REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. EDITED BY GEORGE W. M. REYNOLDS, AUTHOR OF THE FIRST AND SECOND SERIES OF " THE MYSTERIES OF LONDON," " THE MYSTERIES OF THE COURT OF LONDON," & e. & C. No. 23.— Vol. 1.] SATURDAY, APRIL 13,1850. [ PRICE ONE PENNY. ME. WILLIAM GUFFAY. WILLIAM CUFF AY, loved by his own order, who knew him and appreciated his virtues, ridiculed and denounced by a press that knew him not, and had no sympathy with his class, and banished by a government that feared him, has achieved a celebrity that fully entitles him to a place in our Portrait Gallery. He was bom in the year 1788, on board a merchant ship, homeward bound from the Island of St. Kitts, and is consequently sixty- two years old. Cradled on the vast Atlantic, he became by birth a citizen of the world, a character that, in after life, he well maintained. His father was a slave, born in the Island of St. Kitts; liis grandfather was an African, dragged from his native valleys in the prime of his manhood. On arriving in England, himself and his parents became free, and during his services in the cause of Democracy, he, the stern man, has often Bhed genuine tears of gratitude for this boon, and declared that the sacrifice of his life and his liberty if needed, was due to the complete emancipation of that nation which had inscribed his name upon the list of free men, and this burst of generous feeling has been, as events have proved, no idle boast, nor has it fallen without producing its effect upon the hearts of his fellow toilers. Soon after his arrival in England his father procured a berth as cook on board a man- of- war, and Cuffay spent the years of his childhood with his mother at Chatham: though of a very delicate constitution, he took great delight in all manly exercises. As he advanced toward manhood, he entered the ranks of the proletarians as a journeyman tailor, and was reckoned a superior workman. He was thrice married, but has left no issue: his only child, a boy, died in its youth. Scru- pulously neat in his person, he carried a love of order and regularity even to excess in all his transactions, whether social or political, this characteristic procured him much esteem and adapted him to fill offices which men of greater talents sought for in vain; during his whole career, he occupied an active post in the ranks of his own trade and was never found wanting in any of the requisites essential to the maintenance of a character for sterling and unflinching integrity. In a letter written by one who has known him up- wards of forty years, he says, " Cuffay was a good spirit in a little deformed case: I have known some thousands in the trade, and I never knew a man I would sooner confide in : and I believe this to be the feeling of thousands in the business to this day. It was always his great delight to take young men by the hand and in- struct them, not only in the trade, but mentally." He disapproved of the Trades' Union movement in 1834, and was nearly the last of his society in joining the lodge; but ultimately he gave way, and struck with the general body, remaining out until the last, thereby losing a shop where he had worked for many years; since which time he has hadbutvery partial employ. He early saw through the deception of the Reform Bill, and from 1839, when the struggle for the Charter commenced, until his banishment, dedicated his whole energies as a worker to the task of enfranchising the millions; in 1840 he was elected as a delegate from Westminster to the Metropo- litan Delegate Council, an office which he ably discharged during the long and energetic existence of that body in 1842, when the Chartist Executive, with the exception of Morgan Williams, were arrested; he was elected by acclamation, together with Thomas Martin Wheeler, John George Drew, and James Knight, to supply that vacancy. In 1845 he was appointed one of the auditors of the National Land Company, which office he held until his arrest: he was a member of nearly every Con- vention which was called into existence during these exciting times, and fulfilled his duties with honour to him- self and satisfaction to his constituents. Elected as one of the delegates for Westminster to the National Con- vention and Assembly of 1848, he allowed his enthusiasm to overcome his usual cool judgment, and was singled out by the press for ridicule and vituperation: he bore it unflinchingly, he even seemed to glory in it. As early as 1842 he had been especially singled out by the Times as a leader of the opposition in London to the Anti- Corn League, - which facetiously denominated the Chartists as the " Black man and his Party." Entrapped by the infernal spy- system into an almost involuntary attend- ance at the so- called insurrectionary meetings in the autumn of 1848, he fell a victim, but he shrunk not: flight was open to him, but he refused to avail himself of it, and during his confinement, both prior and after his sentence, his spirits maintained their usual equilibrium. Notwithstanding the Government punishment of trans- portation for twenty- one years, it has been intimated that on reaching his destination he will receive a ticket of leave giving liim his freedom in the colony. We trust this is a fact; but whatever may be his after fate, whilst integrity in the midst of poverty, whilst honour in the midst of temptation are admired and venerated, so long will the name of William Cuffay, a scion of Afric's op- pressed race, be preserved from oblivion. ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. OUR ADMIRABLE CONSTITUTION. WHATEVJSB is or has been taught by man was invented by man, and is therefore fallible. Whatever institutions have been created for the government of men have been founded by man himself; they are imperfect, open to improvement, and capable of annihilation. We can alone judge of their excellence by the fruits they pro- duce, or of their imperfections by the disasters they originate. England has for centuries, with the excep- tion of a few years of real prosperity under Cromwell, been governed by an oligarchy and by a constitution • which is often declared to be a model of perfection, although it is constantly being tinkered, and its defects are perpetually being exposed. This constitution, which has gradually been shaped into a huge mass' of mon- strosities, has been found totally inefficient to provide us with such a form of government as can rescue the country from abject misery, insolvency, and unceasing political agitation; and, notwithstanding the splendid inventions of modern times, the producers of wealth are worse off than ever. The reason of this is clear. The constitution, as it is termed, has placed the whole power of the state in the hands of the high born, the rich, and the influential; these have raised up for themselves a certain form of government entirely to their own minds and suitable to their own interests, and then impudently, but complacently, turn round and say to the poor, the industrious, and the unrepresented, " Behold under what a wise form of government we live!" The work of their own hand, it has been modelled to their own pur- pose, reminding us of the lion in the. f^ ble, who, on be- holding a noble piece of sculpture, representing a man riding upon a lion, exclaimed, " Ah! any one may see who the sculptor was! Had a lion done the statue, the position would have been reversed." Who, upon examining attentively our constitution, could have the madness to assert that it could ever have been framed according to the will of a people? Is it reasonable to suppose that if they had been. entrusted with, or ever had a voice in the manufacturing of such a specimen " of legislative wisdom, they would quietly have divested themselves of all power, position, or in- fluence in the affairs of government, and tranquilly sur- rendered all dominion into the hands of a chosen few? We are told that the constitution is nicely balanced be- twixt Queen, Lords, and Commons— that one is a check upon the other— and that although they are supposed to work in unison, still there is a wholesome degree of sur- veillance and authority exercised, tandi controlling the actions of each branch of the executive power. Such an idea, however, is false and preposterous. Let us first examine the relative positions of each party in regard to the nation. The head of the state, either king or queen, is supposed to be a dummy, a puppet, and a mere automaton: but this expensive item in the government of England does use and does enjoy much political in- ^ uence, and that influence will naturally be devoted to iggrandising those by whom the crown is surrounded, by whose hands it is enchained, and by their constant approach to majesty can earwig and persuade, remon- strate and dictate to their own advantage. Crowns only represent rank and wealth; they are the heads, the props, and the mainstays of aristocracies; and aris- tocracies are the curses of nations. We next come to the Lords; and every child should be taught how this batch of lumbering and rapacious legislators have de- spoiled our ancestors and ourselves, heaping a tremen- dous mass of evil upon the nation. Of what earthly use have the House of Peers ever been to this country? Have they ever brought forward one measure calcu- lated to increase the earnings, the comfort, or the en- lightenment of the operative? Has any proposition ever been heard of in that House for extending the franchise, encouraging the industrious, or giving influence to the intelligent? Never! Was ever a measure of retrench- ment hinted at even in that venerable assemblage? No: finance is not their province; the Commons keep the purse, and the Lords only dip their fingers in it. The House of Peers, being unacquainted with the wants, distresses, and grievances of the people, are evidently incapable of legislating for them. No class of men is less cognizant of the ills under which the work- ing- classes are labouring than the nobility of England. They never see, and but seldom hear of sickening want; their tables groan beneath profusion; their stately halls are ever kept in a pleasant degree of temperature; and their bodies are clothed. in the finest garments: what, then, can such persons know of hunger, cold, or naked poverty? A royal duke, famous for his guzzling propensities, when the potatoe disease had caused famine in Ireland, and was severely felt by the poor in England, often ex- pressed liis astonishment at such an event, and doubted of the ravages it was committing. " Disease! disease!" exclaimed he : " don't believe it. I never see a bad potatoe!" The House of Peers represents only wealth, rank, and that most questionable item of property— land; its interests are antagonistic to those of the people, and, as centuries have proven, no good for the nation has ever emanated from them. They have spoilt more excellent and useful men, by perverting their abilities, in the course of half. a century, than they can produce in five hundred year'L Henry Brougham, for instance, a statesman once venerated by the people, now meta- morphosed into a lord, has become the laughing- stock for many, and is despised by all. Knowledge, progress, intellectuality, boldness, independence, and conscience are subjects for alarm in the benighted minds of our hereditary legislators: their power has been obtained by ignorance, fear, and submission, and by. these must it be preserved. The very construction of the House of Commons is a scandalous insult to the nation's sense. We, the people, are told it represents our interests; but, having a very feeble voice in its formation, we confess ourselves at a loss to discover how such a statement can be borae out. Some twenty or thirty members can be found who re- present the whole labour, industry, and the vast masses of the working- population of England; but what else than powerless can such a meagre array become before the overwhelming majority returned by aristocratic in- fluence to the people's house, consisting principally of young gentlemen trained and brought up in those en- lightened doctrines thus poetically enunciated by Lord John Manners, a member of the honourable house, as a representative of the people:— " Let arts and science, trade and commerce die; But give us still our old nobility." Credulous persons are gulled into the belief that be- cause the House of Commons hold the purse and stop the supplies, they are in reality the source of power; but is it likely that those whose families fatten and themselves thrive on the resources of the nation, would ever commit such a suicidal act as to deprive themselves of the loaves and fishes ? Four hundred members out of the six hun- dred and fifty- eight, are either related to aristocratic leeches, connected with the army and navy, law, church, pensions, or places. Such are not the men to exercise a power that might, in late years, have frequently been used to advantage. That power, as the present House of Commons is constituted, must be but visionary; but if one of the principal points of the People's Charter were made the law of the land, and members of parliament directly and not corruptly paid for their services, then the authority of the people over their own purse would no longer be a delusion but a wholesome reality. Robespierre declared that the only extenuation for the crimes committed by kings and nobles was that long habit had so familiarised them with every species of op- pression and tyranny, that their nature was deadened to the atrocities they were constantly committing. Per- haps the most charitable conclusion we can arrive at in respect to the audacious usurpation of all power in the state by a cunning oligarchy is, that they have been so long accustomed to tyrannical dominion that now they regard it as their right, their privilege, and their due. We find that one party alone has monopolised and united the three branches of the executive, and bound them fast under its sovereign control. Our nobility lias con- trived to bind the crown, the lords, and the commons together; like the faggot in the fable, which the old man on his death- bed, when exhorting his sons to unity, pointed out to them ceuld not easily be broken; but, taken stick by stick could with facility be demolished; so have the aristocracy fettered and enchained the ex- ecutive. Had such policy been adopted for the people's benefit, none could complain; but when such a powerful combination has been formed for the aggrandisement and security of a few, then, not only for our own sakes, but as a duty owed to posterity, we should strive to regain that power which by ali principles of justice is our own, and which has been iniquitousiy wrested from us. Had the people a fair share in the so- called repre- sentation of the country, they would doubtless, with that rude but sterling sense so conspicuous amongst the in- dustrial classes of England, return men capable of discussing questions of social importance, and remedy- ing, if not too late, the evils caused by a long system of iniquitous misrule. One'question of vital'importance, a question that in a few years would influence the des- tinies of the country, and, if carried, would raise it from its present degraded position, is— The consideration of the best means for educating and providing for the pop- ulation. Every child should pass through the same routine of education, and the offspring of the mechanic should start in life with the same knowledge and with equaj acquirements as the scion of a ducal house. To ensure such an infinite blessing, a national system of education, from which the intermeddling of any church must be rigidly excluded, should be adopted. The talents and industry of every one should be turned into their natural direction; measures should be taken by the state to provide' opportunities for exercising them to the. best advantage; for labour is the true wealth of a nation'and should be stimulated and maintained. Pro- perty, when justly and laboriously acquired, when ac- cumulated by the exercise of useful ingenuity, or by the perseverance of honest industry, should have a due weight and influence in the state; but hereditary spo liators, and merciless, mercenary grinders of the poor, the extortioners of human toil, blood, bone, sinew, health, energy, and life would, were the people governed as they should be, find to their cost that the House of Commons, instead of being a den of oppression, was the nursery of talent, industry, tranquillity, and pro- gress. To arrive at this desirable result a constant never- flagging, but ever increasing agitation should be main- tained for obtaining the People's Charter; we have one great and all- engrossing object in view, that is, the rescuing ourselves and our children from the slavery so long and so patiently endured by our forefathers. We are not to be daunted by the fierce denunciations of Mr. Hume and others, who fifty years back were looked upon as rushing, radical reformers, but in the