EDITED BY GEORGE W. M. REYNOLDS AUTHOR OF TUB FIRST AND SECOND SERIES OP " THE MYSTERIES OJF LONDON, THE MYSTERIES OF TIIK COURT OF LONDON, [ PRICE ONE PENNY. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1849, MR. W. J. FOX, M. P. MB. WILLIAM JOHNSON FOX, the Member for Oldham, is a public character whose untiring energies and vast abilities have been entirely devoted to improving the lamentable condition of the humbler classes of his fellow men. Whether in the pulpit, on the platform, or in the senate, Mr. Fox has advocated with consummate eloquence the glorious principles of political and religious freedom, principles which, naturally abhorrent to tyrannical go- vernments, close the door of all state preferment to those who have courage, independence, and honesty enough to avow and advocate them. Mr. Fox is the son of a cotton weaver, in Norwich, who was in former life a Suffolk farmer. The Member for Oldham is at present in his sixty- third year, having been born in 178i>; he was educated for the Dissenting Ministry, at Old College, Homerton, under the Rev. J Pye Smith. In political opinions Mr. Fox is a Chartist— and some- ; thing more; in religion, he is a firm believer in the power and glory of a Divinity; but entertains a profound and honest antipathy to the absurdities, hypocrisies, and intolerance which disgrace the Established Church of England. For many years the Honourable Member has been before the public, both as a lecturer and a political! writer of great ability; but it was pot until the Anti-; Corn- Law agitation, that he came prominently forward | aS' a leading man in that popular movement, which i swept away onfe of the most frightful, cruel, and un- aatural monopolies that has ever weighed down the energies of a nation, or denied the bounteous gifts of lature to a famine- stricken people. Mr. Fox's speech at Corent Garden Theatre, on the occasion of a grand i meeting of the League, will lor. g be remembered as one of the sublimest efforts of oratory that ever electrified j the feelings of a delighted and soul- stricken audience. , Such thunders of applause as greeted the eloquent gen- j tleman 011 resuming his seat were perhaps never heard, j or at all events never exceeded at any public meeting, i before or after. I This powerful oration gave a death- blow to the ini- quitous Corn Laws, and was read with wonder and gra- titude by the majority of the nation; but with conster- nation and sorrow by the selfish advocates of monopoly. It was not alone by the power of oratory that this cham- pion of freedom assisted to destroy the weight of oppres- , sion beneath which the energies of the people were i succumbing;— the pen was alike active in their cause. . Among his most popular productions, are, " Letters chiefly addressed to the Working Classes," in three i volumes; and " Letters of a Norwich Weaver Boy," which appeared in the League newspaper. A volume of Sermons, delivered by Mr. Fox, has lately been pub- lished; and we sincerely hope that they may not only be read bv the intelligent masses,— but falling into the hands of bishops and other Church dignitaries, will serve a3 a lesson to them of mercy, tolerance, and humility. It is not to be supposed that a man of such ability and independence as the subject of this present sketch, would long remain tvithout a seat in that place where the destinies of the nation are decided. In 1847 he was returned to Parliament for Oldham; and since being a member of the House of Commons, Mr. Fox has inva- riably voted with the popular party — an insignificant minority, so far as numbers are concerned, but a mighty phalanx of integrity, courage, and talent, arrayed against a host of corruption, rottenness, and political profligacy. Unfortunately, all speeches delivered by liberal members in the House, however argumentative and eloquent they may be, are invariably so curtailed and disfigured, in their report, that the people in general are unable to judge of the strenuous but vain exertions made by their true representatives, in that foul den of corruption Whenever the honourable Member for Oldham has risen to address the House, it has invariably been 011 some topic connected with the welfare of the masses; and however unpalatable such a subject to the majoritv of ' the lordlings and other aristocratic boobies that louii°- e upon the benches of the House of Commons, he has commanded attention by the power of his argument, and elicited applause by the eloquence of his language. An advocate of the People's Charter in all its points, Mr. Fox never allows an opportunity to escape him for expa- tiating upon, and eulogising its glorious principles, be- fore even an unwilling and headstrong body of men calling themselves the representatives of a people that entirely repudiate their obnoxious services. To address such a corrupt and intolerant audience requires no slight degree of self- assurance, calmness, and determinationon the part of a member who rises to advocate the people's rights. Strong in the righteousness of his cause, and powerful ill the possession of transcendent talent, Mr. Fox has nobly withstood the taunts of faction; and un- sparingly lashed the party of corrupt/ on. Mr. Fox has for some years been a very popular preacher at a private chapel in the neighbourhood of Fmsbury Square; where the enlightened doctrines he advocates, and the chosen language in « hieh his argu- ments are conveyed, ensure the, honourable Member an attentive and full congregation. Although past the meridian of life, we sincerely trust that many wears yet ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. remain ere the useful and bright career of this gentle- man is brought to a close. We confidently hope that he will live to see the glorious struggle concluded, that must eventually overthrow the now crumbling fabric raised upon blood, rapine, and wrong. THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. WE have always held the opinion that the abolition of capital funishment in every case should and would take place in Ingland, sooner or later. Nor have we ever for an instant doubted whether it were advisable and safe to effect such a change in the law immediately, and all on a sudden. For a wonderful improvement has of late years manifested itself in the public mind respecting the point now under discussion;— and we are well convinced that the really humane, generous- hearted, and intellectual portion of the community— we mean the industrious millions— are hostile to the scaffold and opposed to the continuation of the hangman's office. The aristocracy, the wealthier grade, the clergy, and a large section of the middle class are advocates for the gibbet,— some because they are the inveterate upholders of all barbarian, cruel, and bloody usages — and others because their narrow- mindedness leads them to sum up the whole question in the argument that " murder must and ought to have the punishment of death affixed to it." Thus prejudice— ignorance ofihuman nature— an inability to comprehend the practical workings of society if left to its own tendencies— a sanguinary sentiment engendered by barbarous enactments — and the desire of usurpers and tyrants to surround the fruits of their spoliation, as well as their self- arrogated privileges, with as many formidable de- fences as possible,— these are the main causes which have led the hangman to be cherished, and the gibbet to be fostered in the bosom of civilized communities. Now be it well understood, that in the advocacy of death- punishments, even on the least selfish and most conscientious principles, there is a strong infusion of the barbarous and un- christian feeling of revenge or of retaliation, when it is argued " that a murderer deserves to die because he has taken the life of, and had no pity upon, his fellow creature;— that the world must get rid of him, for that blood calls for blood." This, say these reasoners, is a universal feeling, amounting to a law im- planted in our nature, that cannot be silenced or disregarded with impunity. But the people who talk thus will seldom listen calmly, if you lay down and expound fairly the Christian doctrine applicable directly to the subject. That doctrine is that vengeance belongeth alone unto the Lord,— that he who asks tooth for tooth, violates the commands and despises the example of the Saviour of men. To take the life of the mur- derer brings not back the murdered, who may have been hurried unprepared into eternity. from ever renewing his career. " Keep watch over him," says Victor Hugo. " If you do not believe in the solidity of iron i bars, how do you venture to have menageries ?" Besides, time, kindly offices, assiduous instruction may melt the heart of the most heinous sinner, and may be the gracious means of preparing him for the felicities of heaven. For the amend- ment of murderers, and for the complete and perfect protection of the community against a repetition by them of their dread- ful outrages, capital punishment is altogether uncalled for. But is there any punishment short of, or different from death, that will operate equally as a terror to others who may be placed in the same circumstances and brought within the same temptations as former murderers were ? The answer is, that according to the nature of man, public executions pro- duce quite an opposite effect to what is intended by the ex- ample. Alas! the body on the gibbet is but like the scarecrow in the field of grain, little heeded by its brethren in plumage, scarcely noticed by aught save the vacant gape of curiosity: it dangles for a time, and is remembered no more. The sight of executions, far from edifying the people, demoralises and ruins their feelings, injuring every virtue. The principle is incontrovertible, that punishment should never exceed, but rather be milder than the offence : otherwise you pamper the sanguinary feelings of the public. Another point is no less fixed, that if the same, although not a better end, can be attained by a mild as by a severe sentence, the milder ought to be pronounced. And what is the fact? Why, in this and other countries it is in perfect accordance with the principles laid down: viz., that as penal statutes have been simplified and relaxed with a due regard to consistency throughout the entire code, and with a direct reference to the light and tendency of the age, then a diminution of the crimes immediately contemplated has been the result. Who does not know what the advances are which we have recently made in the civilization of our criminal laws, which a few years ago would have been scouted as equally Utopian as is now con- sidered the attempt to abolish the punishment of death alto- gether? A great deal might be said of the unequal working,— nay, of the very frequent injustice of our criminal laws, even when the person arraigned has committed the deed for which he is to be condemned. " My poverty and not my will consented," is a proverbial saying, upon which we might feelingly com- ment. A noble is tried by his peers: let poverty have her's. We are constrained to come to this conclusion, that the crimi- nality of individuals is more frequently traceable to the evils incidental to an imperfect social system, than to the greater propensity towards crime, as affecting others, that exists in the heart of one person if compared with another. " My poverty and not my will consented," is, however, not limited to want of pecuniary means, but extends to the causes and experience of the real pains of poverty, intellectual and moral, a view which involves the supplies of education; education not only Neither have we reason to believe that the majority of those sentenced to die, die true penitents. How can the distraction of mind,— the malignant feelings,— the sense of wrong, perhaps, — and the hopes of pardon, clinging to a frail or imaginary reed,— how can all these be brought instantly and entirely to yield to the awful exigencies of the convict's condition? The true doctrine is this, and alone this,— the guilty, on conviction, is to undergo such punishment or self- restraint as will prevent him from committing a like crime for the future. This is one end properly contemplated by humane and enlightened laws: but the next and chief thing to be attained is the teaching, the promulgating, the impressing of a loud lesson that will operate as a warning and an example to all others. These are the only reasonable, humane, and expedient principles or views which a Christian people and tribunal can recognise. But Jieaven knows that spectacles of public strangulation infuse no moral lessons and inculcate no wholesome teachings. One of the most favourite grounds taken by those who uphold the punishment of murder by death is, that whether or not the law be implanted by the finger of God in our natures, there cannot be a question about its constituting one of His authoritative, sententious, and precise statutes delivered to Moses: viz., that " He who sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be slied." Every one of our readers must be aware of the answers that can, as we think, triumphantly be given to those who quote and rely upon the literal terms of the Divine edict in reference to our age and nation. They must know that it was pro- nounced immediately for the guidance of the Israelites, and • under a very different religious and legal dispensation from that under which we live. They must know that other ordi- nances, statutes, and laws were promulgated for the positive observance of the " ancient people," the violation of which had therefore affixed by God's law the death of the offender, but which are not in Christian communities either literally or similarly construed. l) o the laws of England deal with adul- terers in accordance with those of the Great Hebrew legisla- tor ? Besides, what was God's own treatment of Cain, the first murderer of all? Or what the whole benign character of the New Testament precepts and examples? not one of which can be construed as warranting capital punishment for murder. If any still persist that the Divine sanction is given by " He • who sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," then the tyrant who engages in a war of aggression, the general who sanctions one effective shot being fired, should alike bear the penalty with the midnight assassin. Nay, does not the man who accidentally " sheds the blood" of him who is " made in the likeness of God," literally come within the pale of the command, if command it be ? The Chinese but seek to carry out this principle : they merely say, and with juster claim to consistency, " We cannot remit it; there must be blood for blood." Yet we would dispute their right to have always blood for blood : why then may we not question the right ever to have blood shed under Bible sanction at least ? God makes no mention of motives or comparative reasonings as to guilt: in this His supposed command, there is no discretionary option to soften its asserted force. By whatever means or under what- ever circumstances one man kills another, blood is shed; and if " blood for blood" should hold good, then under this reason- ing the slayer must die. If it be argued, that wilful shedding of blood is meant, we point to the words of the text: they refer to " life for life;"— they give no exceptions. " " Who then O man! made thee a judge to tell the signs of the times?" The sound and fair conclusion seems to be, that while penal, laws are not made so much for the punishment as the restraint of crime, every community and organized state is to regard the question about capital punishment as being one for social and mundane legislation alone, and merely to be tested and decided according to the tfficacies produced towards the re- pression of murder, & c. This brings us to inquire what may be the punishments that will most effectually conduce to this end,— to the prevention of a repetition of offence, and as a terror to others, in the punishment of any one offender. First of all, it is quite manifest that the offender most deeply dyed in guilt— that the most savage ruffian may be restrained elevating the mind and procuring for it humanizing occupa- tions, but teaching industry, so as to have a most important effect in the way of creating food, and multiplying in many • ways the product of labour. Comfort and security are thus increased: idleness,, andconsequently crime, are diminished— for a man of information is seldom idle: and one surrounded with comforts is rarely inclined to commit crimes against so- ciety. But how differently do our institutions tend? Oh! how the heart bleeds to reflect on the pains which are taken to render efficient the laws punishing crime, and the little sare to fortify the minds of the people to resist the first impress of crime. The truth is our'criminal laws are penal, rather than sanatory. But let us advance another argument against the punish- ment of death, an argument which we are inclined to look upon as fraught with much weight. Reasoning from analogy, let us remember that we cannot extend the life of a man in order to confer a signal reward upon him for some highly im- portant service rendered to the State; and, on the same prin- ciple, we should not abridge the life of a mail in order to punish some very great crime. The nature of rewards and punishments should be properly weighed, so that the greatest reward may be exactly counterbalanced by the greatest punish- ment. " VVe cannot extend existence as