beth, it is ordered that "convenient houses of dwelling for the impotent poor" shall be erected on the "waste or common" lands of the parish, upon consent of and agreement with the Lord of the Manor, or by order of the Justices of the Peace, such " "cottages" not to be used or employed at any time after for any other purposes. By the Whig system observe the difference: the "cottage" is superseded by the workhouse, from which the desolate inmates are allowed no egress, and by windows above reach, are debarred even the sight of the earth beneath. The intent of the "cottages" was the decent and affectionate provision for family ties and family affections, which are mercilessly sundered and inhumanly disregarded under the Whig law, by which the father or the husband immured in one workhouse, is rigorously isolated and denied all communication with the desolate partner of his life and the hapless child who are relegated to a separate dungeon in some other portion of the Union; and in both cases, with a refinement of cruelty scarcely credible, the places of confinement are so calculated, under the instruction expressed or implied of the central despotism, as to withdraw them, by interposing the greatest practicable distance, from the communion and consolation of the more special friends and relatives of each. Is it to be wondered at that the poor, the aged and impotent poor, prefer to die of starvation, as they are daily dying by hundreds, in their own dear though miserable cottages at home, rather than be consigned to lingering misery in tombs, which, like the graves when dead, cut them off living from the most wretched solaces of earth? Shall we be surprised that weeping friends and relatives take leave and bewail the fate of victims thus sentenced to excommunication, as if the workhouse, like the churchyard, were part and parcel of those gloomy regions from whose "bourne no traveller ere returns?" Ulloa records the same thing in Peru of the factories: "The order to go and work," says he, "in the obrajes or factories, causes more terror in the Indians than all the rigorous cruelties impiously invented against them. The married women, the mothers, begin to bewail the death of their husbands and children the moment of their condemnation to this penal la

bour. With respect to their parents the children do the same, and there is no means left untried by parents to procure the liberation of their children from the labour of these obrajes." Once incarcerated, we may add, it was a sentence for life. When all efforts have proved unavailing, their despair is inconsolable; they (the Indians) "direct to Heaven their clamorous complaints, seeing that all on earth conspire against them." Hear what the great and good Pitt said, as quoted by Mr Walter "The law which prohibited relief, where any visible property remained, should be abolished. That degrading condition should be withdrawn. No temporary occasion should force a British subject to part with the last shilling of his capital, and descend to a state of wretchedness from which he could never recover, merely that he might be entitled to a casual relief." And yet under the workhouse system, so long as a stick of furniture can be found in the poor man's cottage, or a shilling in his possession, he is not entitled even to the luxuries of the Union gaol. Nay, distress warrants have been issued, and execution levied, to recover by public sale of his goods the defalcation of contribution assessed upon the son of a pauper earning twelve shillings a-week, and on the point of being married, for the parish outlay upon his mother.

Whatever amendments the original Workhouse Bill received in the House of Lords, one of which we have gratefully particularized, we are far from being content, after every allowance for the popular excitement of the time and the peculiarity of their position, with the conduct of the Conservative party upon the Poor Law trial. In all times care for the material interests of the poor had been a distinguishing feature of the aristocracy, gentry, and great manufacturers of the country; they should have left the Whigs and Radicals-utilitarian with the monopoly of odium accruing from their own crusade against the non-voting working classes. We are not of the opinion of those who think a "red herring" good enough for the unfortunate beings who cannot work, or who are unable to procure work, or that food to the amount of two pence per day can keep soul and body together, or that paupers should not after death be buried in the same churchyard endeared to them as the

repository of the bones of their fathers, or that families should be divided and the affections of kindred alienated by a line of demarcation in workhouses as broad and as impassable comparatively as the intervention of an ocean. A passage of the humane protest against the Workhouse law, recorded in the Peers' journals, by a right rev. Prelate, and several members of that House, in which it is denounced as "unjust and cruel to the poor," is well worthy of a place here, to the lasting honour of those who signed it. "We think that the system suggested in the bill, of consolidating immensely extensive unions of parishes, and establishing workhouses necessarily at great distances from many parishes, and thereby dividing families, and removing children from their parents merely because they are poor, will be found justly abhorrent to the best feelings of the general population of the country." This is language which affectingly contrasts with the doings of a right rev. Prelate who headed the first commission, and lost sight of Christianity in the delusions of utilitarianism, who himself subsequently, and in more reflecting moments, thus stigmatized the bill for workhouse imprisonment when advocating one benevolent clause. "It is about the only one in the bill that bears a kindly feeling towards the poor on the face of it." Better had he done to have deposed his mitre rather than have countenanced it.

