more right to impose, nor necessity for imposing, tlian they have to traffic in hu- man flesh; or than the black king of Dahomey has to make war upon his neighbours, that he may conquer and sell them, for slaves. As long as these infamous laws, the laws alluded to, continue to be in force, we hold it to be disgustingly absurd and even infamous to agitate the world for the abolition of chattel- slavery in America, or anywhere else. If we attempt to alter the condition of slaves we should do so for their own benefit, and not for ours. We should do so to ameliorate their condition and not to make it worse. The ranters of Exeter Hall and of the Boston and New York societies have no idea of ameliorating the condition of the negroes they so yearn to " emancipate." Their whole and sole object is to " proletarianise " them for the benefit of employers and usurers. Their object is, in fact, to reduce them to the level of the Irish peasantry, or of the labourers in Dor- setshire, or the weavers in Lancashire. The planters themselves do not deny that they would prefer " inde- pent labourers " to slaves, if they could get them. They acknowledge that white- labour would be more profitable to them than slave- labour— even in cotton and sugar planting, if they could only make sure of the constant supply of it. when wanted. But they say the white labourer is too independent to render it safe for the planters to trust to his services in seasons of pressure, as during the time of cane- pressing, sugar- boiling, and cotton- picking. Assure him of a supply of such labour; only give him a " surplus population " of starving proletarians to be ever ready at his hand, like so many sheep in a crib, and you will make him an abolishionist at once. And why ? Because wages- slavery would be then cheaper and better for him than chattel slavery. On no other principle would he emancipate them. Upon other principle did any emanciations ever take place in the w rid, save in the three first ages of Christianity. And no sooner did the Pagan masters and hypocritical Christians discover, under Constantine, that more work could be got out of " free " proletarians than out of chattel- slaves; and that the former need not while the latter must be kept, than they, too, became abolish- ionists upon the same principle. In our next we shall notice Mr. Cruikshank's report of his mission to the King of Dahomey in 1848; and after noticing that and some other kindred matter, we shall then, we trust, be in a condition to enter upon the latter and more important part of our inquiry,— viz., how to banish slavery of all kinds, and especially wages- slavery out of the world, at once and for ever. A NATIONAL REFOEMEB. { To be continued in our next.) express an opinion given in all earnestness and open to cor- rection and improvement by others. The first settlers on these colonies were fifty indigent families, and the mode of location was as follows:— A tract of land consisting of from 12 to 1300 acres was purchased by the so- ciety, for which was paid the sum of £ 4,660, and on which a school- house, warehouse, spinning- house, two- and- fifty cot- tages were built; and a small river adjoining the estate was rendered navigable. Until the first harvest, the allottees were provided for at the expense of the company; seven acres of land were allotted to each cottage, and it was calculated that each family of seven or eight persons would require an outlay of £ 8,141 13s.- The total expenses of each family was as follows:— Building each house , , , Furniture and Implements . , Clothing , Two cows, or one cow and ten sheep Cultivation and seed, first year , Advances in provisions , , Advances of other kinds , , Flax and wool to be spun . • Seven acres uucultiyated land, net £ s. 41 13 8 6 12 10 12 10 33 6 4 3 4 3 16 13 8 6 £ 141 13 4 HOME COLONIZATION.— THE DUTCH AND BELGIAN EXPERIMENTS. IN our last letter we omitted all notice of the pauper colonies of Holland, purposely to enable us to refer to such accounts of the same as woul . i enable our readers to clearly compre- hend this most important experiment. The plan for the formation of the industrial colonies ( we say industrial colonies — for we hate the word pauper when used in connexion with industrial reforms) originated with'ilobert Owen, who, though called by many a dreamer, has, ill reality, been one of the most practical men of his day. He suggested industrial colonies to the Dutch; projected the Ten Hours' Bill for the English; and his name is closely and honourably associated with the formation of infant schools and the general question of education. Mr. Owen suggested his scheme of industrial colonies to the English government without success. It was subsequently submitted to the government of Holland through the Dutch Ambassador in 1816, and was accepted and acted upon. Porter, in the first volume of his " Progress of the Nation," informs us that these colonies owed their rise to benevolent society founded in 1818. The members of this society contributed