present time are justly considered as mere cripples on the way. EMMETT'S FAILURE AND DEATH. THE Irishman, the only true organ of the democratic party of the Emerald Isle, contains the following graphic and pathetic account of the last moments of that glorious patriot Emmett:— _" Where he spent the remainder of the unfortunate night of the 23rd, I have not been able ' to discover. But next day Anne Devlin found him at his old lodg- ings in Harold's Cross. He commissioned her to deliver a letter to Elizabeth Curran, which she did. Doubtless it was a farewell letter— a statement of his ruin and his love. Doubtless he asked her to remember him as one who would have sacrificed his life to spare her a pang._ And her feelings who shall describe? what saereligious band shall raise the veil of misery from that young breaking heart? Just think of it. Her first passionate love dashed by a sorrow like unto which there is no sorrow— her hero, her life of life, her saint of saints, defeated and desolate, setting beneath the shadow of the scaffold broken- hearted and alone— her day dreams, her air- built castles, swept away like gos- samer threads— her sunny visions of happy home and endless affection, of young faces, radiant and beautiful as his, shut out from her clouded soul for ever— her heart widowed of its love, and dark night setting on the morning of her life. And greater misery, her father, soured and shadowed by misfortune, has turned away his face from her; he recognises her no longer as his child; the smile which rippled round his lips when her voice was heard is replaced by a frown; he speaks in rude, bitter taunts; he probes her wounded soul 66 the quick, sears her with his words as with white- hot iron, and drives her from his door with a push and a curse, to perish among sneering strangers. Misery is mystery. Touch her not— her heart i3 broken. Speak low when she passes, and let no harsh accents rouse her from her dream. Let her, like the stranded mariner, contemplate the wreck of her hopes in silence and soli- tude. Tread lightly— clasp her hand gently— speak kindly to her. Do not banish the vision which brings the smile once more to her pale lips, and the rose to her cheek. Do not intrude on her— do not seek with impertinent curiosity to fathom her thoughts. Stay but a little while, and depart as noiselessly as you can; for, oh! brother, her misery is indeed mystery. Touch her not— her heart is broken. ****** " The fatal day came. Pevious to leaving the jail he had exhibited the same calm demeanor which always characterised him. At half- past one o'clock he was placed in a carriage, which was to conduct him to the place of execution, in Thomas Street. His fortitude, as Curran afterwards remarked, was unostentatious. He felt that he was dying in a noble cause, and he knew that his blood would cement his country's na- tionality. At a short distance from the carriage in which he was imprisoned, a mourning- coach followed, which had but one occupant, a young and beautiful girl. He arrived at the scaffold, which was a temporary one, raised from a platform formed by some planks laid across empty barrels. On the scaffold stood some of his early college friends— weeping, albeit unused to tears. He alighted from the carriage, ascended the platform with the easy fearless step of one ascending a throne. The street was crowded with people. Women, children, and hardy men sobbed for ' young Mr. Robert.' Many heroes had perished within a few years. Much sacred blood was shed, but never died one who was so well- beloved, so deeply regretted. He was indeed the child of Ireland's heart. The strong labour- hardened me- chanic shook like a nervous woman. The student gazed on the martyr's pale features, and recognised his ideal. The old man, who had grappled with the world for years, wept like some enthusiast boy. The crowd swayed to and fro, as if their surging passions moved them. Ho turned to them— his people, his friends, his brothers— to them for whom _ he shed his life- drops— to stay whose misery, like Ion, he went joyfully to the scaffold : he turned and spoke in the full, sonorous, manly tones whieh were heard so often in his college days with wonder and delight. ' My friends, I die in peace and with sentiments of universal love and kind- ness towards all men.' Oh, God! and must he die? What! have ye no strength or courage, ye despairing people? Can ye not leap that hedge of bayonets and snatch him from his enemies? Tears, tears— shed no tears, shed your blood for him. The rope is round his proud young neck; one rush, one bursting charge, leap on the scaffold, dash its paraphernalia to earth, die for him, with him, and be redeemed. Not a hand is raised — he gives his watch to the executioner— he clasps the hands of his friends— he puts on the felon's cap. ' Are you ready, sir?' ' Not yet.' Again the question is asked. ' Are you ready, sir?' ' Not yet.' Doubtless he is in prayer. No, he has hope. He has been told that Russell is near him— that Dwyer and his daring band are ready for a rescue. He wants time. Every minute is a gain. Every second is worth refined gold. Where are ye, Wicklow mountaineers? Ye who hare faced death on the hill side and in the valley— ye who have looked into the whites of his eyes and No opportunity should be lost by the people for pro- ^ at Jrim-^ a^ e w^ e your yo^ ng chTrf claiming their grievances in a loud and startlinsr tone. 1 . ° , ,, M F JI . - „ is murdered? Oh, God! not an answering voice, not a manly blow, not a mountain cheer. ' Are you ready, sir ?' ' Not ' the word is choked— the head is severed from the body; the upturned faces are crossed by a spasm of horror, and the dogs of Thomas Street are lapping his blood." claiming their grievances in a loud and startling tone, and every occasion should be seized upon for advocat- ing the People's Charter. The industrial exhibition for 1851 will collect men from all countries to this metro- polis, and from all quarters of Great Britain crowds will pour in to witness the magnificent produce of En- glish industry, together with that of other nations. Nine out of ten of these spectators will remain in igno- rance of the wretched and deplorable condition of those who produce the wonders they gaze upon, but it should be our duty to enlighten them, and proclaim to the world that in this blessed country idleness is protected, whilst industry, ingenuity, and skill are neglected and forgotten. A CHARTIST. LORD BT. OUGHAM.— It is the haunting consciousness of his fall, which impels him to the eccentricities, almost amount- ing to insanity, which now alternately amuse and astonish the European public. He tries to escape from his own reflections, and to erase the galling memories of past honour, worthily won, in the excitement of men's wonder given not to his vir- tues, but to abilities so sacrificed.— Critic. ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. PRISON DISCIPLINE.— NO. VIII. " SIR WALTER SCOTT ridiculed the idea of lighting the streets with gas ; Dr. Lardner declared it to be impossible to cross tlie Atlantic by steam. If then, in endeavouring to develop principles upon which I believe alone can be based a rational system of " Prison Dis- cipline" I should broach doctrines which may appear too new and startling, all I ask is that they may not be igno- rantly rejected; that those who do not understand may not turn away without inquiry; hut thinking of the preced- ing examples, either express no opinion, or qualify them selves to doubt upon the subject by studying it. Perhaps it may not be amiss to take a rapid glance at the rationale of punishment which lias prevailed at different periods, up to the present time ; when we find among the great problems which agitate the nineteenth century, and in- terest the intellectual classes in all countries, scarcely any taking precedence of that mighty one— the ultimate cause of crime, and tile true relation in which the criminal ought to be regarded in relation to the other portions of society. In the early ages, before science had even dawned upon the world, or the present spirit of inquiry and freedom of thought, which is fast levelling the artificial conditions of society, had stalked forth in its might and power, the penal science, if we may so designate sanguinary laws, was an extremely simple affair; at first merely to seize the offender and to vindicate the outraged law by hanging him, constituted all its philosophy and practice, with the mere modifications of transportation, and imprisonment; his principle was carried out up to very recent times, under the influence of the most barbarous feel- ings of vindicative vengeance, still advocated by and appa- rently so dear to Mr. Thomas Carlyle and a few of his infatu- ated followers. Exclusively, occupied with its material interests, the general public had no leisure to investigate the questions of the religious, moral, or social duties of society, in regard to the unfortunate class of beings designated criminals; Telying upon traditions handed down from the ignorant days of their forefathers, the necessity never occurred to them of applying the principles of moral and social science, which were theoretically acknowledged as true, practically to the treatment of moral and social offences. The consequeuce of this radical error has been freely com- mented on by numerous writers ; wealth and power have pro gressively been augmented to an almost inconceivable extent; luxury and refinement have kept pace, still crime has con- tinued its onward course. Governments have used all the monstrous powers they have been entrusted with, and the little knowledge they have possessed, to punish; but they have not succeeded in preventing crime. The moral epi- demic has only been arrested for brief, and uncertain intervals, and there has not been wanting publicists and political econo- mists to argue that the virus increases in proportion to the ad- vances of civilization, so that, in fact, as it has. been poetically observed in one of our best periodicals, that, " as the flower of social existence expands more and more into perfect beauty, the canker which consumes it becomes fiercer and fouler." Societies, like individuals, appear to have had at all times an inclination to evade their duties by_ professing some absurd belief, or contentedly acting on a tradition, without even pro- fessing to know or believe any thing about it. Thus the theologicsd notion of tiia corruption of tlip human heart, that it was incurable by human means, has led to the most im- moral consequences; this plea has been eagerly seized hold of as offering a most obviou3 way of getting rid of the difficulties of the subject. The men were pronounced incurably depraved, and hanging was found a more simple and less cosily method of dealing with offenders than attempting to reform them. Nothing can be more dangerous than to afford encouragement to the notion that it is beyond our power to maintain a suc- cessful struggle against human weakness and depravity. " By believing a thing io be impossible we make it so," is a true saying, which has been proved in the present instance by the support given to the unauthorised theological dogma, that " the heart is irrevocably bad," This parson- creed has been so preached to, and crammed upon, the minds of people, that, as we read of a gentleman who was in the habit of habitually drawing the long bow that he positively told falsehoods that at last lie verily believed himself the stories of his own' inven- tion. This may be the case, for aught I know, with the clergy of this and other countries; at least, I am sure that masses of the people, who have looked up to them for instruction through a length of time, have listened to silly and mischievous tales till they really do believe- there is something in them. Of course all who arc willing to receive their faith from other men's lips, and who are interested in the maintenance of abuses, will be ready enough to hurl at me texts from the Bible to prove the evil and corruption of the human heart; and some, 110 doubt, will try to turn up the whites of their eyes at my declaring this firm hold of priestcraft to be unauthorised by their Bible: but such is the fact. It is no doubt true, and the Bible in many passages declares that in the human heart there exists naturally the germ or seed of the evil passions which are developed throughout life by the education and circum- stances of the individual; but where is the passage which de- uies that the heart of man likewise contains the germ or seed of the good qualities and moral powers, which may equally be brought out with the bad in the course of training anil edu- cation. Of course, ' tis only to avoid useless discussion that we speak at all of the heart as having anything to do with the human passions, more than the liver or the lungs has. This false and mischievous dogma has been the pivot upon which lias turned all the ancient systems of penal legislation ; it sanctioned, or, I might say, gave rise to the savage spirit of retributive punishment, or justice, as it was called; proscribing ail attempts at a reformation, because, as I have previously stated, it would have been more expensive and troublesome than merely hanging a man, and what was of still more im- portance to the upholders ol this savage system, the success of 3 national system of reformatory training would militaie against their dogma. ' Tis not my object to enter into a theo- logical discussion on the point; I only wish to show the bear- ing of the question in relation to the cause and punishment of crime; but I may be permitted to say that even among cele- brated divines, not a few might be quo ed who deny the validity 9f this system as a doctrine, equally as they denounce the false conclusions which have been drawn from the error. At all events, whatever may be its weight in a theological point of view, surely civilly or socially, no man has a right to destroy ins fellow man upon the pretext that he is naturally depraved; still less have governments, which ought to be the represenia toes of abstract truth and justice, the right of pronouncing the doom of death against any of its members, or of sentencing them to any species of punishment, calculated only . to harden their hearts, upon the plea thatthey are incorrigible. This false dogma, it will be readily seen, is more mischievous than is generally imagined, lying as it does at the very root of so im- portant a part of the social fabric, and must of necessity be removed before we can hope to make any satisfactory progress in criminal judicial reform. The idea of reducing our penal system to anything ap- proaching to, or deserving the name of, a science, is of but re- cent origin. It may be dated towards the latter end of the eighteenth century, a period during which were promulgated so many ideas, destined sooner or later to revolutionize the whole world in its social, political, and religious conditions. Public attention was first brought to the subject in a marked manner through the exertions of the philanthropist Howard. It must not, however, be forgotton, that for along while atten- tion was directed solely to the prison, not to the prisoner. The moral patient was still not considered : the legal offender was alone thought of: Howard never rose from the philan- thropist to the philosopher. Urged on by his benevolence to every possible exertion, and ultimately to the sacrifice of his life, to lessen the physical sufferings of this unfortunate class of his fellow creatures, who were suffering for criminal or politi- cal offences, henever thought of the adoption of any system which should lead to their mental and moral melioration. A great impetus was given to the movement by an important political crisis, the separation of the American colonies from the mother country. Deprived for a time of penal settlements for the convicts, a substitute for transportation was sought, and in this search the whole system of Prison Discipline and reform naturally became a subject of paramount interest. During this time men of profound minds and of deep re- search turned their attention to the subject, Beccaria, Black- stone, Bentham, Paley, & c. » and they did much to advance the new and interesting science. The subject was discussed in all classes. Theological, political, legal, and moral writers gave their opinions to the world, and from whatever source ihey started, however different the premises upon which they argued, they all tended to the same point,— the amelioration of the criminal code of the country. Still, however, there was much confusion in all their views, much intricacy and im- practicability in all the schemes proposed, till within late years there has existed nothing approaching towards unani- mity in the views of prison reformers, and even now there is nothing that can justly be called a radical or universal agree- ment upon the subject among its most zealous and ardent supporters. To place