REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL nSTKMnm. EDITED BY GEORGE W. M. REYNOLDS, AUTHOR or TH* FIRST AND SJtCOSD BEBIM OT « TEU MTSTEBIM OW MiKDOX," " TUB KYSTKKIXI OW IKE OOSST Off UIBOI," & C. & 0. Ho. 17— Vol. 1.] SATUEBAY, MA2, CH 2. 1850. [ PRICE ONE PEN1JY. wounds on Lieutenant Drouineau's body, that from the position of the accused it was utterly impossible his hand could have been the cause of death to that officer. " If," replied Barbes, to a remark of the president's, " I had wished to fight with Drouineau, I would have done so loyally, and as becomes a man of honourable • sentiments, iu offering him a fair field and an equal combat." The government, fearful of carrying the sentence into effect, and alarmed by the energetic demonstrations made by the circles, and by the workmen of Paris, commuted the judgment after two days' deliberation, into one of transportation, with hard labour, for life. The glorious Revolution of February kicked Louis Philippe from his throne, and drove the servile, sycophantic, miserable old peers from their den of tyranny at the Luxembourg, into a merited insignificance, from which not one of them should ever after have been permitted to escape. Barbes was restored to liberty, and upon his arrival in Paris, was named Governor of that very- Luxembourg Palace, within the walls of which he had a short time previously been sentenced to death; but he re- fused the offered post. The twelfth legion of the National Guard afterwards named him as its colonel, and he was likewise selected to sit in the Constituent Assembly as a representative for his own department. On the 15th of May, eighty days after obtaining his liberation, Barbes, who had used his utmost efforts to oppose that popular manifestation which had invaded the palace occupied by a National Assembly, and witnessing the cowardly abdi- cation of their places by the royalists when the order for dissolving the Assembly was pronounced by Huber, ARMAND BARBES. The following' details, in the Ufe of Armand Barbes, mere kindly furnisiied to the Editor of the INSTRUCTOR by a most intimate friend of the captive patriot, Citizen Landolphe, Representative of the People, and one of the political exiles condemned for the events of June, 1849. ARMAND BARBES was born at Guadaloupe in the year 1809: his father was a medical practitioner in that island. The person of Barbes is remarkable for its natural beauty and gracefulness; his stature is tall and formed with singular elegance and perfection; his fea- tures are pure aud regular, combining an expression of 1 great mildness and generosity with one of determined energy; his gait and attitudes are alike noble and pre- possessing. The education of Barbes was perfected at the college of Sorreze, and upon his arrival in Paris, during the year 1833, for the purpose of pursuing the study of the law, he went and presented himself to Etienne Arago, then a perfect stranger to him, with the exception of having been formerly a student at the college of Sorreze. He thus addressed M. Arago,—" Sir, I have not the honour of being personally known to you: my name is Barbes; I have finished my studies at the same college as yourself; I am rich, and am now come to offer you my fortune in service of the republican cause, as likewise my arm and my life!" All the world is acquainted in what a noble manner Barbes has kept his word. • In 1835, Barbes, being himself free, assisted with all the natural ardour of his character to favour the escape of his friends imprisoned by the Court of Peers in St. Pelagie. Condemned in 1836 for the clandestine manu- facture of gunpowder, he was restored to liberty the following year by the general amnesty granted upon the Duke of Orleans' marriage. In 1839, on the evening of the 13th of May, he was arrested, wounded and bleeding, and handed over to the tender mercies of the Chamber of Peers, charged with having killed a lieu- tenant whilst in the execution of his duty, suppressing the insurrection promoted by Barbes. When upon his trial he boldly assumed the whole re- sponsibility of the movement, nobly exerting himself to save his associates. " It is I," he exclaimed, " who placed arms in their hands; a species of moral violence calculated to induce them to follow me and take a share in the fight. I, therefore, am the only guilty one, and upon me alone should your revengeful hatred justly fall." When President Pasquier, the Judge Jeffries of Louis Philippe, asked Barbes what he could say in his defence, " Nothing," replied he. " When the Indian, a native of the country in which I was born, falls into his adversary's power, he disdains to defend himself, but simply offers his head to the scalping- knife of his enemy: I imitate the Indian's example, and offer you my head."—" You are right," brutally replied the pre- sident, " in comparing yourself to a savage."—" The greater savage," answered Barbes, " is not the one who presents his head to the knife, but he who cuts it off." Barbes was condemned to death; notwithstanding it was proven that by the nature and situation of the ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. Barbes, believing in the extinction of all authorized power, devoting himself to save the Republic from royalist machinations, and other insidious proceedings of its enemies, repaired to the Hotel de Villefor that gene- rous purpose. There also he was destined, as in 1839, to become a sacrifice to his disinterested patriotism, and the Supreme Court of Bourges, a tribunal which sen- tenced him to transportation for life, could not forbear commenting upon the nobleness and grandeur of his character. Barbes is now a prisoner in the dungeons of Doullens, waiting for the deliverance of his county from the oppressive yoke of those ambitious men that are daily, hourly, and momentarily, trampling upon the liberties of France, exiling the bravest, the noblest, and the best of its children, and cramming the dungeons of their prisons with men whose geuerosity in the hour of triumph overcoming more prudential impulses left in the hands of a wretched, a wicked faction, the means and the power of exercising their accursed, their bitter, their inhuman, selfish vengeance upon the true patriots of France. * May the hour of Armand Barbes' liberation speedily arrive, and may he soon behold his country recovered from the slough of military despotism into which it is now plunged, by the authority of a contemptible buffoon, who was playing the special- constable with the aris- tocratic noodles of St. James's, when Barbes was battling for the Republic's safety and France's integrity. Armand Barbes is the possessor of a very handsome fortune, and likewise of a country seat in l^ he department represented by him in the Constituent Assembly. It is almost needless to » state that in the neighbourhood of his residence he was beloved by the humble for the nobleness of his sentiments and the generosity of his soul, whilst by the rich he was detested as an enemy and as a traitor to their order. Sympathy with the poor is in France the same as in England, incompatible with the favour of the wealthy. The best years of Bar- bes' life have been passed in political dungeons; the beauty of his person has faded within the walls of pri- sons. When tyranny was overthrown and a Republic proclaimed in France, brighter days seemed in store for the former victim of royal oppression; but, alas! tbe poison of monarchy had not been entirely eradicated from his country, and he again became a martyr when struggling in the cause of freedom. THE GOVERNMENT ANB THE PEOPLE. LORD JOHN RUSSELL declares that the people do not want reform,— that they are perfectly happy and con- tented as they are,— and that only the very lowest mur- murings have reached his ears for some time past. To assert that the millions do not desire their rights, is to proclaim a fallacy so glaringly patent and utter an untruth so monstrously absurd, that I wonder any statesman, however brazen- faced, could have had the impudence to volunteer such a declaration even upon his own aristocratic ground in the House of Commons. The averment that the people are contented with their present lot, is a positive insult flung in the face of the toiling slaves and oppressed serfs of these islands: it is the same as telling them that they are a base, servile, wretched crew, hugging the manacles and fetters which aristocratic tyranny has rivetted upon their limbs. But the statement that only the lowest murmurings have recently been wafted to the Ministerial ears, and that the popular satisfaction may thence be inferred, cannot do otherwise than excite feelings of mingled indigna- tion, contempt, and disgust in the heart of every honest reformer. From the Prime Minister's words we are naturally led to infer two things:— firstly, that if the people wish for reform, they must clamour for it; and secondly, that when their clamours rise to a certain pitch, the Govern- ment will listen with respect and yield with readiness. Such is the construction which must be put upon the words of the Prime Minister: but let us see how closely his professions are reconciled with his actions.' In 1848 there was clamour enough. The demand for reform was then loud and general throughgut the length and breadth of the land. Monster meetings were held in the metropolis— in all the cities and large towns— in the hamlets— yes, even in the villages. At that time there was not a community of two hundred persons, dwelling anywhere in Great Britain, that had not its Chartist Committee and its Chartist agitation. The representatives of the whole working- class popu- Jation assembled in Londop, proclaimed the require- ments of their constituencies, and indicated the reforms demanded. So formidable was this agitation, even in its sublime moral aspect,— and it had none other,— that the Government was frightened, the Queen and Prince Albert quitted London, a hundred thousand speoial con- stables were sworn in, the metropolis was converted into a vast fortalice, and the Iron Duke received plenary powers to cannonade the people whenever and wherever he might think fit. Nearly hall' a million of the proletarian race assembled upon Kennington Com- mon to hold up their hands in favour of the Charter;— and a petition containing quite enough real signatures to stamp it with a true political value, was rolled in upon the floor of the House of Commons. Such was the agitation of 1848. Sarely there was something more than " a low murmuriug1' then? At all events, the whole world knows that the Ministers and the Legislature did hear that clamour for reform: inasmuch as the voice raised by the British Proletarians shook the entire nation. And not only was reform demanded generally: but the reform needed was pointed out specifically. The Minister was left in no manner of doubt as to either the existence of the clamour, or the nature of the object clamoured for: the toiling mil- lions sent up the cry— and the CHARTER was the remedy insisted upon. But was the Minister attentive to the wants and requirements thus unmistakably expressed by the wealth- producers of thiscountry ?— was the reform thus energeti- cally demanded granted?— or, in a word, was any mea- sure of reform, however slight, conceded at all ? No— nothing of the sort! The Aristocracy and its Ministers treated the people with defiance: through the Times they almost dared the Chartists to rebellion— pointing significantly to the cannon that was ready to vomit forth death and destruction upon the unarmed masses! And then— because the Chartists would not sulfer them- selves to be even goaded, taunted, bullied, or persuaded into an intemperate policy or violent proceedings— spies were sent among them to practise their damnable arts upon those who were the most enthusiastic in their patriotism or the most desperate in their penury. Thus a few noble spirits were so enmeshed by the designs and schemings of those hellish miscreants, that they were placed in the position where the Government wanted to find them; and a merciless Attorney- General, a partizan Judge, and a middle- class Jury did all the rest! What, then, is the precise aspect of the case 1 Why, that if the people do not clamour, the Prime Minister argues that they are indifferent to reform: and if they do clamour, then they are denounced as spoliators and their leaders are imprisoned or transported. Surely the true character of the Whig Government must now be known to the nation? Did ever a states- man condescend to more paltry, beggarly, despicable subterfuges than those which are greedily caught up and adopted by Lord John Russell? I will suppose that a deputation of working- men visits him at the Treasury, to represent the condition of the industrious population and point out the necessity for reform. Ac- cording to the present tactics of the Government, the following would be the sum and total of the Prime Minister's reply:—" I cannot listen to you as a mere quiet and peaceable deputation. Such a low murmuring cannot possibly produce any effect upon my official ears. The comparative silence of the nation is a proof of satisfaction with- regard to existing institutions. If you really wish me to believe that there is a desire in the national breast for reform, you must agitate until the present murmuring shall have swollen into a deafening clamour."—" Very good, my lord," answers the depu- tation: " we will go away and commence our agitation at once."—" Yes, but take care what you are about," instantaneously exclaims Lord John Russell: " for if you do go and agitate with energy, I shall set the Attorney- General at you."—" Then how are we to get reform, my lord ?" demands the deputation, quite aghast at this most unexpected announcement: " you will not believe that we need reform, because we are too quiet; and you threaten to punish us if we become noisy." But instead of vouchsafing any rejoinder, Lord John shrugs his shoulders, rings the bell, and bows out the deputation. Suck are Whig tactics. But in spite of that shuffling system beneath which so much treachery lurks, — in spite of that double- faced dealing which says, " Agitate to show your sincerity," and then immolates the agitators,— in spite of the mar- vellous tenacity with which an arrogant Aristocracy, a bloated Church, a dishonest Legislature, and a tyran- nical Ministry, cling to old- established feudalisms and long- standing abuses,— in spite of all this, the people shall, and will, and must continue to agitate for the Charter! They will agitate, because they have under- taken a struggle of truth and justice against falsehood and despotism,— and they have become not only inter- ested as mere workers and toilers, but their honour is compromised as patriots, in establishing the triumph of the former upon the ruins of the latter! Many years have now elapsed since the agitation for the Charter commenced. During the progress of this great movement, the Government has heard both " gentle murmuriugs " and impatient clamours: yet to neither has any concession been made. Of what use, then, is it for the Minister to demand the !' signs of the times," if he will not follow their bidding when they do appear? Such conduct is the veriest trifling which a dishonest Government can practise towards a great people. But Ministers are never at a loss for excuses wherewith to vindicate their own inconsistency, nor wanting in subterfuges whereby to parry the demands made upon them. If the people be as tranquil as the calmest lake on a summer eve, their quietude is assumed as a proof of their felicitous contentment: if they be- come agitated as the ocean iu a storm, the declaration goes forth that a time of excitement is not the proper season for reform. Whatever be the state of the coun- try, the people must always be in the wrong, and the Ministers in the right. But how is it possible that such an anomalous condition of things should have sprung into exist- ence? It is because the Ministers, instead of being the people's servants, have become their masters;— no longer the executors of the national will, they have assumed the attitude, demeanour, and conduct of irresponsible dictators. The result is that a constant antagonism exists between the Government and the Na- tion, the former looking upon the latter as something to be coerced, aSid the latter regarding the former as some- thing against which all animosities must be levelled. The working classes in England look at the Government as a sort of natural enemy, at whom it is praiseworthy to level as hard a blow as possible, and whose pecuniary exactions it is perfectly legitimate to evade whenever opportunity serves. On the other hand, the Govern- ment looks upon the working - classes as dissatisfied grumblers, whom it is necessary to keep down by brute force. Such are the relative feelings: and whence sprang they? The whole fault lies with the Govern- ment, which, instead of being the protector of the masses, has become their persecutor— instead of be friending the millions, has betrayed them— instead o- conciliating their affections, has won their deadly hatredf Yes— the whole fault lies with the Government itself: its injustice towards the many and its truckling towards the few, its own rancorous hate of the millions and it* adoration for the oligarchy,— these have been the proof* of its one- sided sympathy, and have naturally placed it in open antagonism with the industrious classes. Is it not, then, a pretty condition of things when our servants have become our masters, and when the admi- nistrators of the whole nation are regarded with abhor- rence by seven- tenths of the inhabitants? Surelv a radical reform is required somewhere? But it is not that the people require to be more considerate and forbear- ing: it is that the Government should display more honesty and rectitude. Whatever amount of agitation may now exist, or may shortly be raised, in this country, the masses will deserve no vituperation: the whole blame should be thrown upon the Ministry and the Legislature. But will the middle- classes recognise this fact? will they lie honest for once?