the summum bonum of the bright side of legislation ; neither should we abridge it as the last degree of pain to which mortal ingenuity caii subject a delinquent. Especially with the views ot' religion befors us, ought we to be careful how we hurry an individual out of a world in which he has done wrong, into another for which he is not prepared. It is useless to delude him with the idea that a penitence, which is only forced upon him by the immediate prospect of dissolution, can wipe away his sins. We shall conclude this article with a quotation from Victor Hugo's celebrated work against the punishment of death,— " Ttie Last Day of a Condemned." Apostrophising the advo- cates of capital penalties, he bursts out into the following magnifi- centflow of eloquence:—" But if,. in spite of experience, ye per- sist in asserting, the efficacy of example, then restore us all the horrors of the sixteenth century— be really formidable— give us back Farinacci— let us have the sworn- torturers called into office again— re- establish the gibbet— the wheel— the rack— the drawing and quartering— the grave to bury, and the caul- dron to boil men alive in— let us have once more the slaughter- house of the executioner built up in the streets of . Paris, amongst the others, and garnished with the flesh of human beings recently slain. Restore us Montfaucon, with its sixteen stone supporters of the gibbet— its caves of bones— its beams — its lioolss— its chains— its regiment of skeletons— its emi- nence covered with ravens— its never empty scaffolds— and the odour of the corpses, which, when the wind blew from the north- east, was diffused through the suburbs of the Temple ! Restore us, in all its permauence aud in all its power, that vast out- house belonging to the executioner of Paris. You would then have an example with a vengeance! There the penalty of death would be well understood! There the system of punishment would possess a certain consistency ! And there all would be more than horrible—- for everything would be terrible. " Order will not disappear with the executioner— do not be alarmed ! The arch of future society will not fall in, because that hideous key is lost. Civilization is nothing more than a series of successive transformations. At what, then, are we about to be present ? At the transformation of the penal code! The temperate law of Christ will at lengtli ^ penetrate into the code, and shed its light upon it. Crime will be regarded as a malady— and that malady will have its physicians, who shall replace your judges,— its hospitals, which shall replace your galleys. Liberty and health shall resemble each other. Balm and oil shall be poured out in those places, where the knife and the searing iron were formerly applied. That malady, which was treated in anger, shall be treated in charity. This will be sublime and simple. The cross shall displace the gibbet,- - and all will be accomplished." THE " TIMES" NEWSPAPER AND THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848. WE look for a change in the opinions of journalists as we do for a change in the political opinions of our friends; and we have before now read two leading articles having opposing tendencies, published on the same day and in the same journal; and we have not expressed any extraordinary surprise. The history of the late Peel Administration prepared us for unex- pected recantations. Noble lords, learned barristers, and commonplace squires went to bed Protectionists and awoke Free- traders. But the Times of Saturday the 10th ultimo, reached the climax, and outstripped all preceding changes. During the late continental revolutions, the Times newspaper earned an unenviable notoriety as the advocate and defender of Absolutism; and now we are favoured with a defence, of which the following sentences form a fair specimen :— " We do not imagine that the public are so ill acquainted with the spirit and principles of this journal as to believe that it was from any absurd predilection for absolutism, or from any culpable indulgence to the crimes of authority, that we took and still adhere to that cause. It was, on the contrary, from the strong conviction, which all experience has corroborated, that these perturbations of society infallibly lead to results diametrically opposed to those which were originally contem- plated by their authors that we condemned them. Not only have these struggles proved vain— not only has blood been shed like water, and the hopes of nations wasted away to gra tify the ambition of adventurers, or to realise the theories of impostors; but the most fatal result is, that the cause of real liberty and progress has been driven back and disgraced by these crimes, whilst military force and absolute power have been invoked and emplced, as if they alone could save society from destruction. To wii > m, then, are we to look for the cause of those evils but to those who rashly, mischievously, and ignorantly began the contest ?" The public have long since formed an opinion of the value of the Times as a journal, which the above defence of past misdeeds is not likely to change in any degree. It reminds us much of two notorious burglars, whose outrages and crimes had for some years been a serious cause of alarm and trouble to a peaceable neighbourhood, being tried, convicted, and sentenced to banishment for life, as a punishment for their crimes; on leaving the dock they triumphantly exclaimed,— " True patriots we, for be it understood, We leave our country for our country's good." If the Times continue to serve the cause of liberalism by a defence of absolutism, the advocates of rational freedom throughout Europe, may well exclaim, " Save us from our friends." Who have caused these revolutions ?— this shedding of blood like water ? Not those who have risen in revolt, but chiefly those who have systematically opposed reform and change, when warmly advocated and necessitously demanded by the people! Who caused the French Revolution of 1848 ? Was it the people who gave to Louis Philippe a throne? or the monarch who coalesced with Metternich of Austria, and Ni- cholas of Russia, and plotted to secure the permanency of despotism I Previous to the late revolution, the whole consti- tuency in France only numbered 200,000. Louis Philippe multiplied public offices, until the government had in its pay more dependants than the numbers of the electoral body. Out of 450 members of the Chamber of Deputies, 204 were place- men and pensioners. The peers were not, as in England, hereditary, but nominated by the king, who never failed to nominate such men as would at all times be subservient and obedient to the will of their royal master. The government had suppressed public meetings, except under special permis- sion of the authorities. The aid of French diplomacy and the French soldiery had been freely employed on the side of Jesuitism in the Swiss war. Paris had been made into one vast military citadel, and barracks built in the chief towns; and as M. Chevalier clearly proved, the profits of labour were thereby swallowed up to sustain a burthensoine and an obnox- ious military force, avowedly for national defence and public order, but in reality to overawe, impoverish, and enslave the people. The king hoarded up gold with the lust of a miser, and trafficked in the Spanish'inarriages with the morality of a brothel- keeper; increased the caution- money of journals; and on opening the session of 1848, stigmatized the moderate Re- formers who had attended the Reform Banquet, as " blind and hostile," and used his best influence for sixteen years to curb French liberty, and guage the growing mind of a great people by the feudal standard of Louis XIV. It is such a pulicy as that pursued by Louis Philippe and his advisers, that caused the blood of the people to now like water; and yet the Times complacently assures us, that '^ it is the marked characteristic of the Revolution of 1848, that it was in a great measure unprovoked:' The same lying prijjrt proceeds to aver that, " JNo measures of arbitrary power weie in execution or in contemplation; no persecutions called for an heroic resistance; no military aggression threatened to crush the independence of nations. On the contrary, the prospects of rational freedom were at that very moment fairer than they had ever been before; "— and again, that " France possessed a charter perfectly susceptible of judicious reforms." It was no part of the Machievellian policy of the old fox of theTuileries to assume arbitrary power. No: cunning and management were necessary for his purpose ; he required to sap and uuder- tnine public virlue by the aid of gold and place,— to corrupt the hearts, and mystify tile judgments of the leaders of oppo- sing parties,— to so entwine the interests of all who surrounded him, in his own fortune and success, as to give to France the name of a liberal monarchy, with the reality of a military despotism. It has been reserved for history and poetry to make us glow and tremble — and even weep over the fate of Louis XVI; veiling the weaknesses of the king in the misfortunes of the man. But Louis Philippe, born and cradled in the revolutionary principles of 1789, neither wins our approbation, nor com mands our pity. Destined by nature to live many years; taught cunning by his preceptress, and self- denial from misfortunes, he yet lives a fallen and wretched old man. Just after the September massacre of 179B, he presented himself to Danton to complain of the excesses of the revo- lution. " Young man, you are too young to judge of these things. To comprehend them you must be in our place. Go back to the army— fight bravely; but do not needlessly expose your life. You have yet many years before you; France does not love a republic!— she has the habits, the weaknesses, the need of a monarchy. After our storm, she will return to it, and you shall be king. Adieu, young man: remember the prediction of Danton!" Such were the words of the revolutionist. The prophecy of Danton has been fulfilled ! The Duo de Chartres- became, in tue lapse of years, Louis Philippe, King of tne French; and history will reflect but little that is honourable to his memory. He has been false to the Declaration of Rights,— false to the ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. principles ofhis youth,— false to the interests ofhis country! and his name is written in the blood of the revolution of February. It ia but too true that the movements of 1848 have not pro- duced great results ; and it is also true that the writers in the Times have contributed to hring about those results they now affect to deplore. How different would have been the prospect of the future civilization of Europe, if Joseph Mazzini and enlight- ened Republicanism had ruled in Rome,— if Louis Kossuth and patriotic nationality had been permanent in Hungary ;— and these results would have been, if the English ministry had acted in concordance with the expressed wish and intelligence of the majority of our countrymen. Never in the history of this country was public opinion more unanimous: men of all parties demanded the recognition of the Independence of Hun- gary. The cause of absolutism was defended in the House of Lords; and Brougham, the once liberal representative of the West Riding of Yorkshire, was its advocate! It found sym- pathy among the peerage; feudality, with its rampart of bigotry and intolerance, game- laws, church livings, and rent rolls, bade it welcome. The . pause of absolutism was also tried in the House of CommoS, and was doubtfully in the ascendant,— the House of Commons being in name and interestone degree nearer to the people. The cause of absolutism was tried in our public juries, immense and almost simultaneous assem- blages of British citizens, met and expressed their opinions and wishes, and absolutism found no defenders, unmistakably proving the policy of England under the rule of her people, the rule of her democracy. Sad and melancholy have been the revolutions of 1848: but we are far— very far from echoing the statements of the Times, and affirm that " at an incalculable cost they have driven the & ir prospects of European freedom backwards for an indefinite period." The policy of England must ever have an influence on the fate of civilized Europe; but our people have hereto- fore looked on foreign politics as only fitted for the consideration of ambassadors and ministers. The late continental revolu- tions have quickened the thought and strengthened the mind of the people. If the genius of Pitt and Burke and the events of the French Revolution of 1793, made the parliament of England European in its mind and policy, the French Revo- lution of 1848, and the growing intelligence of our workmen have made the national mind European also. There was more truth in the sneer of the Printing- house Square oracle than was intended, when it sarcastically affirmed that, " Chartism had a foreign as well as a home policy." This enlightenment of the English mind on Foreign politics had sooner or later to be accomplished, to secure the triumph of democracy throughout Europe. It has been well begun, goes oil prosper- ously, and is destined to produce great results. Aye, ere ten years elapse, if Joseph Mazzini again sends a programme of an enlightened policy to Downing Street, it will not be passed by; and if Kossuth oflers to England the trade of Hungary, to balance against the wrath of Russia, it will not need the mystic aid of prophecy to foretell the issue. May we ask who the statesmen of the Times are ? that they write so magniloquently of their own profound wisdom, and unelected and unsolicited become the dictators and censors of our common country, the only men who can guide us to ra- tional freedom. We have heard of a parson fonder of politics than of theology; also of barristers whose chief practice is con- fined to the bar of a tavern near to Fleet- street, but their names are lost amidst the fogs and filth of this political metropolis; by their deeds only are they known. Their mysterious hiding- places are the secret source of their power; and if their country erect for them a monument, it » ill be well for their memories that their names do not precede the requisite inscription. We are not of those writers " whose memories are so imperfect, or whose sincerity is so questionable, that they see nothing but leniency and morder& tion on the side of the revolution: nothing but a sanguinary vengeance on the side of authority and jus- tice." Revolutions are melancholy incidents in the history of nations, and carry with ttiem many evils and extravagancies; they are not the remedies, but evidences of the disease, and often call forth the hidden and brutal passions of the viciously trained, and morally neglected members of civilized society ; but the atrocities of no revolution equal the brutalities of Haynau, and the butcheries, cool, calculated, fatai, and fero- cious of " authority." We omit the word " justice" so craftily used. If justice prevailed we would neither hear of women being flogged ill the streets, nor hundreds of bold and generous citizens being massacred in cold blood. Those who rule in authority, without justice, are chiefly the cause of all revolu- tions. The policy of governments is generally stationary; the policy of people progressive, and if society has not laws fitted to its desires and wants, sooner or later the destructive barriers must give way, either before the influence of public opinion and a wide spread and rapidly increasing intelligence, or au- thority must yield in the face of cannon and barricades. The first is reform; the last revolution. Kings and ministers can make their choice, and as they sow, so shall they reap. GRACCHUS. INHUMAN SELFISHNESS KINGS. OF COAL THERE exists no class of men whose labour is more con- ducive to the welfare and prosperity of this country than its coal miners; and, shame to say, there is not a more neglected, ill- treated race of beings on the face of God's earth than these very men, whose labour is of the most unwholesome, disagreeable, and often deadly description. We boast of being a humane and philanthropic people: we quote our large charities as proofs of our beneficence; and the monster meetings assembled in Exeter Hall are adduced as evidence of the characteristic humanity of the British nation. Granted such to be the case,— and all due praise and honour be given to the public in general who invariably come forward with ready heart and open hand to succour their distressed fellow- crea- tures,— yet, we hesitate before placing implicit confidence in the good faith or disinterested motives of those per- sons who are supposed by their influence to direct public charity in the stream where its benefits are felt and ap- preciated. We are continually hearing of meetings being held and large sums of money subscribed for the laudable, but we fear, Utopian schemes of abolishing slavery and dis- seminating Christian principles amongst races of savages. These assemblages are constantly crowded and the do- nations amount to large sums; how the latter are appro- priated or what advances we have yet made to the desired objects are very problematical. From all this, sometimes maudlin sympathy for a race of beings who defy our efforts at civilization, who accept our bibles as presents, and sell them the moment the missionary's back is turned for a drop of rum, we think a small portion might be spared for the white slaves of