clearly before my readers the present state of the question, I may state that the three principles which we have hitherto had any experience in their application to the punishment of offenders, are firstly,— What may be called the Retributive system, or the inflicting oipain as a punish- ment for the offence committed, independent of any con- sideration of the effect it would have upou the individual offender: this may be called the theological system. Secondly,— The Force of Example, by which is meant, the infliction of pain upon one individual, not as a retribution for any injury he may have done to society, but to deter the sufferer himself or others from the commission of alike offence. This system has been the pet one of lawyers and statesmen, and may be called the legal one. The theory of the Reformation of the Criminal is the third, the one that has not yet been fairly tried or tested, but which is now gene- rally adopted by moralists aud writers on the subject. The first system has been supported by its advocates upon the plea that it is consistent with the divine will, and the depraved state of the human heart. The only advocate, I hope, of this barbarous system now to be found of any character, is Mr. Thomas Cariyle, who, in one of his " Latter- day Pamphlets" recently published, proclaims his wish for the revival of the law of Draco. While he professes to be preaching aud teaehiug Christianity, it appears to us he is actuated by a most unchristian feeling, and consequently teaching doctrines most opposed to the mild and loving pre- cepts of Jesus Christ. To Mr. Carlyle, model prisons or schools fur the criminal are au abomination. Auy com- miseration for the scoundrel species raises his bile and disturbs the serenisy of this good, easy, man, He is for no attempts at redeeming the sinner; annihilate, destroy him in his sin. The poor woman taken in adultery, according to Mr. C's merciful system, should be immediately stoned to death. He is the unflinching advocate of the steel- collar, the cart- whipi Slo.; and for all who do believe what he believes, and think as he thinks, lie is pre- pared to bespatter and attack with a peculiar species of Billingsgate, which the reverend gentlemau appears to possess, a natural genius for inventing and using, with all the scurrility in intention, 110 doubt, that is more plainly perceptible in tile less complicated swearings and bullyings with which our ears are occasionally assailed when passing through Billingsgate, or the other large markets of the town. He calls his oppo- nents men who are careful of judging lest they should be judged ; men who do not see ill a fellow- creature, driven by poverty or ignorance to crime, an objcct to be worried and driven with unpitying scorn to deeds of greater desperation,— or to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, by way of making him better. All who would extend any portion of that mercy to others, which we are taught to pray may be extended to our- selves, are designated as solemn human shams, pliantasma- gorians, supreme quacks, & c. If we were to judge them by Mr. Carlyle's standard, it would appear that the Howards and the Frys, the Clarksons, Gurueys, Wilberforces, & c., were all mere humbugs— and not very lively and entertaining ones; lie assures us ihe Christian religion prescribes a " healthy hatred to scoundrels," but for this interpretation of his own, he doubtless would abjure it and turn Turk. He is not, for ex- ample, to deter, noc for humane methods to reform, but his cry is " Revenge!" and hearty, hatred to the offender. A few extracts will be pardoned, to show the extraoruinary state of mind this really talented man must have arrived at: nothing but his own words will serve to give an adequate idea to the reader. " And so," saye he, " you take criminals, caitiffs, mur- derers, and the like, and hang them on gibbets for an example to others, whereupon arise friends of humanity and object— with very great reason, as I consider, if your hypothesis be correct. What right have you to hang any poor creature ' for an example ?' He can turn round upon you and say, ' Why make an example of me, a merely ill- situated, pitiable man ? Have you 110 more respect for misfortune? Misfortune, I have been told, is sacred; and yet you hang me now I have fallen into your hands, you choke the life out of me for an example! Again I ask, why make an example of me for your own con- venience alone?' All ' revenge ' being out of the question, it seems to me, the caitiff is unanswerable; and he aud the phi. lauthropic platlorms have the logic all on their side. Tile one answer to him is * CaiuffJ we liate tbee! and discern that now for some six thousand years we have been called on to do so, not with a diabolical, but with a divine hatred. God, himself, we have always understood, hates sin witti a most authentic, celestial, and eternal hatred— a hatred, a hostility inexorable, unappeasable, which blasts the scoundrel, and all scoundrels ultimately, with black annihilation and disappearance from the sum of tilings, ' The path of it is as the path of a flaming sword; lie that liath eyes may see it walking, inexorable, di- vinely beautiful, and divinely terrible through the chaotic gulf of human history, and everywhere burning as with un- quenchable fire; the false and death- worthy from the true and life- worthy; making all human history, and the biography of every man, a God's cosmos, instead of a devil's chaos. So is it in the end; even so to every man who is a man, and not a mutinous beast To the caitiff, these things are incredible : we, not to be partakers in thy destructive adventure of defying God, dare not allow thee to continue longer amongst us. As a palpable deserter from the ranks where all men at their eternal peril are found to be taken with the red hand fighting thus against the universe and its laws, we send thee back into the whole universe— solemnly expel thee from our community, and will, in the name of God, not with joy and exultation, but with sorrow, stern as thy own, hang thee on Wednesday next, and so end." W. J. VERNON. ( To be continued in our next.) THE NATIONAL ORGANISATION OF TRADES. THIS organisation is established for the industrial, social, and political emancipation of labour. The Preamble of the Prospectus declares that in forming the Society, " the Trades deem it necessary to declare, that they have no desire whatever to obtain their industrial, social, and political rights by any other than purely legal and constitutional means: such as trade and public meetings, lectures, discussions, distribution of tracts, and all other legal agencies that can be made available, and directed by the genius of mind, which are calculated to emancL pate themselves, civilize the world, and strengthen the ties that should bind all classes to the general well- being of their country." The objects of the Association are set forth in its published " Rules," whence we quote the ensuing pas- sages :— " The united endeavours of the members of this As- sociation shall be directed to obtaining parliamentary sanction to the undermentioned principles, they being considered as its basis, and as a guide to all its proceed- ings. " I. That the land being the gift of the Almighty to the people universally, ought to be held in sacred trust by the Stats for their benefit, and not be exclusively possessed by a fractional part of the community. But the members of this Association, in declaring that the land ought to be held in trust for the people, do not desire that those who now hold it should be dispossessed of that which the custom of centuries has led them to regard as their own, without being fully compensated. Anything approximating to spoliation they entirely re- pudiate. What is meant by the declaration is simply this: That as the State may " be regarded as the repre- sentative power of the people, the land should be placed under its guardianship— not to be sold, but let at sueh a standard of rental as may be required for revenue pur- poses, and the general exigencies of the State. This ( principle is no new feature in our constitution. Par- liament has repeatedly established the right of State interference with private land- owners, by making such portions of their estates saleable as are required by rail- way or other companies; witness the late act relating to the Encumbered Estates ( Ireland) Bill. Therefore the members of this Association further declare, that what they require is an extension of that principle, with full compensation to the present holders. " 2. That the elective franchise should be extended to every man twenty- one years of age, of sound mind an4 uncontaminated by crime. " 3. That education should be secured by tlie Go- vernment for the people; and that such education, on the part of the State, should be of a strictly scientific and secular character, without in any way interfering with the right of parents to give such religious instruc- tion to their children as they may think fit. " 4. That those laws which restrict tho expansion of the circulating medium should be repealed, and a repre- sentative currency forthwith issued by the Government, equal to the amount of wealth offered in exchange. " 5. That as Great Britain and Ireland contain a superabundance of land, skill, and capital, to profitably employ and comfortably support more than double the present population, the Government should introduce a bill establishing self- supporting home colonies, to give immediate employment to the numerous but compulsory unemployed of our population. " 6. That the application of machinery should be made available to the interest of the whole community, and that foreign manufactures, as alsti goods made in prisons and workhouses, ought not to be introduced into the home market, except upon sueh conditions as will secure our tradesmen and artizans from the ruinous con- sequences of unequal competition. " 7 That for the just protection of labour, local boards of trade should be established, composed of an equal number of masters and men, under the superintendence of a Minister of Labour, whose office would be to give an impetus to the industrial operations of the nation, and act as an impartial arbitrator between employers and employed. " S That taxation should be equalized, by substituting for all other taxes a graduated property tax," A SNUG BERTH IN THE CHURCH.— The following tempt- ing offer, addressed to clergymen of the Established Church, appears in the form of an advertisement in the columns of the Times:—" Next presentation to a sinecure provincial rectory producing £ 252 per annum, to be sold. Present incumbent, aged 72. No pauper population ; uo poor's rates, no ohurch, no glebe, lio duty. For terins apply," & c. Now, what a ras- cally system does this advertisement elucidate. Only conceive such a church!— only fancy the hideous mockefy of calling it God's Church I Surely, such another scandal and Sh'aiile to civilization does not exist as this "• Established Cluurch " of ours. ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. THE ARISTOCRACY: ITS ORIGIN, PROGRESS, AND DECAY. THE union of the Aristocracy with the middle classes was cemented by the blood shed in Manchester; they each felt a necessity for mutual support; their interests, if not identical, had both the same object to achieve— the subjugation of the working community. This tacit bond of alliance, ratified by the massacre of 1819, has continued uninterrupted up to the present day: it would have been drawn closer had the sanguinary carnage prepared for the 10th of April, 1848 taken place. The cry for reform startled the Aristocracy— they, hitherto the undisturbed rulers of England, the dictators of laws, the head of the legislature,— they who had toiled upon the work of their ancestors to raise a mighty fabric of power based upon spoliation, tyranny, terror, and blood, were now threatened from without by that voice be- fore which even despotic tyrants are compelled to bend — the sovereign people's. Reform had been whispered, asked for, demanded, and refused at the bayonet and sabre's point. So far the Aristocracy were successful; but yet they trembled at the storm which was threaten- ing their usurped domination. The war for establishing the accursed race of Bourbon on the slippery throne of France was over, and what benefit had England derived from its so- called success? Did the glory of Waterloo compensate for the unparal- leled misery heaped then upon the country, and felt so acutely by the present generation? Taxation, like a vampyre, fed upon our blood, and the success of tyrants abroad only served to rivet more closely our servile chains. Our glory was a chimera, but our dis- tress was real and lasting: the House of Peer^ still boasted of the freedom and prosperity of the nation, and wilfully shut their eyes against all evidence of the con- trary. The greatest gainer by this costly war to the nation was unquestionably the Duke of Wellington, his grace's pensions amounting to twelve thousand pounds per annum, besides obtaining grants to the tune of seven hundred thousand pounds for the purpose of buying estates, & c. We find by returns that ten noblemen • were, at the conclusion of the French war, pocketing not less than one hundred and seventy thousand pounds annually amongst them of the nation's money. These noblemen were the Earls of Liverpool, Westmore- land, Harrowby, Bathurst, Castlereagh; Lords Eldon, Sidmouth, Melville, Bexley, and Mornington. Amongst themselves, and iu their own immediate families, did this catalogue of robed plunderers share the enormous sum above- mentioned, giving an average amount to each brigand of seventeen thousand pounds annual spoil! The extravagance of the court kept pace with the rapacity of the Aristocraey; the most disgraceful sums wore voted for the repairs and embellishment:) o£ Wind- sor Castle, Windsor Cottage, and the princely brothel at Brighton. From the accession of George III to the year 1815, fifty- six years, the expense of royalty had been to the country seventy- nine millions of money! What a fund might this have created to mitigate the mechanics' sufferings, to lighten the burthen of the honest toiling citizen, and to provide in old age for deserving want, instead of being mostly squandered in disreputable pursuits, and upon licentious abandoned females. The pension list, at the termination of the French war, was swollen to a fearful extent by a crew of hungry lords and ladies. Honourables— male and female— quartered upon the public exchequer, with the vague and unsatisfactory information, that the sums were granted " for services rendered by their ancestors." A formidable list of nine hundred thousand pounds paid annually to these noble paupers was speedily created by the lavish grants of different pensions varying in amount from twenty thousand down to fifty pounds per annum. How many, out of the following catalogue of noble name3 figuring upon the pension list, have deserved one farthing from their country? How many amongst them, we ask, are there whose names are not branded by either crime, incapacity, or treachery ? True, we can select a few who have served their country after a peculiar fashion, and others, unworthy the honours descended to them, have alone profited by the deeds of their ances- tors or relatives. Some enjoy, like the Graftons, Rich- monds, St. Albans, & c., the wages of past prostitution; numbers were thrust into the pension list in return for favours granted by many fair dames still living. The Pagets' or Anglesey family devour an immense amount of public money; his lordship was considered a good cavalry officer, but a most incompetent and headstrong general. His private life can certainly be no recom- mendation for public generosity, considering that upon his return from the Peninsula, being then a married man with eight children, he seduced the wife of his bosom friend, Lord Cowley, she being the mother of four children. An action was brought by the injured hus- band, and damages laid at twenty thousand pounds; a verdict for the full amountTshowed the jury's sense of the aggravated depravity of his lordship's conduct. A divorce being afterwards procured on both sides, the guilty pair were married. Again, in the list we find a string of Fitzelarence's, a bastard crew of lazy, bloated pensioners, children of the unfortunate Mrs. Dorothea Jordan, who the royal brute William, when his passion was satiated and his affection outlived, suffered to die in a foreign land in privacy, poverty, and neglect, having her body buried in a " thin shell, stained black, with no ornament what- ever." The seducer would not pay for his victim's support, but the nation must defray " the costly results of his royal amours in the persons of the Fitzclarences. The aristocratic names that were affixed to the pen- sion list certainly form a strange and motley catalogue of rogues, whores, spies, profligates, pimps, swindlers, and