THE LEEDS TIMES,
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1836.

LORD LYNDHURST'S FINALE.

    In our parliamentary report will be found a report of the panegyric on the labours of the Lords with which Lord Lyndhurst has closed his performances for the session.  Serious comment would be wasted on so amazing a specimen of brazen facedness; but it will afford a bonne boache to such of our readers as are lovers of comedy.  Sheridan could not have drawn it better.

OF WHAT USE ARE THEY?

    Hume, in the closing speech of the session, has struck a bold blow for the right against the aristocracy of the Peerage; and that blow must and will be followed up until their injustice and absurd ignorance be memories merely—things, on the existence of which, men will look back with wonder, as evidences of the foolishness and barbarism of those who permitted them.  But when the hereditary peerage is ended there must not be another, in the shape of an elective assembly, exalted in its room.   Of what use were such an institution?  Let usefulness be the test by which to try it.  If there be one good reason—one sound argument, to urge in its favour, let us have it.  There is not one—no not the shadow of a shade.  If the thing exist at all, it must exist without a reason and without a use; but it will exist likewise for the working of mischief and the promotion of evil.  The only argument used in support of Houses-of Peers and Senates, by men pretending to common sense, is, that they operate as a corrective on the haste and errors of the first chambers.  A pretty corrective our House of Peers has proved!  Such an argument shows how hard pushed the men who use it are; and how difficult they find it to render a reason for their faith.  It may be presumed that the second chamber is not to correct these hasty errors without the consent of the first chamber, and if the consent of the first chamber be necessary the argument is not worth a pin; for, if the first chamber be so well aware of its errors, that it will allow the second chamber to correct them, it may correct them itself; and if it may and could correct them itself, where is the necessity or the use of the second chamber?  This is plain doctrine—food for strong men—and plain sense into the bargain.  Second chambers are an invention for the promotion of fraud and wrong—whether the second chambers be elective or hereditary —and the belief in their efficacy is just one of those ten thousand things which men had hitherto taken on trust to their own hurt.  Wherever a second chamber has existed, it has ever been the stronghold of prejudice, injustice and oppression; and, therefore, down with them once and for ever.  Down with them!—of what use are they?  Let each man ask himself the question in truth and honesty, and we fear not the result.  Next session, the struggle betwixt peers and people must come on, and with the people it remains to make the battle equally short and sharp.  One session the Peers have been saved by popular truckling to Whig fear, and it may be Whig dishonesty; but this is at an end for ever.  On this point there can be no mistake. Another session cannot be lost, to please any party or body of men; and the man who would advise it, is either a craven or a scoundrel—a traitor or a slave.  The truth is, that the Whigs hate and abhor the idea of Peerage Reform, as their deeds show.  They averred that certain legislative enactments were necessary to the prosperity and happiness of the kingdom—they carried these measures a certain length—but the moment they found them opposed by a miserable fraction of the people—whom ignorance had made lawgivers—and whose existence in that unjust capacity was dear to Whig hearts—they gave up, almost without a struggle, those measures which they allowed to be necessary in the welfare of millions of people.  A set of precious fellows after all!—they know a man to be starving—allow that he needs his dinner—engage to get it for him—and carry it part of the way; but when an impudent fellow threatens to stop them, they turn back and leave the man to starve.  They are quite able to knock down the obstructive rogue; but he is their own second cousin; and though the man be starving, they will neither kick the rascal out of the way themselves, nor allow others to do so.  They just reason thus: shall we or shall we not grant what we know to be justice—this justice being opposed by a monstrous injustice, in the profits of which we share?  And so they do not grant the required justice. Very well—all things have their uses, and so has this conduct. It affords a lesson which needs to be learned by every man, woman, and child, in the three kingdoms.  Trust not to the Whigs; but to yourselves.  In a few months the battle will be joined and the question will be the people or the aristocracy? The question is answered.  What is the use of them?—down with them!

    Hume's speech is admirable.  Pointed, bold, and straightforward; it shows that plain truth told in a bold manner, never yet wanted its effect.  The spirit of the speech is the spirit that conquered for the Puritans—the spirit which carried the Reform Bill.  Such a spirit must be not a little unpleasant to the descendants of those men, those Peers, whom old Oliver and his friends declared an incumbrance.