England. We have not yet heard of meetings being convened or measures being proposed for ameliorating the condition of the unfortunate colliers in England; we hear of no resolution to intercede in their behalf with their tyrant masters. A miserable African prince is bombarded with all the force of indignant eloquence anathematizing his barbarous traffic in blacks; but my lord, the peer, or the wealthy purse- proud commoner,— coal owners, and coal slave holders— escape scathless and free from the ora- torical outbursts of our enthusiastic philanthropists. The reason is that rank, wealth, and influence, can per- petrate with impunity greater atrocities in England than in any other country on the face of the earth; and for this simple cause the miseries and wants of the coal miners are neglected, their lives are sacrificed by thou- sands, obloquy and falsehood is heaped upon the heads of those who dare defend them; their complaints are stifled, and their remonstrances unheeded. As proof of the timidity and dastardly cringing of the government towards the mighty Coal Kings of the North, it is sufficient to state that they have sent down Professor Phillips to examine into the ventilation of mines, and with such instructions, as in the case of former commissioners, cripple his researches and render his in- vestigation a farce. On arriving in the coal districts of the North, Mr. Phillips, first applied to the owners and viewers of the collieries for permission to visit their dif- ferent localities. This request was of course immediately complied with; and the viewers with ready officiousness tendered their services in conducting him over the pits, and affording every information the Professor required. These services were accepted, and what was the result? Why, the miners soon discovered that the very * o est ventilated pits were selected as specimens of the whole, and that the viewers carefully abstained from introduc- ing their official visitor into any of those which were in a notoriously bad state. Not a single collier was allowed to be present during the Inspector's progress; nor in fact were they acquainted with his presence until several of the pattern pits had passed under his notice. The ever active and acute Secretary to the Miners' After refusing the principal request of the poor ool" liers and thus denying them even the shadow of sympa" thy or justice, the learned commissioner uttered a string of official commonplaces and the deputation took their leave, about as much advanced as when they entered. The colliers must now be convinced that they have little or nothing to expect at the hands of Government, whose proceedings evince throughout a total callousness for the lives of the workmen and a shameful encourage- ment to the atrocities of the owners. This is not the first nor the twentieth time a similar trifling has been displayed by ministers— their commissioners come and go but still no benefit is derived from their visits— their reports are made and thrown on one side, or only brought to light when required to prove the humanity of some particular Coal King with whom the commis- sioner had dined, or who could give a vote for the minister. In what a base and selfish mould must these monopolists of the North be cast! what accursed avarice dictates the actions of the Globe's most benevolent and hard- pressed men— heartless tyrants, who absolutely have done all that lay in their power to swamp the in- vention of one who has devoted the whole years of a long life in studying a method for preserving the valu- able lives of colliers by preventing explosions they are constantly subject to. We allude to Dr. Clanny. This gentleman has in- vented a safety- lamp dis- carding the use of wire gauze, and employing a copper cylinder having nu- merous and very small per- forations, through whi « h the air needful for the support of combustion passes down- wards to the flame of the oil lamp. Within the Centre of this copper cylinder, the used air passes directly up- wards through a single top into the atmosphere, carry- ing with it the major part of the soot of the oil lamp. In this new safety- lamp the copper cylinder, even when the lamp has been used for a considerable time, is found to be, generally speaking, in a cleanly state, compared to that which obtains in the wire cylinder, under similar circumstances. If fire damp burns for any length of time in the Davy lamp, the pre- cipitated soot, within the wire gauze, becomes ignited^ and in its rapid Combustion, either bursts the cylinder, or burns the wire gauze, and of course, an explosion will, under such circumstances, immediately occur. The light given by Dr. Clanny's lamp is also far superior to that obtained from a Davy. In the year 1817, Dr. Clanny received the largest gold medal of the Society of Arts for the invention of his safety Hamp, and it has been employed for a long time in one colliery where it has afforded the greatest satisfac- tion. But, will it be credited, that, in this age of pro- fessed humanity and refined sentiment, men can be found wicked enough to oppose the introduction of this means of safety, solely because the Davy lamp, burning better amongst adulterated air than the Clanny, a considerable sum of money is saved to the owners of collieries in not having to provide so good a ventilation of the pit? The viewers and owners have set their faces against the in- troduction of this safety lamp, well knowing that the most rational method of preventing explosions by fire damp is by means of good and sufficient ventilation, and THE WOBK OF REFORM IS WITH THE PEOPLE.— The men who seek wholesome and necessary reforms are the true conservatives. They are the men who will contribute in the greatest degree to the maintenance and security of the throne. The work must be done by the people, and for this simple reason, that from the beginning of time all governments have been dishonest: on the principle that wherever you give irresponsible power, that power will be abused. Take the best men in the country and place them in power, surround them by temptation, and in process of time that power will be abused. They will be found legislating for their own interests, and labouring to serve their own con- nexions. The only check upon individual selfishness, upon that selfishness which developes itself even in the best of men, is that of establishing a due responsibility. What can be expected from the present House of Com- mons ? There is a majority of men in that House, who have a direct or indirect interest in maintaining the Army, the Navy, the Church ; who have personal grounds for cherishing the pension list, maintaining large salaries, useless offices, and official extravagance. You have lately seen, in the management of your railways, the effect of giving irresponsible power into the hands of one man. We see the evil effects of unchecked and irresponsible power in the management of local boards and parish vestries. Your railway management presents an epitome of all the governments that ever existed. The same principle operates in our present system of representation. I say, then, give the people knowledge— the power to correct abuse and prevent wholesale peculation will grow out of that knowledge.— Mr. Begg's Speech at Bristol. Association, Mr. Martin Jude, instantly set to work in order that a stop might be put to such an infamous pro- ceeding, and addressed, on behalf of the miners, a very proper letter to Mr. Phillips, complaining of the course he thought proper to pursue in listening to the ex- parte statements of interested viewers, and also requesting him to grant an audience to the colliers. The commissioner appointed a day to meet the deputation of miners, and afterwards received them in a courteous manner. Fif- teen of the principal collieries were represented in the persons of twelve most intelligent and upright miners; men actuated by the best of motives and neither influ- enced by prejudice nor petty malice towards the persons of their employers. These delegates remonstrated against the unfairness of being guided by the reports and statements of viewers,— themselves most deeply inte- rested in saving their masters' pockets and caring little for the lives of the men,— or suffering these persons to conduct the commissioners to those particular pits se- lected by themselves. To obviate all chances of unfair- ness and to afford satisfaction to the miners' the depu- tation proposed that two workmen ( belonging to the particular colliery visited), should accompany the com- missioner and the viewer in his round of inspection. To this equitable demand the government official demurred, on the ground that the viewers had cordially given him liberty to visit the pits, and it was but by sufferance that he was allowed to do so, therefore he would rather not press them for any further privileges, such as that re- quired by the miners. What an excellent specimen is Mr. Phillips of a Government Commissioner? Downing Street has inspired him with due awe and reverence for the mighty Coal Kings, whom the Globe, a ministerial newspaper, lauded and pitied as most benevolent hard- pressed men; the learned Professor as well as the Whig editor had been duly impressed by the Home Secretary that working- men might be blown into eternity, but electioneering influence must not be offended. that'by employing Dr Clanny's invention, the deficient and bad state of the coal pits would speedily be detected, and the pockets of the owners must be touched, to pre- serve the lives of their work- people. The miners them- selves, certainly the best judges of the fittest method for providing for their own safety, have warmly advocated the adoption of Dr. Clanny's lamps, it having been long known that many imperfections existed in the Davy and that 110 firm reliance could be placed upon it. One of the principal causes of complaint amongst the Northern colliers is the apathy displayed by the owners of the pits in relation to the miners' health. According to the proportion of adulterated air in the pit, in the same proportion does the health of the work- people suffer, and ventilation alone can remedy the evil. But to remove the causes of untimely death, would take money from the coffers of the Coal Kings, and Dr. Clanny's invention being calculated to show where ventilation is required, they have opposed its being brought into use, and per- sist in their fiendish apathy and their inhuman selfish- ness. Is it, we ask, to such men as the wealthy coal owners of the North, indifferent as to the lives, happi- ness, health, and comfort of their workmen— is it to men rolling in wealth and revelling in every luxury, wealth and luxuries that are obtained by speculating and traf- ficking in the energies and labour of men— is it to a race of beings, that screening themselves under the pri- vileges of vested right, covet death and destruction for those around them?— and can it be to those who tamper- ing with the existences God has bestowed upon their fellow- crealures, heap up treasures for themselves, by undermining the health and destroying the constitutions- of their work- people?— is it, we ask, to such as these that the government of a great nation is justified in showing, leniency, consideration, or mawkish delicacy? The Go- vernment is in a position to exercise a right— a right that would be confirmed by the source of all power, the Sovereign voice of the people— and assert their juris ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. diction of preventing farther slaughter in the Coal dis- tricts, by adopting a plan of Inspection similar to the one iu France, Belgium, and Germany, where the voice of the miner, whose life is at stake, is listened to with equal attention as that of the employer. Mr. Phillips may be, for aught we know to the contrary, a good, a clever, and a humane man; but we candidly admit that little confidence can be placed in the impartiality of one who at the very starting allows himself to be ear- wigged by interested parties. THE PATRIMONY OF THE PAUPER. THE summer has gone from us, bearing away everything that was bright and beautiful, going to its tomb beneath the flowers; and thin sickly faces, with tottering limbs unna- turally overworked, or weak through want of sustenance, have been forth breathing heaven's fresh breath in the green dingle, and reclining awhile beneath the shade and the song of forest boughs, have gone back weary and dispirited. God's radiance dawning oti them a brief moment, and then darkening away. The autumn hath come and gone, and there has been many a harvest made in which the children of want and misery had no share. They have had no part in the rejoicing of those who were proud to look at this goodly store spread around. The mail of the world has made his harvest, the trader has counted over his golden gain, and both have hugged themselves in a panoply of selfishness which admits not of the possibility that there be one or two with hungry eyes and thin lips, who will say, " Brother, I hunger— I thirst— I shiver with cold, give me to eat— to drink— clothe me!"— for they look ominously for the policeman or the beadle to drive these im- portunate ones away. They have no fear of being called cal- lous and hard of heart. More than fifteen million acres of uncultivated land have lain beneath the rains of the bounteous spring, have warmed their arid bosom under the benignant influences of the blessed summer sun, have seen the plenteous autumn roll over them with many a hymn of joy, without giving forth as much food as would keep the most miserable wretch from famine. By an infamous error, it happens that this kingdom of corn land and pasture land has lain year after year, as if it had been cursed of God after having been neglected by man. The strong in- fluence of a potency not easily recognisable, has said— and said it practically, too. " It is better that this waste land should remain waste— that this common should be closed in— that this patch of heath, of stony sterility, of sand or marl, or what not, should not be dug or sown neither for the use of man or beast What! may I not lay an interdict upon mine own? May I not forbid if it pleases me ?" Be it so; for you, ermined lord and noble, and great capi- talist that you are, have done both! What is the result ? Three million and a half of paupers have this past year been de- pendent for food and shelter upon the middle and the working classes, still adding to their burthens,— still increasing their costs and liabilities,— still bringing them lower and lower, till a pauperised condition would seem to be their normal state. Here are three and a half millions who ought each to have his five acres of land, whereby he could have raised food enough of one sort or other to support himself in independence; here are orphans of the human race robbed of their patrimony; here has been a grossly absurd blunder committed— a flagrant act of injustice done; here has man dared to deny the fiat of God himself, who bade the earth be fruitful, and who gives invigorating showers and ripening suns to aid man's labour,— yet must this gilded " May- fly" say " That land is mine,— it is waste— waste let it be. I curse the ground for thy sake, thou Lazarus, and none dare deny me my right. I will thwart the end and aim of creation, if I must needs do it, to assert my right,— a right obtained by a victorious robbery a thousand years ago on the plains of Hastings 1" This is very fine, is it not ? But, in the meantime, while tears flow fast, and the grim winter is beginning to set in, what 5s to be done? It is not that this terrific mass of humanity should have received what aid was required that we complain of; it is the perpetuation of this frightful condition while they are defrauded out of their fifteen million acres of land that we denounce. Day by day increases the number of those who belong to the beggared and the ruined. Pauperism is a tiling to be dreaded worse than plague, pestilence, famine, or death; but, for iieaven's sake, mistake us not. We never wish to con- found the pauper with that ism which expresses his condition. It is a con litiori abhorrent and detestable to God and man ; hut who is to alter this » for altered it must be, else it will take in hand to alter itself, and that in a sort and fashion that shall not be grateful. . Is this-, then, finally the end of oue who has worked his poor old bones on the soil for a score or two of years? Must he finally give way before the absorption of a parvenu " landed proprietor" and take his miserable offspriug to the workhouse ? Is the last " Auburn " not yet destroyed, and the last tenant gone ? Does the glebe which the swart hus- bandman tilled so often, close up its . prolific womb against him; aud after draining him " marrow, bones and all," is he to be flung amid MILLIONS of others, into one large human bone- hou.