bullies. Amongst the following twenty or thirty titles on this black list figuring for large amounts, we will leave the reader to judge for himself how many are connected in any shape or way with the country's welfare, or have the slightest claim to national remune- ration. Arden, Amherst, Arbuthnot, Argyle, Auckland, Aylmer, Bagot, Bathurst, Beresford, Conyngham, Eldon, Fane, Fitzclarences, Grafton, Greys without end, Henley, Howards, Manners, Richmond, Russells, Shaftsbury, Stanhopes, Talbots, Thurlowe, Villiers, Walpole, Winchester, Wyndhams, etc. etc. This is but a tithe of the depredators fastened upon us, and what, we ask, have they ever done? what deeds of grace can they evidence as a warranty for their continued enjoy- ment of large sums wrung from the produce of the people's industry? Are their names connected with anything that is great, glorious, and good? can any of them be quoted as benefactors to their own kind? How many amongst them can be held up as examples of wisdom, rectitude, and worth to future generations? If cringing to a barbarous lunatic becoming the mer- ciless agents of his tiger- like savageness; carrying out to the letter his satanic projects; or prostituting a wife, sister, or daughter to the foul embraces of a royal de- bauchee; if perfidy, murder, cruelty, profligacy, and infamy constitute claims for national recompense,— then, I say, the pension list should, as it at present stands, remain intact. There is no instance in the history of the world, of a nation that has been so devoured and pillaged by an Aristocraey as England. This career of robbery they have cunningly legalized and reduced to systematic lar- ceny; they now turn upon the people and, with incon- ceivable effrontery, declare their barefaced spoliations to be " vested rights." With equal justice might an Old Bailey pickpocket proclaim his " vested right " in the handkerchief he has filched from a pocket. The land has been taken from the people and grasped by the Aris- tocracy; the possession of the soil, intended by nature for the benefit of all mankind, has been to the order of nobility a reason of enduring power, and the vile law of primogeniture has maintained their iniquitous domi- nion. Not contented with grasping the possessions of the crown, the state, the church, the land, the crown- lands, Ireland, and the colonies; not contented with these immense sources of emolument, wealth, honours, and influence, the Aristocraey pensions itself upon the people, rushes into a ruinous and purposeless war, raises im- mense sums on the property of the country to bring these wars to an issue; retains this property in their own possession, and then coolly shift the burden of their debts upon the people, who had neither pledged their own possessions nor those of future generations for the purpose of upholding foreign despotism. We find, according to a table taken from Spackman, that only two hundred and eighty thousand eight hun- dred and ninety- six persons are interested in the National Debt. The Aristocracy are not great fundliolders, for this reason: instead of only receiving three per cent, for their money in the funds, they acquire land, houses, & c. and by a system of grinding starvation, and oppressing the labourers, they obtain fifteen or twenty per cent., be sides by additional corrupt influence, uphold a rotten and pernicious system of government. The monies possessed by the fundholders were originally lent upon security of the national property, that property is mainly in the hands of the Aristocracy, and although in pledge for an enormous debt contributes but a very insigni- ficant amount to the payment of the interest on that obligation. Everything possessed by the Aristocracy is, by some queer process, turned into a " vested right," sacred, and to be respected; whilst the only " vested right" centred in the people, appears to be the privi- lege of being taxed. Ask an ermiued noodle the reason that Lord Ellenborough receives between three and four thousand a- year, and for many years nine thousand ? What services has he ever rendered? None! What were those of his father? Nil! In the art of sneering and terrifying a witness, as a lawyer, he was unequalled; in bolstering up a nasty business, smelling of blood, to screen a royal duke, he was useful, and therefore the nation must be saddled with a heavy pension, now and for ever,— at least so say the coronetted upholders of " vested rights." How came it, that in this moral coun- try a certain deceased lady, Mrs. Arbuthnot, received for many years a pension of nine hundred and thirty- eight pounds, whilst her husband was likewise receiving an- other pension of two thousand per annum? Was it because she was the concubine of a rich and fortunate nobleman ? For no other reason could this scandalous pension have been granted, and such being the case, it was unpa- ralleled impudence, considering how dearly England had paid for this nobleman's exploits in arms, to mane the nation disburse for his achievements in love. The crimes and usurpations of the Aristocracy had aroused the indignation of the people; the barbarous massacre at Manchester, perpetrated at the aristocracy's sole instigation, although for a moment seemingly adding strength to their position, had, in reality, dealt a heavy blow at their authority. Reform in parliament disturbed their minds by day and troubled their dreams at night,— it haunted them like an appalling spectre, it advanced upon them like an overwhelming torrent;— their prestige for good was gone for ever; their turpitude and selfish- ness would be laid bare to an outraged world! Reform was to them the beginning of decay; they must either bend to the storm, or be broken by its fury. A union with the middle classes— the before despised shopocracy — could alone preserve the Order, it was undignified, nevertheless compulsory; this alliance was effected, the Aristocracy was saved, but the third period that of rapid decay, bad commenced. ALPHA. ( To be continued in our next.) UNREPRESENTED LABOUR. AMONO the many important things which deeply affect the interests of the working elasses, which advances their social position, which makes their comforts more ample, and surrounds them with all the necessities they require, — among the many important things which is neglected and lost sight of, is that of not being represented in parliament, and if the rights of men are not embodied in a man who is in the abstract formed and moulded in the occupations, the wants, the privations, and the labour of the poor, how is it even possible that their misery can be in any degree modified ? If capitalists identify themselves with the interests of the classes who transmute themselves into gold at any particular time, it is only done so by a figure of speech. It is only done on pompous occasions when popularity is to be gained by a forensic display of humanity in the House of Commons. It is the means to an end, and: when the end is gained, the artizan— the labourer of whom they have spoken, is allowed to pass into an obli- vion darker than that which traditionally surrounded the dark ages. The anomaly consists in the producer, the worker, the transmuter of valueless iron- stone into marvels of art by which the banker's book of the capitalist exhibits a Crcesus- like amount of treasure, and the artizan dies daily, a haggard wife by his side, losing the human beauty that God gave her, and which touched the young heart of the man years back, and made the solemn yearn- ings of his love akin to those of the angels— by child- ren with thin pale lips, colourless cheeks, and shrunken frames,— these are not the modifications of his fate: they are the conditions of his existence. Besides all this, there is a disgust engendered by a labour that is unappre- ciated, by a work which becomes mere slavery, by an exhibition of skill, latent genius, what you will, which is quietly passed over,— the astute master saying, " What are you about ? Going to praise my workman's skill t Why that will spoil the man. He will consider himself a somebody, who is absolutely necessary to me. To do this, is to subvert the order of things, and if you wish to preserve the existing order of tilings ; if you dislike innovations j if you wish to preserve classes in their en- tirety— that is to say,— if you would retain that line of demarkation which exists, and ought to exist between the employer and the employed, you will leave him alone." So says the capitalist. " You wish to represent him? Bah! What a crotchet! What a sublime absurdity! The workman! Well, he has merely hands and brain, let him be. He has not twenty, forty, sixty, or a hundred thousand pounds to speculate with." Thus he proceeds, and now believes his argument conclusive. And then, if men will say, " Have we not representa- tives of every trading, manufacturing, and commercial town in England!" We reply in admitting such to be the case by a tjbestion, " What interest do they repre- sent?" We do not want delegates from towns, and cities to em- body their civic dignities. We want trades, and labours, and classes, to send their capacitated men to speak for their brothers. They are soon found, and there are plenty of them. Counties and boroughs are things be- longing to the domesday book, and we will now ask for colliery, mining, smelting, weaving, and agricultural divisions of the people, because the unhappy time gives us a dreary mass of columns of stupid, ornate, or irrele- vant nonsense which we cannot read : they are wearying, — so much from the purpose. Who talks about colliers in the House of Commons T about famished weavers, and blinded needle- makers? Who represents beggary, crime, and famine ? The chiffo- nier, the rag- picker, he who rakes his living from the dust and offal flung into the street, should have one to> be the exponent of the interests of his class. It would certainly be a very remarkable sight; but remarkable sights, if necessary, ought to exist. These would be much better than hanging exhibitions and " chambers of horror!" A miserable, but well- informed, weaver of Spitalfields, says to the correspondent of the Morning Chronicle that " the primary cause of the depression of the prices among the weavers was the want of the suffrage. We consider," he logically argues, *' that labour is unrepresented in the House of Commons, and being unrepresented, the capitalist and the landlord have it all their own way." These words, unstudied, but apropos, are very significant, not of what will be, simply, but of what must be. It is the protest of thousands of men ; and if you were to put it to the vote, to a show of hands, you would find that the existing order of things is sanctioned by the meanest possible minority. The ill odour which surrounds the false and stinted conven- tionality reeks around us. Every acre of inhabited land in England has there a human voice which utters its un- heeded protest. By and bye this protest will gather into a thunder. Are the paupers who receive short weight in food repre- sented? " What absurdity!" people will cry; " what next, I wonder?" Why, the next thing will be that this absurdity will receive grave contemplation, and absurdi- ties far more colossal will be entertained. Without troubling ourselves with statistics, we ask our readers to calculate roughly, and to contrast the amount of labour which makes this country rich with the landed, the mercantile, the speculating interest represented in parliament, and we say that it does not amount to one- fourth the value. There is not an article of English pro- duce, saving corn and garden stuffs, which without labour and skill of workmen is worth as much as its weight in copper. It is the worker who gives value to the amorphous iron- stone, and makes the shapeless multiply its value in a ratio that puts geometrical propoftions in the shade. To represent England properly is to represent its working and suffering classes. When this is done we shall hope to behold the advent of a brighter day. ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. L A NEW HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER XIX. ELIZABETH. ELIZABETH, the third of the children of Henry VIII that ascended the English throne, was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, and was born in 1553. The reader who will remember that there were three different mothers to these sisters and brother, will not wonder at the unloving spirit which characterizes them. The mothers each entered the marriage bed when its last occupant had gone to her red rest on the scaffold, or slept in a dishonoured grave. The hand of murder had destroyed the sanctities of that affection which should bind those so closely related, and the bloody seed had re- arisen like those armed men which sprang from the dragon's teeth in the antique fable. During the time of Edward and Mary, she spent her time principally between imprisonment in the Tower, and in close seclusion at Woodstock. She had several offers of marriage made her, but refused them all, preferring, as she asserted, a single life, that is to say, a life of licence and grossness, for it is absurd to imagine that a woman with her mannish manners, habits, and language, added to the numerous intrigues so openly spoken of, could have been the chastfc Lucretia that Spenser or Shakspere would have us believe she was. On the death of Mary, in 1558, she was declared queen, when at the age of twenty five, and as her leaning towards Protestantism was well known ; she was received in Lon- don with acclamations ; for Catholicism, with all the aids of fire and sword, could never be thoroughly rekindled. She took up her residence at the Tower, and, was politic enough to forget all the annoyances and insults she had been subjected to by the partizans of Mary. It would be well if we could say that she continued this forbearance during her long reign. Philip of Spain, who had buried one sister, was willing to marry and bury the other. Elizabeth, however, had no love for his monkish nature, and refused him. She soon " settled " the religion of the nation, destroy- ing with as imperious and heavy a hand as her father's was, all that Mary had with such zeal effected, and the Reformation was completed by act of parliament. As the acknowledged head of the Protestant religion, sheltering it beneath the shadow of a crown, she inter- meddled with the affairs of the Scotch nation, and took the French Huguenots under her protection. She passed some acts which made it treason to talk about the supremacy of the Pope in England, and which for cruelty all but beggared the severest that Mary had passed on the other hand, and kept a lynx eye upon Scotland, lest Mary ( Queen of Scots) should marry with a foreign potentate; and as she had allied herself to a powerful party which supported the Reformation, she was enabled to rule there with a depotism as great as she ruled over her subjects at home. Like many of her predecessors, but with far more show of reason, she was infatuated with favouritism, and the handsomest men about the court were always nearest her person. Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was the selected at one time; and, as her favours were not as vast as his ambition, he proposed for her hand and was refused. In 1568, circumstances compelled the hopeless Queen of Scots to fly from her country and seek refuge in Eng- land. As this was done without asking Elizabeth's per- mission, or acquainting her with the course of events, an infernal instinct, a compound of hatred, petty jealousy, and a world- wide difference in disposition, prompted Elizabeth to detain her a prisoner for life. The Duke of Norfolk, who was as full of folly as of treason, interfered on her behalf, sought to aid her escape, and was lodged in the Tower. France implored Mary's release, and threat- ened in case of refusal; but the queen obstinately refused to listen to the former, and snapped her fingers at the latter. She had a very decisive portion of her father's temper, together with a large idea of assassination ; and if the eighth Henry could decapitate his wives, she could make her lovers the less by a head as well as dabble in a few executions out of the common. The failure of Norfolk's attempt caused a rebellion in the north, which was headed by the Earls of Northumber- land and Westmoreland, who had engaged themselves with Philip of Spain's head cut- throat, the Duke of Alva, in the Low Countries. This, and a subsequent one, by Leonard Dacres, were put down, and Norfolk managed to escape from danger, but only for a time, for engaging in a new plot, he was beheaded. The Scots were willing to have back their queen, thinking, probably, that if she must be led to the scaffold, it would be some satisfaction to do that themselves ; but as they offered too little, and Elizabeth demanded too much, matters remained as they were. Three or four years went on without much occurring that was worthy of notice. The queen perpetually kept her people and her parliament in hot water, on one score or another; but as they got used to it, they only grinned, grumbled, and magnanimously bore with her intemperate whims. She taxed her people in herprocessions, inflicting upon them the cost of their love of parades, shows, and mask- ings; and she rewarded Iter courtiers by giving them monopolies in things that were absolutely necessary to the people; by this indirect, but infamous means, the taxes became ponderous and utterly inexplicable. She was always demanding supplies as she was always creating emergencies if there were none really existing. The massacre of St. Bartholomew, which took place at Paris, in August, 1572, paralysed the civilized world with its cold, butcherly atrocity. Having been recongnised as the most powerful defender of Protestanism, she was bound to take steps in the matter. She swore roundly that she would do something, and ended by doing nothing, save putting her court in mourning, a proceeding that must have been disagreeable in the extreme to her, and insulting to her vanity; for if ever the intellect of woman was unhinged by the frivolity of dress, it was that of Elizabeth. She accepted the excuses of Charles, the French monarch, by whom this piece of butchery had been pre- cipitated, but she disgusted the Protestants at home and abroad by maintaining an amicable exterior with it, and negotiations were going on for her marriage with the king's brother, the Duke of Alencon. When he came over to England in order to press his own suit and play the part of the amorous swain, it is very probable that his being five- and- twenty years younger than she was, her coarseness, her violence of temper, and many other things, revolted him. Certain it is that the queen at one moment was devotedly attached to him, and ended by getting into a furious rage and dismissing his suit. Various events brought into a rupture tbe complaints, neglects, injuries and reprisals which had taken place between England and Spain since Philip had been re- fused as a very bad bargain, and in 1585 she defied that power by openly entering into a treaty with the Low Countries, who had revolted against the Spanish autho- rity. The sovereignty of these places had been offered to her, and refused; but she sent over into their councils one of her generals, the Earl of Leicester, and sent also Admiral Drake into the West Indies, which was an act exhibiting far more common sense, in order to attack the Spanish galleons in those seas. In the meantime, while she kept Mary of Scotland a close prisoner, she cultivated the acquaintance of her son, James, the King of Scotland, a man of a mean and abject soul, who cordially met her advances. They entered into a league for mutual defence. In 1586 a conspiracy was formed in favour of Mary, by Anthony Babbington, a gentleman of Derbyshire, who was worked upon by Bailard, a Romish priest, to attempt the assassination of Elizabeth, and the consequent libera- tion of Mary. The conspiracy however was entrusted to one of the queen's councils, as there must necessarily be confidants in plots of this kind, so also exists a conse- quent danger of treachery from some one or other. Fourteen of these conspirators were seized, con- victed, and executed; and the death of Mary was loudly demanded. Elizabeth so managed the whole matter that it appeared she was driven by her parliament, her councillors, and people to an act repugnant to her pretended tenderness. She had even gone to the exe- crable length of proposing her private assassination, which is proved in a manner impossible to be denied, and the murderous kinswoman put her merciless dislike into execution, for Mary was beheaded at Fotheringay Castle on the 8th of February, 1587; and when the news of this came to her, drunk with joy or something else, her conduct was that of a frantic Bacchanal. She bel- lowed out oaths and abuse against the executors of the odious act, but the veil of deceit was too transparent, for the meanest capacity beheld through the execrable pre- tence, and she was hated accordingly. The year 1588 is memorable for the attempt and failure made by Spatn to lnvatle the shores of England with an innumerable armament of craft of every denomination, which was called the " Invincible Armada." It was perhaps the most gigantic invasion that was ever medi- tated in ancient or modern times. It is a petted portion of our school histories, that episode of Elizabeth's being at the miserable fort of Tilbury, encouraging the soldiery and rallying the spirit of her troops. Her general was the Earl of Leicester on this occasion. A violent storm of wind, and bad seamanship, did what the resisting powers of England could never have done. The armada was destroyed, and the few scattered vessels left, were taken. Henry of Beam becoming Henry IV of France, and being favourable to the Protestant party in that country, Elizabeth assisted him with men and money during the wars of the league. In these wars, another successor to the favour of the queen distinguished himself by his bravery. This was Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex. In addition to his courage and qualifications were added those, more weighty with Elizabeth, of handsome form and great personal beauty. She spoiled him with her favours, and he behaved himself like a petted but for- ward child. The sturdy virgin queen used to check his impertinence with a smart box of the ear occasionally, which was efficacious enough in most cases. During the Earl of Tyrone's rebellion in Ireland in 1599, she sent him there as iord Lieutenant. Having returned without permission, her indignation against him was soon changed when the adroit courtier conveyed to her that the reason of his coming back was that he could not exist out of her presence, and incontinently fell into a lover's illness, till he was recovered by the physicians, broths, and favours which the queen sent hiin. Essex, however, forgetting all the kindness he had re- ceived, was ingrate enough to engage in a rebellion against her, so that she was with great real reluctance compelled to sign his own death warrant, which, in effect, was her own, for she never recovered the loss ef her last lover. She fell into a deep despondepce and melancholy after his execution which nothing could distract. As the Earl himself had some doubts with regard to the vacillating and irritable temper of his mistress, he on one occasion obtained from her a ring, at the receiving of which it would be certain to insure his forgiveness for any offence. This ring, when in his last extremity he trusted with the Countess of Nottingham, the wife of his deadliest foe, was never presented to Elizabeth; and it was not till the death of the countess herself, that, in her remorse, she confessed this breach of trust. Elizabeth, in one of her delirious transports of rage, exclaimed that " God might pardon her this treachery, but that she never would;" and truly we do not blame her. Human life is sweet after all, and it requires somethingmore than the milk of human kindness to forgive a piece of duplicity so vile, so base, and hypocritical, and we cannot see the least shadow of defence for the part which the countess played. Of the two, however, her husband's conduct, under whose authority she acted, was the more base and infamous. She then gave herself up to the deepest grief. Her anguish was no doubt embittered by the remorse which haunted her for the rivers of blood she had shed, the many lives she had wantonly destroyed. It was a retri- bution as just as it was dreadful, that now overtook her, and she did not seek to mitigate the poignancy of her sorrow by seeking for comfort in justification. She lay on the ground for several nights and days before her death, and died, bequeathing her sceptre to the King of Scots, her nearest relative, on the 21th March, 1602, iti the seventieth year of her age, and forty- fifth of her reign. Some of the greatest names that have created the lofty literature of England belong to her reign ; and her huge appetite for flattery employed the pens of the poets, fore- most of whom stand Spenser and Shakspere. She was in the extremest sense of the word, a " strong- minded" woman, and with the exception of her ridiculous love for dress, show and number, being the chief features, her tastes were all masculine to a degree. CHAPTER XXIV. JAMES I. JAMES I was one of the most ridiculous pedants that ever obtained a literary reputation. Solemn, pompous, un- gracious, stuffed as full with inordinate self- conceit as his doublets were of wool and padding to ward off dagger points, he having the fear of assassination constantly be- fore his eyes, he is an example to the world of the good- temper and patience on the part of a " generous British public," in allowing themselves to be ruled over with a rod of iron by a fool, and something worse. He was born in Edinburgh in 1566. His father was Lord Darnley, and his mother, Mary Stuart. During her jrt- egnacy the jealousy of the murderous brute was excited against Rizzio, her secretary, whom Darnley stabbed in her presence; and this may doubtless have had some effect in impressing upon James that timidity of disposition which so strongly characterized him. His childhood was passed in civil wars, under the re- gencies of Murray, Mar, and Morton, and he resided in Stirling Castle, under the tutorship of the grim Buchanan; but as this and succeeding portions of his life belong rather to Scottish than to English history, we shall come at once to the period when he was proclaimed King of England, immediately after the death of Elizabeth. James was thirty- seven years of age at this time, and both nations beheld with no little satisfaction the union of the two kingdoms under one heir, as it seemed to pro- mise a cessation from the civil wars and quarrels which had for so long a time distracted the people and rent the two countries asunder. The court of James was now thronged with Scottish and northern nobles, whose poverty made them view with delight the wealth and " flesh- pots" of our modern Babylon. With a profuse and indiscriminate hand he showered rank and property upon them. With this we do not particularly quarrel, because with so much imbecility there is no tangible ground for finding fault. He talked of government with tbe gravity of a Solon; but in his actions was little better than a Zany or buffoon. A conference held at Hampton Court gave him the op- portunity of exhibiting his polemical skill, in which dog- matism and monkish Latin, heavily larding his sentences, were prevalent. The celebrated gunpowder plot, in which Guy Fawkes figures so conspicuously, and whose effigy is so zealously paraded about the streets on the fifth of every November, was a great source of alarm at this period. The poor king was frightened out of all propriety. Its intention was to blow up the House of Commons, destroying with it tilt- king, Queen Anne.( the second daughter of Frederick Ii. King of Denmark), place upon the throne the your Princess Elizabeth, and by this decisive blow re- establi the Roman Catholic religion. Desperate men, capable of every act of daring, we engaged in this dark scheme ; but as the cackling of geese saved the Roman Capitol, so did a mysterious letter to Lord Monteagle warn the intended victims of the immi- nent danger. James, who had a nose for smelling out plots, insisted upon the arrogating to himself the sagacity of discovering this, which the complaisance of others readily granted him. The execution of Guy Fawkes, with some of the leading confederates, ended the attempt for the present. The union, as by law established, between England and Scotland, occupied much of his time ; but with cudgelling his brains ever so much, little could the modern Solomon make of it. A difference with the Dutch States, regarding Arminianism, was far more momentous to him, and he was Battered at the result of his absurd and haughty represen- tation, by their removing from the professor's chair one of the most eminent men of his time, who gave a name to a new sect of religionists, Arminian Vorstius. An accusation, in fact a stigma, of a dark, infamous, and unnatural kind is attached to the memory of James, but for which we might forget his sublime effrontery and stilted nonsense. This was caused by his having sud- denly been taken with a passionate fervour of favouritis n, the object of which was Robert Carr, a Scottish youth, whose youth and beauty of person had the same effect upon James that Helen might be supposed to create in Paris or in Faust. This thing, having fascinated him at first sight, he made it in a short time Viscount Rochester and Earl of Somerset. He was about the most impure and filthy scoundrel that was ever guilty of atrocities, nameable and unnameable. He engaged in a criminal correspondence with the Countess of Essex, a woman capable of every crime; he prevailed upon the king to precipitate a divorce between her and her husband, and then married the abandoned adulteress. Sir Thomas Overbury, who was unfortunate enough to be intimate with this wretch Carr, or Rochester, endea- voured to break off the connexion between him and the countess, and this modern Messalina, enraged at the at- tempt made to separate her fro., her paramour, caused him ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. to be poisoned. The deed was discovered, and all except the countess and her worthy lover, were punished for it. There is, however, an avenging retribution in popular opinion; both were shunned by all, and the king, having selected George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, gave Somerset no further heed, and the latter died in an ignominious neglect, which was a fate far too good for him. Sir Walter Raleigh's buccaneering expeditions to seve- ral places of South America, his fabulous El Dorado and his immense falsehoods, occupied much of the public at- tention. He had been most cruelly used by the king, and failing in an enterprize, which, if successful, was to have procured him, in addition to a full pardon, the king's favour, he was executed upon an old sentence, a saving of time and parchment, in October, 1618, It seems James was under the influence of the court of S- pain to such an extent, that it is owing to Spanish in- fluence alone Raleigh was executed. This must have been in great contrast with the relation of Elizabeth to that court; but this miserable king, with every inherent mean- ness of disposition that can degrade human nature, bullied the weak right and left of him, and was insulted with impunity by the strong. Detesting the catholics, as he professed to do, and cowering beneath the sullen hate of Spain, he yet had the shameless hardihood of seeking for his son Charles a marriage with the Infanta of Spain. He however married Henrietta, daughter of Henry IV of France. It was a condition of this ill- assorted marriage that the children should be instructed by the mother, a woman fitted for a presidency of the Inquisition, one whose slow, utfdying hatred neither time nor repentance could change. The parliament became turbulent at this, and was never quieted till the blood of the son ( Charles I), cleared away the offences of his father, as well as his " own, upon the scaffold. Having been embroiled with Spain and with the Ger- man Emperor, by espousing the Protestant cause in the palatinate, and sending over troops to act in conjunction with Prince Maurice, the sequel of which was most dis- astrous, as chiefly through sickness the whole enterprize was defeated, he was seized not long after with a fever, which carried him off in March, 1.625, in the fifty - ninth year of his age, and in the twenty- second year of his reign over England. Few men who have ever lived became an object of more universal contempt than James. Few men ever carried the " divine right of kings" to an extent so dan- gerous to the liberties of men. Gross, brutish, and infa- mous in his pleasures, he was not to be trusted in word or deed. A writer in some degree inclined to favour him, thus sums up the moral value of the man :—" His learning degenerated into pedantry and prejudice, his generosity into profusion ; his good- nature into pliability and unmanly fondness ; his love of peace into pusillanimity, and his wisdom into cunning." He set up for an author by in- flicting upon the world a few exaggerated absurdities, which were duly praised and lauded by those who were interested in this degenerate species of lying. He be- lieved in witchcraft and the power of devils, and had an aversion to tobacco, which can scarcely be comprehended in a day when smoking is a juvenile acquisition. Solemn and grave about trifles, he frittered away life like one blowing air bubbles. It was scarcely worth while for a man to live so long to do so little, and though we believe there is in the destiny of things a certain " use" for evil or for good, we are puzzled to find out in which class his