JUSTICE DENIED THE PEOPLE.

147

the empire; waste lands are reclaimed; a stupendous system of domestic industry employs millions of operatives; every expedient individuals and government can devise is resorted to, except the only one which can ultimately avail-GRANTING THE PEOPLE JUSTICE. The poor are becoming more numerous, more miserable, and more depraved."

66

Chartism numbers its million and a half on one single petition to Parliament; trades-unions are more numerous, and the revolutionary spirit is becoming more and more difficult to control: the national mind is heaving under a sense of outrage; of violated rights; of injustice to man as a creature of God, entitled to his share of God's blessings in the world; and these must continue to be the results of the present blind policy of the English govern

ment.

The aristocracy of wealth, birth, and influence (with a few exceptions), are unwilling to remove the heavy burdens they have bound upon the backs of the people; and, appalled by the results of misgovernment and oppression; by the crimes, suffering, degradation, and discontent of the lower classes, they are seeking every day for some new contrivance to counteract the effects of their own wrong-doing.

When the confused and maddened roar of the people becomes at length so loud that it can be heard in the palace; and ominous signs which are not to be mistaken appear, then the government brings in some relief measure, so called; passes a

reform bill, after the public feeling is so deeply stirred that some Macauley is heard to say in his place, "You can evade the question no longer; for through Parliament, or out of Parliament, this bill must and will pass. "" But I believe Parliament has never on such occasions given to the people any more liberty or justice than they were obliged to; conceding just enough to bribe the masses into silence for the time. This is the policy of men who tame wild beasts: they give them food to stop their savage ravings, but enfeeble them by hunger as much as they dare, that they may be the more easily controlled.

Would free Americans brook such a government? Would you be able to stop the mouths of Lowell operatives by half a supply of bread? You could, no doubt, if they had never been accustomed to more. Men may become so inured to oppression that they will endure a vast amount of injustice and wrong without complaining. What then must be the burdens under which the English people groan, when they who have for ages been accustomed to submit to oppression will bear it no longer? Parliament has never yet granted the subjects of the British crown even what are called "inalienable rights" with us; much less has it secured to them the quiet and permanent possession of those privileges which the Christianity and civilization of modern times ought to bestow There are many of the middle classes, and a few among the aristocracy, who

INSUFFICIENCY OF PRIVATE CHARITY.

149

do what they can to remedy the evils of imperial misrule. But what substantial relief can the starving millions of England experience from the charities of the few?

These charities are often generous; but when government assumes the protection of the people, is it expected that liberal individuals, by extending private aid to a few, can remedy the evils of the misgovernment of the whole? A humane and Christian nobleman may employ five hundred of the idle and the poor who can buy bread with their labour nowhere else, in cutting down a hill to improve his landscape, and feed and clothe them and their wives and children; this is well, for there is more benevolence in giving to the poor labour and its reward, than there is in supporting them in idleness. Some benevolent and rich lady may gather a hundred orphan or indigent children into a charity school; it is noble, and the God of the poor will bless her for it forever.

Subscription-lists may tell of thousands of pounds raised to feed the needy in times of scarcity of bread, and of commercial distress; and every town and village may have its charitable institution, in some instances patronised by the aristocracy; but what does all this avail so long as five times the amount thus given to the poor is again wrung from them by a cruel bread-tax, which takes food from their mouths to swell the incomes of the land-owners; or by church-rates and tithes, to support a worldly and

oppressive religious establishment; or by poor-rates, to feed the millions who have been made paupers by this very taxation system?

Show me a man who, in the decline of life, falls upon his parish for support in the workhouse, and I will show you a man who has been compelled to labour half his days to sustain the government which has made him a pauper at last-a man who, with the same labour and economy, would have accumulated in America an independent estate, and reared up a beautiful and well-educated family to smooth the down-hill steeps of age, comfort him in sickness, and close his eyes in death's peaceful sleep. There can be no doubt that it costs the poor man five times as much to be a subject of Great Britain, if he lives on this island, as it would if he were a citizen of the United States.

Is there any benevolence in giving shelter to the broken-down operative to come and die in, when his overstrained muscles at length give way? or in answering his cry for bread by telling him to emigrate to America? Is there even JUSTICE in it?

Says Carlyle, that acute observer; that lover of the right and the true; that hater of shams and wrong; that strange being," who dares do all that may become a man"-in his Chartism: "The master of horses, when the summer labour is done, has to feed his horses through the winter. If he said to his horses, Quadrupeds, I have no longer work for you, but work exists abundantly over the world; are you

CARLYLE'S " LAISSEZ-FAIRE."

151

ignorant (or must I read you political economy lectures) that the steam-engine always, in the long run, creates additional work? Railways are forming in one quarter of the earth, canals in another; much cartage is wanted somewhere in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America; doubt it not, ye will find cartage; go and seek cartage, and good go with you.' They, with protrusive upper lip, snort dubious, signifying that Europe, Asia, Africa, and America lie somewhat out of their beat; that what cartage may be wanted there, is not too well known to them. They can find no cartage. They gallop distracted along highways, all fenced in to the right and to the left; finally, under pains of hunger, they take to leaping fences; eating foreign property, and we know the rest.--Ah! it is not a joyful mirth; it is sadder than tears, the laugh humanity is forced to at Laissez-faire, applied to poor peasants in a world like our Europe of the year 1839,"

No; I am quite disposed to think, that the horse which has worked through his working life, is justly entitled to something to eat when he can work no more. So thinks the slaveholder, who supports his worn-out servants. One would laugh him in the face to hear him talk of the charity of the act. Indeed, in six Southern states I have never heard a word about the charity of it. I have heard some zealous advocate of slavery at the North say something about it, but never without raising a laugh at the misnomer.