each a weekly sum amounting to not more than one halfpenny of our money. The objects of these colonies were to repress mendicity, to serve as asylums for the poor and aged ; others were called " free colonies, colonies of orphans and foundlings, and colonies for the advancement of agricultural industry." Now, for an experiment, we think that the objects of the founders of these colonies were too multifarious and too vast in their design. Those who may have thought but lightly on the history and progress of pauperism may think that, as " land and labour" are the elements of wealth, it must be an easy matter to profitably employ the idle. Experience, how- ever, that sure guide and test of human actions, has taught every thoughtful man that, of all objects possibly realizable by human agency, the profitable employment of the idle is among the most difficult to accomplish. Orphans and foundlings, aged and infirm persons, can only be maintained by one means, and that is from the accumulated property of a country. And, in these days of 110 poor law politicians, we submit that so long as there are poor, there must be poor laws in one shape or other. If all the paupers of the English workhouses were turned adrift to- morrow, and one of Lord Brougham' speeches about self- reliance tied round the neck of each, poor rates might be abolished; but as each pauper would be pro- bably unable to find employment ( for being an inmate of a workhouse is presumptive evidence of inability to struggle among the bard- headed, hard- sided toilers and dealers of society), there would he no remedies left but death or theft, and the abolition of poor rates would be followed by an in- crease of gaol rates. But a few prefer the gaol to the work- house even now : the reason is obvious. The dietary tables of the gaol show a better means of living than the dietary tables of the workhouse ; and when unfortunate wretches are reduced to the necessity of being lodged and fed at the public expense, it is but reasonable to think that the more unscrupulous will prefer the best lodging and the best food their circumstances can command, even though they may hereafter be called criminals. We would prefer experiments for the able- bodied alone with a view to rendering them self- supporting, and leaving the helpless old and young to be provided for by rate on property. We do not thereby cast any reflection o.. the judgment of the projector or on the judgment of the bene- volent founders of the poor colonies in Holland. We merely The allottees were bound down to certain conditions, as re- garded manure and repayment of the original capital, which it was expected would be refunded in a period of sixteen years. " The produce of a certain amount of work every week is allowed for the support of the sick or infirm. The whole of the appointments are inspected with military care, and such as have been wasteful are obliged to make good what they have destroyed. The careful preparation of manure, the most remarkable feature in Chinese husbandry, is the great resource; and its results are encouraging, since rich crops have been raised from soil which was before scarcely able to support the lowest species of vegetation; The system now pursued is to lay down one- half of the seven acres in grass, to sow one acre with rye, and one with potatoes; the remaining acre and a half being devoted to flax, mangel- wurzel, clover, cabbages, Sic., one quarter of an acre round the house being reserved for kitchen- garden and fruit- trees."—" In two years after their first arrival, the fifty- two families were found to have discharged one- fifth part of the debt originally contracted; and, notwithstanding this outgoing, their condition appeared comfortable. The total number of cottages at Frederick's Oard, in 1833, was 370, each, with its seven acres of land in complete cultivation." Notwithstanding the doubtful way in which some writers have been pleased to discourse about the partial success of the Dutch experiment, we affirm that the facts quoted by us, prove to a demonstration the advantage of Home Colonization. Even Mr. Porter assures us that, " in a country where pau- perism is so widely spread as in Holland, the provision thus made for between 7,0J0 and 8,000 souls, of whom three- tenths are children, cannot have had any sensible effect in checking the evil." Mr. Porter is right. But why have these colonies had no sensible effect in cheeking the evil ? Is it because they are unsound in principle ? or is it because of the want of a more general application of a scheme that is of acknowledged ad- vantage and practicability? What case, we ask, can be more clear and convincing than fifty indigent dependent wretches changed into self- supporting small farmers, who have, by their own industry, in the brief period of two years, paid oft" one- fifth part of the debtoriginally contracted by a society acting for the benefit of the poor and needy of a country ? Multiply an application of the means, and you will in a proportionate