    One small tribute to the genius of humbug, Mr. Home pays, when he speaks of "the high-minded Peers of England," and asks, "For what were Peers created?  For the public good."  Mr. Hume knows very well that Peers were created for no such thing.  They created themselves for their own especial benefit, and for these past three centuries they have hanged and headed all who said them nay.  "High minded" too!  Why the thing is morally impossible.  The great body of the members of an aristocracy cannot be high-minded men; their standing as an aristocracy, a class of men separated from society by conventional rules, forbids it.  There are high-minded men among them, but they are the exception and not the rule. Consider the education of these men, accustomed as they are to flattery and insincerity from the cradle, and then you may make a present of their high-mindedness, without much enriching the receiver.  With these exceptions the speech is a capital speech.  This is the sermon and for the application there is, as the Scotch say, "a braw time coming."

    The Peers are ignorant—the Peers are oppressive—the Peers have cheated us—the Peers have insulted us—the Peers have mocked us.  Well, what then?  What shall we do?  Do!  Let the grey-headed man and the schoolboy—the wife and the husband—the rich and the poor—if they value liberty and law—if they wish peace and plenty—learn and abide by one short sentence:—Of what use are they?—down with them!

THE PAST SESSION.

    Not more unproductive and intangible was the "unsubstantial pageant" of Prospero's mimic banquet than the greater portion of the legislative deliberations of the past session of Parliament. Indeed, in looking back upon the events which have filled up the history of the political year, we well might fancy them to have been the illusions of enchantment, or the shadows of a vision; so little have they left behind to tell of the busy scenes of parliamentary conflict which have for many months engrossed the attention of the nation.  The King's speech presented a long array of measures of public benefit, which, like the magic forms of Banquo's glass, not real themselves, but affording confident anticipations of realities to come, raised the hopes of the people to the expectation of a session made memorable by glorious strides of reform.  One by one, were these visions recalled to play their momentary parts upon the stage, in the most Proteus-like and fantastic changes of form, and then each passed away without leaving a relic or trace behind, save in the minds of the spectators and on the page of history.

    Some few improvements in our laws have, it is true, been effected.  Of these the most valuable by far is the relief of the Dissenter's grievances.  By the measures which have effected this important object, the very large and influential class of our countrymen who differ from the doctrines of the Established Church has been relieved from an oppressive stigma, and has acquired a complete Registry of Births and Marriages, and obtained a legal sanction to a mode of celebrating Marriage, which require no violation of the more imperative commands of conscience.  Thus has a great step towards religious freedom been made.

    Next to the partial removal of the Dissenters Grievances in the beneficial character of its tendencies, is the improvement which has been effected in the Criminal Law.  The act for allowing prisoners the benefit of counsel on their trials, although much mutilated by the collective wisdom of the hereditary chamber, is yet a decided improvement in the administration of justice.  The extension of the period which elapses between the conviction and the execution of individuals arraigned for murder, is also an advance towards a more lenient and efficient system of punishment.

    The reduction in the Stamp Duties on Newspapers is a measure of more questionable complexion.  When regarded as a reduction in the price of political knowledge, it certainly must be considered as a benefit; but when it is remembered that that reduction is not adequate to the universal requirements of the nation, that it will not avail to bring down the price of political information to the means of the largest class of the community, and that it is accompanied by restrictions and enactments of the most inquisitorial and tyrannical character against the organ through which the operative has been made acquainted with passing events, it must be looked upon as a measure degrading to the government which supported it, and to the legislature by which it was passed.

    Of the measure passed for the Commutation of Tithes, it is difficult to appreciate the real value.  So much of subtle evil is mingled with its seeming good, so dangerous an undercurrent of pernicious influence flows under its sluggish superficial stream of benefit, that it is not easy to say which will preponderate.  Some inconveniences will doubtless be remedied, and much heart-burning be appeased, but, on the other hand, the exorbitant and baneful power of the landed aristocracy is connected by new bonds of common interest with an educated and influential class of men, and those imposts which press most heavily on the people are confirmed by the secured support of new adherents.

    The pretence of Church Reform which has been got up between the Bishops and the Ministry, cannot be accounted as an addition to the very trifling list of good measures passed during the sitting of parliament.  As a measure of amelioration it is nothing; whilst, on the other hand, it adds two members to the bench of Bishops, and of course augments by two votes the anti-popular majority in the House of Lords.

    These are the chief results of the battling of the session.  Some few alterations in matters of detail have also been effected—some new regulations of small comparative import have been made—but the only acts of importance to the public weal are the few, and, in part at least, very unsatisfactory measures which have been enumerated.

    In looking over the list, one not remarkable feature must at once strike the observer.  After all the fine promises of the King's speech, after all the blustering tirades of Ministerial journals, after all the flowery orations of Whig members of Parliament, not one measure of Constitutional Reform has been carried.