The commissioners have declared that, for the due administration of this exterminatory enactment, stern, unflinching, and unfeeling executors (executioners, they should have said) are the best and the only qualified tools. There is a point at which resistance, we are told, becomes lawful, and Mr Fielden has intimated his opinion that the limit of endurance is reached. If the workhouse system be persevered in, a social revolution, in companionship with the one political, seems inevitable. The massesthe strong-who have foregone the privilege of strength to "take who can," on a condition and a right, not enacted only by Elizabeth, but coeval with Nature herself, will redress their own wrongs. The poor cannot, will not, ought not, to starve whilst any "visible property remains," as the great Pitt said. To this truism

and compact founded on it, the weak, the property classes, acceded. If the seal berailed off the bond" wo to the rash innovators. If the law remain unchanged, unmodified, the Corn Laws cannot stand-to uphold them would be a paltering with principles which can meet no sympathy with us. If they are abolished, as abolished they must be, what becomes of the farmers? We shall be among the last to consent to their being victimized we shall be among the first to insist upon an "equitable adjustment" of leases and rents. Prices will fall, and so must wages. We shall be found in the front of the battle for the operatives also, that wages may not be depressed beyond the fall point of corn values. But, great God! what a convulsion-what ruin-misery universal must be the consequence of heartless experiments for determining the extreme minimum of food upon which soul and body can be just kept from final separation! We have been told indeed—we are assured every day-that the abolition of the corn laws would raise wages. That frothy person Dr Bowring, in the debate on the factory bill, slashingly bids us "abrogate our corn laws

liberalize our commercial system; thus shall we raise wages." And Colonel Thompson, a gentleman who should be much better informed, and who is infinitely superior in talent, has himself given and preached from the same text. But Prussia has no corn laws, and yet wages do not rise; according to the evidence of Mr Grey before the committee on commerce and manufactures, a political economist of much higher repute than the touring Doctor, manufacturing wages at Bonn in Prussia were only two shillings and sixpence per week, and the operatives were condemned to live on black bread and sour wine. Neither are there any corn laws in Switzerland, where the workmen live on chickory for coffee three times a-day, with potatoes, although, as the Doctor acknowledges, "they naturally prefer better living when they can obtain it." Are the working classes of England to be brought to this-will they submit to it? In passing, we may notice the opinion of a writer upon the Doctor's boasted morality of Switzerland manufacturing, whose literary reputation as far transcends his, as does

the integrity and trustworthiness of his facts. M. Chevalier is quoting from the letter of a friend who was sojourning at Aran, in the canton of Argovia, which, as the Doctor prides himself on his French, we give in the original. "Je vois l'industrie qui envahit les montagnes, et arrache des bras aux terres les plus fertiles. Je puis voir aussi combien elle emancipe et combien elle démoralise. En passant à côté de l'étranger le paysan ou l'ouvrier ne le saluent plus; la jeune fille ne murmure plus son Dieu vous salue! mais elle le regarde fixement et sourit." This is language the Doctor will fully comprehend, and we should not be astonished if his employer of the Trade Board were tempted by the picture to a tour in Switzerland himself.

Thus to the Government and to the Utilitarian Radicals the working classes are indebted for the Reform Bill, which deprives them of a share in the representation-for the proposition of the Ballot which would fleece them of the fraction of political influence in remainder-for the abuses of the Factory system-for the Workhouse system with all its horrors. In exchange they are amused with unmeaning balderdash about Church rates, which they do not pay—about an Irish Municipal Bill, of which Irish hodmen understand little, and for which they care less-about "despotism and Don Carlos," which they value as moonshine. The middle classes are, on the contrary, the special pets of Whig and Utilitarian solicitude. These they have made the depositaries of political and municipal powers these they seek to conciliate with freedom from poors' rates-these they would bribe with the surrender of church rates. The middle classes ought to know how to appreciate their selfishness and hypocrisy-the working classes their ingratitude, their tergiversations, the turpitude of their changeling policy. They court the middle classes now-when not in office, and before the Reform, they excited the lower classes against them. The lessons of experience should not be lost upon either. Mr Roebuck, on the Utilitarian side, has defended the Centralization system of the workhouse, because the poor are a national If so, as this shallow legislator asserts, why is not poor law pro

concern.