de- gree multiply the results. But without a multiplication of means, your cry of trifling results only proves the inaptness and inability of citizens and government. We must judge by contrasts. Sup'pose these fifty families had been unprovided for in any way, in fashionable phraseology, " left to tlieir own resources," what would have been the result ? They woukl have dragged down with them, to misery and crime, at least a hundred others; for pauperism begets pauperism as assuredly as father begets son. Never forget that he who is not profit- ably employed must consume the fruits of the industry of others. If a rich idle pauper cost a guinea a- day for his main- tenance he robs the industry of the country to that amount; if a poor needy pauper be fed for a sixpence, he consumes to the value of a sixpence of the property produced by others, and in both cases " Like begets like." Reader, I dare say you exclaim, let the able bodied poor be so employed ; and you perhaps wonder why they are not so employed. Remember Mrs. Gilbert's Eastbourne experi- ment in Sussex and ask, Why has not every parish followed so praiseworthy and profitable an example? The honest truth is, that one- half of mankind are craven- hearted cowards and idle gossips, mere talkers of words, and not doers of deeds. How many evils might be remedied if practical common sense could be changed into plain honest action; and if you wish the world mended, mend yourself, not in words aloae, but in deeds. Mr. Porter informs us that the plan adopted in Hollaed was followed in Belgium; and as the conclusion arrived at by so reputable an author is rather extraordinary, we quote his account at length:— " At first the families placed in the colonies founded by the Societi de Bienfasance, were placed each in a separate farm, in which were a house, barn, and stable, two cows, sometimes sheep, furniture, clothes, and other stock, of the estimated value including the land ( about seven and a half statue acres), of £ 133 6s. 8d. sterling, which was charged against them as a debt due to the society. The occupants were bound to work at fixed wages, to wear a uniform, to conform to certain rules, and not to quit the precincts of the colony without leave. A part of their wages was retained to repay the advance made by the society; a further portion to pay for necessaries fur- nished from time to time by the society; and the remainder was paid to them in base coin, current only within the colony, and which could be expended only in shops established by the society within its own limits. It was found that this plan could not be persisted in. The land was badly cultivated, and the cattle were lost for want of proper food and attention. The society, therefore, in 1828, took back the surviving cattle, and throwing all the farms into one, employed all the colo- nists indiscriminately in its cultivation."—" From this time," says Monsieur Duepetiaux, in a report drawn up by him in 1832," bound thus by obligations towards the society, which deprive them almost entirely of present liberty without any hope of freedom in any time to come, the lot of the inhabitants of these so- called colonies is very similar to that of the serfs in the middle ages, and of Russian peasants now; it is rather less fortunate than that of the peasants of Ireland, who, if like them, they often have nothing to assuage the pangs ot hunger but potatoes and coarse bread, nave, at least, the power of disposing freely of their actions, and removing from place to place at their pleasure." " The Belgian colonies, therefore, from the establishment ol which so much good to the community was predicted, may be pronounced a decided failure. They have merged into establishments for compulsory labour; the society by which they were established has taken up the profession of farming, and the colonists differ only from ordinary labourers in work- ings, under the penalty of being treated as vagabonds in case of the unsatisfactory performance of their tasks." Granted that these Belgian colonies have been " a decided failure," such a fact does not prove that the principle on which they were founded was unsound; for we have on the same authority an account of the partial success of the parent experiment in Holland. Now, why is it that an experiment was even partially successful in Holland, and that a similar- experiment was a decided failure in Belgium? In Holland the experiment was tried in 1818, in Belgium in 1823; five years' experience in a sister country warranted the attempt in Belgium. Now, if the scheme had been impracticable its failure would have been as certain in Holland as in Belgium. Its partial success in Holland proves two things, first, that it is practicable and under more efficient management would be still more successful, — second, that the failure in Bel- gium is not because the scheme is impracticable or un- sound in principle, but because the Belgian occupants were idle and immoral. The case is clearly made oat by Captain Brandreth, who