    Little as has been accomplished, it certainly has not been for the want of continued attempts.  Besides numbers of Bills of inferior importance—the Irish Municipal Reform Bill—the Irish Tithe Bill—the Municipal Act Amendment Bill—the Registration of Voters' Bill—and the Jewish Civil Disabilities Removal Bill—have all made considerable legislative progress, but all been eventually lost.  In these cases, one history may suffice for all.  The measures were carried in the Commons, and sent up to the Lords, there to be either rejected, or so mutilated as to ensure their rejection on being returned to the Lower House of Parliament.

    This leads us from the consideration of the Acts passed or introduced during the session, to the far more important consideration of the collisions of the session.  Little has been done in the passing of Laws, but in the testing of the powers of the various bodies concerned in legislation, and in proving their true worth, much, very much, has been effected.

    The collisions between the two branches of the legislature have been productive of one most important result.  They have proved, beyond the possibility of controversy, that "our glorious constitution" provides no efficient remedy for the anti-popular perversity of the Peers.  They have shewn that the Lords have only to stand out against all measures of reform, and that, however urgent they may be, there is no chance of obtaining them by strictly constitutional means.  The Lords and the Commons have been fairly at issue—the stoppage of the supplies, so often made the great panacea for lordly obstinacy, has never once been mentioned among the "elect of the people"—and the victory has rested with the Lords.

    From this two truths are manifest—that further reform in our constitution is indispensible to popular welfare—and that it cannot be hoped for from the uninfluenced decisions of the Parliament.  From hence, also, two questions arise—What is the reform required?—How is the needful reform to be obtained?

    The events of the session shew that the Lords are decidedly opposed to the people.  The rejection of all measures calculated to augment the power, or to advance the welfare of the people, places this beyond question.  But the events of the session also demonstrate that the house of Commons is very lukewarm in asserting popular rights, and that, so far from really representing the feelings and opinions of the people, that house is strongly influenced by aristocratic sentiments and predilections.

    This therefore is the end at which we ought to begin our labours.  The House of Commons must be made, not theoretically, but truly, the House of the People of Great Britain and Ireland, and then we shall secure one branch of the legislature to watch over the well-being, and struggle for the rights, of the people.  Then we shall have no compromises with the Lords, no shrinking from a struggle with the aristocracy; but the powers now but nominally vested in the Commons will then be called into active operation, whenever the public good shall demand it.  But this is not to be effected by any half-and-half reform.  Universal Suffrage must be its basis.  Every man who has a home within the realm must have a vote in the election of its legislature.  To this must be superadded—Secret Voting, to protect the poor against the oppression of the rich—Short Parliaments, as a constant check on the representative—Equal Representation, that every man's vote may have an equal value—And the removal of all Property Qualifications, that merit, not wealth, may be the road to power.

    This would we do, but not to leave the other undone.  The House of Lords must be reformed as well as the House of Commons.  It must be purged of its aristocratic tendencies, and rendered, by the introduction of the elective principle, a popular assembly.  This, however, will be the second step—Reform of the Commons is the first.

    But the second question is—How is this Reform to be accomplished?  It has already been stated that it never can be looked for from the voluntary acts of the legislature—How then is it to be obtained?

    The question may be answered by another—How was the first step towards a Reform of the House of Commons effected? Was that the voluntary act of the legislature?  Did a House of Peers possessing the power of nominating a majority in the Commons, of their own free-will surrender a large share of that power to the mercantile interest?  Did the nominees of the proprietors of rotten boroughs, by their own willing vote, destroy the sources of their legislative power?  No—Not by the legislature were the corrupt boroughs overthrown—It was the work of the People; whose mandates then were uttered a tone that a corrupt Parliament dared not treat with contempt.

    Nor was that the only occasion on which the masses have struggled against and vanquished the Parliament by the resistless power of peaceful agitation.  Then they had on their side the ministry and the commercial interest; but in the Last session they have struggled against the united power of Administration, Lords, Commons, and Merchants, and come of victorious.  The attempt to modify the already sufficiently imperative restrictions of the Factory Act afforded an occasion for a most impressive demonstration of popular power in the victory it afforded to the many over the influence and legislative power of the few.

    The engine which on these occasions has been worked for such beneficial ends all with such triumphant results, must once more be put into operation.  The House of Lords is our open enemy.  The House of Commons is a fickle and wavering friend.  From ourselves therefore must the mandate of Reform emanate, and by ourselves must the execution of that mandate be enforced.

    Something has already been done.  Some few standards read which the people may rally have been erected.  Numerous societies for the acquirement of Universal Suffrage have been established.  The work of organization has been begun; but it must not be suffered to remain unfinished.  The brief recess ere Parliament will again meet affords ample opportunity for preparing for a grand national movement.  From this alone can further advances in reform be hoped.  Let this, therefore, be made, and made with energy and resolution.  Its first efforts must be directed to complete the reform of the House of Commons. We shall then have an instrument well able to control or to reform the House-of Lords, or even (if the public weal shall demand it) to sweep from the British constitution every vestige of lordly legislation.