— will they, in a word, refuse with indignation evermore to become the agents of vin- dictive Attorney- Generals and the instruments of par- tizan Judges? Let them repudiate any future intention of suffering themselves to be made the agents for per- secuting, scourging, crushing, ruining, immolating the veritable patriots of the country; and the working- classes will once mare place confidence in them. My Chartist friends, ye must now address yourselves with a renewed energy and a more fervid enthusiasm to the great moral struggle which is at hand. Europe stands upon the verge of a crisis: its condition will shortly be such, that the English Minister, alarmed by the something more than " low murmurings " from across the sea, will not dare refuse timely concessions to your demands. For on the nations of the Continent such a storm is about to burst as the world never saw before,— a storm that will sweep away the relics of feudalism and the elements of serfdom," like chaff upon the wing of the hurricane. And, oh! will it not be a glorious— a blessed— and a thrilling spectacle, to be- hold the People triumphant at last, and their accursed tyrants all stripped of their gaud and grandeur, and writhing in the chains which thenceforth must be their doom? God grant that when the nations shall rise again, the true Social and Democratic Republic may be proclaimed from the Seine to the Danube— from the Baltic to the Mediterranean;— and then— and then only — will there be hope for the Proletarians of the Euro- ropean Continent! GEORGE W. M. REYNOLDS. THE DOCK- YARDS.— The Dock- yards is another depart- ment, in which there is a riot in prodigality. Since the ter- mination of the war 02,700,000/. have been expended for timber and other materials for ship- building, salaries ! and wages of officers and workmen employed in these dock- yards ; for every shilling of which there ought to be some- thing to show. What has become of this money it would be difficult even to conjecture, as at the close of the war there were GGG ships in commission and 33d in ordinary. If stock were taken of the ships built and on the stocks, and repaired, since the Peace, I doubt if anything approaching to one- half of this enormous amount could be accounted for. During the same period 9,000,0002. have been expended in what is denominated " enlarging and improving the Dock- yards," although sufficiently capacious durmg the war fur building and keeping in repair the above 1,000 men- of- war, store- ships, & e. Pembroke is the only naval yard added, and basins for steamers. The entire system of conducting the bu- siness of the Dock- yards has been one of continuous blunder, • mismanagement, extravagance, and waste ; for, as has been truly remarked by the Times, " ships have been built two or three times over." It would be marvellous, indeed, if a better state of things existed under the, p/ eseut system. The qualification for the First Lord of the Admiralty aud the Secretary seems to be, utter ignorance of Naval affairs; and if the other Lords should have a better qualification, their being required to be Members of Parliament, the duties of which occupy so much of their time both day aud night during the Session, renders it impossible for them to attend to their official duties.— William Williams. AMERICAS AND ENGLISH SYSTEMS.— In America, the system of government and legislation is the very reverse of that of England. In lieu of an hereditary monarch, claim- ing the right divine to govern by descent from a military conqueror, there is a president elected every four years, anil his powers are restricted to reasonable limits. The people do not merely claim a few privileges, but are the actual governors of the country, the source of all political power, the repositories of sovereignty. No class enjoys immunities or privileges of any kind. The representation of the people in the halls of legislation is 4 reality; their trustees, dele- gates, or agents are there to attend to the interests of the nation at large, but without any power to deprive the mean- est citizen of his fundamental rights. In England, on the con- trary, the people, the middle as well as the working classes, are in readty unrepresented in the legislature. Popula- tion, wealth, and intelligence are all disregarded in the com- position of the House of Commons; and, as to the Hou » C' of Lords, its legislative power is a mere remnant of the feudal, system. The principle of representation is disregarded in all matters of a general nature, and but partially recognised in local affairs. In a word, the English political system is a patched- up remnant of the ages of absolutism and feudality, whilst that of America is founded upon the plain and inalien- able rights of mankind. A STBANGE FACT.— Many things have been written about shirtmaking; but here perhaps is the saddest thing of all, not written anywhere till now that I know of. Shirts by the thirty thousand are made at twopence- halfpenny each; and in the meanwhile no needlewoman, distressed or other, can be procured in London by any housewife to give, for fair wages, fair help in sewing. Ask any thrifty house- mother, high or low, aud she will answer. In high houses aud in low, there is the same answer: no real needlewoman, " distressed' or other, has been found attainable in any of the houses [ frequent. Imaginary needlewomen, who demand considerable wages, and have a deepish appetite fi> r beer and viands, 1 hear of everywhere ; but their sewing proves too often a dis- tracted puckering aud botching ; not sewing, odly the fall ® , cioushope of it, a fond imagination of the miud. Good semp- stresses are to be hired in every village; and in London, with its famishing thirty- thousand, not at all, or hardly. Is not No- government beautiful iu human feusine s? To such length has the Leave- alone principle carried it, by way of organiz- ing labour in this affair cf shirtmaking.— Thomas Carlyle. ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. SETTLEMENT OF THE FACTORY QUESTION: DECISION OF MR. BARON PARKE. All disputes between factory operatives and mill- owners as to the meaning of the Ten Hours' Bill is at an end so far as a decision in a court of law can end disputes, and interpret the meaning of an act of parliament. The discussion of the question among those who create the power that begets acts of parliament is fortunately not yet at an end. Mr. Baron Parke has in the Court of Exchequer given the decision of the judges as to the legality of the relay system. His lord- ship's judgment is final; and as it involves the interests of thousands of our readers, we ask all of them to read the summing up carefully. His lordship observed, " that the act must be construed according to the well- known i ule of con- struction. It had been properly asserted that the act ought to be read as if it had reference only to children, for the legislature had classed women with them, and the question was whether a factory owner was liable under it to a penalty for working such hands on the shift system. Now, the act was undoubtedly a penal one, and, as such, ought to receive a strict construction; for people were not to be convicted in penalties which were not enacted expressly and clearly. The Court cannot, on a conjecture that the Legislature meant such and such things, say that it has enacted as it meant. There must be words used which plainly prohibit the thing to which a penalty is sought to be attached; and, adopting that established rule of construction, the Court was not of opinion that the language tf the act was sufficiently clear to call upon them to affirm this conviction, and to decide that the system pursued by the mill- owners was illegal. It was admitted by both parties that the time for beginning the calculation of ten hours was fixed by the Act; but the de fendant contended that no limit was defined at which the work was necessarily to finish, and he argued that if such had been the intention of the Legislature, it was just as easy to have said so, as it was to say, as it had said, that all the workers in a mill should partake of their meals at one and the same time at each mill. It is true that there is no such time fixed for leaving off work ; but it might bfc col- lected from the rest of the Act, if any intention existed to assign any such limit to the termination of labour; and if we could plainly infer it, we might enforce the penalty and affirm the couviction. Unquestionably if such a provision could be found or imported into the act, great facilities would be afforded for carrying out the avowed object of its framers, which was the protection of the young and weak, and tl^ attainment of certain intervals for reereation and education during the day. This object, however, could only be secured at the expense of the mtll- owuers, for they would be thereby curtailed in their control over their capital, and the workers themselves would be restrained iu the em- ployment of their capital. This being so, this restriction, we think, ought to- be most clearly enacted in order to be enforced by penalty ; and whatever may be the opinion of the Court as to the propriety of affording such p: otection to these people, we cannot give effect to that opinion simply because we entertain it. But the prosecutors, besides the general language of the Act, rely on the form of the notice given in the schedule, as indicating necessarily the correct- ness of their construction. It seems, however, that though that form would support that construction, aud was most pro- bably framed with that view, it is not at ah inconsistent with that of the defendant, for under it some of the workers may clearly leave off at one hour, while others may work on to an- other. If, indeed, this were not so, it would be impossible for the mill- owner to work his people less than ten hours, which it is clearly meant he should do if lie pleased. Under all the cir- cumstances, then, of the case, and looking at all the pro- vis'ons of the Act, the Jesuit is, that in our opinion there is not any suc. h restriction imposed 011 the mill- owners as was contended for by the Attorney- Geneial on behalf of the crown, with reference to the continuous labour of women and young persons in factories. The Act does not expressly say that they shall not leave off at different hours; and it is therefore left open to the owners to make agreements with the individuals of the restricted classes, so long as they do not zoork more than ten hours daily, and have such intervals of leisure as may be convenient for the working of the mills. This con- viction therefore must be quashed." Far be it from us to impugn the decision of a judge on trifling or narrow grounds. But had we known nothing of the meaning of the Act of Parliament under consideration, beyond what is conveyed to us iu the remarks of his lordship, we should have contended for a decision the reverse of that given. It will be observed that his lordship's decision rests on the fact that no fixed hour is named at which the labours of the day shall terminate, " if any intention existed to assign any such limit to the termination of labour, and if we could plainly infer it, we might enforce the penalty, and affirm the conviction." If such was not the intention of the framers of the Act of Parliament, why name an hour at which labour should begin ? Why fix stated times for meals t If the court had decided alone on the fact that no fixed time was named at which labour should cease, judgment so far would have been complete; but when the words " intention" and " infer, ence" were introduced, tbe whole case was open. Was there a doubt as to the intention ? A reference| to the debate in parlia- ment preceding the passing of the Act, would have removed such doubt. Was the case solely to rest on inference 1 Labour was clearly to be performed between the hours named for cessation from labour, and if to work, from six in the morning to the time appointed for breakfast, and from then to the din- ner hour, after which the hands were by law to feturn to the factory, why fix the hour at which they shauld return to the factory except for a fixed purpose 1 and if not to work out their allotted time of ten hours, for what purpose did they return 1 The inference seems to us as plain as the sun at noon- day, and the only conclusion at which we can arrive, forced upon us as it is from all we know of the whole case, the sufferings of the factory workers, the agitation for a ten hours' bill, the discussion of the question in the House of Commons, and the still more important discussion out of the House of Commons, viewing the case in its broadest and fullest bear- ings, we are involuntiarily compelled to exclaim,— " Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law." Mr. Baron Parke has been complimented for his " lumi- neusly reasoned" exposition of political economy. We have not only a right, but we are fully prepared to re'ason on this science, whether its expositors be judges, bishops, peers, or beggars. So the learned Baron discovers that '' thisobject can only be attained at the expense of the mill- owners, who would thereby be deprived of the full control of then- capital, while the women would l> p restricted in the em- ployment of their labour, whieh is their capital also." That is, that ten hours' labour per day can only be obtained at the expense of the employers and the employed. It occurs to us at the first blush, that it such were really the case, the factory operatives would be the most determined enemies of all restriction in the hours of labour. Yet, sin- gular as it may appear to the judgment of Baron Parke, it is nevertheless a fact patent to the' world, that these same operatives have been the unceasing advocates of short hours. In direct opposition to the doctrine of increased labour, and doubtfully increased wages, these operatives are almost to a man in favour of short hours. Instinct alone would guide them rightly to such a conclusion. What was the condition of the factory operatives before they were pro- tected from the griping hand of merciless avarice aud reckless commercial strife ! We shall only call one witness into Court, but his respectability and character shall admit of no cavil. Himself a manufacturer, and knowing intimately from experience the facts of the case, speaking amidst those who were in the same trade, and who would only have been too glad to have contradicted the statements made. " Mr. Wood" ( a large and highly respectable manufacturer at Bradford) says, " children have been confined in the fac- tory from six In the mornfog to eight at night— fourteen hours continually— without any time being allowed for meals, rest, or recreation; the meals to be taken while attending the machines, and this the practice of years. » » • This is the practice at Bradford. • • • The children there occasionally work twenty- four hours every other day, out of which they are allowed three hours only for meals, & e. When trade is particularly BRISK ( I ! I) the elder children work from six in the morning till seven in the evening, two hours allowed for meals, & c., and every other night, all night; which, is a still more severe ease. For this additional night- labour they receive fivepence. There is another lamentable circumstance attending the employment of these poor chil- dren, which is, that they are left the whole night alone, the sexes indiscriminately mixed together,— consequently, you may imagine that the depravity of our work- people is indeed very great. " Even at this moment, while' I am thus speaking in behalf of these oppresssd children, what numbers of them are still at their toil, confined in heated rooms, bathed in perspira- tion, stunned with the roar of the revolving wheels, poisoned with the noxious effluvia of grease and gas, till at last they turn out, weary and exhausted, almost naked— plunge into the open air, and creep, shivering, to beds from which a relay of their young work- fellows have just risen; and such is the fate of many of them, at the best, while in numberless instances they are diseased, stunted, crippled, depraved, destroyed." ( March 16,1832.) ^ Read tiie facts, the naked facts, as stated by Mr, Wood. Mr. Baron Parke speaks abaut tile mill- owners not having full control of their capital. Give