- e. Look at the white and pinched cheeks, the quivering hp, the starveling limbs, the gaunt aspect as a whole, which mark that poor Wiltshire, Hampshire, or Shropshire man 1 look upon him, and read his history. It is one to tear the heart in two if it be made of " penetrable stuff"— if not, God help the poor wretch who pours out his tale of sorrow into sucu ears as belong to that heart. This is its history,— a childhood of penury, a youth of pri- vation, a manhood half of despair, of gigantic toil unrequited, of affections strangled iu the bud, of noble human feelings indignantly denied him, of holy ties snapped asunder, or trodden in the dust, of a heart sapped of its freshness, of tears hot and stifling, of terribie moments when suicide or crime tempts the dark destiny of the doomed wretch,— a hi- tory of everything iu, fact, that bears down one who has struggled hard,— been finally stricken— and now, with bowed head goes into the workhouse. The graves of his kindred— what are they to him now? he who is robbed of the five acres," lawfully, rightfully his own. Ttie home of his fatheis— what is that? It was a sentence that possessed a fine meaning once : what does it mean now more than a mockery ? Wife and children— what are they ? Draw the veil solemnly here, for there is a sanc- tity about Death— even though it breathe through rags and dirt. He listens to their last moans, and his heart, tough as it has been, begins to crack. Wo could almost feel thankful that there is a certain last moment when human suffering goes to the utmost, aud will hear no more,— even as it is the ast straw that breaks the camel's back. Gentlemen of large landed property, and you who call yourselves possessors of mountain moors, heaths and waste land ; so many millions of acres tabooed out of the actively working universe, what do you propose to gain by all this? Cottage after cottage is destroyed upon your estates, and the faces of wretched wanderers on the highway, or of those dying in the next diteh are not visible to you through the dense foliage of the laurels and shrubs that line your parks. It is a rule of art, that a landscape is destitute of vigour and vitality, to a great extent, that has no living being in it. How will your estates look when there are no cottages, no small farms no happy peasants around them,— but in the distance, Union Workhouses, where these peasants die of famine, cursing the land that bore them, aud the day of their birth I What sort of a picture will you have here ? Re- verse the order of things before it be too late: down with the workhouse, and up with the cottage, and England will be happier than it has been for many a day. THE CONDITION OF MAN. THROUGHOUT the whole of nature, with one exception, we find an admirable correspondence of actual condition with implanted capabilities. Every tree grows on the soil and in the aspect suited to its habit. The succulent plant flourishes in the marsh ; the dry moss on bark of trees and on rocks. The bird flies in the air, or swims on the water, according as its wings and feet adapt it for either situation. The lion roams the forest in search of prey; and the auimals whom hs makes his prey are endowed with swiftness and cunning, to elude his pursuit. Every species has its own nature, and every individual of each species may be taken as a specimen of its kind. The exception is man I Man is not, never has been, what his nature points out he should be. In the savage state he is raised but little above the brutes— in some respects is much be'low them; in that state, therefore, he cannot be in accordance with the laws of his being. But what is termed civilization is the advance, not of the human race, but of certain portions of it. A constant element of all civilization has been, the subservience of the majority to the minority. In the despotism of the east, the slavery of the ancient Euro- pean republics, the serfdom of feudal Europe, the artisan and peasant system of the present day, we find this element ever present— the very foundation of the social scheme. The great majority of the human race are but servants, bound over under heavy penalties ( of actual coercion, or the fear of starvation) to do the will of the remaining few. And so burdened are they by the requisitions of this will, that no time is left them for ministering to any but their merely animal wants. Now there is nothing in human nature to countenance this arrangement. Among the animals, where something similar takes place ( as the bees aud ants for instance), na- ture has herself expressly provided for dilference of duties by difference of formation. Not so with man. The prince is not more, the peasant is not less than man. What, then, but a violation of nature is the difference iu their lots? If the prince has right done him by society, it cannot be but the peasant has foul wrong. Nor can assertion of the con- trary avail, as long as it is true that human nature is ONE. Now, so long as society upholds the principle that any class of men is worthy of more respect than human nature itself, must misery, uneasiness, and danger be the conse- quences ; for nature is stronger than human institutions, and will prevail. The problem, therefore, for the future civilization to solve is, how can man be made what nature points out he should be ? We must no longer rest satisfied with raising barriers to protect one class against the in- roads of another. This is but giving strength to wrong. Wherever a class thus acts on the defensive, it is conscious of the possession of exclusive privileges. These, indeed, are what constitute it a class; but no man, or set of men, has any right to the possession of exclusive privileges. The common rights of humanity, as they are the highest that can be enjoyed, so they are the only rights that can be enjoyed without injustice aud oppression. To despair of the solution of this problem, is to call in question the justice and goodness of God. To believe that man always must be what man always has been, is to believe that the great Creator, successful in his humbler works, has achieved otdy a miserable failure in what should be Ilis most exalted. Content with civilization iu its present state, as the best that can be realised, is either despair of the future, or selfishness hugging itself on the possession of good things unattainable by others. And what is needed for the solution of this problem is, above all, the wish to solve it. Palliatives will not long avail. It is not eveu the benevolence of the slave- master caring for the sustenance aud amusement of his slaves that is needed; but the large- souled humanity, yearning to set them free. The abnegation of self must be complete. All selfish considerations of class interest must be merged in the ardent, extinguishable desire to raise, not any class, but man himself to the noble position which is his birthright by the law of nature. THE WORLD IS GOVERNED TOO MUCH. BY ELIHU BCBR1TT. WE have seen this proposition hung out to the world on the broad pennant of some newspaper, the name of which we do not now remember. But; wherever, and with whomsoever it may have originated, it is an axiom of standing truth, ap- propriate, with all the compass and application of its veracity, to every region of the civilized world. The people, the universal democracy of Christendom, are so weakened by political divisions; by being penned up anil fenced into jealous, hostile septs; so crushed out of all strength and dignity of fraternal unity by superincumbent mountains of nationalities, that, if truth could get at free speech under such circumstances, it would sum up its plea for humanity in the remonstrance, " The world is governed too much!" The people are furrowed and eross- furrowed into belli- gerent patches of humanity by the ruinous ploughshare of discordant nationalities. They are not only governed too much, but are supporting ten times more governments than they ought to bear. One government, conducted on the right principles, would be enough for the whole continent of Europe. Uuder such a government the people would rise to the dignity of their great brotherhood. The crushing burden of supporting a hundred greedy, jealous, quarrelling nationalites would roll off from their shoulders, aud they would find a htfme and a home market for all their affections, for the products of their labour, learning, skill, and soil. " Divide and conquer," is one of the dynamics of home- made tyranny, by which the Samson strength of the great people is wasted down to an impotence just fitted to the iron hand of despotism; by which they are subjugated and government- ridden to death. Here is the history of the whole matter. Some spirit of malice afore thought, and of murder and misery after thought, creeps into the mind of the people, residing along the sources aud banks of the same river— the Danube or the Rhine, for instance. The murderous infusion circulates and burns till a million of human hearts belch from their sul- phureous craters a deluge of fiery madness on common humanity. The product of all this animosity, slaughter, home- burning, and mutual impoverishment, is a couple of new governments saddled ou the necks of the wasted, hate- breathing belli- gerents, which ride them by day and night, like the monster shouldered upon poor Siubad. Just look at the people in Europe. Look at the rivers, the lands they water, and the course they run to the sea. Notice the peculiar distribution of nature's deposit banks of uucoineu specie, which she laid by in her subterranean vaults for the hard hand of honest labour before man was made. See how she has prepared a continent with frater- nising relations and interests for an unbroken continent of democracy; for the commerce and community of integral people; for free- trade between all members of the continental family, who have anything to buy or to sell. Compare the na- tural productions of Northern with those of Southern Europe, aud notice the highways which nature opened for the ex- change of those productions, aud for the social intercourse of those producers, before the trace ot' mau's hand or foot was left on that quarter of the globe. Now why may not the great people of Europe follow out this political economy of uature'? Why may not the Russian or Swedish labourer drive his waggon or sail his ship, laden with the products of his clime, skill, and labour, to any town on the European side of the Mediterranean, without a volume of passports, or a fleet of revenue cutters, or a posse of con- stables, chasing from river to river and port to port ? Why is it that the rivers of that continent, which uo more belong to a nation than the oceau or the air, are locked up at their mouths, aud dammed across a dozen times thence to their source by a chevaux de frise of tariffs, and every petty town in sight of navigable water, overlooked and- overwatched by a custom- house or a government toll- gate ? Must the govern- ment, essential to the well- being of that continental people, suck the blood of commerce aud labour at this rate to sus- tain its fuuetious ? Must the people for ever spin out their vital substance, caterpillar- like, into a fretwork of hampering restrictions, taxing the very water they driuk and the air they breattte; thrusting a toll- gate across the windows of heaven and the chambers of the sun, that rain and dew, light and heat, may come through the custom- house with their dispensations of mercy ? Is all this world- consuming sacri- fice necessary, not for the existence and exercise of govern- ment, but for a proximity to the seat and source of govern- ment? Just as if the people, at a great distance from the seat of a righteous legislation, were in a cold, gloomy aphe- lion ; as if good laws were better at the capital than at the extremities of a nation ?" Now, then, we think it is susceptible of the clearest de- monstration, that the impotent aud degraded condition of the people of Europe comes from their being saddled with a mul- titude of petty governments aiid nationalites, all arming to the teeth Tigamst each other, and maintaining what they call a defensive attitude, at the cost of universal despotism, ignorance, and poverty to the people they pretend to govern and defend. A SCANDAL AND A SHAME.— Lord Mornington is here- ditary warden of Epping Forest. Any enclosures made or permitted by him, must be sanctioned by the verderers, who are elected by the freeholders to protcct their rights. Three of the four verderers, are lords of manors within the forest, and in conjunction with his Lordship, have ail interest in exercising the right of enclosing as much as they choose within their manors. His lordship sold his manorial and forestal rights to his steward, a solicitor, of ( he name of Cutts, who has granted permission to make enclosures to a considerable extent, for which he has been well paid. The verderers have permitted these encroach- ments to proceed without any interference, and over 700 acres have been thus actually filched from the Crown and the public. The parties who accuse Cutts of encroach ment have actually made enclosures themselves. Thus the public interests and the rights of the Crown arc negligently entrusted to the guardianship of parties who are personally benefitted in encroaching on both. And this while the Commissioners receive, the chief £ 2,000. and two others £ 1,200 each per annum, to superintend the whole corps of forestal officers, and to protect the public property.— Reformers' Almanack. BUILDING SOCIETIES.— There are, throughout the country numerous benefit Building Societies, not formed with the view of giving a vote, but which, in most cases will confer a qualification. We saw it lately estimated, in a periodical devoted to these societies, the Reporter, that they contain upwards of half a million of members, who may, in pro- cess of time, become entitled to the county franchise. This alone would double the present number of county electors. They will require to be stimulated to avail themselves of their privilege, and to be instructed in the mysteries of registration. Here is abundant scope for the labours of a " Freeholders' League," and we hope that the forty- shilling freehold qualification movement will have assumed such an organized and concentrated form, as to insure the widest possible extension to a scheme which is destined to effect great and beneficial changeB, not only in the political, but in the social and moral condition of the people. LAW. — Ood made law and religion alike simple and easy to be understood ; yet the greatest mystifier of law is considered the best lawyer, and the greatest mystifler of religion the best priest.— Uxbridge Spirit of Freedom. ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. r A NEW HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER V. HENRY I I."( • HENRY, the first of the line of Anjou, or Plantagenet kings, was the son of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and of the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I. He suc- ceeded Stephen in the year 115- 4. Since the invasion of William, the intercourse between England and the Continent, which the necessities of government imposed upon tbe English kings, had been as continual as they were unproductive of anything but fresh factions and new quarrels. The feudal system, as in action in the states of France, subdivided as they were into dukedoms and petty principalities, had tended to aggrandize and make powerful an aristocracy at the ex- pense of monarchy, which threatened more than once to paralyse the powers of the king, and from a master reduce him to the condition of a vassal. Both demanded greatness, and both were inimical to each other. The great lords, on the occasion of doing great services to the crown, wrested privileges from it at the time, which became dangerous to it in future. With regard to his English subjects, however, Henry held much more power over them than he possessed over his noble vassals of the Norman and other states, though even on the Continent he had ramified his authority so far and so well that the French king was in dread lest he should lose the crown which Hugh Capet had wrested from the weak . grasp of the last representative of the Corlovingian race. Henry was engaged in besieging a castle on the frontiers of Normandy when the news of Stephen's death came; but, as his partisans were many and brave, the opposition which the French king had, in conjunction with many, meditated against his accession, was neutralised. Henry, • having completed the siege, arrived in England on the Sth of December. The first act of his government was a wise stroke of policy. Stephen, during his turbulent and stormy reign, had found it necessary to engage a host of mercenaries, led by William of Ypres, whose excesses had become a ierror to the people. These Henry dismissed, revoking all the grants made them by his predecessor. As the castles of the barons had also been so many strongholds of lawless rapine and violence, in order to strike a terror into them, and thus render himself dreaded in turn, he caused the old and the newly- erected residences of these robber nobles to be demolished. Some two or three of the more powerful seemed inclined to resist this method of procedure, but the presence of the king at the head of his forces intimidated them, and brought them to sub- mission. The foreign possessions of Henry on the Continent were, by his birth and marriage, more extensive than any yet held by his predecessors. In right of his father, as Count of Anjou, he held both that state and Touraine; by right of his mother Matilda, he possessed Normandy and Maine; and through his wife Eleanor, daughter of William, Duke of Guienne, and the divorced wife of Louis VII of France, whom he married six weeks after her divorce, he held Guienne, Poictou, Xaintoigne, Auvergne, Perigord, Angoumois, and the Limousin. These, coupled with the annexation of Brittany, made more than a third of the whole French monarchy, the disputes regarding which have since caused those long and costly series of wars be- tween England and France, that were scarcely con- cluded with the cession of Calais in Queen Mary's time. This lust of conquest and dominion, this wholesale ava- ricious grasping to add state to state, and territory to territory, made a war with our neighbours in time an hereditary duty, and confirmed us in a sentiment little creditable to humanity, the absurdity of which we are be ginning to perceive and acknowledge, namely.