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THE LEEDS TIMES,
SATURDAY. DECEMBER 3, 1836.

THE WORTLEYS GATHERING CRUMBS.

    IT is said there is a certain extent in extortion and greediness which only a priest can compass, and be this true or false we are quite sure that there is a certain depth of meanness to which only our blessed Aristocracy can sink, and which the a worst and most despicable of the untitled in vain attempt to match.  What character can be more despicable than that of the man who after abusing another in his absence, goes and begs a favour of him?  What course of conduct can be meaner than that of a man who abuses a body of men to the best of his small ability, and then licks the dust from their shoes like a fawning spaniel to entice from their unwilling hands a few crumbs?  It is stated in a Sunday paper which is generally correct in its statements, that the lady of a certain ultra Tory Lord who has gone about the country abusing the Whigs and the "Houseless" Radicals to the best of his small ability, and who in addition has brought his sons like "four and twenty blackbirds all it a pie," to sing each their small song of Tory malignity—is to be appointed a lady of the bedchamber to the Queen, thus showing that though the Tories abuse men, they are not above asking favours, and that if they cannot get a great slice they are willing to take a small one till times mend.  And who do our readers think this Lady of the Bedchamber is, whom the Whigs have thus favoured?  Lady Wharncliffe!!  The Aristocracies understand one another.  The Whigs favour the man we abused them, and of course if he should ever get in he wi1l favour them.  Caw me, caw thee is the order of the game which, we hope the People will stop in the middle.  The Whigs in bestowing this appointment are either traitors or slaves—traitors for promoting the people's enemies; or slaves for continuing responsible for appointments made by the influence of Court butterflies and parasites.

"GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD."

    OUR parsons are so busy preaching politics that they have no time to spare for preaching the Gospel—that Gospel which said that the cry of those who toiled and were not rewarded for their toil had gone up before the Lord of Sabaoth.  As the parsons will not preach the Gospel, we must; and we have this day taken for our text a supplication which is daily made, and is daily answered.  Men toil, and sweat, and pray—they ask Divinity to give his creatures bread, and he has spread the plains of Poland and of Asia Minor, to grow that bread in plenty for all the living; but that which men seek, that which God hath given, is kept back from the poor, and the weak, and the hungry, by men who have made themselves great by the labour of the poor; and who say, that of the bread which he eats, the man who toils must contribute 100 per cent. to fill the purses of those who give him nothing in return.  God gives, and man mars that giving, yet are our pulpits silent—yet Ebenezer Elliott's Corn Law Hymns remain unsung.  So be it.  But there are some able and willing to tell the poor how the Aristocracy rob them by Corn Laws.  How wages profits, employment and bread itself, are rendered scarce and small by a law which shuts up this land within a wall of brass, and hinders us from buying what?  Food!  We ask but to labour and to buy food; and we dare not.  This is our freedom.

    Farmers are now finding out the trick of the Corn Laws which have ruined them as well as us.  When corn was raised by Corn Laws to twice its natural value—when the artizan was compelled to pay twice as much for his bread, or to go with only half the quantity, there is no doubt that those farmers who had leases made money; but, as Corn Laws speedily ruined other trades and professions men all flocked into farming, thus raising a competition for farms, and insuring through the force of that competition, that the landlord got all the profit.  Let farmers look back twenty years, and say, was not this the case?  Did there not come a spell of prosperity to the farmer at the expense of ruin to all others? and did not the landlord pocket all the profits in the shape of higher rents at the end of each lease?  He did, and thus gradually by a competition for farms, were higher rents given, were farmers' profits annihilated, and distress began.  We appeal to the recollection of every farmer, if this was not the case.  When farming grew a bad business, men turned from it to others; but it was found that the Corn Laws, by reducing foreign trade to a third part what it might have been, had destroyed all other trades, and the result of the whole was distress among farmers, and ploughmen, and artizens, and manufacturers, and nobody gaining but the Landlord.  All were ruined but him by the Corn Laws.  He made the farmers his dupes, but now their eyes are opening.  They see how prices were raised, not for their benefit, but his—they see that, whenever foreign Corn is excluded, and grain at a monopoly price, that the trade of farming grows a lottery, in which all the gain must, in the long run, be on the side of the owner of the soil leaving the farmer ruined, the manufacturer beggared, and the artizan starving.