them, we beseech you, full control of dead inanimate capital over living capital, and are you prepared for the results? In the first genera- tions, stunted growtli and cripples; in the next, dwarfed bodies and low foreheads, to be followed in the natural course of succession by a race of pigmy idiots. We spaak with authority on this question. Mr. Chadwiek, in his re- part from the factory districts, assures us that fewer re- cruits are to be had from the factory district now tliau formerly. Sir James M'Gregor, the Director- General of the Army Medical Board, admits the deficiency of the physical strength of the recraits enlisted in the factory districts, aud every one who visits Manchester fr Bradford, Leeds or other factory districts, may see, with his own eyes, the most wretched and pitiable moving objects it is possible for the mind of man to conceive. The late Mr. Thackrah, of Leeds, a most competent witness, says:— " I stood in Oxford Road, Manchester, and- observed the stream of operatives as they left the mills at twelve o'clock j the children were almost universally ill- looking, small, sickly, bare- foot and ill- clad ; file men generally from If) to 21, and none aged, were almost as pallid and thin as children; the women were the most respectable in appearance; but I saw no fresh, fine looking individuals amongst them. Here I saw, or thought I saw, a degenerate race— human beings, stunted, enfeebled and depraved." Mr. Thackrah did see a degenerate race, which will in" turn beget a race still more degenerate. And with all respect to the rights of capital, we are willing to share the obloquy cast so freely by some portions of the press, by those who liberally denounce all interference with what they call the rights of capital. This we do demand of all men, that they either es- tablish justice or acknowledge humanity. If justice were established we should hear less about the power and claims of wealth, and more of the rights and claims of labour. If humanity be recognized the factory workers must be pro- tected by law. Mr. Samuel Fielden of Todmorden ( son of the late John Fielden, M. P. for Oldham) and the parliamentary leader of the short time advocates) in an admirable letter on this question, published in the Times of February the 18th, the effects of the relay system are thus described. We the more readily quote Mr. Fielden's letter as we know its correctness from experi- ence :— " To take the case of the 600 looms with 300 weavers— before alluded to: 100 weavers are sent out each hour, and the 200 weavers remaining at work have to attend to, or ' tent,' as it is called, the 200 looms thus left without hands; so that each weaver has to ' tent' three looms instead of two. The mis- chiefs of this system are, that the women and children are kept hanging about the mills, loitering away their time while they are out, the time given being of no use whatever to them even if they live near at hand, but especially to those who live, as many do, at a mile or two miles from the mill. The time, in short, that tlie legislature meant these classes to have to themselves is wasted by the master. Then, while in work, the shift system casts more work on them, as I have explained above. Again, it is customary to make abatements in { lie wages of the hands for ' spoilt work;' and when a young person ' tents' two looms throughout, the day, the overlooker knows who tented those looms, and makes his abatements on the spoilt work with certainty. But in the shift system, when two weavers have to ' ten1.' the looms and do the work of three, when there is everlasting changing and shifting through- out the day, 110 man can tell which weaver it was that spoiled the work, and the consequ, lice is, that the abatements must be made in the wages of all the weavers who work at any time during the day at the looms where the spoilt work occurs. Conceive the injustice of this, and the heart- burnings it must occasion amongst the hands 1 Another great mischief of the shift system is, that it completely frustrates all inspec- tion. If tilt) work of the restricted persans is performed in consecutive hours, reckoning from the time when they first began, the inspector sees whether or 110 the law is evaded; lor if all go in at one time, and all come out at one time, he must see the violation if it occur; but if the master may keep on shifting a woman in and out of his mill, giving her twenty minutes of recreation in every hour during fifteen hours, how can any inspector ascertain whether or not this woman is in the mill for more than the ten hours? I assert with confi- dence that, under this system, now declared legal by the judges, I could deceive the inspectors even if one of them stood at the door of every mill that I am connected with. Why, sir, the whole of the Factory Acts are useless after this decision. This decision of the judges spreads the time of working the ' restricted' (!) classes over the whole factory day of fifteen hours; and all attempts at watching and bringing violators of the law to justice must be utterly futile." All honour to you, Fielden: you are, after all, a chip of the old block. That letter reminds us of the plainness of the late John Fielden,— an honoured name, that cannot be forgotten while there remains in England an over- worked factory slave. Mr. Samuel Fielden has not over- rated the evils of the relay system. This lengthening out of a day's work will produce moral evils of a kind not generally known. Understand, we write from what we have seen. Say, three young women leave home at five o'clock in the morning to begin work at six, work ten hours a- day, but are obliged to remain at the factory for fifteen hours; how is the time spent that is called an intermission from labour. Either by loiter- ing about the works, not leaving the factory, or stealthily run- ning down to have a gill of beer at the " Tomaud jerry" hard by. Unprineipled factory- masters, too, send out the overlooker to cry " time's up," when only fifteen out of the twenty minutes have elapsed. Fifteen hours at a factory, and what time remains for household duties, for education, mental and moral improvement ? Things cannot continue so, and we are quite prepared to do our humble share in the struggle. Men of all parties unite on this question. We' have seen before and shall see again, . Chartists, Socialists, Dissenters, and Church of Eng- land Clergymen fighting the battle of humanity against Mammon. Richard Oastler, the venerable and vigorous ad- vocate of what Sir Caarles Wood once called " an extrava- gant humanity," is still able to lead the people, and by per- severance and the aid of good men he will lead and conquer. There must be no delay in this movement, no waiting until we have a return of dull trade, and the factory- masters, closing their factory doors, turn round to the operatives and say ironically, " Now you have time short enough," while they, the factory owners, will be prepared on the first return of activity,— or, as Mr. Maudley of Manchester calls it, " the ascension of the wheel,"— to use them up with fifteen hours' work out of the twenty- four. There must be no mistake about the next movement: it is for ten hours' work per day for atl hands— the moving power to begin and cease at the hour named in the Act of Parliament. It win be observed that we have ventured freely to express our opinions on the decisions of the judges, as pronounced by Mr. Baron Parke. We have done so in no haughty or over- bearing spirit; and if our boldness meet with criticism we express a hope that our reasonings shall be met with argu- ment. Zord Bacon, in his admirable Essay on Judicature, says wisely, " Cursed ( saith the law) is he that removeth the land- mark." The mislayer of a mere stone is to blame; but it is the unjust judge that is the capital remover of land, marks, when he defineth amiss land and property. One foul sentence does more hurt than many foul examples, for these do but corrupt the stream, the other corrupteth the fountain. So saith Solomon: " Fous turbatus, et vena cor- rupta est justus cadens in causa, sua coram adversario"— The just man, failing in his cause before his adversary, is like a troubled fountain and a corrupted vein. We do not for a moment hint that Baron Parke and his colleagues are corrupt; but we unquestionably think that when they consulted they forgot that " the safety of the people is the highest law;" and to know that laws, except they be in order to that end, are but things captious and oracles not well inspired. The decision of the judges on the Factory question, will at this time do more to raise a spirit of turbulence and diseonteet in the minds of tens of thousands of her Majesty's subjects than could possibly have been brought about by any other means. We have before witnessed, and may again witness, the At- torney. General pleading in person at Lancaster, York, and Liverpool against riotous proceedings in the Factory dis- ricts, and talking about the security of property, the Sanger of communism, aud the fears to be entertained from the fiery speeches of Chartist orators and political demagogues; pious VVesleyans, and timid shopkeepers will convict, of course, and say those proceedings must be put down; and, perhaps, Baron Parke himself may interpret the law and sentence offending criminals in all the dignity of office. Poor Attorney- General, do not blame the criminals alone, blame also the tendency of those laws that make men criminals. Cast your mind's eye back to the judgment on which we have so freely commented, and you will remember one of the chief causes of the riots you wish to quell, of the communism of which you speak, but do not understand, of the mad schemes of physical force revolt you so freely denounce but fail to pre- vent. There is but one course open, one path to be followed: another appeal to parliament for a veritable " Ten Hours' Bill," about which there can be no mistake. Such a bill will do more to put down discontent, than any other step that could be adopted. And if such a bill be not passed, and the principle on which such a measure is based, more generally adopted, those who now talk and wri. e so much about the rights of capital, will, one day, have to listen not to the rights of labour, but to the cry of veiigeauoe, and, as we have seen elsewhere, tremble with fear, and listen to the fatal words, " too late I" Never were words more proroundly trde than those of Canning, with which we, for the present, close our remarks: " For those who have checked improve- ment, because it is innovation, will, one day or other, be compelled to accept innovation when it has ceased to be improvement." GRACCHUS. FAILURE OF THE REFORM ACT.— The Reform Act has had mpre than seventeen years' trial aud under its provisions- five General Elections have taken place, and in each of which, in succession, the people's influence in the return of members has visibly diminished, and bribery and corruption have be- come more prevalent. I11 no respect whatever has it earried out the principles which its authors promised it would ac- complish, namely, to give to the people a full, a fair, and a free Representation iu the Commons' House of Parliament; The people now demand a. fulfilment of this promise; and, in the words of Lord John Russell:—" I say, then, that if we appeal to reason, the Reformers have reason on their side. Again," said the Noble Lord, " what the people wanted was Representatives in that House [ of Commons] in whom they could confide as the mast vigilant guardians of the pub- lic purse and national interests,"— William Williams. ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. THE CO- OPERATIVE SYSTEM. IT has been objected to the principle of co- operative as- sociations that men and women will not exert them- selves except for the sake of amusement, or for the purpose of acquiring the means of enjoyment; that, consequently, the members of the association will not labour, seeing that no personal advantage is to be de- rived from it. It is argued that eaeh man will desire to reap the fruits of the labour of the other members of the association, without working himself. To this we reply that the examples of the various associations now in existence, and of which some ac- count has been given in the Instructor, are sufficient to refute this theory. But let us, for the sake of the ar- gument, disregard the experiments already tried, and examine the question irrespective of that experience. All the members of the association must know that their individual and collective welfare depends on their in- dustry. Hence rules for the regulation gf that industry • will be formed by the society. It will not be left for each individual to work or not, as he pleases, nor to begin and leave off when he likes. Each member of the community will have his allotted task, and that will be an easy and a pleasant one, according to his or her age, strength, taste, and capacity: the employment will be varied from time to time so as to avoid mono- tony. These restraints are nothing as compared with those which nine- tenths of the human race now endure; the professional man, the tradesman, the artizan, and labourer, are all under a variety of • restraints, and compelled to labour more than would be necessary in association, besides having to submit to insults and in- dignities. In association, there will be no servants, no persons situated like the common soldiers and sailors of the present day, and all would have more leisure, more social enjoyments, more amusements, and more true liberty than can possibly be had under the competitive system. Very little labour, with the aid of skill and improved machinery, would suffice to furnish the community with all the comforts and luxuries of life. Even under the present system, every day adds to the facility of raising food, and manufacturing articles of use and ornament; but, under the community system, the whole mass of the people being intelligent, with abundant leisure to study, • with ample means to try experiments, and no motives for the concealment of a discovery, there will be a hun- dred inventions and improvements where there is one now, and mankind will be elevated to a height of civili- zation and refinement beyond all existing anticipations: The finest palaces of the present age will be insignifi- cant in comparison with the mansions of the associa- tions. Means will be discovered for rendering all occupations inoffensive, and no labour will be deemed mean and servile; all must labour on a footing of perfect equality; the less pleasant kinds of work must be per- formed by the members in rotation, or those who per- form it must be compensated by the shortness of the period of labour, or by being allowed advantages in some other way. Man is so constituted as to derive health and enjoy- ment from moderate labour; and we fully believe that even the fortunate few— the pampered aristocracy— would be much healthier and happier in an association than under the present system, devoured as they are • with ennui, and filled with envy, discontent, and anxiety for the future welfare of their families. A thousand means of amusement will be afforded in the associations which are wanting under the present system. It has been said, by persons utterly ignorant of the matter, that there would be disputes at the table, all desiring the best joints and the best viands of every description. Such persons can never have seen a large party at a public table. No such disputes arise at the tables of the great hotels and boarding- houses of the United States, or at the tables- d'hote upon the continent of Europe. As to clothing; each person will be supplied with materials of a certain value, selecting whatever kind he may please, so that there will be no monotony of dress. The health of the people under this system will be greatly improved: no diseases will be engendered by confinement, foul air, unwholesome labour, intoxication, or sexual intercourse. Early marriages will be pre- vented, and the human race will become greatly im- proved in strength and beauty, and will go on improving from age to age. Ample means of counteracting the evil effects of the climate, when too hot or too cold, will be invented; dwelling- houses will be properly warmed or cooled, as maybe required: and moreover the climate itself may be changed by the gigantic exertions of as- sociated industry, as forests will be reclaimed, marshes drained, and plains planted with trees. The means of locomotion will be vastly improved. Railroads, on an immense scale, will be formed, with corresponding en- gines and carriages. Migrations of entire associations from north to south in winter, and from south to north in summer, will be common, as well as holiday visits at all times of the year by those members who choose to work overtime for the sake of such holidays. Every association will receive such visitors with hospitality, and dismiss them with kindness. As to commerce with distant foreign countries, there can be but little, if any, necessity for it. If there be any such commerce, it can be conducted by members of the various associations who prefer an adventurous life; and of this class a sufficient number could easily be found, especially among the younger> nd unmarried members. VANITY.