— that a . Frenchman is the natural enemy of an Englishman, and that to be orthodox in our nationality, it is necessary for us to hate them hugely. Having, after his accession, " restored everything to tranquillity in England," to use a stereotyped phrase in history, Henry went abroad to restrain the incursions of his brother Geoffrey,— the ties of blood, together with many oaths of solemn import, having but little weight among the descendants of the Conqueror. Geoffrey re- signed his claim for a pension of a thousand pounds annually, and took possession of Nantz with that sublime indifference to the rights of men, or the privileges be- longing to a free people, that characterised his race. Now Geoffrey had no more claim to this place which had been put into his hands, than you or I have, good reader; but this is only one example of the extravagance, the impudence, and audacity which these men exhibited in their claims. In two years Geoffrey died, but Henry laid claim to these dominions by hereditary right, and went over to support his pretensions with an army of men. Conan, Duke of Brittany, had however said that Nantz was his. We will suppose his right to be quite as good, if not better, than Henry's. In order, however, to prevent Louis, the French monarch, from interfering, Henry paid him many attentions, and an alliance was made between two princes, each dreading and detesting the other, to the effect that Prince Henry of England should be affianced to Margaret of France. Conan, find- ing himself in a minority, gave in ; but fresh alliances arose, which were as intricate as they were ineffectual; for, finally, Henry, while endeavouring to annex other provinces,— as Toulouse, for instance,— embroiled himself with Louis, and a general war was only avoided through the mediations of Pope Alexander III. Having at last reconciled his differences with Louis, he returned to England. The power of the priesthood and the Pope had in the meantime risen to such a height, that matters were brought to a crisis, and it remained now to see who could bold out longest, and thus prove his mastery; i. e. whether the King or the Archbishop of Canterbury should be sole sovereign of the realm. Theobald, the present archbishop, was a man of mild and unassuming character, and had assisted Henry materially, by formerly refusing to crown Eustace, Stephen's son; but the moment Theobald died, Henry, keeping his object in view, advanced Beckett, then his chancellor, to that dignity ; but, as is often the case in things of this kind, the man he had thus elevated became the sole and only stumbling- block in his ambitious path. He had to do with a man to the full as ambitious, and being second in the realm, Henry only placed capabilities in the hands of one who had both the spirit and the will to resist him. Thomas A'Beckett, the first man of English descent who, since the Conquest, had risen to any considerable state, " was born of reputable parents in the city of London." He had travelled considerably in foreign lands, and studied deeply in Italy. He was advanced to church preferment under Theobald, who appreciated his talents, and who recommended him to tbe favour of the king. Henry soon after made him his chancellor, and the powers which, by this office, were vested in his hands, gave him a greater knowledge and influence in the state of the realm than its ruler possessed. He was also Provost of Beverly, Dean of Hastings, and Constable of the Tower. He lived in princely state, and almost surpassed the pomp of Henry's Court. He engaged in the pleasures of the time, and his hunting and feasting parties wer « upon a scale of royal magnificence. His knowledge of men was exten- sive, and he possessed the art of winning the good opinion of the world in an eminent degree. Beckett well knew Henry's intention with regard to restricting the privileges oft. be ecclesiastics; and when the chancellor was elevated to his new office, he prepared himself for resistance accordingly. He now. altered the whole tenour of his past life. He wore sackcloth next to his skin, became ascetic to a de- gree of cynicism, practised every species of self- austerity, not forgetting penance and the scourge. Watching by night and praying by day, he began to surround himself with the prestige of a peculiar sanctity especially imposing to the people who looked up to him with reverence and awe. The archbishop was the first to cast down the gauntlet. He summoned the Earl of Clare to surrender the barony of Tunbridge, as it formerly belonged to the see of Can- terbury. He appointed one Laurence to a living held by William'de Eynsford, who himself held it from the crown; he protected a clerk in Worcestershire, who had de- bauched a gentleman's daughter, and thus set at naught the working of the civil laws, as in these matters the ecclesiastical took precedence. Henry summoned a general council of nobles and prelates at Clarendon, where those laws denominated the " Constitutions of Cla- rendon" emanated, and the quarrel finally grew so threat- ening that A'Beckett twice sought to escape from the kingdom, after having caused a general ferment through all classes of people. It was a ticklish position this, in which Henry had placed himself. There seems no reason to doubt that, on the whole, the efforts of the church were bent in favour of, and for the defence of, the people. It was to the church alone that the benignant and civilizing influences of edu- cation, restricted as it was, were owing. Sunk in igno- rance, and tinged with barbarism, neither king nor noble sought to do else than follow the impulses of ambition ; and crimes of the most atrocious kind might he committed by them with impunity, had it not been that the arm of the churchman still wielded a power beneath which the boldest and the loftiest quailed. Henry, baffled in every way by the obstinate resistance offered by the primate, became harsh, cruel, and tyrannic. Throughout, the grossest injustice and a total disregard to truth and honour marked this quarrel, which terminated so fatally to the archbishop, who, if he was blinded by a false zeal, had yet immensely more of right on his side than Henry. One remarkable thing iti the " Constitutions of Claren don" was, that appeals to the Pope were abolished, and to make them now was criminal to a degree. This was intended by the king to cripple the power of his arch- bishop. Henry, by his violence, had become unpopular, and tiie Earl of Flanders, together with the King of France, were willing to take advantage of the disturbed state of the times, and sympathised with A'Beckett, even while the impolicy of such a sympathy must be obvious, as a future contingency, likely to affect their own power. The Pope interfered, and sided with the primate, so that Henry was compelled to come to a sort of compromise with his late chancellor, in order to avoid a sentence of excommunication which he had reason to fear was hang- ing over his head, first having taken care to have his son, Prince Ilenry, crowned, and associating him in the go- vernment of the kingdom, an act that he had afterwards reason to repent of. In the meantime the primate retook possession of the diocese from which he had been ex- pelled, with a pomp and ceremony which caused the most threatening reaction in his favour. Henry was at Baieux, where some prelates, excom- municated by A'Beckett, made their appearance and told a most deplorable tale of the ungovernable manner in which the primate revoked all Henry's decisions, abro- gated his authority, and set him at utter defiance. Transported with rage, he broke out into a violent passion, remarking that, " had he but faithful and zealous friends around him, he should not be longer exposed to the insolence of an overbearing churchman, one who was both ungrateful and imperious." Four " gentlemen" of his household, zealous even to the shedding of blood, formed a league with each other and instantly departed for Can- terbury. It is said that Henry, hearing of their journey, sent a messenger after them, commanding them to forbear their purpose. There is a method of requesting which asks for a denial. The assassins proceeded on their jour- ney, and arrived in safety; they sought their prey, and cleft. the archbishop's head as he stood by the altar during vespers, in St. Benedict's Church. With the odour of sanctity possessed by A'Beckett, one may imagine, the shudder of horror which ran through the breast of every man whose religious sentiment must have been outraged by this most fearlul act ox sacrilege ; and it was only the schism in Europe, which, fortunately for Henry, took place at the time, and the most abject submissions on his own part, that prevented the thunders of the Church from breaking upon England; the conse- quences of which would have been disastrous to the people- to a degree that would have made the land one scene of desolation. The primate was canonized; and in one year alone, it is supposed, that upwards of one hundred thou- sand pilgrims visited the shrine of the Saint. This religious ceremony originated the " Canterbury Tales " of Chaucer. In 1172, Henry undertook the conquest of Ireland. Two or three motives prompted him to this; he had lost some popularity which he found necessary to retrieve, and i addition, was moved by his ruling passion, a thirst for conquest. Ireland, populated by Celtic tribes, the antiquities of which are lost in the distance of the dead ages, had been for years torn by factions at home. They were a fierce and warlike people, and like most, primitive tribes were continually at war with each other, uniting only at times, and in the general cause. Dermot Macmurrough, a licentious tyrant, rendered himself odious to his people and was driven forth by them. He applied for help to Ilenry at Guienne, which was readily granted, as it chimed in with his own designs. This prince received the aid of Richard Strongbow, Robert Fitz- Stephen, and Maurice Fitz- Gerald, and going back to Ireland, awaited his English succours. Hume, in plain terms, calls liim a " ruffian;" and it was to this noto- riously bad man that the puissant Henry, now a good son of the church, gave his aid, and on whom he bestowed his friendship. The inroad was successful; and Henry, land- ing there some time after, found that he had but to " receive the submission of a people utterly dispirited by the rude hand of overwhelming force. Henry's next step was to conclude his " accommodation" with the court of Rome. This same accommodation being a word of extensive meaning in the king- craft of the period; it signified a repudiation of everything admitted, said, or sworn, if the demands of the church clashed with the intentions of the monarch-; it implied the most slavish obedience when a concession brought some desired result. The manner in which Henry got over his difficulties with the legates, places his abilities as a casuist at a high valuation ; but domestic disagreements marred that happi- ness on which he had calculated, and which he had taken so much trouble to ensure. His eldest son, Henry, he had appointed to be his successor in England ; Richard was invested with Guienne and Poictou; Geoffrey, his third son, held Brittany; and Ireland was destined for John. Henry, who had been betrothed to a princess of France, being now in the court of Louis, was moved to demand from his father either the crown of England or the Duchy of Normandy ; and the refusal of the father met with the most undutiful return. Queen Eleanor, whose gallantries had disgusted her first husband, now tormented her second by continual jealousies. She caused two of her sons, Geoffrey and Richard, to exhibit an unnatural resentment against their father Henry, on account of the unequal division of the royal spoils. This procedure of her's was carried to a height so dangerous, that King Henry was obliged to have her arrested while endeavouring to escape ( in man's apparel) and put in prison. The result was that father and sons fought against each other, and hence arose a war with Louis. Henry ex- perienced the bitterness of seeing his three sons in the train of his mortal enemy; but he was compelled to ne- gotiate on such terms as while they gave him peace,' left him a large loser, in addition to the mortification which he felt in being compelled to make terms with his un- governable sons. On the Sth of July, 1174, Henry did penance for the murder of A'Beckett. This was just after a great irrup- tion had been made by the King of Scotland, which, though checked with fearful loss, threatened, with other things, to become dangerous. The hypocrisy of Henry during this farce of humiliation— humiliating as it was— is beyond calm censure ; it was descending to a meanness below manhood, in order to be restored back to the favour of those people he had heretofore thought so little of. A victory over 80,000 Scots on the same day, added to- the false lustre of the whole, and made the scene complete; and four days after William of Scotland was taken pri- soner. Prince Henry, who had been at tlie head of the rebellion which the kings of the Scots had aided, was waiting at Gravelines in order to embark for England, but this unexpected termination put the designs of this remarkably undutiful son aside for the time. A great deal has been said about this king's " equitable administration," of which the murder of A'Beckett, an incursion into Wales, and the conquest of Ireland, give- the student of history remarkably favourable instances. He enacted severe penalties against robberies, murder, false coining, and arson; which is only to say that he availed himself of the instincts of self- preservation, most of these laws having been made after his having expe- rienced the evils resulting from these crimes. In 1180, Prince Henry, who was imbued with the spirit of re- bellion, made his submissions, and finally united his arms to his brother Geoffrey, and attacked Richard, whose warlike nature laughed them both to scorn. The prince died of a fever in 1180, thus ridding the world of a turbulent and restlessly intriguing man, by which Richard became heir to the king's dominions. Geoffrey in turn was killed at a tournament, leaving a son named Arthur, who was invested with the Duchy of Brittany. During Henry's reign the Crusades were continued, and he contributed to them both money and men. In 1189, Henry was engaged in a war with his son Richard, who had entered into a league with Philip of France; and being compelled to make very advantageous terms, it. so preyed upon his mind, that overloaded with grief, he cursed his children and died at the Castle of Chinon, near Sauraur, in the fifty- eighth year oi" his arje, and in the thirty- fifth of his reign. 