    But it is said that the landlords should have a monopoly because land is heavily taxed.  We wish it were so for no commodity can be heavily taxed without injury to the community except land, but such is not the case.  In Belgium, Holland, and Germany, land pays one half of the public burden—in England it pays out a tenth.  Land is here almost untaxed.  We tax our labourers and then allow the owners of had to do the same.

    Oh, but our home market!  This is but a shuffle of the cards.  Suppose a German offers to give me a quarter of Corn, for half the price of English Corn, the English farmer says, if you do not give me twice as much as that fellow I cannot buy so many goods of you.  Now what is this but saying give me 10s. and I will spend it at your shop.  The thief would steal your purse and do the same.  If the payment for the Wheat were made in yards of cloth, what would be the result?  Why this, that the farmer would have to say take my corn for twenty yards of cloth when you can get his for ten.  There is no mystery here.  But it is said, the farmer can’t go on unless he gets the high price.  Now I want to know why I, an eater of bread should be robbed of half my living, not to keep the farmer, but to enable him to pay a little more rent to the rural oligarch who a oppresses him and me?  And remember, if I am compelled to give a farmer 10s. for the bread I should have had at 5s., that I must spend 5s. less on Leeds or Huddersfield woollens, or something else.  So it is not taking from me a bread eater, to give to a landlord who is lighter taxed than I; but it is taking from the maker of Leeds woollens to give to the landlord, and robbing me of half my bread, or half my money into the bargain.  Then comes another objection that the Germans will not take our goods for corn, they ask gold.  Now by the beard of Mahomet what is the difference?  This country does not produce gold, so, if the Germans must have it, we shall just send out woollens to Peru for gold, instead of sending them direct to Germany.  Every objection urged in favour of these horrid laws serves to convince us the more and more that no good argument can be brought to defend them, and it would be strange if there could; if it were possible to conceive that a man in Leeds could have a loaf 100 per cent. smaller than a man in Hamburgh.

    Wages, profits, both manufacturing and farming, and employment, are destroyed by these laws, for the benefit of the lazy and useless owners of the soil; and if they were removed, England would be merry England once again.  Wages could not fall, because employment would be brisker, which would raise them, while necessities would be one half cheaper.  Profits and wages both would rise, and England would manufacture for the world, because the Germans would find it more profitable to grow corn for us to eat than to manufacture goods.  And why are these laws not repealed—why have we not these blessings?  Because the Whig and Tory Aristocracies are joined to oppose us.  A society has been formed in London to agitate his question, and it shall not be our fault if here at least the cause of truth be not well served.  The whole question is, whether men are to be starved, or not.  Let the people be up and doing—let their daily and nightly prayer be “Give us this day our daily bread”—and if the people were only fairly aroused—if men had once said, "we will never see famine in our children’s looks while we can struggle for cheap bread," then we shall see the improvement of the text.  Mr Maberley was coerced for preaching against the New Poor Law Bill—will nobody make themselves immortal by preaching the first sermon against the Corn Laws?

SPAIN; HER QUEENS, ARISTOCRACIES,
AND PEOPLE.

    SPAIN is again sacrificed to her privileged orders.  The whole is a very pretty plan for enslaving the People.  The Queen’s Generals have orders not to fight Don Carlos, and Don Carlos takes care not to fight the Queen's troops, and why?  Just when the People have been ruined, and plundered, and the spirit of independence broken, they may fall an easy prey to those who have laid the plan and who are to raise a despotism on the success of it, Carlos, the Queen, and Louis Philippe!  This is the state of things in Spain at this moment, and a despotism will soon be established in that country unless the people rise as they ought to do, and send their Queen and her pimps and minions across the Pyranees, and unite to fight not for Queens and Aristocracies, but for the liberties of Spain.  If this were done and a half dozen men raised from the ranks, as were Ney and Murat to replace the butterfly generals of the court, success were as certain as defeat and despotism are under the present system.  We hope and fear.

GENTEEL MURDER AND VULGAR MURDER.