equivocal position placed him. CHAPTER XXV. CHARLES I. CHARLES I was the son of James I and of his wife Anne of Denmark. He ascended the throne of England in 1625, at the time that a war was going forward with Spain. As his marriage with the Infanta had been broken off, which was the principal cause of the outbreak, this latter power seemed determined to wreak its vengeance upon him. The first parliament he summoned, testified its disgust against him, the war, and against the minister, Buck- ingham. This, was soon dissolved, and by pawning and borrowing, a sufficient sum was raised to carry on the war. As this supply was soon exhausted the next parliament was still more restive and refused to draw the strings of the public purse, and impeached the minister. Charles, irritated, haughty, and enraged, again dissolved it; and led away by an infatnation common to kings, the belief that tile world cannot do without them, and that their anger is fatal, and their favours are like the light of heaven, he threatened to do without them, and raise money on bis own account, and by his own authority. Men then talked of laws, constitutions, and the divine right of the people, and Charles set them all at defiance. Buckingham, who seemed to be his own evil genius as much as he was the evil genius of all who were con- nected with him, grew offended with Richelieu, and put his own thick skull in competition with the fertile and teeming brains of his great rival. Charles entered into a war with France, and the disgraceful repulses Bucking- ham received were terminated by the knife of his slayer, Felton. In 1628, the parliament once more met, and once more, and still more strongly, refused to be conciliated. From that time, Charles was his own minister, and raised to honour as his principal agent, Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Lord Strafford: made a foaming madman to boot, Laud, head of ecclesiastical matters, and now assisted by an unscrupulous friend, an intolerant bigot, and his own obstinacy, Charles commenced warfare against the statutes of the land, which brought him in unfortunate collision with Hampden, Cromwell, and, not least, with the Covenanters in Scotland. Strafford, who had faithfully served his master, was given up by him when the cry of an enraged people warned the king that he was going too far. • The queen, who would have sacrificed her father and her mother to I her strong hate, urged Charles to sign the sentence which ! made him write himself " liar" to the world; Wentworth i went to the scaffold, and Laud was assassinated. Both had earned their doom with a fatal diligence. The parliament little by little began to make the king feel its power at the cost of his own: what it gained he lost, and he was checked his full career. Laws were passed which made it death for him to pursue his course of taxation, and outbreaks in Ireland, Scotland, and England prepared men for a crisis. While in Scotland the covenant was gathering its sworn defenders daily, in England, men were dividing themselves into Cavaliers and Roundheads. Charles thinking that there was yet time and oppor- tunity for making a decisive blow, his wife, his evil angel, was by his side, and her pernicious councils hurried him on to his* ruin. The king caused his attorney- general to accuse five members of the Commons of high treason, and next day went with an armed party to seize them. The aspect of the parliament, of the city, and of the people, at this breach of privilege was so menacing, that Charles retired to Hampton Court. The gauntlet was cast and taken ; anils alone could decide the quarrel. The queen fled to Holland for aid and men, and the king went to York as his rallying point, to gather his forces round him, while the parliament remained firmly esta- blished in London. In 1644, after several severe introductory skirmishes, the first fatal blow to the royal cause was struck by Cromwell, at Marston Moor. York soon followed, and Charles was a fugitive. The battle of Naseby was the next, which was ob- stinately disputed, but none could stand against such men as Fairfax, Cromwell, and Seton. As Fairfax was leading the northern army to Oxford, the king having lost every hope, determined to throw himself under the protection of the Scottish forces, that then lay before Newark. In 1647 he was taken by the army of the parliament and was guarded with lenient watchfulness at Hampton Court. Even here his fate was in his own hands, but he endeavoured to escape, and proceeding disguised to the south coast, crossed over to the Isle of Wight, in the hope of finding a ship to convey him from thence. Failing in this he was again taken, and lodged in Carisbrook Castle. A sort of reaction was going on in his favour, and an insurrection in Kent and Essex required the army of Fairfax to put it down. As the army had become the most powerful body in the state, and as Cromwell was its head, Charles was brought from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle, and preparations were made for trying him for high treason against his people, and on the 20th of Jan- uary, 1649, the court assembled on this unparalleled oc casion, and began its sittings. His treason was clearly proved. No man could for a moment entertain a doubt but that the unconstitutional proceedings of Charles had earned for him the fate lie was so ready to deplore. In consigning Strafford to the exe- cutioner, little was seen of sympathy in his dark, impassive nature. A man who swears togovern his people with justice and moderation, and setting aside the law of the land in order that his own will should be the rule, must be pre- pared to abide by the consequences. We must not deny him the merit of firmness and dignity during the last trying hours of his life. But after all, is there any merit in bending with propriety to the, destiny which he cannot change ? It is not so difficult a matter, we hope, to die with tranquillity, when death comes in such meted and measured steps, and although there be not the flattering unction of conscious innocence to lay to one's soul, a man must necessarily derive some prestige of moral grandeur from the very nature of an inexorable fate which resolutely holds the chalice to his own lips, which no earthly power can put aside. The episcopal intolerance of Charles had filled Scot- land with horror and death; and we once more assert that the odium which is sought to be attached to the Scottish Commissioners for resigning him into the hands of a power that had the right to claim him is as undeserved as it is false. Three days were allowed him to make bis peace with heaven. His family, all that remained in England, were allowed to visit him, and the interval he spent with them, in writing, and reading, and in prayer, for we believe that his devotion was sincere. He was the best moral man of his doomed family, against whom a curse seems to have been issued. On the 30th of January, 1649, fie rose early, and made his toilette ( with assistance) with considerable care. The execution was to take place before Whitehall, and the sound of the workmen's hammers erecting the scaffold came to his ears in the night, and perhaps, distracted his attention. He was led out, and guarded to the scaffold, which was surrounded by soldiers. A few sublime words crossed his lips aS he made preparation for laying his head on the block, and in a few moments as the royal blood was being greedily absorbed in the scattered sawdust, a man in a mask took up the ghastly and dripping head, and hold- ing it aloft said aloud : " This is the head of a traitor 1" His character is a mixture of many virtues with few vices, but these vices were destructive to the happiness of his people. He was chaste, temperate, and frugal. He was cold, haughty, andobstinate. Narrow- minded and full of prejudice, he lacked that catholicity of soul which sees his own good, only as derivable from that which is general. We repeat that the queen was his evil angel. He be- trayed the trust which the unfortunate Strafford placed in him through her infernal representations. Self- willed and ignorant of the art of government he had no com- prehension of the rights of men. No man was perhaps better fitted for a private station. None less fitted to play the part of a king. He was to the full as unfor- tunate as he was guilty, and by the law of retaliation and by none other, we cannot say that the fate he met should have been otherwise than it was. He was beheaded in the forty- ninth year of his age. EDWIN ROBERTS. THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND PEASES OF HUMAN SLAVERY: HOW IT CAME INTO THE WORLD, AND HOW IT SHALL BE MADE TO GO OUT. LETTEB XVIII. BEFORE resuming the subject of the resolutions, with which we concluded our last, we pray the readers of the Instructor to bear in mind that we are now arrived at that all- important branch of our inquiry which pro- poses to answer the question—" How is human slavery to be made to go out of the world?" To have shown how it came in,— how it was propagated,— the varied phases it has assumed, and the hideous, wide- spread proletarianism to which the conversion of chattel- slavery into wages- slavery has given rise,— to have shown all this, without at the same time essaying to show how the fell monster is to be felled and eradicated from the face of the earth, would bo a mere idle literary disser- tation— a contemptible parade of erudition without ob- ject— without end. A higher purpose will, we trust, be found to have dictated this inquiry. An earnest, heartfelt desire to contribute our quota towards rescuing humanity from oppression and sorrow is the motive wo lay claim to. This motive it is which impelled us, on the part of the National Reform League, to propose the resolutions embodied in our letter of last week. These resolutions, wo are happy to say, were passed unanimously, and with acclamations, by the Leicester Square meeting. They have also received the sanction of sundry other meetings in town and country. They are still to be submitted to others; aud it is in contem- plation by the Council of the League to have a million or two copies of them distributed throughout the king- dom when sufficient funds shall have been collected for tho purpose. In the meantime it is the wish of tho council and of the members generally, that all the de- mocratic papers, stamped and unstamped, shall give us the benefit of their circulation. And as every member of the League is a genuine democrat,— as they are all chartists and " something more,"— as they are all social reformers who recognise no other boundary to man's rights than the equal rights of others,— and as they are all supporters of the democratic press, it is hoped by them that no mere difference of opinion ( as to details) will prevent any democratic sheet from lending the use of its columns for the purpose iu question. In these resolutions ( which are to be considered the resolutions of the National Reform League) we profess to answer the question—" how is human slavery to be made to go out of file world?" It is true, their immediate applica- tion is intended only for our own country; but they are equally applicable to France, Germany, and every other " civilized" country— America itself not excepted. America is comparatively free from most of the poli- tical anomalies and exclusive privileges which disgrace Europe and degrade the vast numerical majority of its people. There are no crowned heads there; there is no state church; there is no National Debt hanging like a mill- stone from the neck of the union. Some of the states have public debts of their own. But they are comparatively light, and, for tho most part, in course of easy liquidation. The United States, as a confederacy, have 110 public debt worth noticing. Moreover, there is no titled aristocracy claiming, by hereditary right, to legislate for or govern any of the states. In this re- spect men of all grades and conditions are equally eligible to office, and to places of trust, honour, and emolument Leaving out the black population, universal suffrage may be said to be the general rule, and pro- perty- qualifications the exception. Treason works no corruption of blood in America. There is no law of primogeniture or of entail; there is no religion esta- blished and maintained by law; and consequently no legal bars to religious freedom. Dissenters have, there, something more than mere toleration. Taxation is, generally speaking, equal, uDiform, and direct. It is comparatively light, too; and when otherwise, the remedy lies with the people themselves; for, as restric- tions upon the suffrage by property and tax- qualifica- tions exist but in some few of the states ( and in these are not very onerous or stringent), the basis of repre- sentation may, for ali practical purposes, be considered numerical and not territorial or financial. Add to these advantages the fact that the old common law of England is the common law of America, and that where any de- parture from it is made by statute, it is invariably in a democratic sense. Thus, in Texas and other states, for instance, that part of the old common law which con- siders a married woman as dead in 1 aw, is abrogated by statute in favour of the gentle sex, and so as to give her more power than she possesses under the civil law. Thus, any property possessed by her before marriage remains at her sole disposal after marriage; as also any property she may become entitled to during coverture. She may receive from and give to her husband a deed of conveyance whilst under coverture. And any deed af conveyance made by the husband requires for its full validity the joint signature of the wife. In some of the states, too, the homestead can never be taken in execu- tion of debt, and, at the moment we write, a powerful movement is going on throughout tho states to secure a similar exemption of the homestead throughout the en- tire union. These and other privileges— the result of her political constitution— America fully enjoys. No European state can compare with her in these respects — not even Norway or Switzerland. In a word, America is already possessed of every political amelioration con- tended for by the old radicals of this country, or by the financial or mere middle- class reformers of the present day. Indeed, to assimulate us to America is their summum bonum— the ne plus ultra of their reforming aspirations. Far be it from us to undervalue the political rights ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. secured to the Americans by their general and state constitutions. Our Chartism is too well known for that. Nevertheless, we unhesitatingly affirm that the reso- lutions of our League are no less necessary for the extinction of slavery in America than in England, France, or any other European country. Our position is this: it is the land and money laws of a country that must ever mainly determine the social condition of its people. In other words, without just agrarian and commercial laws— laws that shall establish for all classes equal rights in the soil, and equal advan- tages from the use of money an equitable exchange in trade),— l and credit ( so as to secure • no country can be pros- perous, be its form of government what it may. Now, in these respects, America has but little to boast of over England, France, or any other European country. If she does not exhibit the wide- spread distress that these countries exhibit, she owes it not so much to the supe- riority of her political institutions ( for of these she has as yet but little availed herself) as she does to her un- bounded resources ( in the extent and fertility of her soil) and to the comparative exemption she enjoys from public and private indebtedness, owing to her being a new country. But for these causes— but for the facility with which unappropriated land may be had— and but for the fewness of her territorial and commercial aris- tocracy, as compared with those of older countries, her citizens would very soon exhibit the same hideous ex- tremes of rich and poor, as are to be found in Europe. Indeed, New York and some of the New England States, ( where most of the land is appropriated, and the popu- lation crowded) have already, on more than one occasion, exhibited all the worst features of British " civilization," — that is to say, wholesale squalor and destitution ( with their necessary consequences), in close proximity to teeming granaries and warehouses: alias an unemployed labouring population in rags and hunger within sight of Strange to say, too, the people submitted to this as to every other abomination of the times. They submitted because the great mass of them were too profoundly ignorant of their social rights to take much interest in the franchise question. It ever was so; it ever will be so, with a people ignorant of their social rights: they will never risk life or limb in defence of their poli- tical till they comprehend their social rights. In America