visited the colonies, and he says,—" Among the colonists there were a few whose previous habits and natural dispositions disposed them to avail themselves, to the best of their ability, of the benevolent provisions thus offered for their relief, and who had worked industriously, and con- ducted themselves well, during their residence in the colony. Their land was cultivated to the extent of their means, and their dwelling- houses had assumed an appearance of greater comfort and civilization than the rest. But there were too few in number, and the result too trifling to offer the stimulus of emulation to others. " These farms that I examined, with the above exceptions, were not encouraging examples; there were few evidences of thrift and providence— the interior of the dwellings being, in point of comfort, little if at all removed from the humblest cottage of the most straitened condition of labourers in this country." Captain Brandreth states the whole case. Those occupants who were thrifty and industrious enjoyed a tolera- ble degree of comfort with the means of improvement; those who were idle suffered in their own persons and also in llie condition of their families. In the Dutch colonies the settlers were of a higher order than those settled ill the Bel- gian colonies, and to the respective characters for industry and thrift of the occupants must be attributed the success of the first experiment, and the failure of tile second. And it must not be overlooked that according to the arrangements in the Belgian colonies the allottees were slaves deprived of present liberty " without any hope of freedom in any time to come." No wonder that men and women were idle when their treatment was the treatment of slaves. In every age and every clime reward stimulates men to action; but lis who can receive no security for independence in any period ot life has but little inducement to personal exertion and labo- rious physical action. Reverse the case, and give to the colo- nist a security that he may by industry and economy own the property which he cultivates, and he and his family will be changed for the better ill both industry and morals. It is the crying evil of the present system in both Holland and England, that industrious labourers are allowed to become idle in their habits and immoral in their lives before any re- medial measures are adopted. An unwilling idler must be- come immoral before he is even noticed or cared for; if he lives in one of our rural parishes, he must threaten the Board ot Guardians, poach, and probably set fire to a stackyard before he is feared; and, except he be feared, his case commands but little attention. If he reside in a town, he must break windows before a magistrate can listen to his tale of hardships and sorrows, and before he can insure redress. Such things do not show that the rulers of those lands are statesmen. A states- man does not only look at the evil as a quack would at an. ulcer, merely to have the sore covered with skin in one place, to insure debility to the constitution and periodical returns of hideous wounds,— a wise statesman, like a skilled physician, does not only cover the wound with a plaster, or heal it up for the time with a salve: he attacks the evil at the root, and gra- dually but surely uprooting the cause of disease, he restores the patient to health. Considerable success has been effected in the. remedying of diseases of the bodies of men ; but we are as yet in the infancy of science as regards the treat- ment of and remedies for national maladies. The world's history unfolds to us a panoramic view of the rise and fall of states; but the biographies of the world's statesmen casts to our view but few men who were fitted to rule for good, and to give to nations permanent greatness. Even in these times of enlightenment so called, men are often called states- men who are, at best, but clever talkers, and who no more comprehend principles, and the influence of principles, than the child of two years of age understands the meaning of geography and the use of the globes. Shall it always be so ? It is for you, reader, as one of the many constituting a state, to answer as one man speaking for himself, and pro- mising to aid in the good cause of national regeneration. GKACCIIUS. ENGLAND AND AMERICA.