— The intoxication of vanity is far more danger- ous than that of wine. A VOICE FROM THE COAL MINES. BY A SUFFERER. LETTER I. SIR,— I trust you will excuse the liberty I have taken in addressing this letter to you; but knowing your well- earned character for philanthropy, and your earnest desire to assist and defend all classes of your oppressed countrymen, I make bold to solicit a place in the pages of your valuable Instructor for a few letters on the mining question, by one who has suffered in the mines. The miners are an important body of men, who, by their labour, have done the " state good service," and therefore deserve the protection and sympathy of their fellow- men, in order to encourage them in their hazard- ous calling of exploring the mineral world, and sending to the surface its riches for the general good of the community. As a class, they have many grievances to complain of, of which the great mass of the people know nothing, and, being ignorant of their existence, cannot be ex- pected to interest themselves for their removal. But, thanks to that mighty remover of ignorance, the print- ing press, the day has gone by when even the wrongs of the men whose lives are spent in the bowels of the earth can be kept from the knowledge of the world any longer. There is no class of men whose condition is so little known, or who have, to the present time, occupied so small a portion of the attention of the public press as tho miners have done. True, when one of those ap- palling catastrophes— an explosion— has taken place, whereby a number of men have, in a moment, been swept out of existence, the press has recorded the fact, and there it dropped. But I am but repeating the opinion of thousands of my order, when I say that your letters in that useful periodical, the MISCELLANY, have done more towards exposing to public view the wrongs of the miners than any othnr portion, or the whole of the press put together on this important subject. But " time tries all;" and when Lord Wharncliffe obtained a committee in the House of Lords, towards the close of the last session of parliament, " to inquire into the necessity, rfr non- necessity, of inspectors of mines," then the Times and other daily and weekly journals, both in the metropolis and the provinces, took up the question almost for the first time— thanks to them even for that— for, by so doing, they exposed one of the monster evils of which we complain— want of protection for our health and lives. I shall confine myself to a plain unvarnished state- ment of facts which came under my ow n observation, during betwixt twenty and thirty years of practical experience as a workman in the mines of this country. And I trust my letters, from their simplicity andyruth- fulness, will become a means for conveying to the people information and instruction on a subject of which so little is known at present. I shall therefore commence with the miner on his first entering the dreary caverns of the earth when a boy, and point out the various gra- dations he has to go through before he becomes what is termed a hewer, or in other words, a worker with the picks. His first employment is either as a trapper, a roller, or that of a helper to a drawer. To the former of these employments, boys of six or seven years of age are in- troduced; and I have known them younger than that. But now, thank God! under the provisions of Lord Ashley's Act, such a monstrosity, with others I shall have" to mention, are, I trust, destroyed for ever. The employment of the trapper is one, the effects of which in after life are lamentable in the extreme. This child is taken into the mine, placed behind a door in a small cell cut in the coal; he sometimes enjoys the lux- ury of a bit. of litter from the stables to sit upon, but oftener without. He is there left in total darkness and solitary, none to speak to, except when some one passes through the door, when it is the trapper's duty to open it and see that it be properly shut again. Many persons will think this is not very excessive labour for even a boy of six or seven years old. No, true: but that is one of the evils to be complained of. The poor little fellow has no exertion to keep his body in warmth; the place were he is stationed is cold and often damp, and the blood in his veins is almost frozen for want of exertion; and thus he is robbed of that essential stimulant to his physical and mental development, so necessary in youth, namely, exercise; and the results of which is an early grave, a debilitated frame, or an impaired intellect. And can this be otherwise, when we take into account his situation. We deprecate the separate and silent system introduced into our gaol discipline, and justly so, when from the testimony of the most eminent of tho medical profession we are told that its tendency is to drive tho unfortunate sufferers into a state of insanity. But what is gaol- punishment when compared with these poor boys? Prisoners are confined in separate cells; so are the trappers: far, far separated from the workings of the men. But even the former have this advantage over the latter: they are blessed with the glorious light of day, and therefore may amuse themselves in some way; but the trappers are confined in utter darkness for twelve or fourteen hours per diem, and often in the winter months never behold daylight from one Sunday to the other, being obliged to go to the pit before daylight in the morning and return to tkeir> homes after dark at night. The lives of scores of men are dependent upon a trapper's vigilance in keeping his door shut, it being the means of turning the supply ef atmospheric air into some particular department of the workings, and should the door be left open, that supply would be imme- diately cut off, and the men's lives endangered; there- fore, a trapper must sit his allotted time at his station, no matter what are the consequences to liis health, his life, or his intellect. Thus is the " coal miner" in the days of infancy, deprived of all that makes life worth living for: no means of receiving instruction, no mental training for him; he is doomed to toil, unremitting toil; and, as " ignorance is the tyrant's best title to power," lie becomes an easy prey to those who fatten upon his sweat, his blood, and his labour. To this want of proper care and training in his youth may be attri- buted the cold indifference with which he suffers wrong after wrong, contumely upon contumely, to be heaped upon him. Had he been taught to know the proper dignity of man, and learnt the respect due to him from, his fellow men, he would long ere this have thrown off the shackles which bind him, and have compelled the legislature to have given that protection which health and life requires. Then shame on those who would make forced ignorance a crime, and by depriving man of all those high prerogatives which should belong to every citizen, reduce him to the level of the brute. But the would- be moralist asks, " Why not send such boys to a Sunday or an evening school?" With all due deference to Sunday schools, and the praiseworthy ex- ertions of their conductors and teachers, who give up their day of rest for the purpose of instructing the rising generation in the rudiments of education, the Sunday school is not adapted to the necessities of the trapper boy— confined all the week as above stated: sel- dom seeing the light of the sun or enjoying the sweets of nature, his life is a dreary, sombre blank, with but one bright spot of hope, and that is his Sunday. To rob him • f this, would be to deprive hiin of his " all," and plunge him into dark and hopeless despair. To instruct youth you must make learning a pleasure to them; but take from the trapper- boy his Sunday, and you inflict a punishment both cruel and inhuman. Neither is the night school suited to his case. When his day of inactivity is over, on his return home, he wants some little recre- ation, and should he even be sent to the school in the evening, the same stupifying influence of inaction is introduced, and instead of learning he is sleeping. Therefore, the remedy must be more radical in its na- ture than either Sunday or evening schools. I speak feelingly on this subject, being a sufferer myself in the days of my youth; therefore, having partaken of their sufferings, and been acquainted with their wrongs, I do sympathise with the trapper- boy. ONE WHO HAS SUFFERED IN THE MINES. THE SCAVENGERS OF THE MINISTRY. WITHOUT going into the labyrinth of the public expendi- ture, whence flow, from countless sources, the mostprofligate extravagance and waste of the country's resources to pra- vide patronage for the government, to supply the insati- able cravings for places, pensions, and sinecures by the Aristocracy, their parliamentary supporters and creatures, denominated by Junius the " Scavengers of the Ministry," I will instance a few heads of expenditure in which great reductions may be effected. In the second Session of 1841, I brought under the consideration of the House of Commons the enormous increase in the cost of collecting the public revenue, which had been nearly doubled. I took, as an example, the year 1806— an eventful year of war— in which the cost was not less than that of other years about that period, but because a committee of the House of Commons had investigated the cost of the collection of that year, which amounted to 2,797,0002. for collecting 58,250,0002. of taxes, or a little more than 4j per cent. The amount of the taxes for the year ending the 5th of January last was 57,054,0002., ofwhich the cost of collection was 4,684,0002., or 8 J per cent. 1 In making that motion in 1841, I showed that the cost of the necessaries and luxuries of life was much less in that year than in 1806; but they are at present still lower, and may be estimated at fully one- third less than in 1806. These striking facts induced Sir Robert Peel, who had just come into office as Prime Minister, to appoint a commission to inquire into the whole system of collecting the taxes; but the only inquiry instituted by the commissioners was in the port of Liverpool, and their report exhibits the system there pur- sued as highly discreditable, both as to the expensiveness and inefficiency. The commissioners there came to a stand- still, and would move BO farther; of which I made re- peated complaints in the House. The cause, it was un- derstood, of cutting short the inquiry, was a discovery that enormous reductions might be effected, but which, if acted upon throughout the vast ramifications of the Customs, Excise, Stamps, Post- office, and the Estates of the Crown would lop off an immense amount of corrupt Government Patronage, wliiok is carried on, unseen and uncontrolled. Parliament having surrendered its great prerogative of supervision, each department intercepts the amount of the salaries and pensions of its officers from the taxes on the way from the people's pockets to the treasury, and in the annual account published, the net amount only is given, and no mention is made of the cost of collection. This is a public grievance of long standing; in reference to which, the Marquis of Lansdowne, in 1797, in his place in the House of Lords, said, that " Every officer seems to be lord of his own will, and to have unlimited power over the purse of the nation, instead of being— as the spirit of the constitution directed— under the constant check of Parliament."— William. Williams. THOMAS CARLTLE.— This author has just issued No. 1 of " Latter- day Pamphlets." The revolutions of 1848 are dealt with by Mr. Carlylo as keys to the mysteries of the present time. The flight of European kings before the wrath of the aroused millions proves to him that the true kings of men are not seated on the thrones ; aud that Democracy is the inevitable and universal fact of these days,— seen in all movements of the masses— heard in all speaking and writing — apparent in all thinking and acting. ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. A NEW HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER XVI. EDWARD IV. EDWARD IV, the son of Richard Duke of York, was born in 1441. The houses of York and Lancaster both had their origin in King Edward III, and' laws of priority making quarrels, and factions thus deluged England for years in the blood of its own sons. Edward may be called the Sardanapulu3 of English history. Keen as a bloodhound in the scent of blood, merciless as a tiger, hard and corrupt of heart; his licentious life, low amours, and fierce unrestrained passions have made him an object of hatred and abhorrence. The reigns of Edward and his predecessor, Henry VI, offer, perhaps, the most ex- traordinary fluctuations and vicissitudes of fortune any- where to be met with. Here we have Henry on the throne one day; Edward, having driven him off, suc- ceeds; then Henry, then Warwick master of the king- dom; then Edward ante more. So that the intricacy of the chronicles of this period forms a great difficulty • when the student would calmly arrive at the truth of things. The latter part of one reign is so mixed up • with the beginning of the next, that the endeavour to unravel the Gordian knot becomes a task almost hope- less. His father being killed at the battle of Wakefield, in 1460, he succeeded to his title, and the universal odium which had fallen upon Henry gave him hopes of attaining aloftier aim. After the great battle of St. Albans, gained by Margaret, Henry's queen, over the indomitable Earl of Warwick, Edward, gathering together the scattered remnants of the earl's forces, compelled this ainazon to retire towards the north. He relinquished the pursuit, entered London, and by universal acclamation was de- clared king, in March, 1461, being then in his twentieth year. Bloody, bold, and unrelenting, his fair exterior seemed to have shrouded every vice and every criminal impulse so widely scattered among men. As an instance of the refined brutality ef his dispo- sition— as expressive of the sanguinary spirit which these unnatural kings, with their still more unnatural strifes, had infused into the military license of the day, we record the following: A tradesman of London, whoso sign was the Crown ( ill- omened designation) having jocularly said that his son was heir to it, he was seized, condemned, and executed, by order of this monster! The battle of Towton, fought on the 20th March, 1461, first effectually confirmed him in his title. The victory was complete in his favour, and the slaughter was so immense, that 36,000 are said to have been killed! Henry and Margaret then fled into Scotland, and the savage butcheries, the executions which followed, struck terror and dismay into the stoutest of the Lancastrian party. The reader must bear in mind that the wars of this period were also denominated the wars of the roses. These harmless and lovely products of nature, which in general only waken the most human emotions within the mind of the spectator, were the heralds of bloodshed and ferocity— the emblems of deep, inextinguishable hatred between two parties. The house of Lancaster had assumed the red rose, that of York the white. Koch in his " Revolutions of Europe," states that " twelve pitched'battles were fought between the two roses. Eighty princes of the blood perished in the contest, and England during the time presented a tragical spectacle of horror and carnage. The battle of Hexham, fought in May, 1464, destroyed Margaret's hope, sent her with her son, fugitives de- pendent upon the protection of a robber, who proved to have possessed a soul whose magnanimity was far beyond standard of honour common t ® the time. It annihilated the aid sent her by Louis XI of France, and Henry was taken prisoner and cast into the Tower. Edward, for a period having a cessation from the hor. rors of war, ( which however had hideous charms for him, as he delighted in shedding blood with the avidity of a tiger) plunged into all manner of debauchery. He dishonoured his friend's families; plunged scores of people into misery i> y his indiscriminating lusts; insulted the wrongs he had heaped upon the unprotected; and finally, attempted the chastity of a Lady Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of Sir John Gray, of Groby. She, noble and pure as Lucretia, contemned his love, which grew so powerful that he descended from the imaginary loftiness of his state and married her. This, in one respect, was unfortunate for him, as he had sent the Earl of Warwick to negotiate a marriage with Bona of Savoy, sister to the Queen of France. Returning, after having satisfactorily conducted the preliminaries, the earl beheld himself a laughing- stock to the court; and the king, instead of excusing himself, merely bore his haughty head higher. From that mo- ment he found in Warwick a deadly and a dangerous enemy. Determined to lose no opportunity, for this violent man was as indefatigable in his feuds as his friendships, he alienated the king's brother, the Duke of Clarence, from Edward's interests, and gave him his own daughter ( with a princely dowry) to wife; while Edward on the other hand, to strengthen