    The Aristocracy of Britain would have been the pink of morality, if the moral law could have been read like the Hebrew, backwards, or if in each of the ten commandments there had been an exception in favour of the people called Tories.  As it is, their morality is of a flexible sort, easily twisted, which must be very pleasant, for wrong under it can scarcely be committed.  The most wonderful thing connected with the Aristocracies, is the different light in which they see a crime by one of the "order,” and by one of the mob.  Mrs Hibner whipt her two apprentices to death and hid them in a coal-hole, and she was hissed into eternity by a moral mob, and her case was pointed to by aristocratic moralists, as a sad instance of human depravity.  Now it happened on a time that a certain Prince Polignac planed an attempt to inflict misery on millions and millions of human beings, and in this attempt he failed, but not till thousands had fallen by wounds, and shots, and swords.  Now what was his punishment—what was the reward of this crime and this blood-thirstiness?  Our Aristocracy bewailed his hard fate when he was sent to prison, and after a fine speech by Master Thomas Duncombe, out he comes, to be feasted and admired by the British Aristocracy, for trying to destroy the happiness of his country, and for plunging thousands of human beings into eternity.  This is the justice of the Aristocracy.  We abhor the punishment of death—it is bloody, and unchristian, and unnecessary, and instead of hanging the wretch Hibner, we would have sent her to hard fare and hard labour, and her own thoughts in a cell, a living, speaking example to all murderers, and when Polignac, who sinned a thousand times more deeply, and in the face of a clearer light, made himself an enemy to his kind, we would have done the same by him, and made his life a spectacle to the ruffian inhumanity of tyranny to the end of time.  But what is the conduct of our Aristocracy?  They put him in their high places—they bewail his misfortunes—they bow before him!  No doubt they are grateful to him for his kindness in extinguishing so many of the base Democracy—the "houseless" Radicals of Paris.  His was genteel Murder!

HYPOCRISY IN BRADFORD AND HYPOCRACY
IN VIRGINIA.

    In Virginia there are many clergymen and laymen pretending to be Christians in word and deed, followers of Him who spoke as never man did, and these men are actually at the same moment the holders of bond slaves—of human beings whom the law of the land makes it a crime to teach.  When we read of such things we hold up our hands and thank our stars that we at least are free from a blot like this,—that though we have men who tell us that out of their Church there is no salvation, and men who tell us, the Dissenters, that at the Devil is our patron saint—that we have nothing even on Atkinson’s Church Building Committee to compare for disgraceful hypocrisy to these slave-holding, would-be Christians in America.  But let us not be too proud or too sure.  If we have nothing so bad as that, we have something very little better.  For instance the Tory friends of Carlow Hardy, in Bradford are, if we believe them, very religious—they would not do a bad act for the whole world—and these very men came with an impudence and an hypocrisy which has not and never had a parallel, before the Revising Barristers at Bradford, to establish by quirks and quibbles, votes which were shown to be got up for the occasion!  The law has fraud and these religious men tried to take advantage of them, knowing, that if they succeeded in placing one false vote on the list, they had established a falsehood by testimony, and had defrauded every real elector of a part of his right.  Are not these men fit companions for the slaveholders of Virginia?  Is not their conduct the same?  Do not both pretend to care for truth, and ye outrage it when it suits them?

    The Bradford Tories are monks and saints only when there is no temptation to the contrary.  When there are they imitate the conduct of their brothers in Virginia.  In Virginia they illustrate the text of doing as they would be done by, by lashing their "Niggers.”  In Bradford they do the same thing, by attempting to create f????? [Ed.—forged?] votes.  Truly Hardy’s friends are worthy of Beckett’s friends, and altogether they form a pretty set.

TORYISM IN AMERICA—THE LIBERTY OF THE
LASH.