there is less danger than anywhere else of the people losing their political rights. This is owing partly to the greater equality in property which subsists there, but chiefly to the agitation of social ques- tions, which has been forced upon the working- classes of late years by the oontinuous arrival of European emigrants competing with thom in the labour market, and alarming them, by their example, as to what might prove their own fate hereafter, should they suffer a powerful territorial and commercial aristocracy to grow up amongst them. Hence the springing up of the " Free Soil" and " National Reform" movements in the United States: hence the recent attempt to radicalize the constitution of Rhode Island: hence the numerous pub- lications which denounce the sale of the public lands—• especially to foreigners and companies : hence the hatred of national debts,— especially if they arise out of foreign loans— and the determination of the working classes to " repudiate" them: and hence, above all, the cheering faet, so well deserving of our notice, that every new revision of an American constitution,— whether it be that of a state or of the entire union— is invariably distinguished by an increase of strength or latitude given to the democratic principle. This is particularly observable in the new states, where the settlers, con- sisting in great part of exiles forced from Europe by poverty and tyranny, have carried out with them an intense hatred of the systems they fled from, and there- fore take all the democratic precautions they can to merchant- princes and master- manufacturers, worth some keep down the aristocratic leaven, i . in,. i ^ i ii i . i . i i ii l A : i ip hundreds of thousands of dollars each. And why should it be otherwise? The social system is the same there as here. Rents are higher in New York, Boston, Phila- delphia, & c., than in London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. Competition is tbe same or worse; wages slavery is as rife in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York, as in any part of the British Isles,— and if wages be not quite as low in Philadelphia and Lowell as they are in Man- chester and Birmingham, it is partly owing to the high protective duties laid on foreign manufactures, partly to the comparative scarcity of hands, but chiefly to the facility with which the victims of competition can escape from the mills and factories to the backwoods of Indiana, Missouri, & c. In other words the Americans owe whatever advan- tages they have over us, not to any superiority in their But not even America herself, we predict, will escape the regime of Europe unless she reforms her social insti- tutions while she is yet young and healthy. Her agra- rian laws are not a jot better than those of France or England; and her commercial spirit is even more ravenous and unscrupulous. In one respect, she is worse than either. We allude to her preference of metallic money to symbolic money; which is a result of the fraudulent paper- systems she has so often smarted under. There is no subject upon which the American working classes are so lamentably at fault as the subject of money. They fancy that an honest paper system is impossible, because they have been so often cheated by the worth- less rags of fraudulent issuers; and in this suicidal delusion the bullionists and usurers take good care to confirm them. Next to their want of sound views upon social institutions,— not to better agrarian and comraer- j the land question,— this delusion as to the real nature cial laws, nor even to the acknowledged superiority of and proper functions of money,— is the greatest foe to their civil and religious system of polity— but to the ; American progress. On the subject of eredit — that territorial and other local advantages to which we have : most potent of all levers of modern production— the referred, and - which no more distinguish thorn than they do the people of Sydney, Adelaide, Port Philip, Natal, New Zealand, or any other new country in which land is abundant and labour scarce. But let America ( with her present social system) come to be peopled as England is; let her now unappropriated land be made private property of, and her agrarian and commercial laws remain what they are,— and we venture to say that not one jot better off will her labouring population be than our's is now. Universal suffrage might stem the aristocratic tide for a season ( as it has done in other new countries), but the men of land and money would sweep away universal suffrage there as they have ever done elsewhere, the moment they found it incompatible with landlordism and usury. All the principal states of Europe bad universal suffrage eighteen months ago— France alone possesses it now; and that with a tenure so insecure that it can hardly be said to be established. In all the other states, the men of land and money de- stroyed universal suffrage by brute force. They dis- persed Diets and National Assemblies at the point of the bayonet, and made rights and constitutions to dis- appear before the cannon of disciplined assassins. It may be the same in France before six months. It would have been the same twelve months ago, but that some two millions of social reformers were known to be ready to take advantage of the event, in order to wreak vengeance upon the landed and commercial villains who have defrauded them out of the fruit6 of three revolu- tions, purchased with torrents of blood. In truth, universal suffrage is no guarantee at all for liberty, unless it be accompanied, on the part of the working- classes, with a knowledge of their social rights, and a consequent determination to use political power for their establishment. The Romans, the Spar- tans, and Athenians, the Sicilians, and many other ancient peoples, had universal suffrage;— at least, a vote for every citizen who was not a helot or a bondsman; but it proved of no use to them, for want of knowing their social rights. For the like reason, the Irish made no good use of their forty- shilling freehold vote when they had it; and, for the same reason, they offered no resistance when it was taken away. The French people had universal suffrage in 1793. Their convention of that period was elected by universal suffrage, and the con- stitution it made was far more democratic than the pre- sent French constitution of 1848. But not understand- ing their social rights then, so well as they do now, they suffered their landlords and money- lords to rob them of it, just as the old Romans, Athenians, & e., had allowed their land and money- lords to do in their day. After the convention had succeeded, with the aid of the Parisian shopocracy, in murdering Robespierre, and same ignorance prevails in - Amerina as hero and France. In truth, were it not that universal suffrage is | the fundamental law in France and America, while it is scouted in England, we should be at a loss to know what advantages the French and Americans possess over us; so deplorably similar are the three countries in re- spect of social rights. But we shall better comprehend these matters when we come to analyze the resolutions of the League, and to test their value by showing their equal applicability to, and durability for, all three countries— indeed for all " civilized " countries, under the sun. A NATIONAL REFORMER. ( To be continued in our next.) SIE CHARLES WOOD'S BUDGET. by Mr. Cobden. We trust to increased intelligence as the redeeming influence that is destined to save our country from the trafficking of mean statesmen, the eating rust of selfish avarice, and the frivolous treatment of hawking philanthropists. But we much mistake the character of the Whigs if they voluntarily pave the way for their own destruction. To England they have been treacherous and repressive, to Ireland cowardly and coercive, and will hold in their grasp the balance of power and the balance of property so long as the nation will allow them. Sir Charles Wood has been the first member of the cabinet who has admitted the existence of agricultural distress. The admission aud the hopes of the Chancellor as to the remedy both deserve attention. Having referred to the present low price of corn, and boasted ambiguously about the general prosperity, he continued :— " At the same time, sir, I admit that the change in the law has imposed on the agriculturists the necessity for great ex- ertions to maintain their position, and it will require the united energies of all classes to meet the difficulty ( Hear, hear). I am convinced that the skill and energy of the agriculturists will surmount that difficulty : but I cannot deny that, in the great struggle which may ensue, many will fail ( Hear, hear, hear). I have never denied that this was my expectation. There has never been any great improvement in the world, especially in commerce, unaccompanied by loss to certain classes." Well, here is the old remedy " skill and energy." Is there a tax to be paid, a royal whim to be gratified, an additional burden to be borne, we have the same remedy ; and how does it manifest its influence? The " skill and energy" of the far- mers is first felt by the labourers and tradesmen whom they employ. We read in the columns of the newspapers of a general movement in agricultural districts in favour of a re- duction of the price of labour, amounting to fifteen or twenty per cent, in the wages of all employed. The movement we refer to is an organized movement, c union of farmers to reduce the wages of labourers. The tradesmen and labourers are uniting to protect their wages, and though not favoured with the gift of prophecy, we can foretell the result. If the labourers refuse to work at the wages offered, the workhouse is open to receive them ; and when brought before the Board of Guardians, they meet the same farmers who offered them the reduced wages, aud are told to work at the prices offered for their labour, or starve. There is no alternative. A few stack- yards being set on fire does not mend matters in the least; it satisfies a savage revenge, which, in turn, begets increased distrust and hatred; so true it is that injury done begets injury as a reaction. The end of it is that the labourer is forced to accept of the reduced wages and eke out a living by poaching, stealing, and, such other means as are within his reach. The tradesman stands out longer; he, too, in the end must yield to necessity ; if the far- mer finds him dogged and determined in his demand for for- mer prices, he is threatened with ruin. Another saddler, wheelwright, or blacksmith, as the case may be, is induced to become his competitor, or the work is performed by the cheap labour of badly- paid operatives in large towns. This is the practical meaning of the increased " skill and energy," of which it has been the misfortune of England to have heard so much. Thirty years ago when the great master of that policy of which Sir Charles Wood is the disciple, experimented on 1 the silk weavers of Spitalfields, he too talked of the increased « « lcill ami oncrgy " of the silk weavers. For thirty years the poor weavers have practised the fatal lesson ; the results are too well known to admit of doubt. The weavers work more and get less; their wages have fallen two- thirds in amount and they are born in poverty, live in pauperism, and are buried by charity. The hand- loom weavers, amounting to 800,000 in number, were toid the same tale and have shared the same fate. These serve as specimens of the way in which capital " surmounts " difficulties, the way in which increased " skill and energy" build up the glory of England! There is a lesson to be learned in the arrangements of the affairs of men not yet understood in the English House of Commons by either the Protectionists or Free Traders. The Protectionists lean too much to land; the Free traders too much to capital. The former oppress by privilege, the latter cheat and screw down labour by the power of capital. England requires to be protected from the Protectionists and made free from the Free Traders. And if she be not so emancipated, some minister, twenty yearshenoe, will point to Sir Charles Wood's speech of 1850, just as Sir Charles pointed to the speech of Mr. Huskisson spoken thirty years ago; and like Mr. Huskisson and Sir Charles Wood, he too will be obliged to make the humiliating confession, that the real property of the country has increased beyond calculation, and the condition of the labourer has not improved. One property pre- eminently ministerial Sir Charles Wood's speech does possess: it is a speech of many meanings. As we have seen the Chancellor of the Exche- quer lias admitted the existence of agricultural distress, and so fearful is " the great struggle that may ensue, many will fall." Very candid indeed; tile agricultural distress is caused, we are informed, by the low prices of agricultural produce. And Sir Charles' sympathises with the sufferers, and then declares that, " taking England throughout, he believed that the agricultural labourer had enjoyed more happiness during the last three years than for many years prior to 184G ( Hear, Hear). His food had been cheaper, and his employment more constant. Such an improvement in the cultivation of laud as would cheapen its cost, whilst ft multiplied the quantity of agricultural produce, would be a benefit, not only to the occupier of land and his labourers, but to the kingdom at large. Improved cultivation could, of course, only be attained by an outlay of capital on the FOR once in the history of the rule of Whiggery a Whig Chan- cellor of the Exchequer has been enabled to boast of a small surplus of income over the annual expenditure. We say, for once we hear of a surplus : well, the very name of it is refresh- ing. The Whigs who in 18- 30 were the great sticklers for re- trenchment and economy have at last made a beginning in what the Financial Reformers must call the right direction. " John rari'so long and ran so" fast. No wonder he ran out at - last." Not so, Sir Charles saves John and makes a confession of the sins of both, and promises amendment for the future. How these promises may be kept is another question. The Burplus of about one million and a quarter has been dis- posed of; the claims of the national creditor have been acknow- ledged, and the duty on bricks is to be taken oflj and the stamp duty on leases reduced. And. there at present the matter ends. Great good to the agricultural labourer is expected to result from the abolition of the duty on bricks. And Sir Charles, who is quite a labourer's friend, was confident such would be the case. Cast your eye over the m$ p of Eng- land and you will see that there are counties in' which stone is plentiful, and bricks are seldom used. Travel through- out most parts of Scotland, and you will seldom see a cottage built with bricks. Yet we know nocountiesin England in which 1 part of the owner; aud where the owner had not a sufficiency more miserable hovels are to be seen than we meet with j of capital, aud was obliged to borrow money for the better in Forfarshire, Kincardinshire, and Aberdeenshire, counties j cultivation of liis estate, it was of course desirable that no in which stone is plentiful and cheap, and bricks seldom or never used. And we venture to prognosticate that the un- taxed bricks will make but little difference to the homes and hearths of agricultural labourers. It is all very well to abolish the tax on bricks as it would have been to have abo- lished the taxes on soap or windows ; hut the honest fact is, the relief from taxation to the full extent of all the proposed saving would never be felt on even a section of the producers representing any particular interest. Common and popular as this cry of Financial Reform is, we are simple- minded in striking terror into all who, like him, loved iustice enoueh t0 confess that all the relief proposed and attainable and the people, they not only abolished the democratic reduced taxation will not do much towards the real and constitution of 1793, and put a middle- class constitution P, erm? neot improvement of the masses. A total abolition of in its place but they acUy decreed that they ( the ^ flTo'as ™ conventional members) should constitute two- thirds of — • • • • • ' - the next Legislative Assembly, and that the nation should be at liberty to choose only the remaining third! obstacles should be imposed on him by the legislature." There must be a mistake somewhere. There is or there is not agricultural distress. If the first statement be correct, the second is incorrect. Are we told that the statement, refers to three years and not to one year; if so, we think the object of such statement was to screen a difficulty. Does agricultural distress exist now? It does. Is bread low- priced ? It is. Can the agricultural labourer have his full share of it? No! And why not? Because his wages are. so low he is unable to buy it. We have often seen similar cases. We every day see clothes to