vision administered equably, rateably, uniformly in allowance throughout the kingdom? Why is the administration split into parishes with the rates of some differing 50 per cent with those of others? Paving, lighting, watching and warding, are to the same extent national concerns. Upon what principle are these left to the absolute direction of parish boards or town councils? Why should they be better qualified to adjudge upon outlays · of hundreds and thousands upon town halls and gas works, than upon the shillings and pence to helpless paupers? Why should the self-government about which he dilates, without grasping the principle, be more operose, or impracticable of application to the of fices of local charity than to those of local police? Why should those who are assessed to the rates be disqualified for dispensing and controlling their expenditure? No central board of despots sits enthroned, or would be tole rated at Washington, for coercing or disposing at its pleasure of the poor of the American Union; not even a State Assembly interposes to limit or influence the action of legal and local authority. The select men apply the law, and superintend its execution in the township, against whose decisions appeal is allowed to the justices of the peace in session-as here under the old law. The system is found to work satisfactorily both to the poor and the rate payers; for there are poor even in America; a recent report states the existence of 2000 in the city of Boston alone. The local Board of Guardians, which by the workhouse system has been created, is the mere slave, and not the delegation of the central despotism. It is a body without vitality

a corporation without power-official without functions-having option or volition none, save to register the decrees which emanate from the triune tyranny of Somerset House. Men who servilely consent to accept the style and title of guardians, without one single right or privilege to the care and superintendence of the poor, must stand degraded in self-esteem, as they are in public opinion. The Government has invested them with no trust, the people repose in them no confidence. They are the ostensible agents of oppression, which they have not sanctioned, but are powerless to qualify-they are the helpless utensil

for the reception of that popular execration, which unshared, might suddenly overwhelm the Workhouse system with all its authors and abominations.

Let the middle classes take heed in time; for upon them, as the foundation of power, as the order, more tangible, more hated and envied, the reaction of popular vengeance, for the ills of the Factory system, and the atrocities of the Workhouse system, will surely be discharged the first. Savings in wages, by the slow immolation of factory children, and of rates, by the decimating consequences of workhouse incarceration and work house starvation diet, will be found cheerless and unfructifying economy, when corn ricks are blazing, cotton mills are fired, and the masses, manufacturing and agricultural, with their Jack Cades and Wat Tylers at their head, are in open insurrection.

At

the best, and if successful in the struggle, the county rate of one year may chance to absorb all the wretched and recklessly purchased parsimonies of the poor's rate outlay for twenty. The sound and thinking portion have foreseen this, but in the presence of a factious majority in the Legislature, and agitators in the Government, they remain inert and passive. The clergy of the national church have distinguished themselves as becomes their holy calling, by active endeavours to mitigate the evil, and by remonstrance against the barbarity of the system. But not one of the dissenting ministry has ventured forth to plead the cause of the people, nor dare they. The wealthy and well-doing, and such only do they covet for their flocks, are there with the Voluntary principle in hand, and in terrorem over them. Their salaries, the supplies of the recusant preacher would be stopped, who also has a sordid interest in diminished rates.

With these dangers impending on the one hand over them, no inconsiderable portion of the middle classes, of the sectarians chiefly, are rushing blindly on towards are infected with insane longings for--the establishment of a pure democracy on the ruins of the mixed Constitution, under which they, as all, have grown in wealth and happiness. M. Chevalier notes it as a distinctive characteristic of the English and Anglo-American race, that