— In America the labourer or mechanic can, with great ease, become the owner of a house and lot, although the price of the property may be as high as in England. He makes the purchase without the intervention of a lawyer, pays down say one- tenth part of the purchase- money, and executes a mortgage for the balance, payable in perhaps from three to eight annual instalments. He may thus become the owner in a few years, by paying a little more an- nually than he would pay as a tenant for rent. If he fails to make a payment, according to the terms of the mortgage, the mortgagee may foreclose and sell, but the expenses are insigni- ficant j and in most of the States the mortgagor is protected from sacrifice by judicious regulations, providing for an ap- paisement, and public sale of the property, after due notice, and forbidding a sale at less than two- thirds of the appraised value. Ill England, if the mechanic desires to purchase a dwelling- house, there are various difficulties in his way : the expense of the conveyance and of a mortgage to secure a por- tion of the purchase- money, may be estimated at 301. or 401., and he cannot transfer his interest to another person without great expense. If a foreclosure is resorted to, the costs will entirely eat up the property. In this state of things it has been impossible for the practice of purchasing small properties on credit to become common; the cost of a few transf ers would soon exceed the entire value of a small tenement or lot of land, Whenever, then, a man is willing to encounter the expense of a transfer, and seeks for a small piece of property, iie soon discovers that he is asking for a thing which, not being in com- mon demand, can hardly be found at all,— Russell. ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. REVIEWS. " PROSPECT OF REFORM ;" a Letter to Sir J. Walmsley, M. P. We much doubt whether the worthy, high- minded, and liberal chairman of the Parliamentary and Financial • Reform Association will be flattered with the letter which is here addressed to him. Purporting to be the effusion of a middle class reformer of the present day, it savours - strongly of the intolerant and contracted doctrines of the ' last century. A tone of thorough contempt for the work- ing classes and their leaders pervades the wearisome three- and- twenty pages of ribald, fulsome, rubbish impudently . addressed to Sir J. Walmsley. It is a lame attempt on the part of an hireling scrub remunerated by some wealthy ass, to cast an apple of discord amongst partial and thorough reformers working for a certain object up to a certain point, which, when gained, leaves one party stationary whilst the other progresses. The attempt how- • ever will be a sad failure, for neither bad grammar or stale, Tefuted, and worn- out arguments are at all relished in these times. Should the pamphlet ever reach the hands of Sir Joshua, he will no doubt enjoy a hearty laugh over the " soft sawder" so lavishly but clumsily showered upon him. The book is published by Kent and ' Richards, PaternosterRow, its price is 6d.; but we prophecy the butter- shops will obtain it at a much lower figure. Pe- ruse this pretty specimen, and, by it, judge of the whole contents :— " The name of Hume, whose long- tried integrity and per- severing and disinterested career of public usefulness, have • mainly redeemed the " popular party" of late years from utter comtempt, will ensure with the people respect for any • proposal which proceeds to them through his friends: and : his motion to extend the franchise to every householder and • lodger occupying a tenement or portion of a tenement twelve months, registered by means of the poor's- rate books, was sufficiently large in its contemplated operation to enable your orators to appeal, on very respectable grounds, for the support of the majority of their audiences. Had you, how- ever, confined yourselves to the old more limited Whig panacea, household suffrage, you would have been equally • successful, and would not have had one follower more or • less. Your perpetual repudiation of your own principles on theground that they were too restricted was therefore unneces- sary. Had you proposed household suffrage merely, you would have been encumbered and damaged in the same way as you now are with the friendship and the sanction of Mr. Feargus O'Conner; and for the same reason: that he was bound to go as far as you go, intending to go farther, and that he had confidence in the latest sincerity of your extreme intentions. That dangerous mass of ill- fed, ill- clothed, ignorant, uneducated, savage men who are the victims of social disorder, but who believes, and truly, in the possi- bility of political regeneration, would have cheered you with all tiieir heart and soul, and would have given you, as they have given you, their confidence and their respect, so long as you but conceded iu a general way, in justification of their disaffection, that Parliament was a fraud." Now we beg to tell the author of this pretty tirade that if the " popular party" was dependent upon the name and support of one individual to rescue it from utter contempt, the " popular party" would, in our opinion, cease to exist; having deservedly dwindled down into the " unpopular party." Again, the author is quite at sea when kindly in- forming Sir Joshua that had he confined his association to the " old Whig panacea of household suffrage," it would - have been equally successful. Had the author, which he should have done before writing upon a subject of which he is lamentably ignorant, attended the great meetings of the Association, be would have witnessed such a tide of i enthusiasm in favour of the universal suffrage ( and of the encumbrance O'Connor) as