himself against France, had entered into treaty with Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, giving him Margaret, his sister, as wife. To this foreign " good relationship" may be added a league made with the Duke of Brittany; for the skill, policy, and deep treacherous dealing of Louis of France, his merciless revenges, and his diabolical sanctity made him one to be dreaded and feared far more than to be courted. I The result of Edward's conduct, his treatment of Warwick, together with several other things, created an insurrection in Yorkshire. This took place in 1469, and the battle of Banbury followed, by which it was quelled; the Earl of Warwick appearing to be, ostensibly, the chief agent, in putting down a revolt that for a time threat- ened to become a revolution, the latter of which, we need scarcely say, being of a very different complexion to the former. The king, in this, as in a subsequent disturbance which arose in Lincolnshire, gave little merov to the leaders. Torture first, and then execution, were the means he took in order to deter others from the like conduct. The reader will observe that we are here relating some of the events which took place while Henry was iu Scot- land, and which were described in the last chapter. Warwick and Clarence had been ordered to levy troops in order to oppose this last riot in Lincolnshire; but as they declared against the abuses of the government, when the insurgents were defeated, these two powerful nobles fled into France, and Louis with great diplomatic skill, brought about a reoonciliation between Queen Margaret and Warwick. The consequence of this was, that Louis fitted out a strong body of troops, with which Warwick and Clarence landed in England. So great was the popularity of the former that in a short space of time he was enabled to march against Edward with a body of 60,000 mon. Clarence had been, in the meantime, tam- pered with, and upon a promise of pardon from his brother ( Edward), agreed to forsake the interests of Warwick, and to embrace those of the king. The rapidity of the earl's movements, however, prevented Clarence from fulfilling his intentions. Edward, learning of this for- midable attempt against him, went to meet Warwick's forces. At Nottingham, where the two armies approached, Ed- ward had a very narrow escape from seizure. By the treachery of the Marquis of Montague, Edward, who placcd great confidence in him, was nearly seized. De- termining to aid his brother the Earl of Warwick, Montague rose up in the night, led his adherents to the king's tent; but the war- cry of the Lancastrian party suddenly reached his ears, and amid the frightful din and the butcherly strife that ensued, and by the assistance of Lord Hastings, his chancellor, he escaped, and mounting his horse rode with fiery haste to Lynn in Norfolk; and going on board some vessels in the bay, set sail for Holland, leaving the Earl of Warwick master of the kingdom. Such a sudden reverse as this can scarcely be paralleled even by the sudden deposal of Louis Philippe in the recent French Revolution. Thus the Lancastrian party was at the ascendant once more, and the restoration of Henry VI was the next consequence that followed. Warwick and Clarence being declared regents, as the utter imbecility of Henry vvaj become mere parish gossip. Few men were ever more univer- sally despised then this unhappy thread- paper of a man, about whom so much trouble was taken, and who with idiotic unconcern waded to aud fro in an ocean of blood! Edward, arriving with somo difficulty and no little danger at Alctnaer, a part of Holland, made applica- tion for help to the Duke of Burgundy, who listened with an unusual coldness to him; for irate and stormy as Charle# the Bold was, he lias generally received credit for frank dealing and good faith; but the truth was, that political interests alone had brought about a league with Edward; for the duke had always been partial to the house of Lancaster. Henry VI was again recog- nized by parliament, and Edward's hopes appeared to be altogether extinguished. The precipitation of Warwick at this time determined the Dulce of Burgundy in his course, who was somewhat doubtful of what he should do. He resolved to assist Edward, as the earl had sent soldiers into the Low Coun- tries, governed by Charles's brother- in- law. In March, 1471, Edward was enabled, with a small squadron, to land 2000 men at Ravenspur, in Norfolk, and a number of his partizans flocked daily to him. With the aid of these, he entered York, and then turned his march towards Loudon. All the animosities of the roses broke out afresh, and the people were threatened with a re- newal of the horrors of the civil wars which had raged for so many years in the bosom of the country. The administration of Warwick had become unpopu- lar for many reasons; but this chiefly arose from the reaction which resulted in the detestation all classes felt towards Henry. Be that as it may, when Edward came up to London, Montague, whose desertion had first caused Edward to fly, once more returned to him with 12,000 of the great earl's troops; Edward was not in a condition to be " nice about trifles," and help from a double traitor was better than no help at all. He was received with a joyous frenzy in London; and as War- wick would listen to no terms, nor accept or give any conditions, it was necessary that one great battle should decide the quarrel. This was the battle of Barnet, fought on the 14th of April, in the same year. Edward was victorious, and the desperate Warwick, who had fought on foot in the thickest of the dreadful battle, was slain. Edward had issued orders that no quarter whatsoever was to be given! and the slaughter in the pursuit exceeded that committed on the field. On the very same day Queen Margaret, with the young prince, landed with a small auxiliary French force at Weymouth; but too late to be of service. She held out for a few days, retreating from place to place; but the defeat at Tewkesbury, on the Severn, left her and her son prisoners in Edward's hands, who, on this occasion, proved himself to be possessed of that ferocious barbarity attributed to a Hun, and, but that he did not eat his prisoners, was as destitute of human pity as an Ashantee. Henry himself was in the Tower, where he soon after died. The young prince he struck on the mouth with his gauntlet, for making him a reply for which he ought, at least, to have been respected. Some worthy nobles, gentlemen moved by zeal and loyalty, beheld in this dastardly act a signal by which they might please the crowned monster. Among the first was Clarence ( traitors make excellent spies and executioners), Lord Hastings, and Sir Thomas Gray, they dragged the unfortunate youth into the next cham- ber, and incontinently poniarded him on the spot. Edward, having thus all but exterminated the House of Lancaster, had no other opposition to contend against; and the reader would probably ejapeet that, as a violent contrast, a golden age should begin in England. Edward did not reign himself, but plunged headlong into a cours of depraved debauchery with that suicidal insanity- common to men of his nature. Men will tolerate murder rather than they will tolerate brutal lust. He was retailed from this infamous course for a time by the Duke of Burgundy requiring his aid, and Ed- ward's hopes of recovering at least a portion of the lost French daminions were awakened. He pa'ssed over to France with an army of 10,000 men, and Charles was to join him with his forces. St. Pol, the constable of France, had also promised to join them; and the par- liament was necessitated to open its purse for this pupose. It is extraordinary to read of the willingness with which, cm every occasion of this kind, assistance was given, though afterwards it brought repentance and poverty. The parliament voted a tenth of rents on this plea; but, as in every other case, they found it resulted in a sort of temporary pauperism. The consequences o£ illegal conquests always brought their punishments with them. Edward landed his army at Calais, and found, to his chagrin, that neither did the constable open the pro- mised gates, nor Charles bring his army to the field; having in his impetuosity carried every man against the Duke of Lorraiu. Charles afterwards came to excuse his breach of promise; and Edward, disgusted at his conduct, listened to the overtures made by the politic Louis. This king gave the nobles of Edward's court enormous presents, patronised familiarly every one near the per- son of the king, and courted, with the most assiduous attentions, his intercourse with Edward. He gave Edward down 50,000 crowns, and agreed to pay an annual sum, neither more nor less than a tribute of 50,000 a- year, during their joint lives. The treaty of Pecquigni, a3 it was termed, displayed the craft of Louis ( certainly to his own advantage) as it did the mean and avaricious dis- position of Edward. Among the stipulations made was one to the effect that Queen Margaret should be released. Louis paid 50,000 crowns for her ransom. This woman who, with the spirit of a warrior, combined a daring of disposition and a cruelty scarcely exceeded by Edward himself, retired from the world and ended her days in—- " tranquillity!" Edward now abandoned the interests of the Duke of Burgundy, and suffered Louis to gather up the spoils, out of which he could easily spare the money he so lavishly expended, and then returned to his infamous course of life. The next matter which engaged his attention was the putting of his brother Clarence out of tho way. Having deserted his friend Warwick, and been of great assist- ance to Edward, he never could gain the king's confidence. Whatever ground there may have been for suspicion, certain it is that Edward, with unnatural haste, hurried on the trial, stood in person as his accuser, and on the most frivolous charges so influenced the two Houses, that the one prejudged him, and the Commons petitioned for his death. He may have richly deserved it; in fact, we do not question this; but certainly not upon the charges made against him. Clarence fell a victim to tho jealous hatred of his brother, and the manner of death being left to his own choice, he desired to be drowned in a butt of malmsey. Whimsical as it was, it was at least characteristic of tlie man who doubtless was inordinately attached to that liquor. This took place in 1478. With the termination of the civil wars terminated all that is of any interest in the life of Edward. Destitute of talents for civil administration, the progress of the people exhibits little to enliven the horrible gloom of this period. We seem to be moving in a place of skulls, and are sickened with the fumes of blood. Edward pro- jected the most splendid marriages for his daughters, but none of them were ever completed. A rupture with Scotland throws a little animation over the last days of the king, which was settled by the Duke of Gloucester. While making preparations for another French war, caused by the perfidy of Louis, Edward was seized with a distemper, brought on by his excesses, and died in the forty- second year of his age, and twenty- third of his reign. He left two sons, Edward Prince of Wales, aged thir- teen, and Richard, Duke of York, aged nine. It wilt be seen that the hand of retributive justice followed in the footsteps of all crowned murderers; for in almost every case, prior and subsequent, the blood of the chil- dren has been required to wipe away the crimes of tho father. EDWIN ROBEEIS. , THE INEQUALITIES OF THE TAXES.— Probate and legacy duties form only one of the iniquities of the stamp laws. The unequal rate at which smaller transactions are taxed, as com- pared with the greater, adopting a principle the reverse of an ad valorem scale, is most unjust and oppressive. The stamp upon a £ 100 sale amounts to five per cent.; upon a £ 300 sale, to £ 2 10s. per cent.; upon a £ 500 sale to £ 1 14s. 3d. per cent.; and above that sum to only one per cent. If a poor man buy a cottage for £ 10, he has 10s., or one- twentieth part of the purchase- money, to pay for a conveyance. If a rich man buy an estate worth £ 50,000, the stamp duty is only one- hundred- and- eleventh part of the purchase- money, or £ 450. A similar unequal tax is incurred in borrowing small sums on bond or mortgage, while special favour is shown to those who borrow large sums. If a man has eight windows in his house, he is assessed 16s. 6d.; if he has one more, he is charged 4s. 6d. for it. If a nobleman has 180 windows, he is charged £ 46 lis. 3d.-, if he has one more he is charged only Is. ( id.; and he may have as many more additional windows as he pleases at the same low rate of assessment. It is hard that a poor servant girl, who advertises for a place of all- work, should be subjected to a duty of Is. 6d., while the advertise- ment for the sale of an estate would pay no more. Perhaps this inequality is unavoidable, if a duty be levied on advertise- ments ; but why are advertisements selected for taxation, if the pressure cannot be more equitably apportioned 2— Wade. w 134 REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. THE ARISTOCRACY: ITS ORIGIN, PROGRESS, AND DECAY. THE Aristocracy of England, blind to a species of dan- ger which European history reveals to them in legible characters, saw nothing in a rupture with France, but one of those tvars and revolutions of ordinary policy, a squabbling of kings, which pass away without leaving any vestige, except debt, of their transitory and igno- minious operation. Had the English people at that time been alive to their own interests, they would have made a resolute stand against the king and his nobility plung- ing this country into a war with French democracy, merely to uphold their own despotic absurd notions of the divine and vested rights of monarchs. A religious passion for freedom animated and directed the spread of republicanism in France, and as Gibbon, when de- scribing the spirit which aroused the Crusaders, remarks: —" A nerve was touched of exquisite feeling; and the sensation vibrated to the heart of Europe." The ene- mies of liberty in England were thoroughly convinced that had the republican government of France been allowed by the other powers of Europe to maintain its imposing attitude and magnificent institutions,' the con- trast between a re- invigorated, re- modelled, and re- orga- nized state,, without either a monarchy or an Aristocracy, would have presented such a formidable and favourable contrast to the corrupt, depressing, and enslaving forms of recognised sovereignty in Europe, that the people would awake as though from a dream, and realise in the eighteenth century, for a more glorious cause, the elo- quent description we have quoted from Gibbon. To combat the advance of republicanism, to suppress the free delivery of opinions, to crush liberty in its bud, to what infamous and wicked means did the king and Aristocracy of England resort? They formed a con- federation of kings, purposely to achieve their own terrible idea of gathering the whole civilised world under the iron yoke of military despotism. The Duke of Grafton dec'ared, that " the disease of republicanism in France must be considered as contagious; that the En- glish government would do well not to check, but to annihilate such pernicious doctrines; and the armies and fleets of Europe cannot ue more righteously employed than in sweeping from trie earth those propagators of such vile such atrocious doctrines! Things must be re- stored in France, at any sacrifice, to their former posi- tion." This outburst was received by the lords with vehement applause. And what was the position, we ask, of France previous to the revolution? M. Thiers, cer- tainly no friend to democracy, thus describes it, " The condition of the country, both political and economical, • was intolerable. There was nothing but privilege,— privilege vested in individuals, in classes, in towns, in provinces, and even in trades and professions. Every- thing contributed to check industry and the natural genius of man. All the dignities of the state, civil, ecclesiastical, and military, were exclusively reserved to certain individuals. No man could take up a profusion without certain titles, aud compliance with certain pecu- niary conditions. Even the favours of the crown were converted into family property." Back to such a corrupt end baneful system, much resembling the present one of England, was theAristoeracy of 1794 anxious to force the French nation by means of shedding English blood and squandering English treasure. The first campaigns against French freedom ia Hol- land, under the Duke of York, were of the most melancholy and disastrous description; himself, utterly incompetent as a general, assumed an authority on the presumption of his royal blood, which neither by talent, knowledge, or experience he had the remotest claim to. His royal highness's intellect, together with his military skill, scarcely fitted him to fill efficiently the situation of a corporal. But being a royal duke, his whim for soldiering was gratified at the expense of the people's money, blood, and reputation. The instant this campaign • was