38 REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. Tfe mitigated tlie forest laws, but sacrificed liuman lives as if they were given of God for the sole purpose of the stupendous sacrifices that were made. He became severe to the robbers and murderers of London, because they sacrificed one member of his court, having paid little attention to their past atrocities from which the citizens suffered. The story of " Fair Rosamond," with its sad train of consequences, appears to be founded upon fact; and Eleanor, amorous herself, may have had but too just cause for her jealousies. The only mourner over the corpse of Henry was a natural son. EDWIN ROBERTS. THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND PHASES OF HUMAN SLAVERY: HOW IT CAME INTO THE WORLD, AND HOW IT SHALL BE MADE TO GO OUT. LETTER IV. HAVING shown how human slavery originated in parental despotism, let us now inquire how jjositive laws came to consolidate and regulate it, and public opinion to con- secrate and perpetuate it, till it had become the normal condition of some three- fourths of the human race, ante- teeedently to the period of Christ's advent. Here we shall again find history our safest guide. If the oldest tra- ditions show, on the one hand, that slavery did not originate in human laws, but was the spontaneous growth of the natural subjection of children to parents, there is equally ample authority, on the other hand, to show that, once introduced, all the forces of law and opinion, known to the ancients, were unsparingly applied to propagate and maintain slavery in every pagan country. While families remained apart from each other, with- out intercourse— without social relationship,— slavery knew no other law than the will, or pleasure, of the head of each household. But when, in the progress of early civilization, the families congregated in any particular locality or country, came to find it necessary to consti- tute themselves into one great society, for the purposes of exchange or commerce, intermarrying, mutual de- fence against aggression, & c. & c., the despotic will of individuals gave place, of necessity, to a general law of the heads of families composing the society. It was then, and not till then, that slavery became a legal insti- tution. The general law not only sanctioned and en- forced it, but also greatly enlarged its bounds, by creating new sources of slavery. For example, to bo taken prisoner in war; to take refuge in the house of another; to be unable to pay one's debts; or, if a girl, to be married out of her family or tribe;— these were so many new sources of slavery created by the general law. The rights of war were made to confer upon the vanquisher the same rights over the vanquished that belonged to their own fathers. Indeed, amongst the ancients, the vanquished were considered as " men with- out gods;" that is to say, men without ancestors of rank or dignity ( for, in the language of the primitive poets, the gods and the ancestors of great families are one and the same thing), and they were treated as mere chattels, as appears from the very name given them; viz. mancipia, whioh, though the ordinary term applied to slaves taken in battle, is, in its etymological sense, applicable only to things inanimate. Whether it was from a religious scruple, or for the purpose of divesting the vanquished of what prestige might attach to them from the possession of their gods, or ancestral images, we find that the taking, or keeping possession of, these gods was always a vital consideration in the sieges and battles of antiquity. Once taken by the enemy, the cap- ture and enslavement of their possessors were deemed inevitable. Those left without gods, in this sense, were regarded as outlaws by their own fellow, citizens, and their future slavery was considered a mere matter of\ course by themselves, as well as by their conquerors. We may readily imagine what a prolific source of slavery this must have been in lawless times, when might alone conferred right. We may also conceive how greatly it must have aggravated and embittered the aboriginal relations between master and slave. Asylums, or houses of refuge, were another means of extending slavery under the positive law. The man who took sanctuary in one of these places became the slave or chattel of the protector who had given him safety. These asylums, of which we find mention made in the primitive traditions of almost every old country, drew together not only maltreated slaves from other quarters, but malefactors and vagabonds of all sorts; and, in general, that restless and turbulent class of people who love action for its own sake, and cannot live out of broils and adventure. History testifies to the opening of such asylums by rulers and the founders of cities, as an essential feature of their policy. Thus, Moses determined six certain cities in which manslayers might take refuge from the avenger. Theseus opened a refuge at Athens, the remembrance of which was so fresh in Plutarch's time, that that biographer thinks the phrase of the common criers in his day—" all peoples, come hither"— were the identical words used by Theseus himself. Romulus, as before observed, opened an asylum at Rome for the fugitive slaves of Latium, which, it is said, remained open for upwards of 750 years. Indeed, if we are to believe Suetonius, it and similar places of refuge were to be found in Rome, and in the provinces, till Tiberius formally abolished " the law and custom" of them by an edict. It may be observed, generally, of these asylums, that originally, or primitively, the parties who fled for refuge to them became the slaves, or sub- jects, or clients of their protectors; yielding to the latter their personal liberty and service in exchange for their preservation: but, at later epochs, the character both of asylums, and of those who fled to them, changed alto- gether. When opened by free cities within the boundaries of their liberties, or by priests in their temples, they were sacred to freedom, and not to slavery. There is no doubt, however, that in the early ages of the world, both law and custom turned them largely to account in extending the domain of slavery. Next to war, indebtedness, or the relation of debtor to creditor, was probably the most odious and prolific source of slavery under the positive law. Such appears to have been the case at least amongst the Greeks and Romans, with whose histories the moderns are better acquainted than with those of other ancient countries. Plutarch tells us, in his life of Solon, that that legislator, on his arriving at power, found a large proportion of the citizens in a state of actual slavery to their creditors, and that one of his greatest difficulties and triumphs was the adjustment of their conflicting claims. Certain writers and commentators speak of an old Athenian law which gave money- lenders, as security for their money lent, the personal liberty of the bor- rowers, alias, a power to make them slaves. Others say the law in question extended the creditor's power to one of life or death— that he might expose or kill his default- ing debtor. The Roman laws of the Twelve Tables were, we know, borrowed from Greece; and Aulus Gellius cites the express terms of the law of the Third Table, to show that it armed Roman creditors with simi- lar power over their unfortunate debtors. The rigour of this law was such, that in case there were several creditors, they had the option either to sell the debtor's person to strangers, or to dissever his body and divide the pieces amongst them. Shocked and disgusted at the barbarity of this law, Aulus Gellius asks, " What can be conceived more savage— what more foreign to man's natural disposition— than that the members and iimbs of a destitute debtor should be drawn asunder by a mangling process of ever so short duration?" Tertul- lian, one of the early Christian fathers, bears testimony to the existence of that and similar laws under the pagan system. As he uses the plural word leges instead of the singular, lex, it is clear there must have been more than one law of the kind. The murderous part of such laws, was however, too revolting to be carried into effect; so the enslavement of the debtor's person was the course usually adopted by vindictive creditors. Indeed, Quintilian tells us expressly that public morals rejected the law of the Twelve Tables— at least, that portion of it whioh gave creditors the power to cut up the bodies of insolvent debtors. To imprison or enslave them was, therefore, their only praticable course; and, as the latter was the more profitable, it became the one usually resorted to. The sale of unfortunate debtors, as slaves, became, therefore, a part and parcel of the commerce of Greece and Rome. It was one of the ways by which hard- hearted creditors indemnified themselves for bad debts. And, as neither law nor custom could reconcile any people to such a palpable outrage upon the rights of humanity, it never ceased to be a prolific source of dis- affection and civil broils throughout every period of the Greek and Roman annals. Livy records some terrible outbreaks, arising solely from the laws of debtor and creditor. Indeed, next to agrarian monopoly, the work- ings of usury in pauperising and enslaving free citizens was the principal cause of all the civil wars, and the ultimate cause of the downfall of the Greek and Roman republics. But Greece and Rome are not the only ancient states in which debt multiplied slaves and slavery. Tacitus informs us that the ancient Germans were so addicted to gaming, that sometimes they staked even their bodies upon the last throw of the dice, and when the game went against them, resigned themselves tranquilly to be bound and sold, as slaves. ' Tis curious to observe the language made use of by Tacitus in describing this af- fair. It forcibly reminds one of the " national debts" of modern times, and of the cunning cant by which the toiling slaves who pay the interest of them, are made to boar the burden with more than asinine resignation. Indeed, the whole passage as given by Tacitus, might be strictly applied to the men and things we are living amongst, if we would but substitute a few of our modern commercial terms for the old dice- table terms employed by Tacitus. " They, the Germans," he says, " practice gambling amongst their serious pursuits, and are quite sober over it. So desperate is their lust of gain or fear of losing, that when all other means fail, they stake their liberty and their very bodies upon the last throw of the dice,-— nay, the beaten party ( the loser) enters volun- tarily and resignedly unto slavery. Although younger, and more robust than his antagonist, he quietly submits to be bound in fetters and sold. Sueh is their perverse- ness in depravity. They, themselves, call it FAITH! HONOUR! The successful parties ( winners) dispose of this class of slaves in the way of commerce, that the in- famy of their victory may be lost sight of by the removal of their victim." In this almost literal translation, we have paraphrased Tacitus no farther than his elliptic style and the different genius of our language render necessary. Vet we can hardly persuade ourselves that we have not been describing the process and the very terms by which commercial speculation, and our system of public and private credit manufacture the slaves of our own day. The only substantial difference is, that our gambling and slave- making are upon an im- measurably larger scale, and that our enslaved Saxons, unlike their German progenitors, have not even a chance of saving themselves; for, though they are made to con- tribute all the stakes, they are allowed no further share in the game than to look on and pay the losses, whoever may be the winners. Tacitus's term fides ( faith! honour.') is the identical term made use of now- a- days to enforce the payment of national debts by those who never bori owed, and the payment of " debts of honour" by those who forget to pay their tailors' bills and their servants' wages. The old German gamester's trick, too, of getting his victim out of the way by disposing of him as merchandize, instead of keeping him to serve as a slave upon himself, is not without its analogies in our modern practice. Indeed, our whole system of com- merce and of public credit is based upon a similar prac- tice and similar motives. The slaves of our modern landlords, merchants, and manufacturers, are always the apparent slaves of somebody else,— of some wretched go- between underling, on whom the odium, though not the profits of the system, is made to fall. The landlord throws it upon the farmer, or agent; the mill- owner upon his overseer; the " coal- king" upon his .; the ex- porting merchant upon the slop- shops and " sweaters," and so on, throughout every ramification of trade and manufacture. The loan- monger retains not in his own hands his purchased privilege of rifling the pockets of all tax- payers twice a- year for no value received. That would make his position as odious as that of Tacitus's suc- cessful old German gamester would have been, had he made the " plucked pigeon" his personal slave, who was whilom his boon- companion and equal. Business could not go on in that way. Our loan- monger knows it, and, therefore, no sooner does he get his bonds than he dif- fuses the " scrip" as widely and plentifully as the dews of heaven, till there is hardly a grade, or calling, in society that i3 not made directly interested and instrumental in enslaving the producer and defrauding him of his hire. At the moment we write, there are nearly one quarter of a million of families interested in what is called " pub- lie faith," " national honour," and all that sort of thing; and amongst the whole lot, there is not one that was originally concerned in any of the hoeuss- pocussing transactions which have given us our " national debt," with its thirty millions of annual tax on the producing slaves of this country. The original loan- mongers, and their representatives, have dexterously shifted the odium and the responsibility of their black job, or jobs, ( for there were many of them) from their own shoulders to those of innocent parties; and whatever may eventually become of these parties, they took good care tohavemore than their quid pro quo before they transferred their claims upon the public purse— to the present recipients of the dividends payable half- yearly, on account of the debt called " national." An- other, and mayhap a stronger analogy to the case of Taci- tus's " plucked pigeons," sold into slavery, might be found in the expatriated tenantry and peasantry of Ireland. The landlords of that country do not always dispose of their human chattels by plague, pestilence, and famine; and there is no law of the Twelve Tables to authorise the cutting up of the bodies of their tenants in arrear. But there is a law— or, whether there is or not, they find one— which authorizes them to eject tenants from their holdings, to raze their habitations to the ground, and to drive the said tenants, homeless and breadless, to find a shelter and a crust where they may. In such cases ( and they are as plentiful as cranberries) it is not unusual for such landlords to smuggle their ousted victims out of the country, and even to pay their freight to Canada, in some crazy old hull ( provided their fare don't exeeed what it would cost to bury them in ease they died under a bush or ditch, after the dilapidation of their homes). Once removed to Quebec, or to the bottom of the Atlantic ( it matters not which), there is an end of trouble to both landlord and tenant. In Canada the tenant cannot fare worse than in Ireland ( for, worse he could not), and he may fare better. At the bottom of the sea he is safe and provided for, for all time to come. In either case, he is out of the landlord's sight, and out of the sight of all to whom a knowledge of his treatment might sug- gest misgivings as to their own future. To the landlord who ousted him, his personal service, as an actual slave, would be as useless as that of Tacitus's ruined gamester would be to the successful one who had won him and sold him. He would be but an incumbrance— a lump of dead stock— an incubus upon the soil! His presence would but be a reproach to his landlord, and a curse to himself ! To get rid of him, then,— to dispose of him anyhow, or by any means, that will only get him out of the way,— is the one thing needful. Well, Tacitus has shown us how the lucky gamesters of his day got rid of their fleeced victims in Germany. Against his case we fear not to put the Irish " clearers," and the British farm " consolidators" of our day; being perfectly assured that the Saxons of the present day will be found to excel those of Tacitus's day, or any other of the old German tribes, in the art of slave- making, as much as we excel the old Romans themselves in road- making, ship- building, money- grubbing military man- slaughter- ing, or any other art or science. To return from this digression: the relation of debtor and creditor, was unquestionably one of the direst and most fertile sources of slavery known to the ancient pagan world. Even God's chosen people— the Hebrews — were not altogether free from it. It is true, Moses' septennial release from debt, and the jubilee ordained at the end of every fifty years, were powerful checks upon the inroad of this form of slavery. But, nevertheless, indebtedness did furnish its contingent to slavery even under the Mosaic law: for, do we not find Moses antici- pating this curse in Leviticus, when he enjoins, " If thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and bs sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a slave or bond- servant, but as an hired servant; and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee, until the day of the jubilee," Sic. & c. This shows clearly how inseparable was Slavery from indebtedness under the ancient order of things, when Moses found it necessary to make provisions against its contingency, notwith- standing all the precautions he had ordained to prevent it. And Moses' foresight is fully proved by the subsequent history of the Jews. For, we learn from Josephus, that at a later epoch,— to wit,— under King Joram, the son of Josaphat: the widow of Obadias ( who had been go vernor of King Achab's palace) came to tell the prophet Elisha, that unable to reimburse the money that her husband had borrowed, to subsist the hundred prophets he had saved from the persecution by Jezabel, his credi- tors laid claim to herself, and her children, as their slmm. We might furnish other instances of a similar kind from sacred history; while from profane history we might cite ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. proofs ad infinitum, bearing upon the same point: but enough has been said for our purpose. The obligations of debtors to their creditors was undoubtedly one of the most grievous sources of slavery known to the positive law in ancient times. Next to war, it was probably the greatest. * The last remaining cause to be disposed of, is the mar- riage of females— more especially of females married out of their own family or tribe. That much slavery was brought about in this way, is proveable in a variety of ways, and by the best traditional evidence. Homer's Illiad abounds in testimonies to this effect. We have already cited the example of Cassandra, whom Othryon purchased from Priam, even as Jacob bought Leah and Rachel from their father Laban. Other passages are still more conclusive on the point. We find in the 9th boob, for instance, that Agamemnon, regretting his having occasioned the wrath of Achilles, offers him, by way of appeasing it, certain costly presents. Amongst others, seven Lesbian female slaves along with Briseis; and, when Troy should be taken, twenty captives, the most beautiful, after Helen; and, as a climax, one of his own three daughters ; Achillea to choose, and to have her without purchase. And, again, in the 16th book, we find Homer making mention of a certain Polydora, the mother of Menestheus, whom he describes as having been purchased for a wife, by her husband, at a great expense. The poems of Virgil contain similar evidences — as for instance, when Juno proposes to Venus to settle their quarrels, and to accept Dido as a spouse and ser- vant to her son iEneas. The term service made use of by Virgil indicates clearly the servile relation to the husband which such marriages imposed upon women. Having explained the origin of direct slavery, its legal establishment, and the principal known causes which multiplied it, and consolidated it as a social institution, let us now inquire in what light it was regarded by the ancients themselves,— wherefore it was able to maintain its footing all over the world, till the advent of Christi- anity,— why it still obtains in so large a portion of the habitable globe, — and why it has in nowise ceased without giving birth to a masked or indirect slavery worse than itself. In this inquiry, our task will resolve itself in establish- ing the three following propositions. 