sell, and tailors half- clothed, shoes to sell, and shoemakers unshod. What are the periods of the greatest manufacturing distress ? Pre- cisely those periods in which there is the greatest quantity of goods iu the market unsold, proving clearly that the evils telligence which might one day reflect its influence in reforms endured by the labourers are too deeply rooted to be reme- deeidedly more organic than the chee6e- paring economy of j died by mere surface reformers; and demonstrating that a Sir Charles Wood, or the more extreme measures proposed plentiful supply of any commodityis no proof whatever 184 REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. under the present arrangements of " property and power," that those who are the producers shall also enjoy the ad- vantages of an equitable distribution, proportionate to their wants. Having finished the taxation and distress parts of the business, Sir Charles proceeds:— " The reductions which he had proposed in favour of the taxation on land would be a benefit to the country at large, as they would lead to increased agricultural production. No great interest in this country could be benefited without every interest in the country being simultaneously benefited. It was most important to the country at large, not only that the corn which was consumed in this country should be cheap, but that that corn should be grown in this country ( Protec- tionist cheers). " With the view of effecting that object, he pro- posed to make further advantages for the drainage and land improvement. The most satisfactory reports had been made of the effect of advances already made in giving employment to the labouring population and abundant returns to the landowners for the outlay of capital. He need not go into any detail on that subject: he could read, as he had done on former occasions, letter after letter from parties who had taken the advances, detailing the great benefits which em- ployers and employed had received therefrom. But those benefits, he took it for granted, were admitted on all hands, and he therefore anticipated no objection to further advances He was willing to believe that the effect of these advances made by the government would be to induce private indi- viduals to make advances for land improvement. The last advances granted for England and Scotland amounted to 2,000,000i; and certainly the gentlemen who lived on the other side of the Tweed had shown their readiness to avail themselves of those advances, for out of 2,000, OOOi., by means of priority of application, they had taken 1,600, OOOi. ( Great laughter). Applications had been made for 500,0001, more than had been granted by the house. He intended to propose that a sum not exceeding 2,000,000/. should be advanced to English and Scotch agriculturists applying for the same, for land improvement; but in order to give England an opportu- nity of squaring herself with her sister country, he proposed that three- fourths of that amount should be reserved for Eng- land, so that both countries might receive an equal sum of 2,000,0002. To Ireland he proposed to make advances amounting to 1,000,000/.; but he did not propose that the " whole of that money should be devoted exclusively to the im- provement of the land." The object, then, af all this scheme of legislation is to ena- ble England to grow as much corn as her people can consume. A very laudable and desirable object we confess. But if it • were realised where would be the great advantages arising from the e xchange of manufactures for the agricultural pro- ducts of other countries, of which the Free Traders have talked so loudly. Surely if England grows as much corn on her own soil as her children can consume, there will be no necessity for importing corn from abroad, and the much talked of advantages of international exchange will fall to the ground. No such result will follow from the proposed mea- sures of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Protectionists might well cheer the shadow, but may will never enjoy the substance. It will no doubt be advantageous to a few needy landlords to be able to borrow money at a low rate of interest, but neither the farmer nor tbe labourer will profit much thereby. Scotch, Irish, and English landlords are ever ready to accept money : no doubt of it. Now for a fact closely related to the condition of landlord, tenant, and labourer. According to M'Culloch the rental of land has increased fifty per cent, within these past fifty years. A comparison between the rental of land as set down in the property tax returns of 1815 and 1841 corroborate the in- crease of rent as made out by M'Culloch. It will be remem- bered that in our last letter we referred to the lessened value of manufacturing produce, and consequent reduction of wages. Compare the wholesale list of prices now and thirty years ago and you cannot fail to see that all the products of manu- facturing industry are not more than one- half their former price. Here then the landowners have been pocketting at the same time increased rents and the advantages of cheapness necessary for their own special advantage. Yet agricultural distress is no novelty, but an old standing grievance. When free trade in silks ruined the silk weavers, cheap silks were an excellent thing, so were cheap hats, cheap shoes, cheap fancy goods of all kinds, cheap furniture, cheap carpets, watches, & c,, & c. No sooner do we have free trade in corn than they cry out most alarmingly. And will the grant of money from the Exchequer make them do justice to their dependants ? No! assuredly no. Property and power are on the side of the wealthy and pri- vileged, and neither landlords nor capitalists are likely to do justice to labour. We sincerely wish that it were otherwise. One hope remains for the oppressed many,— the existing order of things seems destined to work out its destruction. It is sad to be saved through the destruction of others and " boundless seas of human suffering. All classes seem to have forsaken the poor and the oppressed. The children of labour are the despised and rejected of men; yet if they knew their own strength and power, they are, after all, the heart of the nation, without which there can be no life. They must not trust to Sir Charles Wood's policy, nor Benjamin D'lsraeli's policy, nor the free action theories of Adam Smith and his disciples: no,— they must take, courage, . think, and act for themselves. The great desideratum in English politics is the want of a labour party to represent at all times the true interests of in- dustry. A party existing independent, in all respects, from either Protectionists or Free Traders, and possessing sufficient intelligence and power to instruct and control both. Then the • wisest sentence in Sir Charles's speech would have some meaning, viz., " No great interest in this country could be benefited without every interest in the country being simul- taneously benefited." Such a party would know but one " great interest," and it is the root of all others, to wit, the wel- fare and independence of the producers of wealth; and if justice were done to that one interest, property and power would stand on better terms than they do at present. GRACCHUS. THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. BY FREDERICK GEORGE LEE. THOUGH England is called a Christian land, Thou shalt die by thy brother's hand: Kaise the gibbet, aud tie the rope, Banish religion— banish hope 1 Look on the sun as smiling, he Tinges thy face in mockery 1 " Blood for blood 1" the law of Moses cries, " Blood for blood P falsely, our code replies; " Blood for blood 1" with a shout and song, Is the dismal cry of a heartless throng. Raise the gibbet and tie the rope, A foolish dream is foolish Hope! " Hurrah I" for him who faces Death With scornful look and latest breath: " We'll drink and gaze with happy glee, That culprit's writhe of misery!" " Blood for blood 1" is the song let us sing, Through a Christian land its chords shall ring, We'll point with pride at that stately tree, To England, a by- word and mockery ! INCOMES OF THE ENGLISH BISHOPRICS. Canterbury .. £ 27,705 York ... 22,416 Winchester ... 11,599 ... 7,467 Bath and Wells... ... 4,567 Carlisle ... 2,476 ... 1,893 Chichester ... 6,519 St. David's .. 4,752 Ely .. 6,486 Exeter ; fil, 092 Cloucester & Bristol 5,226 Hereford 5,936 Lichfield. No Return. Lincoln 5,610 Llandaff 890 Norwich 8,765 Oxford 2,506 Peterborough 4,060 Ripon 4,563 Rochester 1,102 Salisbury 12,878 Worcester 7,294 PROGRESS OF SOCTALISM AMONGST THE MIDDLE CLASS. — To say to a City capitalist that he had become a convert to socialis- n and was practically carrying out its doctrines, would meet with a prompt and rude denial. Nevertheless such is the fact. Socialism apportions to wealth only a fair re- muneration for its use; it denies the right of capital to create monopolies whereby enormous profits are made and the con- sumer consequently oppressed and injured. What is the pro- posaluow made by the contending new gas and water com- panies ? That not more than 10 per cent shall be received by the capitalists, and all profits above that dividend shall be given up to benefit the consumers. This, although on a limited scale, is Socialism. The clubs, reading rooms, literary institutions, & c., have long been examplars of Socialism. Thus the holy principles of justice silently, steadily, aud un- consciously permeate the mind of man. An individual may profess to he an infidel to certain broad and national prinoipleaj but circumstances arise, views expand, the public require- ments are different, and the unbeliever, unknowingly to him- self, in act and thought becomes a practical convert although he continue to repudiate the name of the system. Now Ready, beautifully Illustrated, price One Penny, No. 14 of THE DAYS OF HOGARTH; OR, THE MYSTERIES OF OLD LONDON. BY GEORGE W. M. REYNOLDS. This work has been pronounced one of the best of Mr. Reynolds's tales, and is illustrated by faithful wood- cut repre- sentations of all Hogarth's best pictures. It is issued in Weekly Penny Numbers and Monthly Sixpenny Parts, uniform with " The Mysteries of the Court of London," & c. London: Published, for the Proprietor, by John Dicks, 7 Wellington Street, North, Strand THE NOODLE " SPECIALS" OF THE 10TH OF APRIL. The picture drawn of these " Friends of Order," with clubs in hand to break the heads of the starving, oppressed, and liberty- seeking Chartists, by Lord Dalmeny, is " true to the life." His lordship's description of them is this :—" On that day, ( April 10), I saw many forms cast by nature in an athletic mould, but wasted or bloated by luxury or inaction 1" — Aye, bloated truly, my lord, by unjustly robbing labour of its fruits, revelling in the spoil, and then ready to shoot, slay, and smash the skulls of those who dared in the face of heaven to protest against the injustice. Now READY, with the Magazines for April, No. XI. OF r£ DEMOCRATIC REVIEW of BRITISH and FOREIGN POLITICS, HISTORY, and LITERA- TURE. Edited by G. JULIAN HARNEY. CONTENTS:— 1. The Stamp Tax on Newspapers. 2. March of the Red Republic. 3. Revelations of the Building Trades, Part II. 4. A Glance at History, Part III. 5. The His- tory of Socialism. By Louis Blanc, Lecture II. 6. Democracy Defended, in reply to the " Latter- Day " ravings of Thomas Carlisle. 7. Two Years of a Revolution— 1848— 1849. 8. Letter from France. 9. Letter from America. 10. Political Postscript, & c. FORTY PAGES ( in a coloured wrapper), PRICE THREEPENCE. London: Published by J. WATSON, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. NATIONAL CHARTER ASSOCIATION. The Provisional Committee of the NATIONAL CHAR- TER ASSOCIATION hereby give notice, That they have taken an Office at No. 14, Southampton Street, Strand, where the General Secretary, MR. JOHN ARNOTT, will be in attendance daily from 9 to 2 o'clock ( Sunday excepted), and on every Monday Evening, from 7 to 9. THE FUND FOR THE WIDOWS OF SHARP AND WILLIAMS. The following is the amount of Subscriptions already ac- knowledged £ ii 14s. Id. SUBSEQUENT DONATIONS :— The Newcastle Chartists ( for- warded through Mr. Martin Jude), 1/. 5s.; Mr. Alexander Craig ( Banff), 14s.; A. A. T. ( Liverpool) Is.; Mr. Jude, Is.; Mr. Sands, Is.; Mr. Medley, 2s. ( id.; Mrs. S. M. Layfield ( Second Donation) 2s. 6d.; W. Hoare, 6d. Additional Sum from the proceeds of a Concert in Edinburgh, £ 3 3s.; E. ( Aberdeen) 2s.; A few Friends, Norfolk Arms, 2s. 8(/.; John Miller, 8d.; Robert Wright, 2s.; Thomas Major, 6d.; Type- founders of Sheffield, 8s. Id.; W. Holmes, ( Sheffield) 8d.; Six Republican Students ( Lincoln), 6s.; J. R. and J. S., Is.; R. W. Stevens, 2s.; J. Baker, Is.; H. Jarves, 6d.; C. Bransgrove, 6d,; Omega, Is. *** The money from Newcastle was erroneously acknow- ledged in No. 19, as being from the miners, instead of from the Chartist Association of that town.— Should any individual perceive that his contribution to the Fund has not been ac- knowledged, he is requested to write to me upon the subject and have the omisBion rectified. G. W. M. R. THE COMMITTEE OF THE FUND FOR THE WIDOWS OF SHARP AND WILLIAMS. The EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE beg to give notice that they propose to hold A TEA- MEETING, ( TO BE EOLLO WED BY A PUBLIC MEETING,) AT THE NATIONAL HALL, H0LB0RN, ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, APRIL LOL'H. 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B.— The General Committee will meet on Monday Evening, April 8th, at the office of the National Charter Association, 14, Southampton Street, Strand. Chair to be taken at Half- past Seven o'clock precisely, when those who have Tickets for sale are earnestly requested to attend. Signed, on behalf of the Executive Committee, WILLIAM DAVIS, Chairman. TOWER HAMLETS. 7 ECTURES will be delivered on Sunday Evening next, J-" April 7th, at Eight o'clock, at the " Whittington and Cat," Church Row, Bethual Green. Mr. GALE will take for his subject the character of the men that figured in the French Revolution of 1793. On the following Sunday, Mr. W. DAVIS, member of the Provisional Committee of the Chartist Association, will, at the same place, expound the intended policy of that body. PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT. PUBLIC MEETING convened by the Provisional L Committee of the National Charter Association will be held in the Hall of the Literary and Scientific Institution, . Tohn Street, Tottenham Court Itoad, on Tuesday Evening next, April 9th, for the purpose of reviewing the proceed- ings iu Parliament during the past week. Chair taken at Eight o' Clock. Admission Free. NATIONAL BENEFIT SOCIETY. Enrolled, pursuant to statute 9th and 10th Victoria, c. 27. THE ABOVE SOCIETY, as amended and legalized, was J- formerly know as the NATIONAL CO- OPERATIVE BENEFIT SOCIETY; the managers of which have long seen the necessity of legal proteetiou for the security of its members. In framing the new rules, care has been taken to equalize the expenditure with the receipts, so that the permanent success of the Society should be beyond all doubts. The Society is divided into three sections, to meet the necessities and requirements of all classes of mechanics and labourers, from eighteen years of age to forty. • THE FOLLOWING IS THE SCALE OF FEES TO BE HAD AT ENTRANCE:— Age. 1st section. 2nd section. 3rd section. s. d. s. d. s, d. From 18 to 24 3 0 2 0 1 0 — 24— 27 6 0 4 0 2 0 — 27 — 30 9 0 6 0 3 O — 30 — 33 12 0 8 0 4 0 — 33 — 36 15 0 10 0 5 O — 36 — 38 18 0 12 0 6 O • — 38 — 40 21 0 14 0 7 0 WEEKLY ALLOWANCE IN SICKNESS. s. d. First Section 15 0 Second Section 10 0 Third Section 5 0 MEMBER'S DEATH. WIFE'S DEATH. £. s. d. £. s. d. First Section ... ... 15 0 0 7 10 0 Second Section 10 0 0 5 0 0 Third Section 5 0 0 3 0 0 MONTHLY CONTRIBUTIONS. 1st Section, 3s. 6d. . 2nd Section, 2s. id. . 3rd Section Is. Id. The Society meets every Monday evening, at the Two Chairmen, Wardour Street, Soho, Middlesex, where every information can be had, and members enrolled. Country friends, applying for rules, can have them forwarded, by en- closing four postage- stamps. Members of the late Co- operative Benefit Society, who have paid all dues and demands up to the 2oth Decem- ber, 1849, can at once be transferred to either section of the National Benefit Society, without any extra charge. Agents and sub- seeretaries of the late National Co- operative Benefit Society, are requested to immediately in- form the General Secretary of the number of members likely to transfer to the National Benefit Society; and parties wishing to become agents, or to form branches of the new society, can be supplied with every information, on ap- plication to the Secretary, by enclosing a postage- stamp for au answer. JAMES GRASSEY, General Secretary, 96, Regent Street, Lambeth. LONDON : Printed and Published, for the PROPRIETOR, by JOHN DICKS, at the Office of REYNOLDS'S MISCELLANY, 7, Wellington Street North, Strand. I mm