    When the false friends and the avowed enemies of the rights of the many are loud in their denunciation of popular government, where do they go for facts to support their assertions?  Ask Sir Cicero Strickland.  Where did he go when at the Mayor's dinner, he made his unforgettable attack on the doctrine of self-government—that government in which there is but one power, interest, and aim—the power of the People, the interest of the People and the happiness of the People?  With a show of fairness and plausibility, he went to America—to the land which boasts of its self government and equal laws—to the land in which all power is lodged in the hands of the People—to the land which in its declaration of independance asserted before God and man, that every man is born free.  We know Strickland's one gross dishonesty in this; for no man knew better than this quondam Radical Cicero that slavery existed in America not through, but in spite of Democracy—that the slaveholders were not so because they are Democrats, but because they were not; but it is to be borne that a nation which dares to usurp the name of free, shall be allowed to do so without a protest on our part while personal slavery in its most horrid and disgusting form exists within its borders; and while the existence of that slavery in a nation calling itself free is quoted by the enemies of man in England, to justify the withholding of the rights of the masses here?  We ask any man of common sense or honesty, if this ought to be borne?  The evil deeds of these men are used as an engine against the People every where, and the People therefore should come forward and show that they abhor their doings and abominate their sneaking hypocrisy.  Britain must lift up her voice and tell the apostate Americans that while the plague spot of slavery exists in their land they shall be reckoned the enemies of the freedom they have belied and blasphemed so fouly.  Is there a Radical in England who has not had the example of America, in relation to slavery, flung in his teeth, and urged as a reason against Democracy at home?  And while such is the case, not only is it bare humanity and religion in the People of this country to come forward and protest against this system of blood, and murder, and horror, but it is their own interest to do so, that the world may learn that we who truly love universal freedom abhor this unholy thing.  What is slavery in America and how is it justified?  Slavery in America is the existence of millions of degraded, miserable human beasts of burden, who exist for nothing but toil, not for themselves but for others, and this monstrous and horrible system is justified, because it is said the slaves are too ignorant for freedom, and because they are black!  Men of England, have we not something like this at home?  Why are four-fifths of the People of England excluded from a share of the government?  It is not that they may toil, even like the black, for the benefit of their masters of the Aristocracy?  And what is the justification for this?  Hear it heaven and earth, for it is the slave-holder's reason—the People are ignorant!  Nay if the Negro is lashed because God made him black, is the working man here not trampled on because he is one of the "unwashed"?  It would seem then that in America it is not an affinity to the Democracy of Britain which makes the Aristocracy of the Whip; but an affinity to Cicero Strickland, and the rest of our masters.  This is another reason why the People of this land should raise their voices against Slavery and all that pertains there to.  Toryism there is the Liberty of the Lash.  Toryism here is restricted suffrage and no ballot box.  It is both there and here the same scheme of murder and robbery—the same scheme for keeping a few at the expense of the many, and as the slaveholders—the Tories—of all lands are joined to uphold each other, shall the slaves of all lands not join to oppose them?  Our weapons are opinions—our warfare is a moral warfare, and if not for religion and humanity at least for our own interests, let us help our black brother in Virginia.  We are oppressed and insulted on the same unholy principles, and shall we not make common cause?  Should not we rise up and denounce with scorn and loathing, the cold-hearted murderers and hypocrites, who, with the name of liberty on their lips, worship the God of tyranny in their hearts, and carry the whip in their hands—who call themselves a free nation, and have millions of creatures degraded by murderous tyranny into brutish slaves in their land—who call themselves a christian nation, and yet in their acts deny the truth of that noblest and holiest precept—“That God hath made of one blood, all nations of men”—who call themselves a humane nation; and yet support a system of blood and crime never equalled, save by these dearly beloved friends, our own Tories, the planters of the West Indies.  This is what the Radicals of England are called on to protest against, to deny, if not for the slave’s sake, for their own, that this nation is, or can be a free nation.  They tell us of their proud and starry banner which has never yet turned back in the battle’s strife.  There is blood on its folds, which all the waters that roll between them and us can never wash away—the blood of the slave—of the being whom God made a man, and whom they degraded into a beast, and then murdered with the lash.  This a free nation! the soul grows sick at such hypocrisy.  And this, too, is the land from which those struggling for freedom expected so much of counsel, and example, and encouragement.  That it should come to this—that, on the soil which holds the bones of the Puritan pilgrim fathers, one human being should hold another in abject bondage!  A slave!  And what is a slave?  A chatel—a thing to be trampled on and beaten—a human dog—a being existing only to suffer—to have neither home, nor house, nor hope, nor happiness, nor God, nor religion but to toil for the increase of another’s gains.  This is a slave—a being whose soul and body are the property of another!  Let the Liberals—not the holiday, but the real Liberals— of this land tell these freemen, as they vaunt themselves to be, though masters of slaves as they are, that they are the veriest tyrants—that every gale which blows from their land comes to our ears laden with the groans and sighs of suffering humanity, and that every wave which rolls from their shore to ours brings in its bosom the tears of our fellow men who are by them held in bondage.  Tell these men that the curse of God and men follow their cruelties.

    What business have we to interfere with America?  It is our business.  In helping the slave there, we are helping the slave here; in overthrowing Toryism in Virginia, we are helping to overthrow it in Yorkshire, and telling the tyrants too plainly to be misunderstood, that all who suffer are banding together to resist.  This is our business with America, as politicians.  And it is our business likewise to say to the free Northern States in which some nobility of spirit seems to be awaking, that if the Southern slaveholders all have their pounds of flesh—if they must have the lash in their hands—if they wish the groans of their wronged and murdered victims to haunt the dying bed—if they are, in short, devils in very truth—then let the men of New England separate themselves from them and leave them to their fate.