1st. That direct or personal Slavery" was not regarded by the ancients in the light in which enlightened men of the present day regard it; that is to say,— as an unnatu- ral and inhuman institution,— but, on the contrary, was considered to be a thing perfectly natural and reason- able in itself, and essential to the ends and purposes of society. 2nd. That the main cause of its permanence in the world, was the universality of public opinion in its favour, rather than the force of law or custom, and that the slaves themselves fully participated in the general opi- nion— and 3rd. That, all things considered, direct Slavery, whether as practised by the ancients, or by the moderns ( wherever it is in use), was, with all its evils, less de- structive of life, morals, and happiness to the majority, than the present system of indirect or disguised Slavery, as effected in most civilized countries by unjust agrarian, monetary, and fiscal laws. i These proposition we shall endeavour to make good as we proceed. A NATIONAL RBFOBMER. ( To be continued in our next.) THE ARISTOCRACY: ITS ORIGIN, PROGRESS, AND DECAY. CHAPTER V. THE first of the vile house of Stuart now ascended the throne of England, and the destinies of this great nation were confided to a slobbering dullard. The change of dynasty from the Tudors to the Stuarts was, however, greatly conducive to the liberty of the country ; for the obstinacy of the latter driving the people to madness and goading them to desperation, caused them to rise up in their Sovereign grandeur and strike one blow that severed the neck of a tyrant, but struck awe and dismay into the hearts of future kings, teaching them the salutary lesson that not only their crowns but their heads might fall if they wilfully trampled on the liberties of a nation. The Tudors had been a bloody- minded and tyrannical race; but they were cunning enough to foresee that one day the people would assert their rightful sovereignty, and to procrastinate that fatal period they had always affected a certain show of respect to the popular voice, and even on particular occasions bent before its might. But the Stuarts were an obstinate, idle, vicious, and silly race; James I was a dolt and a tyrant, so fully impressed with the divine right and inflated pretensions of monarchs that he rendered his almost loathsome person more disgusting with the ridiculous airs he assumed. His progress from Holyrood to London was a nauseating spectacle of royal absurdity and aristocratic cringing ; even the money re- quired to equip this tom- fool of a king, and array himself and family in decent apparel, was levied on the people; and when once set foot in England the royal ass lorded it with all the pretensions of a conqueror. His favourite pastime was hunting, and his journey was continued in pursuing this amusement. Having but a vague and general idea of the rights of property, that is to say, property belonging to his subjects, himself and followers laid waste the lands of the farmers, and trampled them down with impunity. On arriving at Newark a poor devil of a pickpocket, profiting by such a promising occasion for plying his ille- gal calling, was detected in the act, and by James's orders instantly hung up without trial or form. On being in formed that such summary proceedings were contrary to the principles of English laws, he indignantly exclaimed, " Do I make the judges ? Do I make the bishops? Then, by God's wounds '. I make what likes me, law and gos- pel!" This wretched piece of royalty showered honours upon all that came within his presence; his progress was one incessant scene of servile homage and sickening adu- lation. Before he had arrived at the palace of White- hall he had knighted more than 200 persons, the greater part of whom had no claim to either honour or, respect. He raised his needy Scotch followers to the English peerage, conferring upon them estates and places. Ram- say, who stabbed the Earl of Gowrie, for this act was created Viscount Haddington, and afterwards Earl of Holderness ; his debts to the tune of 12,000Z. were paid by the - English people, and James married him to a daughter of the Duke of Suffolk. The name of Hadding- ton still continues in our English peerage, and the present holder of the title is one of the most illiberal of his order; his talents are much below mediocrity, and can only be classed asaristocratically dull. Lord Haddington was James I's favourite, and we shall soon show upon what horrible concessions that favouritism was to be acquired. Hay, another pauper, was created Earl of Carlisle, and fastened on the British public. James made many unconstitutional attempts to rule without a parliament, being urged on by the reigning favourites to raise himself into an absolute monarch. He endeavoured to obtain a fixed annual income from parlia- ments out that assembly very properly refused to grant the wishes of this disgusting old despot before he had re- linquished every idea of ruling by his own proclamation, and raising taxes without the consent of the Commons, and had suppressed the abominable monopolies that weighed down the energy of the nation. Unable to obtain the supplies he required, to satisfy the demands of his favourites, James turned salesman, and created a market for the purchase of titles. He fabricated a new order of knights called baronets ; this title was to be hereditary, and at first sold for the sum of 1000Z. By these means an enormous sum of money was raised, under pretence of planting the North of Ireland; not a shilling ever found its way to that wretched country, but went to gratify the extravagant whims of the king's horrible favourites. From so corrupt and filthy a source sprung that bastard descrip- tion of aristocracy denominated baronets. Such a singular notion of kingly importance had that beastly specimen of royalty, James, that he asserted his uncontrolled right over the property of his subjects ; and had it not been for the firm attitude assumed by Parlia- ment, Heaven knows to what extent his rapacity and arrogancfe might have led him. On one occasion the king was dining with two bishops, Andrews and Neile, when he proposed the question to them— whether he- might not take his subjects' money when he needed it, without all the formalities of Parliament ? Neile, with true episcopal servility, replied, " God forbid that your majesty should not, for you are the breath of our nostrils." Andrews, with more spirit, declined answering, saying he was not skilled in parliamentary matters; but upon the king's pressing him, and admitting of no evasion, he quaintly replied, " Why, under any circumstances, I think your majesty may take brother Neiie's money, for he offers it." But we must now come to that period of this reign that is truly loathsome to contemplate. Servile historians, fearful of fixing a dark stigma upon an anointed king, have glossed over the horrible predilections of James, and ascribed to weakness of intellect that which in reality, at the present time, is considered a capital offence— a crime the most horrible to contemplate, and far too dis- gusting to record. Carr and Buckingham were the two great favourites of the monster James. The first was a miserable poor Scotch lad, but described by Osborn as " straight limbed, well formed, strong shouldered, and smooth faced, with some sort of cunning and show of modesty." He was placed by designing persons in a conspicuous situation, so as to attract the king's atten- tion, and by reason of his graceful person raised himself to the place of favourite; this scheme succeeded beyond calculation, and Carr soon became the greatest man in the land. Riches, honours, and places were heaped upon this detestable being; and the king, even in the presence of ministers, unrestrained by the slightest sentiment of decency, would throw his arms around his minion's neck and beslobber him over with filthy caresses. And this wretched king dared, in- the presence of his Parlia- ment, to utter the following horrible blasphemy: " Kings,'' he exclaimed, " are justly called gods, for they exercise a manner or resemblance of Divine power upon earth. For if you will examine the attributes of God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king." A foul incar- nate liar ! Carr was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Rochester, with an immense fortune granted him to sup- port liis new dignity. His arrogance and assumption knew no bounds ; his contempt for the people was openly expressed on many occasions, exclaiming frequently, that " subjects were made as the serfs of kings, subser- vient to them, and to those majesty smiled upon." The castle and estate of Raleigh, in Dorsetshire, attracted the covetousness of this infamous scoundrel, and he in- sisted upon James bestowing them upon him, thus wrest- ing the property of the gallant Raleigh from his wife and children, whilst he himself was confined a close prisoner in the Tower. Lady Raleigh threw herself upon her knees before the king, and entreated him not to drive her children houseless from their home, and deprive them of all they possessed ; she recapitulated the services her. husband had rendered to the nation, and implored the royal mercy for his offspring. To this heart- rending appeal the only answer she obtained from the foul brute was, " I maun ha' the land,— I maun ha' the land for Carr." The fearful depravity and treachery of this royal favourite were of the blackest kind; he scrupled at nothing; and the power he possessed over the king's mind was doubly increased by the awful secrets it was in his power to reveal. The fate of Sir Thomas Overbury, the dearest and best friend of Rochester, is a striking proof of the latter's cold- blooded treachery. The young Earl of Essex was married to Lady Franois Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk ; the bridegroom being in his fourteenth and the lady in her thirteenth year; and it was deemed necessary by the relations that the young earl should travel for a few years upon the continent before the marriage was consummated. Upon returning, he found his wile grown into a beautiful and ripe woman; but, to Lord Essex's astonishment, she evinced a most unaccountable disgust and loathing for his person, positively refusing to receive him as a husband; and, although constrained by her relatives to live with him, the marriage was never consummated. Such coldness and . aversion arose not, however, from mere distaste to Essex's person, but from a burning, vehement attach- ment for Rochester, who, having possessed himself- of her person, was now desirous, on her husband's return, of obtaining a divorce and marrying his paramour. He confided his intentions to Sir Thomas Overbury, who vehemently dissuaded him from so doing, and threatened Rochester to withdraw all friendship if he persisted in his design. The latter told Lady Essex what had passed, and she, a revengeful, deep, and remorseless woman, deter- mining upon the destruction of Overbury, induced Rochester to entertain her projects for the ruin of his friend. The perfidious Carr repaired forthwith to James, and represented to him that, of late, - Overbury had be- come so exceedingly arrogant and overbearing, that his demeanour was quite insupportable, and counselled the king to remove him from England, by conferring the Russian embassy upon him. James, ever ready to hear the calumnies of his favourite, consented, when Carr, with devilish treachery, went to Overbury and advised him in the strongest terms to refuse the proffered appointment. The unfortunate man consented to follow this perfidious counsel, and from that moment his doom was sealed. Rochester returned to the King, and, as a farther proof of Sir Thomas's presumption and haughty carriage towards his sovereign, evidenced this refusal of the Russian embassy Overbury was committed to the Tower, where the ran- corous hatred of the she- devil - Essex, and the fiendish treachery of Rochester followed him until the death. By the agency of More, lieutenant of the fortress, and with the cognizance of his anointed Majesty James, Sir Thomas Overbury was duly poisoned within the walls, and the vengeance of Lady Essex was satisfied. The king entered into his favourite's projects, a divorce was obtained, Ro- chester married the countess, and that she might not lose any rank by this union, her new husband was raised to the dignity of Earl of Somerset. What a pure and excel- lent race of aristocratic personages might be expected to spring from this addition to the peerage— from this union of an adulteress and murderess with a favourite of James I! George Villiers, a young man of beauty and grace, a younger son of a poor family, next attracted the attention of the king, and was destined to supplant the Earl of Somerset in the questionable position of royal favourite. The latter, owing to a confession made by an apothecary's apprentice, who had prepared the poison for Overbury, was arrested with his countess, tried, and condemned for the murder. The king complained to Chief Justice Coka that the villanous couple had made him a go- between both in their adultery and their murder, and emphatically added, " God's curse be on you and yours, Coke, if you spare either of them." But Somerset possessed a power over the king, that lie threatened to exercise in case his life was in danger; he possessed the power of revealing to the world the horrible, revolting practices of a monster reigning, as he asserted, by the Grace of God. James was dreadfully alarmed, and in a fever of anxiety and trepidation. At length the difficulty was overcome and the disgraced favourite's mouth closed by a promise that his life should be spared. Villiers was taken into the royal household; his mother, a beautiful but infamous woman, became the great retailer of places, pensions, and honours ; government situations were sold by her at a variety of prices, the monies destined to defray the neces- sary expenses of the state, were lavished to support her son's extravagance, and she was created Countess of Buckingham. Villiers himself was made Viscount Vil- liers,— a title at present born by the eldest son of the Earl of Jersey— Earl, Marquis, and Duke of Buckingham, with places and emoluments conferred upon him, that to enumerate would almost occupy a colufnn of the " POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR." His needy relations were pushed forward and covered with riches; the paramour of his mother, Williams, was created Bishop of Lincoln, and held such enormous preferments, that Heylin remarks, " he was a perfect diocese within himself; at one and the same time, bishop, dean, pre- bendary, residentiary, and parson." Fielding, who married Buckingham's sister, was made Earl of Denbigh and had a large fortune conferred with the title. The present holder of that dignity, if such it may be called, was Master of the Horse to the late Queen Adelaide, an honour he has necessarily obtained by the fortuitous circumstance of being a descendant by a favourite of James I ! The House of Cavendish, Dukes of Devonshire, owe their nobility to the corruptions of Buckingham's mother, who amongst other peerages, honours, and promotions, dis- posed of one at a certain price to a Mr. Cavendish, the inheritor . of spoils his relation had obtained by the con- • fiscation of Abbey lands. The Fanes, the Petres, the Spensers, the Sackvilles, the Stanhopes, and many other noble families, are indebted for their standing in the peer- age, not to the deeds of their ancestors in the senate or the field, but to the base corruption of a profligate favourite and his infamous, rapacious mother. To supply the extravagance of the minion Buckingham, James committed a gross act of fraud on the nation, and robbed his people in the most barefaced and impudent manner, by surrendering the three cautionary towns held from the Dutch as security for the sum of eight hundred ' Wi- REYNOLDS'S POLITICAL INSTRUCTOR. thousand pounds lent by the English nation. These towns, Brille, Flushing, and another, were to remain in our hands until the amount was paid by instalments: two hundred thousand had