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ing of Spartan freedom-the Helots are overlooked."

But the mass of hearts beat in the bosoms of the poor (the Helots of this country), whose every desire is ungratified but the wish to hide away in the still, kind grave, from

"The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely."

In no country can such wealth be acquired. But it is the one who grows rich by the labour of the hundred; and that hundred as wonderfully fashioned by nature; with hearts which can feel as deep anguish and as pure joy; all made by the same kind Father; and regarded with the same love by " Him who is no respecter of persons." To enrich the few, the many are sacrificed. One painful consideration affects the mind of every American whenever he contemplates the condition of the mass of the English people. The government, with its privileges and protection; the throne, with its power and patronage; the institutions for science and truth; and those facilities for happiness and elevation which have sprung from a high civilization, all are intended for the few. The majority receive no more advantage from these things than as though they had never been.

He must be a superficial observer of the state of society here, who does not discover that, just in proportion as the higher classes advance in wealth, power, and influence, are the poor depressed. What is gained by the few is lost by the many. If the landholder grows rich, his pockets are filled by the

PRACTICAL SLAVERY OF THE POOR. 143

odious and unjust tax upon the necessaries of life, which falls chiefly upon the poor. If the Manchester manufacturer amasses a colossal fortune by underselling his competitors in every market in the world, it is because his dependant operatives do not receive a fair compensation for their labour. If the bishop rolls in wealth, his luxuries are the price of the hunger and nakedness of thousands in his diocese. If a Lord-lieutenant of Ireland throws up his commission after a month's administration, and retires to a chateau on the Continent on £5000 a year, this sum is wrung from the starving peasantry of that misgoverned Island.

It would have been far better for the poor of England if their country had never attained her present commercial eminence; for every step of her advancement has crushed them deeper in poverty. You will, of course, sir, not understand me to apply these remarks universally: I am speaking of a general. principle.

One of the chief elements of slavery mingles in the condition of the English operative: he does not receive a fair equivalent for his labour; and, in addition, unjust legislation places a tax upon the necessaries of life so high, that a very large proportion of his scanty wages goes to his oppressors.

The life of an English operative is a perpetual scene of suffering and wrong. He enters upon his task-work while he is yet a child. In his infancy he begins to fall under the curse which this state of soci

ety inflicts. Let me here quote the words of Southey in Espriella's Letters--a work with which you are familiar: "They are deprived in childhood of all instruction and all enjoyment; of the sports in which childhood instinctively indulges; of fresh air by day, and of natural sleep by night. Their health, physical and moral, is alike destroyed; they die of diseases induced by unremitting task-work; by confinement in the impure atmosphere of crowded rooms; by the particles of metallic or vegetable dust which they are continually inhaling; or they live to grow up without decency, without comfort, and without hope; without morals, without religion, and without shame; and bring forth slaves, like themselves, to tread in the same path of misery.

"The dwellings of the labouring manufacturers are in narrow streets and lanes, blockaded up from light and air; crowded together, because every inch of land is of such value that room for light and air cannot be afforded them. Here in Manchester, a great proportion of the poor lodge in cellars damp and dark, where every kind of filth is suffered to accumulate, because no exertions of domestic care can ever make such homes decent. Those places are so many hot-beds of infection, and the poor in large towns are rarely or never without an infectious fever among them; a plague of their own, which leaves the habitations of the rich, like a Goshen of cleanliness and comfort, unvisited.

"Wealth flows into the country, but how does it

INCREASING NUMBERS OF THE POOR. 145

circulate there? Not equally and healthfully through the whole system; it sprouts into wens and tumours, and collects in aneurisms, which starve and palsy the extremities. The government, indeed, raises millions as easily as it raised thousands in the days of Elizabeth; the metropolis is six times the size which it was a century ago; it has nearly doubled during the present reign (1802). A thousand carriages drive about the streets of London, where, three generations ago, there were not a hundred; a thousand hackney-coaches are licensed in the same city, where, at the same distance of time, there was not one; they whose grandfathers dined at noon from wooden trenchers, and from the produce of their own farms, sit down by the light of waxen tapers to be served upon silver, and to partake of delicacies from the four quarters of the globe.

Work

"But the numbers of the poor and the sufferings of the poor have continued to increase; the price of everything they consume has always been advancing, and the price of labour, the only commodity they have to dispose of, remains the same. houses are erected in one place, and infirmaries in another; the poor-rates increase in proportion to the taxes; and in times of dearth the rich even purchase food, and retail it to them at a reduced price, or supply them with it gratuitously; still every year adds to their number.

"Necessity is the mother of crime; new prisons are built, new punishments are enacted; but the VOL. I.-N

after

poor become year year more numerous, more miserable, and more depraved; and this is the inevitable tendency of the manufacturing system."

Perhaps it should have been added, " as it is now conducted in Great Britain;" for all true political economists know, that labour becomes valuable and productive, in proportion as the labouring classes advance in physical improvement. It is poor economy for a nation to wear out the bones and muscles of its labourers by oppressive taxes and prostrating toil; since it must in the end inevitably impoverish the people which inflicts the wrong.

Said one of the sages of Greece, "Show me a country where a people are happy, and I will at the same time show you one where they are virtuous." Said a celebrated forger, who was executed in London not long ago, in a letter to a friend before he committed the deed which cost him his life, "I must have money from you, or do worse; for God knows I cannot starve."

The words of Dr. Southey have a still deeper meaning now than when they were first written: "New prisons are built, and new punishments are enacted." The English government experience at last a reaction upon themselves for their oppression. Society feels in every part the pressure of the emergency. Millions are given in charity; thousands of poor children are educated in private schools by the benevolence of the good; hundreds of thousands emigrate to America, and the foreign possessions of

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