would convince any unpre- judiced mind that not only a large portion of the middle class, but also " thatdangerous mass of ill- fed, ill- clothed, ignorant, uneducated, savage men," are no longer to be humbugged and wheedled by partial snd scanty mea- glorious attributes ? No, they represent the Divine Being to us as the sole mover of all human actions, and man as a mere automaton, to be operated upon either for good or evil by the influence of the eternal. Hence, if any ambitious monster, dead to every virtue— to every feeling of humanity — surround himself by an army of mercenaries and march over the bodies of men and women to a throne, he has only to fix himself securely on his seat when his power becomes consecrated and these luminaries designate him the chosen of God, called to his high eminence by the fiat of the Al- mighty ; and the Deity is made by these expounders of his will, not only to sanction, but to sanctify their usurpation." " THE CHURCH OF HUMANITY."— A clever and argumen tative pamphlet, by Mr. Hows, published by himself, at Boston, and by Strange, Paternoster Row, price one penny. Mr. Hows advances the truly Christian doc- trine, that all the peopl^ of the world form the church; hence the Church of Humanity includes the whole human race. He advises all men to study the sacred books of the world; and as he considers them made up of good and evil, truth and fable, to retain the good and true, rejecting the evil and legendery. Our Saviour, placed at the head of all good names, is truly designated by Mr. Hows as the greatest apostle of human progression who ever appeared on the stage of existence, and the New Testament as a legacy to humanity at large. The intentions of Mr. Hows are excellent, and his knowledge of the subject treated upon, profound. REVENUES OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. Church Tithes Incomes of the Bishoprics Cathedrals and Collegiate Churches Glebes and parsonage- houses Perpetual Curacies 752. each Benefices not parochial 2502. each £ 6,480,000 197,496 260,095 250,600 75,000 32,450 Surplice- fees on burials, marriages, christenings, & c. 500,000 Oblations, offerings, and compositions University and school foundations Lectureships in towns and populous places Chaplainships and offices in public institutions New churches and chapels 80,000 932,303 60,000 10,000 188,100 £ 9,165,438 " READ AND JUDGE FOR YOURSELVES."— This is a small serial publication, to be completed in three numbers, written by a working, man, and published by Leach, of Turner Street, Manchester, price one penny. It abounds in excellent argument and startling facts, handled in such an able manner as would do credit to a person whose able life had been devoted to literary production. In respect to the church the author remarks:— " Permit me here to point out to you what I conceive to be some of the causes and curses which afflict this unhappy laud, and to suggest a remedy which, in my inmost soul, I believe, would make this country what God intended it should be— a Paradise in which all might live harmoniously toge- ther. The primary cause out of which all others spring, I hold to be class legislation. The curses coming from this source are too numerous for contemplation. I shall, there- fore, content myself with very briefly reviewing a few of the most prominent:— the first with which I shall grapple is the church, as established by law. This cormorant," as Mr. Cob- bett used to call it, * costs this country 12,391,000/. per annum, a sum more than all the local taxation of the coun- try— more than the cost of the whole of the American go- vernment- more by nearly one- half than all the church establishments of Russia, France, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, the German States, Greece, and Northern Europe! I" Now, let me, iu all sober seriousness, ask you what are the benefits we receive for so extravagant a sum ? Do the parsons, dignitaries, and bishops of this church go forth through the lanes, streets, aud alleys, to instil into the minds of the ignorant, correct ideas of the character of God and of the nature and design of man's existences? or do they teach them to regard him as holy, benevolent, just, and immutable?— that because he is in- finitely holy, he cannot ordain wickedness— that because he is infinitely benevolent, the privations, slavery, and wretched- ness, which follow millions of his creatures from the cradle to the grave, cannot be attributed to him— that because he is infinitely just, no system of fraud or robbery can originate in his decrees, and that because he is immutable, we cannot convert vice into virtue, change error into truth or wrong into right by the antiquity of its existence ? Do they direct us to venerate and worship God as exhibited to man in those MISCELLANEOUS. How THE PEOPLE MAY EE DECEIVED.