set on foot, a hungry swarm of vultures— aristocrats ' and their connexions— rushed forward, eager to graft corruption upon the organization of our military arrange- ments. A shoal of noble sprigs were planted in dif- ferent situations in the commissariat and diplomatic departments. Byngs, Howards, Grenvilles, Russells, Pelhams, and Percys,— young, inexperienced, but unpro- vided members of the nobility were drafted into lucra- tive^ positions; and what were the results? Defeat aud disgrace followed close upon each other. Our troops, through the incompetency of their commanders, were . ridiculed and mistrusted by our allies, and openly laughed at by the enemy. General Pichegru sarcastically re- marked, " The Duke of York and his staff are surely accomplished gentlemen, for they invariably give up their comfortable quarters upon a stranger's approach." Again, [• when the misfortunes of the English army were at their climax, the general observed, " Messieurs the dukes and milors begin to discover that the marshy flats of Hol- land are not so delightful as the carpeted floors of St. James's Court, and scamper back in all hurry, under different pretexts." Immense sums were voted by parliament, but they became so diminished by the numerous aristocratic cor- morants that fastened themselves upon every department that a dreadful winter overtaking the army in Holland, then labouring under every disadvantage of bad general- ship and a fraudulent commissariat, fever and disease of a fatal character, occasioned by want of caution and insufficiency of food, carried off our unfortunate soldiers as though infected with a pestilence. " Dodsley's Register," for the year 1795, thus describes the condition of this un- fortunate army:—" Our hospitals, which were so lately crowded, are, for the present, considerably thinned. Removing the sick iu waggons, without clothing suffi- cient to keep them warm in this rigorous season, has sent some hundreds to their eternal home; and the shameful neglect which prevails through all that depart- ment, makes our hospitals mere slaughtering houses. Without covering, without attendance, and even without clean straw or sufficient shelter from the weather, they are thrown down in heaps, unpitied and unprotected, to perish by contagion, while legions of vultures, down to the stewards, nnrses, and numberless dependants pamper their bodies and fill their coffers with the nation's trea- sure; and, like beasts of prey, fatten on the carcases of their unhappy fellow- creatures, of whom not one in a hundred survives." In such a way were our brave soldiers abroad neg- lected, and left to die by tbe aristocratic government at home, for whose very existence they were then fighting. Nor was the navy a whit better treated by the hereditary locusts, as we find on perusing the follow- ing extract from Junius, addressed to the vicious descendant of a vicious prostitute, the Duke of Grafton; a name which appears for ever destined to be branded with rapacity, selfishness, and corruption. " The world," writes Junius to the duke, " knows in what a hopeful condition you delivered the navy to your successor, and in what a condition we found it in the moment of dis- tress. You were determined it should continue in the situation in which you left it. Our religious, benevolent, generous sovereign has no objection selling his own timber to his own admiralty to repair his own ships, nor to putting the money into his own pocket. People of a religious turn naturally adhere to the principles of the church; whatever they require falls into mortmain." A surveyor- general was appointed to report upon the most fitting royal chases and forest in Eugland to supply the wants of our navy, and reported that Whittlebury Forest, of which tile Duke of Grafton was ranger, offered the best supply of timber for the national neces- sities. The deputy, upon being informed that the war- rant was signed and sealed at London, zealous in the public service, crosses the country and begins hi3 duty. The Duko of Grafton was furious at what he termed an " illegal and unwarrantable encroachment upon his privileges;" and upon being told that the nation required some timber for its naval service, angrily exclaimed, " Damn the nation; let it find timber elsewhere, and pay for it!" Ilia grace pursued the unfortunate deputy surveyor with the most rancorous hostility, aud insisted that he should be dismissed his situation. " You have," continued Junius, " ruined an innocent man and his family. In what language shall I address so black, so cowardly a tyrant? Thou, worse than one of the Brunswicks and all the Stuarts! To them who knew Lord North, it is unnecessary to say, that he was mean and base enough to submit to you. After ruining the surveyor's deputy for acting without the warrant, you attacked the war- rant itself. You declared that it was illegal, and swore in a fit of foaming, frantic passion, that it never should be executed. You asserted upon your honour that, in the grant of the rangership of Wliittlebury Forest, made by Charles II to one of his bastards ( from whom I make no doubt of your descent) the property of the timber is vested in the ranger. I have examined the original grant; and now, in the face of the public, con- tradict you directly upon the fact. The very reverse of what you have asserted upon your honour, i3 the truth. The lords of the treasury recall their warrant; the deputy surveyor is ruined for doing his duty; the oaks keep their ground; the king is defrauded; and the navy of England may perish for want of the finest and best timber in the island. And all this is submitted to, to appease the Duke of Grafton! to gratify the man who has involved the kingdom in confusion and distress, and who, like a treacherous coward, deserted his master in the midst of it!" Truly, the existence of such a name as Grafton, in a legislative body of England, is a foul and lasting disgrace and affront to the whole nation. " The soldiers' friend," the Duke of York, leaving his army when he beheld to what a deplorable state his un- wise generalship had reduced it, returned to London and flew into the arms of his concubine, Mary Ann Clarke, there to drown in pleasure the remembrance of his defeats, disgraces, and disasters. Taxation was ra- pidly on the increase; the burden of Excise, shamefully shifted by the Aristocracy from their land upon the people's commodities, was growing to a fearful extent, and the amount required for the year 1797 was forty- two millions of money. This heavy taxation and increase of debt were said to be in consequence of the " king's great predilection for the lavish expenditure of the royal family, and his anxious determination to continue the disastrous war." Whilst the people were thus oppressed by burthens they were ill calculated to support, and whilst a load of after distress was being accumulated for future generations, the princes and their Aristocratic satellites Were revelling in every description of wasteful profusion and extravagant profligacy. Amongst the most favoured of the companions of the Prince of Wales was the late Marquis of Hertford, a man who by his beastly licentiousness and filthy, depraved habits would have degraded the very humblest aud meanest position of life, but whose rank and wealth rendered him a wel- come and acceptable guest within the fashionable circles of the Aristocracy. This man's mother, Isabella Ingram, daughter of Lord Irvine, and wife of the Marquis of Hertford, was a fitting parent for such a profligate son. Her intrigues with the prince were open, and scandalous; although his senior by many years, she contrived to in- spire the royal voluptuary with a transient passion, and it was a matter of notoriety that on many occasions the young marquis not only discovered the lovers in their amorous enjoyments, but frequently jested with the prince upon the subject, laughingly styling him his " left- handed father." Eucouraged in his vicious pursuits by the Aristocracy, who cried him up as " the most perfect gentleman in Europe," George thought not of his future people's sufferings, but occupied himself by wringing money from them to supply his extravagancies. ALPHA. ( To be continued in our next) THE PENNYCUICK AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. THE QUEEN'S AND THE PRINCE FIELD- MARSHAL'S HEALTH. IN No. 8 we stated that at a dinner of the Pennycuick Agricultural Association, the chairman, Mr. Graham, refused to propose the Queen's health, as being irrele- vant to the object and purposes of the meeting. The source from whence we derived our information was a correspondence forwarded to us by Mr. Graham him- self, as chairman of the meeting. We unhesitatingly and joyfully offered it to our readers as a proof of the independence, uprightness, and manliness of the Penny- cuick farmers. A few days subsequent to the appear- ance of No. 8, we received a communication from Messrs. Cairns and Moffat, of Edinburgh, calling upon us to contradict the statement put forward. After citing the paragraph, these gentlemen proceeded to say; " We are instructed by the secretary of the society to assure you that the report above quoted from your pub- lication is wholly untrue, and that you must have beea grossly imposed on by your informant." Believing, from the tenour and style of this letter, that we had, perhaps, been imposed upon, and having no personal knowledge of Mr. Graham, we readily com- plied with the request contained in Messrs. Cairns and Moffat's letter, and contradicted the objectionable state- ment. Upon this contradiction appearing, we received a letter signed T. E. Graham, persisting in the original particulars, and containing the following extract: " Words are totally insufficient to pourtray my wonder and vexation, mingled, I must say, with some feeling of irritation when my eyes fell upon the paragraph wherein my communication to you, stating that at the annual meeting of the Pennycuick Agricultural Society, held in the house of Mr. J. Henderson, upon the evening of Friday, the 7th December last, the toast of Victoria, and afterwards that of Prince Albert, were disallowed re- sponse to, the former as apart from and foreign to the duties of the evening, and the latter as unworthy of such honour, having his poor rates still unpaid and dis- puted, was false and a mere fabrication,' such an occur rence never having taken place.' Now, sir, for my individual vindication, and for your respected satisfac- tion, as well as* for the honour of a cause I deeply venerate — the truthful- voiced and noble- actioned de- mocracy — I beg to convey to you my most unquali- fied refutation of such an audaciously unsupportable assumption, which I conceive and feel to be the basest and most dastardly falsehood in which my name has ever been and hope ever again to be implicated. A » chairman of the meeting surely I had observation of those proceedings which your correspondent affirms never oeeurred. I surely saw and heard Mr. *, of the village of Pennycuick, after the toast from the chair, ' Prosperity to our society,' and sundry others had been delivered, propose the queen's health; for the pur- pose, as he afterwards told me, o£ testing the politics of the company, and I most certainly know that I refused its approval. I surely must remember that Mr * moved for the toast to the health of Prince Albert as a farmer, which I said could not be accepted; neither would it until he better gained our approbation and esteem by paying his rates and supporting tbe poor a3 we do. In fine, and in fact, I hereby solemnly asseverate that without the most miuute reservation or mitigation, I affirm and shall uphold and vindicate the, truth of every letter in my communication to you; and this in the face of any one who may impugn an item of its veracity and at every risk." After receiving the communication before mentioned from Messrs. Cairns and Moffat, assuring us that our report was wholly untrue, we confess ourselves to have been bewildered at the energetic protest of Mr. Graham, and forthwith, determining to unravel the mystery, com- municated direct with him, so as to avoid any possibility of being, as the professional gentlemen assured us we had previously been, imposed upon. An answer was received containing this, to us, conclusive extract:— " When our annual meeting was held in December last, I refused to drink the health of Victoria as altogether apart from the duties of a chairman; as it was with the toast of Prince Albert, only I added the remark about his not having paid his poor rates. Both of which toasts, as far as my present or bye- past consciousness exhibits, were by the whole company present thrown aside, my example having been sufficient to deter them from so unworthy and ignominious a humiliation as the drinking of it." Now, having thus given our . readers the benefit of every particle of information we possess upon the sub- ject, we must leave them to judge between the contend- ing parties. To ourselves, at all events, the censure conveyed in Messrs. Cairns and Moffat's letter pub- lishing a statement wholly untrue cannot, in justice, be merited; for, if the chairman of a meeting declines either proposing or drinking the health of a certain party, it was certainly refused to be druuk by one person present,— even supposing, which appears doubtful, that others responded to it,— and that a most important one. THE INTELLIGENT WORKING- CLASSES.— The great poli- tical uud social problem of the time is furnished hv the con- dition and attitude of the working classes. Here is the hidden ruck which calls for the most consummate pilotage. The immense and constantly increasing numerical force of these classes— the general abjectness of heir physical and mental condition— the intelligence and talent displayed by what may bo termed their aristocracy— the growing sense of their degradation, and the growing willingness to ascribe that degradation to social aud political causes, not to the eternal ordination of nature; all point to danger present, and danger for the future, if prompt and efficient remedies be not found for whatever of evil may lurk in these gloomy portents — The Revolution in France. • The names are give: i in full, but as it might, be disagreeable to the gentlemen having them published at length vre t'orb - urdoing go, r I i ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. A SHORT COMMENT ON A SEN- TENCE IN THE QUEEN'S SPEECH. IT is a bold thing to criticise royal attributes ; to dare to make a comment upon what a queen says or does; _ to imagine that, in a speech elaborated in the royal brains and the royal heart, and written down with royal fingers for the Lord Chancellor to read ( because we repudiate that useless calumny which says that the queen does neither of these); to imagine, we repeat, that there were things in this aforesaid speech far better left out, and that a few omitted things inserted would have made a far nobler feature in the gracious words of her most gracious majesty 1 We fear the queen is misinformed; that she gazes across the long perspective of a country by means of glasses which " darkly" shadow things to her. From the Cove ef Cork to Dublin Bay all was pouleur de rose : no squalid poverty, no skeleton- ribbed paupers, no horror, were jeen. Beyond the noble rivers that flow with no brave crafts upon them, spreading their plenteous treasures as they go to the sea; beyond the blue mountains, where, in the distant valleys, roofless cottages, charred timhers, haggard ruins of every shape and form, the great point of this picture of death being so many men, women, and children in ruin too, famishing in the ditches, dying in the night air; beyond those tranquil, solemn mountains, drying their charming beauties in the sunlight, or borrowing the dreamy, fairy beauties of times far more happy, when the moonshine fell down their swart sides, and the stars peeped forth ; beyond these were the people huddled, nursing their mighty miseries, a prey, helpless and innumerable, to every evil that the great God sends upon man, and that man in addition, with such pertinacious industry persists in creating and perpetuating. « " Protectionists" above all! Yes: beyond these were the rags and filth and the fever of poor Ireland, hidden from the eyes of Queen Victoria; else would her woman's heart have been taught lessons more enduring. The livid, hollow, faces of mothers nursing dead children would have touched her— a mother herself. The shadow of death walking among them, making each spot a plague- smitten Ashdod; she would have seen this, and being woman and the pro- tectress of the people, she would have made eviction a capi- tal crime ; she would have said, " Messrs. Poor- law Com- missioners, you do your work wrongly, or rather, you do no work at all. Get you gone— to Orcus— to the blackest pit, if you will! but gf t you gone ; I will look to this my- self." Ah 1 would that she had seen the misery of the people and taken pity upon it; she would have said, " My lord duke, men say you are made of iron, or have a heart of iron, or something of that sort. I repudiate your doctrine of sending dragoons and bayonets, and filling Irish streets with blood and massacre; I love not that you • hould urge such strong measures against your own coun- trymen— your own brethren too. No! we will try an- other." This, then, is what Queen Victoria, ignorant of all that happens in Ireland, before the time she was there, while she was there, and after her having left there— this is what she says:— " Her majesty, in her late visit to Ireland, derived'the highest gratification from the loyalty and attachment manifested by all classes of her subjects. Although the effects of former years of scarcity are painfully felt, in that part of the United Kingdom, they are mitigated by the present ABUNDANCE of food and the tranquillity which remains!" We repeat that if Queen Victoria,— for she is said to be kind and womanly,— if she had known but a little of what the papers state of the miseries that have been haunt- ing the people, that is among them at this very hour, she would never have allowed words like these to be spoken in her name. Whether this speech was concocted with her knowledge, by her sanction, or not, she would not have permitted language that is a mockery of human distress to have been spoken;, she is responsible to God and to man for them. We will not instance the last appalling workhouse catastrophes which have taken place there within the last three weeks. One occurred at Killarney, and twenty- seven women were burned and killed. One at Kenmore, by which " several of the inmates perished in the flames." A third, a horrible accident at Limerick from an alarm of fire, by which twenty- seven human beings were killed, and twenty- eight dreadfully injured. These are not to be attributed to aught else than as unhappy casualties whicKno foresight could avert, further than that there ought not to have been any necessity for this work- house business at all. No ; these we set aside as refer- able to the matter in hand. " The effects of scarcity are mitigated." Where? Not in a land where still family upon family are thrown house- less upon the world to die and starve in ditches and on the high roads. Not in a country where, week after week, the dead, from absolute famine, add to the great mass already laid in the ground ! " Tranquillity prevails.'" 