already been received, and the re- mainder was to be liquidated at the rate of forty thousand annually,— we, all the time, retaining possession of those important places. Buckingham was clamorous for money, and James, to his eternal ignominy, of his own accord, took two hundred and fifty thousand pounds as a compromise for six hundred thousand, and delivered up possession of the towns. The royal favourite, utterly incompetent as a Minister, must needs meddle in warlike atfairs, and by his rashness, folly, and obstinacy, cost the country many lives and much treasure. He sailed with one hundred ships and seven thousand troops for the occupation of Rochelle ; but so i> adly were his plans devised, that he was obliged to make off with disgrace, and after losing in his expedition more than two thousand men, returned to England, as Hume observes, " totally discredited both as an admiral and • general." The vicious career of this profligate nobleman was put an end to by the hand of an assassin, Felton, who, guided by some personal vengeance, stabbed him at Ports- mouth. To the tutelage of this base favourite did James confide his son and heir Charles, thus preparing him for a fate he afterwards so well and richly merited. The reign of James I was a palmy one for the Aris- tocracy— in times of corruption and depravity they flourish and prosper. Peculation and favouritism were linked hand in hand, — every office in the state was venal and new ones created expressly to raise money upon; even the Chancellorship of the Exchequer was sold to Sir Fulke Greville for four thousand pounds, which he paid to Somerset's mother- in law, Lady Suffolk. Baronetcies, the stepping- stones to Aristocracy, were put up and dis- posed of at a fixed price ; the securities held by the king in trust for the nation, were parted with in defiance of all principles of honour or self- respect; and the sum raised by these foul means went to support an arrogant, upstart Aristocracy, in their career of corruption and crime. The voice of the people, however, during this reign, made itself heard; for the disgusting follies and vices of the Aristocracy shocked and astounded, whilst their rapacity alarmed the nation : the storm was brewing in the horizon that burst with retributive anger in the following reign. James had dismissed his Parliament in wrath, and when again compelled to summon them, they spoke boldly out, and reproaching him for the exactions of his favourites, impeached the Earl of Middlesex for bribery, oppression, and peculation ; and in spite of the king's entreaties in his favour, he was condemned to a fine of five thousand pounds, and to be imprisoned during pleasure. The King and Aristocracy were leagued together, to plunder and oppress the nation. To gratify his horrible depravity, favourites were raised up who fell with un- controlled and ravenous hunger upon the revenues of the state; a fraudulent Aristocracy was created, many of whose descendants, like the Stanhopes, Cavendishes, Denbighs, and F'anes, have the impudence to boast of their ances- tral honours, whilst the names of Villiers and Bucking- ham— names that can only be found in the history of our country as covered with obloquy, scorn, and odium, are at the present time borne with pride, and boasted of with arrogance by those who are considered the very essence of our respectable Aristocracy. ALPHA. ( To be continued in our next.) REVIEWS. THE PEOPLE'S ANTHEM. BY E13ENE7. ER ELLIOT. WIIEN wilt thou save the People ? Oh, God of mercy, when ? Not kings and lords, but nations! Not thrones and crowns, but men! Flowers of thy heart, oh God, are they, Let them not pass like weeds away, Their heritage a winter's day. God save the People! Shall crime breed crime for erer, Strength aiding: still the strong ? Is it thy will, oh Father, That man shall toil for wrong ? " No 1" say thy mountains. " No !" thy skies; " Alan's clouded sun shall brightly rise, And songs ascend instead of sighs." God save the People .' When wilt thou save the People ! Oh, God of mercy, when ? The People, Lord, the People ! Hot thrones and crowns, but men! God save the People ! thine they are, Thy children, as thy angels fair; Save them from bondage and despair. God save the People! PLACEMEN AND PENSIONERS.— It appears from a Parlia- mentary return that there are 841 placemen and pensioners who receive out of the public purse upwards of XI, 000 a year; viz Total Emoluments. Average income. 252 civil officers 469,950 ... 1,865 164 judicial officers 419,837 ... 2,559 74 diplomatic and consular officers... 178,540 ... 2,410 35 naval officers 44,166 ... 1,261 158 military officers 322,961 ... 2,045 30 ordnance officers 30,170 .... 1,005 118 colonial officers 201,340 ... 1,706 10 officers of House of Commons 21,407 ... 2,140 Their aggregate receipts amount to £ 1,688,391, making an average income of £ 2,008 for each person. Probably, about 25,000 is the present number of Government employe of all kinds, and their income about three millions.— Wade's Unreformcd Abuses. " THE PROGRESSIONIST."— One of the most significant warnings to a stand- still Government is to be found in the numbers of Democratic and Progressive journals that are now constantly springing into existence,— and in the avidity with which their contents are devoured by the masses of the people. In France, the ultra- liberal newspapers and periodicals enjoy an immense circulation, and calculate their readers by hundreds of thousands, whilst the more Conservative and monarch- ical sheets are not seen by a tithe of the number. To this circumstance alone can be ascribed the democratic notions that prevail in France; men read and judge for themselves; they weigh the arguments pro. and con., and are enabled to arrive at a just and proper conclusion— for this reason, likewise, they are restive under the iron rule of despotism, and unceremoniously overturn the tyrants that attempt to dominate over them. In England the press is of a different complexion: newspapers quarrel amongst themselves for party's sake, their leading arti- cles teem with abuse of men and condemnation of prin- ciples adverse to their own; they all admit that things are radically wrong— but one and all, Whig, Tory, and Liberal, shirk the grand question and evade the only remedy. They tell us that we are badly governed, that abuses exist, that our money is squandered, that corrup- tion is in the ascendant; but none of them dare to state what they all well know— that permanent and hereditary power is synonymous with extravagance, profligacy, and social derangement. The " Progressionist " merits a wide and numerous circulation; the doctrines it advo- cates cannot be too much diffused, or too strongly in- culcated. The Number for November the 10th, contains some excellent matter, amongst other articles, those headed " The True Reformer " and " The Present Age," deserve to be carefully studied; another one advising a petition to the Queen from the Agricultural Labourers, suggests the following plan of bettering their condi- tion:— " That we do not blame our employers for our extreme poverty, knowing as we do, the low price of their produce; we therefore do not seek to force thein to give us better wages, nor do we ask for charity, nor seek in any way to live upon other persons' property. NO! We only ask for the means, and by our own honest industry, to increase our in- come to the required amount, which we believe, and as prac- tical labourers, we feel convinced that it could be doue, if your Majesty would advise your Ministers to pass an Act, ' That every agricultural labourer in England, might hold and have, and cultivate, at his discretion, at least, one acre of land, in all agricultural districts, save and except in cities, and such large towns, where the same would be impractica- ble ; and to have and hold the same ou the following condi- tions:— 1st. At farmer's rent. 2ud. On lease for his life, the life of his wife, or any one of his children, uot having other land, and then compensation to his successor for actual im- provements. 3rd. The said acres to be taken from the large farms, and not the small ones. 4th. A loan of five pounds to each acre, from whaLever source your Majesty's Ministers may think proper, the same to be paid back by instalments of one shilling' per week. Your petitioners feel sure that one acre of land, held on the above conditions, aud cultivated by the spade, would produce them an amuuut, in value, equal to their present amount of wages; would furnish themselves and their families with constant and profitable labour, at such times, when their employers might have 110 use for their services would remove poverty, aud consequently crime, pauperism, and poor's rates, to the extent that yuur peti- tioners would be benefitted thereby.'" The " Progressionist" is published by J. Small, Buckingham; and Watson, Queen's Head Passage, Lon- don. Price One Penny. " THE FOUR P'S."— Under this quaint title, Mr. George Hows has given a sound and hearty lashing to the authors of those grievances which are continually weighing us down, and reducing the country daily into a more desperate condition. The three first P's, Princess, Peers, and Priests, united as they are to crush and oppress the fourth P, the People, are shown no mercy in this little publication, and as a specimen of the whole we select the TEEBS, Of whom Biackstone very gravely says, " The lords are an aristocratical assembly of persons selected for their piety, | their wisdom, their valour, and their property." How very I funny all this sounds in this year of 1849. Selected ? By 1 whom? Self- elected is the proper term, Mr. B. Their | " piety," too; the piety of the peers uf England I In what < does it consist? Why, in maintaining the State Cliurufi for i the purpose of clutching for their order the highest prizes. : The " wisdom," forsooth ! Who ever heard of hereditary i wisdom ? Wisdom is neither inheritance nor legacy: wisdom ! ot'ttimes walks ill clouted shoes. Oh! let us hear no more about hereditary wisdom, tut they have been selected for their property also. Too true is it that they have been so selected ; yea, they have regarded, do regard property more than they esiimate the flesn and blood of meu, women, aud children. Sweet indeed might be the use of property, in teaching the ignorant, in delivering tile poor from the fangs of the oppressor, in binding up the broken- hearted, in visit- ing the widow and the fatherless. But property in the hands of the aristocracy is greatly used to effect the moral and po- litical degradation of those to whom it owes its value. With our nobles ( and others, ton), property too often accumulates to crush and to corrupt. Truly has Lamartiue said, " The epoch when aristocracies fail is that in which uatious rege- nerate themselves." Another French writer says, " The English aristocracy is the last remnant uf the feudal institu- tions in Europe: and Euglaiid is the battle ground on which the contest for its extinction must be fought out." And M. Passy thus writes, " Woe be to those nations when the magnificence of the few displays it- elf at the expense of the many I Such is the stale of Great Britain." * * * " The Four P's" is published by Strange, Paternoster Row. MISCELLANEOUS. THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.— Like the Jews, our oligarchy have a law, and they call it " primogeniture," which Adam Smith says means " a custom which, in order to enrich one, beggars all the rest of the chil- dren ;" and this ) avv is meant to preserve the great historic names of our ancient nobility! VAell, the younger sons are thus left out, and being too proud to beg, and considering i't beneath their diauity to engage in anything useful, must hare gentlemanly allowances granted them, and their parents, not being willing to give tbem, gently persuade us to do it; and so we find them in swarms in the army, navy, church, colo- nies, and home and foreign courts. But, you say the House of Commons vote the supplies, and should not allow such exr travagance. They know that, and have provided against it; for, when making the Reform Bill, they did it to give the landed interest ample power in the House of Commons; and in order to show that they have not miscalculated, hear this: out of the 656 members of the House of Commons, we have catalogued no less than 250 who are officers, or the immediate connexion of officers. There are six marquises, who are eldest sons of peers, seven earls, who are eldest sons of peers, 63 lords who are sons of peers and Irish lords, 133 brothers," sons, and immediate relatives of peers, 56 baronets related and be- longing to the aristocracy, 26 eldest sons and immediate rela- tions of baronets, 85 lauded proprietors, married to sisters, daughters, & c., of peers. Thus you have 381 persons, or a standing majority in what is called the people's house for the maintenance of a war establishment and official extravagance. Have I said enough to prove that it is for place and pension, and not for protection, that the army is kept up ? I think 1 have. Allow me now to call upon you to use all your influence to put an end to this infamous and ruinous expenditure. If you wish to see trade flourish; if you wish to increase our ship- ping; if you wish to cultivate a trade with China; if you wish to keep our mills going; if you wish to see our marts filled with merchandise, and our poor- houses emptied— you must free industry from its present grievous burdens; and this can only be done by reducing our national expenditure; and we warn our governors to be just in time, for there are agencies at work, and movements commenced, which will never be relaxed until justice be done, or until the House of Commons be made indeed the Commons House of Parliament, and until the middle and industrious classes of this country have that fair share in the administration of their alikirs which their wealth, their talent, their industry, and their morality deserve."— Mr. Stewart's Speech at Manchester. THE MILITARY.— Naval officers never look forward to seats at the Board as a reward for distinguished services. They kuow full well that they must get into Parliament be- fore they have much chance of a seat at the Admiralty. It is, therefore, more than probable that the officers who com- pose the Board are uot always those most fit for the situation. How is it possible that men who go down to the House at four o'clock, sit there till after midnight, and frequently attend committees in the house at day time, can find time to manage the navy as it ought to be? It must be left to clerks, aud experience lias proved beyond a doubt that the system works badly. The responsibility of the six geutlemeu com- posing the Board of Admiralty is not worth a straw.— Sir Charles Napier. LABOUR.— Excessive physical exertion causes the anima! portion of the brain to preponderate;— the true end of ma- chinery is to release man from excessive labour, and thereby improve his organization.— Uxbridge Spirit of Freedom. INCREASE OF MINISTERIAL PATRONAGE.— Siuce March 1845, no less than 1814 public appointments have been made, the salaries of which amouut to upwards of 272,500?. The expenses of the establishments connected with them amount to 630,636/. Respecting the exercise of patronage by the Board of Admiralty, Sir Charles Napier says :—" So far are the Admiralty from reducing their patronage, that they are every day grasping at more. Formerly captains alone had the power of bringing young gentlemen into the service, a reasonable share of which weut to the Admiralty. They have now seized upou the whole, allowing two to an admiral, and oue to a captain on his commissioning a ship; and not satisfied with that, the captain is generally solicited by some one of the Board to give up his vacancy; the commanders have been lately deprived of their's, aud unless it is checked, the captains will share their fate. The master's assistants have long been ill their grasp, these little places beimj very con- venient for the members of naval boroughs!"' THE FUND FOR THE WIDOWS 0F 7 SHARPE AND WILLIAMS. The following subscriptions have been already re- ceived :— I Baron Rothschild Mr. G. W. M. Reynolds Mr. Luke James Hansard The proceeds of a Concert in Edinburgh The Proprietors of the Weekly Dispatch Sir Johua Wahnsley, M. P. Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart Mr. William Williams Mr. Prout Mr. W. J. Hall Digby Arms Locality Public Meeting at Derby Proceeds of Ball in the Tower Hamlets The persons in Mr. G. W. M. Reynolds's em- ployment ... J. \ V., 2s. { id.; per Mr. Xllingworth, Is.; Mrs. and Miss Eagle, Is.; Auouymous Currespoudent of REYNOLDS'S MISCELLANY, 6< « . Ditto, 6d.\ G. W. ( id.; a Youth, , id.; J. H. ( Slioreuitch) 2s. 6d.; Mr. Ruffey, 5s.; E. 11. 2s. OA; one of Mr. Reynolds's Wood Engravers, 2s ( id.-, William Frowsdale, Is.; A Shoemaker ( Liverpool), Is.; J. J. Mauby, Is.; a Labourer ( Leek), Is.; Mr. D. Forsyth. 5s'.; Mr. Deuuis ( Pickering), Is.; R. B. and J. A., 2s.; Harmonic Meeting iu Foley Street, 5s.; C. H. R. ( Cardiff), 5s.; J. W- ( Leii. li). Is. . WILLIAM DAVIS, Chairman. G. W. . H. REYNOLDS, Treasurer. JOHN J FLRDINANDO, Secretary. i> • V. d. 5 5 0 5 5. 0 5 0 0 5 u 0 3 3 0 2 0 0 U 0 1 1 0 I 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 17 0 0 10 0 0 10 0 Dec. 3rd, 1849. LONDON : Printed and Published, for the PROPRIETOR, by JOHN DICKS, at the Office of REYNOLDS'S MISCELLANY, 7, YV elliiigton Street North, Straud.