— Nearly two years have now elapsed since Lamartine thus addressed a deputa- tion from the people of Paris:—" The Provisional Govern- ment has only joyful iutelligence to communicate to the people here assembled. Royalty is abolished. The repub- lic is proclaimed. The people will exercise their political rights. National workshops are opened for those who are without work. The army is being reorganised. The Na- tional Guard indissolubly unites itself with the people, so as promptly to restore order with the same hand that only the moment before conquered our liberty. Finally, gentle- men, the Provisional Government was anxious to be itself the bearer of the last decree it has resolved upon and signed in this memorable sitting— that is, the abolition of the penalty of death for political offences. This is the noblest decree that ever issued out of the mouth of a people the day after their victory." And yet, in spite of all these glorious achievements of freedom against feudalism, and humanity against cruelty, the French are pretty well as much en- slaved as ever. But they will not remain so much longer; and the next cry that they raise will be an acclaim for a veritable Democratic Republic. ARMAND BARBES.— This glorious Republican soon saw that Lamartine was the veriest humbug in existence; and yet Lamartine himself does not suspect why Barbes soon abandoned him. The dreaming, vacillating, milk- and- water statesman thus alludes to the matter:—" I had been so for- tunate during the last reign as to save the life of Barbes; and it is the more equitable to ascribe to the absent the merit of the pardon, as the recollection of a life spared by them may soften the bitterness of exile. Barbes, on leaving his prison, came to thank me, aud I entreated him to use the authority his long martyrdom gave him over his party, to keep them within the limits of a republic, which was the perfection and not the subversion of society. He adopted my principles, and courageously supported them on the 17th of March, in conjunction with Sobrier, at the Hotel de Ville. From that time Barbes iasensibly forsook me: he was worthy to be regretted." CJIOWN LANDS.— The property of the Crown, which the Queen has surrendered to the public for a Civil List of 385,000f. a- year, is nearly swallowed up by plunder and mismanagement. This property is under the management of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who received from it in the last three years an income of 1,187,7462.; of this amount they only paid into the Treasury 313,3162., being 874,4302. less than they received. If this property were honestly managed, it would produce a sum equal to the amount of the Civil List, thereby placing our most gracious Queen iu the independent position of receiving no more from the Nation than Her Majesty repays from the produce of her own estates. The great Crown Forests, which an- nually ought to supply the Navy with a vast quantity of timber, produce scarcely a sufficiency to pay the pensions and salaries of officials aud peculators.— William Williams. THE POMP OF ROYALTY.— Royalty is costly, but is only one element of an expensive regimen. What is a king without an aristocracy and priesthood? and what are these unless bolstered in state and finery ? It is a system in which men are sought to be governed by the senses rather than the under standing, and is more adapted to barbarism than civilization. Pageantry and ceremony, the parade of crowns and coronets, of gold keys, sticks, white wands, and black rods; of mitres, ermine, and lawn, and maces, and wigs;— these are the chief attributes of monarchy. They are more appropriate to the king of the Birmans or of the Ashantees than the sovereign of an European community. They cease to inspire respect when men become enlightened, when they have learnt that the real object of government is to confer the greatest happiness on the -^ ople at the least expense: but it is only a pitiable and aV i system, that would perpetuate such fooleries amidst an impcv iiished population— amidst unbearable debts, taxes, and pauperism,— Wade's " Uniformed Abuses,". ^ . - THE ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT.— Of a very corrupt and wasteful character has been the Expenditure of the Ord- nance department, in building barracks in Great Britain and Ireland, and the construction of Fortifications aud Barracks in the Colonies. The Expenditure under these heads, in the last five years, was 3,000,0002. Upwards of 400,0002. was expended in fortifying one of the Ionian Islands; and the value of our Exports to the whole of those islands is about 120,0002. a- year! The Ordnance Estimates for the expen- diture of the year ending the 5th April last were 3,001,1002.; in 1790 they were only 375,0002.— William Williams. FRENCH AND AMERICAN REPUBLICANISM.