8urely not in Ireland, where the condition of the people compels them to have recourse to the most desperate means, either to hold their own or to be avenged for real or imaginary things done them; where assassination after assassination is as regularly re- corded as the weeks roll by. Not in poor Ireland, where secret societies continue to be organised in the dead of the night, and fresh combinations are made to resist or retaliate, as the case may be. In a recent paper we took up. but read so hastily that we cannot remember date ot place, :. letter describes a scene of such vampyre- like horror, that one puts the hand over the eyes to shut out a loathed, a disgusting pic- ture. There, where the dead are flung to rot in the ground with barely a cover around them, with such irreverent haste that the loose eartk scarcely hides the scant pauper coffin ; dogs came to rake up the mould, tear the thin planks asunder, and, like ghouls, run off, here with a limb, there with a skull, and go growlingly away with their horrible offal, in order to lick their bloody jaws at pleasure, and gorge over their frightful food! No mitigation there, where the lands are a barren waste, where the cabin is empty, the plough rotting in its place, the labourer an emigrant, a pauper, or dying daily of typhus, cholera, and want of food. None! No, despair cannot be changed into smiles of radiant happiness by words. Let them be fair, promising, melo- dious as the language of the poet, and as full of beautiful images as the poet's imagination can make them, they are but Utopian after all: they are the expressions of what ought to be, not a description of what is. PRISON DISCIPLINE- NO. III. AFTER my committal by the magistrate, I was locked in a cell behind the office till six o'clock, P. M., when I was con- ducted by a posse of officers to the common prison van at the door, and conveyed in that to Newgate witli the thieves and vagabonds who had been committed during the day. The van being divided into pens, or boxes, no communication can be made by the prisoners to one another, and so small an amount of light is admitted that it is impossible to dis- tinguish any object. The effect this ride, although a short one, had on me, will I believe be among my most lasting re- miniscences of the consequences of the victory of April 184S. It was most oppressive and choking. After the van had turned round the corners of a few streets, I had no perception of the direction we were going in; all seemed whirling round; the air was stifling, and it was indeed with pleasure that I felt the motion cease, and upon the door being opened I beheld Newgate, the gloomiest of all gloomy- looking prisons, the roughed and massive walls of which seem to be scowling at the governor's gaily painted house by their side, with its fine curtains and cheerful- looking flowers. I was marched into the hall, where I saw for the first time " mes compagnons du voyage."— two noted felons and two scamps of pickpockets, as JL found out afterwards. I was searched while in the entrance- hall by one of the plumpest and best- tempered looking gaolers which I should think all England could produce. Notwithstanding that, I explained, while being searched, that I war, a political prisoner, and not charged with any criminal offence. I was turned into a room with the prisoners who were brought there with mp, and in which I found several others ( if pos- sible) of a more degrading and disgusting appearance. The furniture of the room consisted of one form fastened to the floor, aud tiers of what looked like broad shelves one above another, each shelf provided with a rope mat and two rugs for bed and bedding,— well stocked too with vermin, as the not- over delicate expressions evinced during the njght of those who hoped to find forgetfulness in the " balm of hurt minds, nature's second course." I did not venture on so desperate a risk ; the certainly not classical remarks of the really- to- be- pitied men I was with, upon the kind of biting, or crawling, they were experiencing, and the horrid stench from a filthy closet in one corner of the room, rendered this ever- to. be- remembered night the most annoying if not the most sad of my existence. The longest quarter of an hour is but fifteen minutes I Day light came; and as soon as I saw an officer, I repeated the request which I had made the previous evening, that, I might see the governor; but ere ho made his appearance, I had seen, by climbing up to the window, Ernest Jones, Fus- sell, aud the others who had been committed the previous day to me, in the yard, shaking their rugs and mate. When I saw the governor, I complained of having be-' n huddled up with such a set: he admitted I ought not to have been, aud I was removed to an upper room which had been allotted to Jones, Fussell, Sharp, aud Williams; it would not be easy to express our mutual satisfaction at being altogether; it is said " a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind," and cer- tainly from that moment till we were, alas ! finally parted, a truly fraternal feeling reigned paramount, I believe, in all our hearts. Our ongratulations were not ended, when an officer came and ordered us to wash out the room and down the stairs. We were somewhat amazed at this; but laughingly, we got the water, pails, and flannels, and performed the feat to our own satisfaction, at feast, seeing that it was the first appear- ance of some of us in that character. I saw the prison gruel; but, before trial, prisoners are allowed to keep them- selves, that is to'say, to have their meals from a neighbour- ing coffee- house; but should I ever be placed in a like position I would not incur the expense; nor would I advise my friends if they are likely to be convicted,— to the prison diet they must eventually come,— and in this as in many other things, the first step is the most dreaded. When the governor made his daily round, we stated to him the indignity we had sub- mitted to in washing the room and stairs, and we were never required to repeat the dose; it is but' fair that I should here remark upon the general urbanity and disposition of the governor and the authorities towards us: we were allowed a knife anc> fork with our dinner, and we had the free use of pens, ink, and paper. Till I was released on bail, I had no- thing/ urther to complain of; my only regret at leaving was, that all were not euabled to pass at least a few days with their families, and in arranging their affairs previous to their being tried; as from the first moment we all felt certain of being convicted, knowing we should be tried by juries of special constables, and judges who had publicly declared their readiness to sentence if the juries would convict. It would be useless to enter into any detailed account of the trials; they are now a matter of history, and will long be remembered by all parties interested, either in maintaining the fiction of our glorious constitution, or in effecting those salutary reforms necessary to adapt the spirit of our laws to the present age and increased intelligence of the people. After conviction there was an end to all indulgence. I was taken back to Newgate, placed again in the same room with the prisoners who had been tried, great care being taken to prevent the slightest communication taking place between those who were convicted, aud those who were still to be tried. Is this for the purpose of keeping the latter in ignorance of any circumstance that might be favourable to them, and thus rendering their conviction more certain ? One by one, as they were found guilty, my fellow sufferers were brought back; and by the end of the week we were again united, convicted prisoners under sentences of from two years to two years aud three months' imprisonment for having expresses! opinions not palatable to the powers there are; or for having been present at meetings where sueh opinions were enunciated. Now began the prison diet. Grue! and dry bread for break- fast, meat and potatoes for dinner, alternate days soup; gruel and bread again for supper— no knife or fork allowed; those who were determined to overcome their repugnance to such food, were compelled to pull it to pieces iu their hands and t( et i as they best could, and to lap up the soup and gruel with a piece of crust of bread, not even a spoon being allowed to eat it with. After a few days passed with this way, and speculating upon where we should have to pass the time of our sentences, but always calculating upon being allowed to remain together, the van came for conveying us to our destined prisons. Looney was taken to Horse- monger Lane, I, with the others, to the Westminster Bride- well. Upon our arrival, we were called upon to give up every article of property, not being allowed to retain even the small- est piece of paper. While waiting to be examined by tile surgeon, I observed a notice hanging up in the reception- room, stating that the silent system was to be strictly observed by convicts in the prison; I understood this to be applicable only to those sentenced to transportation, as they are generally under- stood to be the convicts. After having seen the doctor, we were taken to an adjoining cell and compelled to undress, and adopt the not very picturesque costume of the prison,— a suit of coarse blue cloth, coarse cheek shirts, worsted socks, and heavy- shoes, the whole crowned with a peaked worsted tin- coloured. cap. Being thus attired, the prison rules were read to us; then did we find that convicts meant, in prison language, all who had been tried and convicted; and, therefore, that we were to be subjected to the silent system. Going to chapel, we wera never to approach within three yards of each other. To speak, nod. or make any sign or communication to a fellow- prisoner,, rendered both parties, the one speaking or nodding, and this one spoken or nodded to, liable to be put upon a bread- and- water diet for any period of not more than seven days. This was to mean appalling announcement; how it affected others I know not, as from that time to the present moment I have had no opportunity of communicating with them. I felt that I was to be alone, without speaking, cut off from ajl. rational and social intercourse with my fellow- creatures, for two years: submitted to the uncontrolled tyranny of gaolers; badly fed; not even to be allowed a pencil, pen, or ink, to make a mark, or to note the onward, although under such circum- stances, apparently slow march of time. I thought of these things, and of the active and exciting occupations of my past life, mid for an inJtant I felt sick. ' Twas a mighty change, indeed, that " tcame o'er the spirit of my dream." But I wa3 not long left to ruminate. I was tajten into a yard to be in- structed by one of the " old hands " of the prison, how to fold up my blankets of a morning; I paid little attention to this; after the ceremony was over, I was taken into a cell, called the day- room, locked in, and thus commenced my experience of the silent and solitary system of imprisonment. It will be well here to point out the distinction between what is denominated the silent system and the solitary. They ara not necessarily associated. In some prisons they are sepa- rately maintained; but owing to some particular arrangements in my case, I had to endure the combined severities of both. The silent system is when the prisoners are associated in rooms, & c., to work, and sleep in considerable numbers in dor- mitories, but are kept by different arrangements from speaking, or in any way communicating with each other; and are strictly forbidden from any kind of conversation with the officers. The solitary system is one of separate confinement, but silence is not necessarily enforced; in the other case, a prisoner is no* allowed to whistle or hum a tune to himself, or even to read >•' chapter in the Bible, or a hymn aloud in his cell. The silerj-, system being that( adopted in the prison I was sent to, I, if course, had to submit to it in all its rigour, and owing to t! e particular arrangements by which I was kept alone, in a cell, during the day and night I was equally subjected to all tha inconveniences of the solitary system. I shall conclude this portion of the subject by an exact de- tail of the discipline enforced, that we may be able to judge correctly of its inadequacy to produce the effects, which we must presume, in charity, are intended to follow its applica- tion ; and to enable us to contrast it with a rational system of Prison Discipline, which it will be my object in the following articles to develop. W. J. VERNON. { To be continued in our next.) THE CHURCH AND THE THIRTY^ INE ARTICLES.— Every Church which possesses fixed articles of faith, contains within itself its own condemnation, and fosters the very cause of its own downfall. When a set of men not only confess, but make it their boast, that they are stationary— that they have taken their stand on blind faith, and con- temned reason— that they are resolved to oppose all pro- gress, as destructive to the end for which they are banded together; then, by that very confession, by that very boast, do they declare themselves hostile to the necessary tendency of human intelligence; and thus repeat the oft- enacted tragi- comedy of kings, governments, and churches, who have fondly imagined that by their own refusal to advance, they could prevent the progress of man. In what a fatally de- plorable condition, then, are the members of such a Church! Unimproving components of an unimproving Vhole, it is re- quired of them, as an imperative duty, to renounce for ever the highest privilege of man. They must not, dare not think. They not only dare not think themselves; but by their very office they are bouod to terrify others frsm the exercise of- free thought. THE CERTAINTY OF CANADIAN ANNEXATION.— Canada now only belongs to Great Britain by a figment, a tradition, a loyalty, a recollection of heroic deeds ; and not by any material interest or benefit. Nay, in the present state of things, cast off by the mother country, and left to their own resources, with the United States just by their side, possessing vast poli- tical power and influence; a growing credit, and monetary re- sources; a prodigious mercantile and commercial navy; an active, industrious, and virtuous people; a government capa- ble, in all respects, and equally disposed, to foster, protect, and strengthen all its possessions;— we say, with all these things staring them in the face, the policy of this country has made it the plain, palpable interest of the Canadians to seek for an- nexation. This is as clear as any problem in Euclid. How long the tradition and the penalty will weigh against the in- terests now put in the balance against them, nobody need be at a loss to determine. Perhaps the lion- election of General Cas » will Settle the question for the next four years; but, had that gentleman obtained the presidency of the States,— why the world would have presented itself in different phases at the end of'the above period.