"In

whilst they trample on, or disdain all below them in the social scale, they are jealous, and would pull down to their own level all above them. The bourgeoisie, or middle orders of America, have already passed under the absolute yoke of the masses. They are shorn of all power, deprived of all dignity, degraded and confounded among the common herd of matter without mind-robed in all the arbitrary absolutism of universal suffrage. Not alone does the majority, in the plenitude of its tyranny, exclude them from political dominion or participation in it, but its scrutinizing jea lousy penetrates and persecutes them in the details of private life. Woe to the citizen, rich though he be, who indulges too ostentatiously in the luxuries of private life. The sight of a carriage would scarcely be tolerated in Broadway-in Wall Street the gaudy nuisance would breed a riot; the tenant would be hooted for lordly affectation of superiority-the pride of "equality" would be shocked, the majesty of the workie insulted. Europe," says M. Chevalier, "where great cities abound, every bourgeoisie which should fail in supporting the throne or the aristocracy, would be exposed to a worse fate than that of the American bourgeoisie." Let it not be imagined that the prosperity and advancement of America is referable in whole, or to any extent, to her republican institutions. De Tocqueville, a writer equally favourable to the democratic principle, and calculating upon its inevitable triumph with the one before quoted, acquaints us, that "the population of America (in which is included her progress economically and socially), increased as rapidly under the colonial system as it does at the present day; that is to say, it doubled in about twenty-two years. But this proportion, which is now applied to millions, was then applied to thousands of inhabitants; and the same fact which was scarcely noticeable a century ago, is now evident to every observer." He continues to show that the "British subjects in Canada, who are dependent on a King, augment and spread almost as rapidly as the British settlers of the United States, who live under a Republican Government."

Here we must draw to a conclusion. Interests well understood, should lead

the middle classes rather to strengthen their connexion with the aristocracy and monarchy, than jealously to weaken powers and forms essential to the preservation of their own supremacy, and which never can seriously endanger it. But the social and political superiorities of both bourgeoisie and aristocracy, will be jeopardised if the crusade of the first, and the acquiescent march of the last, against the rights of the poor be madly persisted in. The industrial world is every where in the throes of a convulsion-in the United States, in France, in Germany, as well as here. Overstrained production is succeeded by a violent reaction of falling values. Widely spread ruin and bankruptcy are inevitable results of a decline in prices, of 30, 40, or 50 per cent. Consumption is arrested without a medium of barter or exchange, and can only be re-established when the par is re-adjusted, and the downward race between nations decided at the common goal of diminished rates, as well as diminished production. Long before that period, nay, before the expiration of another year perchance, thousands, and tens of thousands, in the manufacturing districts, may be cast out of work. They will cry out for bread, and a stone, a workhouse will be offered. The next encampment of one hundred thousand raging spirits, will not be in Warwickshire, but in Lancashire. No Olivers, or Parkeses, backed with Treasury franks, will be wanting to excite them for betrayed they will be powerless. A populace incomparably more intelligent, and leaders infinitely more desperate than those of Birmingham, may be banded in mortal strife against the " monarchy of the middle classes," whilst these are rashly as besottedly occupied in sapping the foundations of the monarchy aristocratical. Where, in so solemn a

conjuncture, is the empire to look for safety and protection? In presence of the coming tempest there is a Government only less imbecile than unprincipled-a majority in the Commons' House compounded of traitors more than suspected, of Radicals utilitarian and destructive, of Whigs venal and time-serving-the authors, abettors, and supporters of the workhouse system-the implacable foes of the poor. Come the crash will, meet it who may. A rural police will be nerveless to prop up workhouses tumbling to their ruin. The firmament of Whiggery is, however, calm and unclouded as on a summer's day. The cries of the poor or the oppressed cloud not the atmosphere respired in Downing-streetyet rebellion is silently and sombrely hatching in Ireland-Lower Canada is in open revolt-even the little rock of Malta is in quasi insurrection. Russia captures our ships, and wars against our commerce-Portugal bars us out with prohibitory tariffs-General Evans, the hero of Lord Palmerston, with his legion and an army half as strong as that which, at Vittoria, under Wellington, triumphed over, and chased before it, 50,000 of the élite of the troops of Napoleon, is so disgracefully defeated at Hernani by a band of raw mountaineers, that the wreck owed its safety and escape, though within the walls of St Sebastian, only to the cool intrepidity of the Royal Marines, who protected the flight. Brookes's is all agog with peerages expectant, and commoners coronetted but not ennobled. Nay, four hundred baronets have formed an union to enforce their rights tothe Ulster badge!!! Such was the feasting, such the idle revelries in Belshazzar's palace at the ominous moment of the "handwriting on the wall." So Nero sang, danced, and fiddled, whilst Rome was blazing!