— Had France not been cursed by a Napoleon— had the Republic been allowed to pursue its career uninterrupted by the military despots of Europe— mankind would ere this have been re- deemed : a sound socialjsystem would have been established in France, and the great example would have been followed in the principal part of the old as well as the new world. Fifty years of democratic government in France would have sufficed to bring the theories of her great sages and philo- sophers into practical operation, and to secure the reign of true liberty, equality, and fraternity. There are obvious reasons why the New World has not yet set this example. The Americans have been fully engaged in making a new dwelliug place in the primeval forests; in clearing the ground, settling the country, and establishing new social and political institutions. Steadily, however, has the cause of democracy advanced in that quarter of the world from year to year, until at length almost every remnant of the old aristocratic system has been destroyed, and a general equality of conditions effected. But this is only the first stage of the great social revolution now in progress. Not only has America given to the Old World a new political faith— anew system of government— but her citizens have demonstrated that a new social system, based upon the golden rule, is per- fectly practicable. What the poets and great geniuses of all ages have hoped for, and prognosticated, is shown to be almost within their reach ; and they may calculate with cer- tainty that their immediate descendants will enjoy the blessings of a system of society in which men will cease to prey upon each other. THE SUFFRAGE.— I am unable to discover upon what just and reasonable ground the elective franchise should be conferred on me and withheld from the constructors of the steam engine and the ingenious machinery it works, and from those whose mechanical ingenuity has invented and constructed the complicated machinery employed in our manufactures, whose capabilities are computed to perform the work of 600,000,000 of men, which have conferred upon our country a pre- eminence above every other nation; neither can I, for the same reason, see a just cause why ihe elective franchise should be refused to the labourer, whose industry makes the earth yield her abundance— to the miner, who digs the vast hidden treasures from the bowels of the earth— to the artizan, who produces linen, silk, cotton aud woollen cloths; in short, to all whose skill and industry produce the necessaries aud luxuries of civilized life; while the placeman, the idle pensioner, and the unmerited sine- curist, not only enjoy, but are known to traffic their fran- chise with unblushing impunity. Besides every man is liable to be drawn for and compelled to serve for the de- fence of his country in the militia ; and during the last war, to be drawn to serve in the Army of Reserve; aud, with some privileged exceptions, liable to be impressed to man the Fleet: and in the event of a war, the same authority would be again resorted to. What greater claim has auy man to have his voice heard in the Legislature of his. coun- try, than those who ate thus compelled to devote their lives in her defence aud in upholding her renown and power, and who produce her wealth and boundless resources — all the requirements and comforts of life for the industri- ous as well as the idle.— William Williams. Now Ready, beautifully Illustrated, price One Penny, No. 6 of THE DAYS OF HOGARTH; OR, THE MYSTERIES OF OLD LONDON. BY GEORGE W. M. REYNOLDS. This wo& . has been pronounced one of the best of Mr. Reynolds'sjales, and is illustrated by faithful wood- cut repre- sentations of all Hogarth's best pictures. It is issued in Weekly Penny Numbers and Monthly Sixpenny Parts, uniform with " The Mysteries of the Court of London," & c. London: Published, for the Proprietor, by John Dicks, 7, Wellington Street, North, Strand. ^ * > » * The February Number of the " Democratic Re- view " contains original and very important letters from France and Germany. Now READY, No, IX OF RFHE DEMOCRATIC REVIEW of BRITISH and - L FOREIGN POLITICS, HISTORY and LITERA- TURE. Edited by G. JULIAN HARNEY. CONTENTS:— 1. The Editor's Letter to the Working Classes. — The Taxes on Knowledge. 2. Taxation and Terrorism. Tile Grave of a Tyrannicide. 4. A Glance at History. Part I. 5. Memoir of Fourier. 6. Revelations of the Build- ing Trades. Part I. 7. Pictures of the Poor. 8. The Char- ter, and something more 1 9. Literature: " Ledru- Rollin, and the 13th of June." 10. Letter from France. 11. Letter from. Germany. 12. Political Postscript, & c., & c. FORTY PAGES ( in a coloured wrapper), PRICE THREEPENCE. NOTICES OF No. VIII. The letters from Special correspondents from France and Germany form an excellent feature of this popular magazine. — Weekly Times. " THE DEMOCRATIC REVIEW" for the month of January contains a variety of excellent matter, both foreign and do- mestic.— Reynolds's Political Instructor. " THE DEMOCRATIC REVIEW" for January is a distinct improvement on . preceding numbers, both in typogiaphical respects and in the interest of its contents.— The Reasoner. London: Published by J. WATSON, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. LONDON : Printed and Published, for the PROPRIETOR, by JOHN DICKS, at the Office of REYNOLDS'S MISCELLANY, 7 Wellington Street North, Strand. „