— Nixon's " America." ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. OUR VICIOUS SYSTEM OF SOCIETY. THIS is the bsasted land of freedom; bat where is it to be found?- On the contrary, slavery seems to be the actual condition of all men. Wives are the lawful slaves of their husbands — children have no defence against ill- treatment or bondage. Apprentices, jour- neymen, labourers, and servants, are professedly not free— they must agree to obey for the sake of the very elements of mortal Ufe— but even their masters are - under great restraints. Common sailors and soldiers do not pretend to personal freedom— but even officers are under command. Apart altogether from the consideration of a landed class, with a vast influence on the multitude living on their territories, we see an employing class, with equally great subject masses; and a trading class, among whom the affluent few exercise a scarcely limited control over all the rest. The Englishman, after twenty- one years of age, is • told that he enters into the full rights of his country- men : but he sees that all these rights will not keep him from poverty, not even from starving, if not placed in congenial circumstances by family influence or friendly aid. Even, then, in order to gain an existence, he must give up all idea of having a will of his own; he must make himself the echo of everything his superior may say; he must be patient of all kinds of trouble, meek, submissive, even to the rude and unreasonable; in short, lie must hesitate at nothing which seems likely to fur- ther the great end of money- making. Is he a legal or medical man; what with his anxiety to obtain employ- ment, and his fear of losing it, he cannot be conaaered as much better off. The awful sentence, " One must live," is an iron collar round the necks; while " wife and children " are fetters to the feet of these and all other men. The most generous inclinations, the most con- scientious resolves, all sink before the tremendous consi- deration, " Meat, clothes, fire." The evils of excessive competition, daily augmented by the discovery of new machines superseding labour, will soon cause the present theories of political econo- mists to be scattered to the winds. Employment is becoming more and more scarce in these islands; prosti- tution and crime more abundant; and Great Britain and Ireland are at this moment presenting the astound- ing spectacle of a vast increase of human misery, concur- rent with an unbounded increase of the meaus of pro- viding food and raiment. It is truly astonishing to observe how the present system of society is defended by its advocates. It cannot be denied that mankind now possesses the most ample means for producing an abundance of every ne- cessary and comfort of life with but little labour, through the medium of machkiery: and it cannot be denied that, notwithstanding this great fact, nine- tenths of the human race are over- worked; have not sufficient leisure, opportunity, or means to cultivate their minds; are un- able to obtain most of the comforts of life, and are living in constant dread of the future. It cannot be denied that, for want of the means of earning an honest livelihood, millions of men and women are driven into evil courses; nor can it be denied that millions are prevented by poverty from entering the matrimonial state, and that under these circumstances the existence of hordes of prostitutes is unavoidable. And yet he who dares to suggest that this is a vicious system, which may by degress be superseded by a better one; that it is really possible for men to live according to the precepts of Christianity, in peace and good will, do as they would be done by, and love their neighbour as themselves, is denounced by the advocates of the • wealthy classes in terms of unmeasured abuse. REVIEWS. * THE CLAIMS OF THE REDEMPTION SOCIETY CON- SIDERED."— Many of our readers are perhaps unaware of either the existence or the intentions of the Redemp- tion Society; and, therefore, before we proceed to notice Mr. David Green's lucid and argumentative pamphlet, it will be better to give a slight sketch of the origin, frogress, and motives of the above- mentioned society, t was founded at Leeds, and enrolled under the Friendly Societies' Act, in 1845, and is based upon the economical principles of the thriving communities in America. The executive consists of a president, vice- president, secretary, treasurer, five directors, two auditors, three trustees, and nine arbitrators; the last are, by law, quite unconnected • with the society. The conditions of membership are, that after being proposed and seconded, a candidate pays sixpence as admittance; he must then pay not less than one penny per week for six months; aud then on paying sixpence for a card he may become a member and has a right to vote, he also possesses as much power over the society's property as any other member. Not long after its formation, the society received the munificent offer of the reversion of a landed estate of one hundred and sixty acres from Mr. G. Williams, of Gorse, in Caermar- thenshire. Mr. Williams had travelled in both North and South America, and becoming much struck with the flourishing conditions of the communities existing there, the consequence was a thorough conviction in his own mind of the superior soundness of communal economy over competitive society. Fart of this estate has already been taken possession of, and several members are located on it. The establishment of the Bedemption Society was a good beginning to a great end; its progress will be watched with interest by all friends of the human race; its success will be a e » m plete refutation to the many calumnious aspersions so unscrupulously lavished upon the doctrines of commuuism fcy interested parties. To obtain a thorough insight of the intended operations, the chances of future success and the advantages to be derived from the Redemption Soeiety, we must refer our readers to Mr. Green's clever pamphlet. It is to be obtained of Bsrger, Holywell Street; Watson, Queen's Head Passage; and Green, Leeds. From amongst other valuable matter we take the following extract :—. " Let us now inquire what class of society is a gainer by the present order of tilings. Is it the interest of this town, to spend some thousands annually in the prosecution of criminals? What peculiar charms have the large poor- rates on the house- holders of Leeds, or any other town ? Is it a pleasing picture to see our streets patrolled by swarms of wretched mendicants, perhaps oppressed with contagious diseases ? It need only be stated, that hospitals, infirmaries, dispensaries, & c., are main- tained by a voluntary tax upon the pockets of the rich, to sup- ply the pressing exigencies of the poor. Need we menti » n the diseases which are generated and spread in society through the channels of poverty, or pourtray the effects of the dense igno rance which pervades the land ? Yet all these, and far more than we have time to considei'or enumerate, are losses and taxes upon the industry of the country. 1 have heard it often urged as an objection against Community of Property, that the idle would depend upon the fruits of the industrious. The advocates of community of property have a right, before reply- ing to these objections, to ask the following questions. Do paupers and mendicants produce their own food ? Do thieves steal that which their own hands have made ? or do they pay the expenses of their prosecution and imprisonment? Again, do paupers pay the salaries of our poor- law commissioners, and other officers, and build, with their labour, the splendid bastiles of this country? Do the desperate classes maintain our police forces, constables, and other law officers, or do they pay for the construction of our jails ? The old proverb says, that ' they who dwell in glass houses, ought never to throw stones.' Now, these objectors abundantly prove their want of wisdom, by most thoughtlessly throwing their stones in every direction, theugh every one but themselves can see that they dwell in the most transparent of glass houses. Why, it is utterly impos. sible to answer any of the foregoing questions, without fully admitting that all these are maintained, done, and suffered, at the cost and expense of the industrious at the present time. We are not so extravagant as to expect, that a time will come when every human being will just consume and enjoy neither more nor less than what he produces; because, as yet, we know of no means by which mankind can be freed from the casualties of organic, mental, or physical deficiency, or even from accidental misfortune in after life. But I will state facts before I conclude, which I trust will be sufficient to satisfy you, that men in a communal state are more industrious and less wasteful of wealth ; that there are no pauper non- pro- ducars, no destroying, non- productive thieves, and few or no disorderly characters; aud when I have established these facts you must admit that the labourer in such a state, must re- ceive more of the fruits of his toil than he can by any possi- bility generally get under the present system, especially when it is understood that in addition to these advantages, he is his own capitalist." " PRINCIPLES AND OBJECTS OF TIIE NATIONAL CUR- RENCY REFORM ASSOCIATION." — The objects of this society, if carried out, would be beneficial to that class most in need of protection, the industrial part of the population, fn the pamphlet before us, the subject of currency reform is divided into three branches: na- tional money, commercial currency, and having gold at its market price, thereby depriving it of its conven- tional character as money, and throwing it back to its natural character as a commodity. Not having suffi- cient space to enter fully into the objects of this asso- ciation, we must content ourselves with giving tho fol- lowing extract on the subject of National Money: — " In every country, provision must be made to defray the annual cost of governmental administration: hence the origin of taxation. Taxes were originally paid iu kind, but were commuted into money in the reign of King Henry I ; but that monarch did not demand gold, silver, or copper; he changed the mode of payment for public convenience, but took care not to increase the pressure. For this pur- pose, wooden tallies of the Exchequer were invented, which became national money, and passed curre& t as legal tender. This system continued in force till the establishment of the Bauk of England; and, while it was iu operation, the founda- tions of British grandeur were laid. It is proposed to revert back to this ancient principle, substituting paper money for wooden- money. Parliament would, of course, continue to vote the supplies to the crown, and the Executive Govern- ment would be empowered to issue, as legal tender, such an amount of national money as would be equivalent to the supplies voted. Iu this money, the crown would discharge all its obligations, and the officers of the revenue would take it back from the people iu discliarge of taxes, at the same nominal value at which it had beeu issued by the ministers of the crown. Not a single grain of gold would be required; and by thus economising its use, it would be far more avail- able than at present for purposes presently to be noticed. The security of National Money would be guaranteed by the whole property of the United Kingdom, computed at from five thousand to six thousand millions. It could never be in excess through accumulation, because every note would be cancelled after being paid to the collectors of taxes, and fresh notes would be issued in each succeeding year to ac- quit the crown of its new obligations, again to be redeemed and cancelled by the discharge of new taxes. Thus the balauce between National Money aud National Taxation would b& constantly preserved. It could never depreciate, since the crown would always take it back at the same no- minal value at which the erown had paid it away. It would never be withdrawn from circulation by hoarding, as it would not bear any interest; nor would it ever be exported) as it would not discharge a tax due to any foreign govern- ment. Intrinsically valueless, it would possess a conventional value among ourseives, derived from the authority of the Crown autl Parliament, which had put it into circulation and declared it a legal tender. In its nature, it would be of the same quality as a postage stamp." This pamphlet is published at the Society's office, 4, Beaufort Buildings, Strand: and it is intended, if one thousand subscribers can be obtained at one penny, to continue the publication weekly. Messrs. Bennoch and Duncan, two gentlemen who have warmly advocated the cause, are President and Secretary of the Society. NEW TALE BY G. W. M. REYNOLDS. Iu next week's issue ( Number 89) of REYNOLDS'S MISCELLANY will appear the commencement of A NEW TALE BY GEORGE W. M. REYNOLDS. THE Tale will be of a domestic character— the plot belong- ing to the present age, aud the scene being laid in England. The object will be to expose, through the medium of a tale as interesting as the Author can possibly render it, one of the most fertile causes of oppression, misery, and demorali- zation whieh belong to the many abuses characteristic of the social system. All classes of society will feel— or at least, ought to experience— an interest in the topic to be thus dealt with: the fair sex in particular will accord their sympathy to the subject of the New Tale. It may be as well to observe, for the information of new subscribers, that Mr. Reynolds's romance of " THE CORAL ISLAND ; OR, THE HEREDITARY CORSE," commenced in No. I of the present Series of the MISCELLANY, and terminated in No. 38. It was also in No. 88 that " THE BRONZE STATUE ; OR, THE VIRGIN'S KISS," was commenced ; and it it will concluded ki No. 88. Neither tale experienced any interruption in the hebdomadal publication of the average quantity: not a single week was missed in respect to the regular continuity of those tales. The first 80 Numbers of the MISCELLANY form Three Volumes, price 4s. each, well bound iu dark green cloth and lettered at the back. * » * The February Number of the " Democratic Re- view " contains original and very important letters from France and Germany. Now READY, NO. IX OF THE DEMOCRATIC REVIEW of BRITISH and 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. 3. The Grave of a Tyrannicide. 4. A Glance at History. Part I. 5. Memoir of Fourier. 6. Revelations of tbe Build- ing Trades. Parti. 7. Pictures of the Poor. 8. The Char- ter, and something more! 9. Literature: " Ledru- Rollin, and the 13th of June." 10. Letter from France. 11. Letter froitt 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 typographical respects and in the interest of its contents.— The Reasoncr. London: " Published by J. WATSON, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. THE GENERAL COMMITTEE OF THE FUND FOR THE WIDOWS OF SHARP AND WILLIAMS. The EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE beg to give notice that the GENERAL COMMITTEE will meet at Anderton's Hotel on Monday evening, March lltb, instead of Mareh 4th, as originally proposed. The EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE likewise give notice that they propose to hold A TEA- MEETING, ( TO BE FOLLOWED BY A PUBLIC MEETING.) on Wednesday, the 10th of April, for the benefit of the Fund. The Committee have fixed upon the Tenth of April, that being the second anniversary « f the memorable day when the Chartists held their Grand Demonstration in spite of the tremendous endeavours made by the Govern- ment to excite the middle- class against the workiug- class, aud suppress the legal, constitutional, and moral manifesta- tion of the sentiments of the masses. The EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE take leave to recommend their Chartist friends throughout the provinces to hold similar festivals in their respective localities, and for the benefit of the Fund. The Committee earnestly hope that this suggestion will be acted upon, inasmuch as it will soon be necessary to close the subscription- books and appropriate the amount to its destined purpose. *** Further particulars relative to the Metropolitan Tea- Meeting above announced, will be given at an early day. Signed, on behalf of the Executive Committee, WILLIAM DAVIS, Chairman. PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT. APUBLIC MEETING convened by the Provisional Committee of the National Charter Association will be held in the Hall of the Literary and Scientific Institution, John Street, Tottenham Court Road, on Tuesday Evening next, Feb. 26th, 1850, fijr the purpose of reviewing the pro- ceedings in Parliament'during the past week. Chair taken at Eight o'Clock. Admission Free. NOTICE.— In consequence of the political engagements of MR. BBONTERRE O'BRIEN, who is now making a lour in Scotland, the Letters upon Slavery, of which that gentleman is the author, are suspended for two or three weeks. LONDON • Printed and Published, for the PROPRIETOR, by JOHN DICKS, at the Office of REYNOLDS'S MISCELLANY, 7 Wellington Street North, Strand.