    It were indeed labour lost, to talk of justice, truth, or mercy, to a Tory or a slaveholder, a dealer in human flesh.  What should such men know of these things?  But we can tell them of their present interests.  The slave population of the slave states of America is increasing in a far bigger ratio than the free, or white.  This is proved by the population returns; and the reason is that the bodily organization of the black is suited to the climate, and that of the white is not.  Now, can any man fail to see that in these circumstances the blacks must go a increasing, till they so far outnumber their opponents, that if the slaveholders be not wise in time, the blacks will bundle them all out of the country.  With this staring them in the face, the whites or rather yellows of the Southern States must be mad not to curry favour in time with their slaves, by giving them freedom, when a law of nature has said that the black must soon be able to take that freedom which they now implore as a boon.  That a time will come when the slave will be strongest is as sure as the sun will rise to-morrow.  This is one argument for emancipation, addressed to the interests of the aristocracy of the lash.  Another is that America will soon be surrounded on every side by coloured free nations.  Mexico on one side, with an army half black—the Aborigines on the other—the republic of San Domingo and the free negro states of the British West Indies.—Now, how long will free black men stand by and see their fellows lashed in the Carolinas?  Not long; and when the superior capabilities of the negro organization for that climate are taken into account, the contest cannot be considered doubtful, even though it will be a war of races—a war of extermination.  How would the slaveholders like a black republic in Virginia?  This is another argument for emancipation.  A third argument is that America at this moment is, in her capacity of a nation, the weakest for defensive war of any on the face of the earth, by reason of slavery.  If ever she engages in another war, she is ruined.  Let an energetic and clever man land with a small force in the Carolinas—proclaim freedom to the slave—and in a week he would drive the whites before him like chaff.  This is the true statement of the question.  If the slaves are not emancipated—the whites, not the blacks, will be the sufferers.

    The course for the masses of Britain is to stand up boldly and fearlessly for the right.  Let the People of this country say, that they will as soon go sup with the felons in the goals as with a slaveholding American; thus showing that with them crime is crime, whatever be the fine name under which it is bid.  If a religions body calls on another of like principles in the United States to imitate the noble example of the Quakers and the Cammeronians and put away this sin from amongst them, because it has abhorrent to God as it is degrading to man—if this be done, it is something, nay a great deal; but in its political bearing the question ought not to be lost sight of.  Our black brethren are oppressed and enslaved, and if we help them we help ourselves.  Did not our Tory Aristocracy defend the liberty of the lash in the West Indies? did they not make a stalking horse of religion, as they do yet while defending the lashing of women?  Did not our Whig Aristocracy buy off the murders with our money?  If the lashing Aristocracies did not assist the Aristocracy at Whig and Tory, in some way or other, is it probable that Whig and Tory would do this?  Depend upon it, that here and every where, the oppressors are knit together and only in banding to oppose them is there hope for the oppressed.  We are at one with the masses of Belgium, let us likewise be at one with the blacks of America.  It a a step to our own freedom.  The White slave and the Black slave are oppressed in the same way, and for the same reason—to support their masters in idleness.  Our pockets are picked because we are "houseless" and "unwashed;” theirs because they are "flatnosed" and "blackskinned." The slaveholder defends slavery on the ground that he could not raise cotton without; the mill-owner defends Factory slavery for the same reason.  The Blacks then suffer as we do, and it is the duty of the many of England to tell these American tyrants that the good pity them and abhor them.

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THE LEEDS TIMES,
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1836.

A NEW YEAR SALUTATION.

    IT is good for all who are engaged in advocating a good cause to stop now and then short, to examine what has been due, and consider what is yet to do; and this is the more especially necessary, as amid the turmoil and crash of the battle we are too ready to forget the end in the means, and to fight for victory instead of truth.  Well it is then to ask, for what do we struggle?  And the answer is surely enough, if a man have a heart bigger than a nut shell in his body, to send the blood dancing lightly through every vein.  For what do we fight?  Not for the interests of this party or of that—not for the defeat of this section and the aggrandizement of another—not for the exaltation of a conqueror or the triumph of a dictator—if we fought for these the task might indeed grow irksome and the labour heavy; but we fight in earnestness and truth for something immeasurably nobler, and greater, and better—for Truth—for mental, and moral, and physical, and political truth—for that truth which consists in the happiness of the whole human race.  This is our end and aim, and in following this object we appeal to our readers, modestly, but confidently, if we have ever turned to the right or to the left at the call of expediency, or liking; or disliking?  Never; our course has been, as it ever will be, guided by principle, and that sure guide we have followed honestly and boldly, caring neither for the favour or the anger of any man, be he peer or pauper or of any party be it Whig or Tory, but telling the bold plain, honest truth of all, in plain language free from mystery.

    To speak boldly and honestly—to cringe to no party—but to struggle for the community, has been our plan, and for this honesty, and boldness, and plain speaking we have been repaid by those whose battles we fight with greater and more decided success than ever before was bestowed on a public journal.  In four months the Leeds Times has risen from about 1,000 a week to nearly 3,000 a week, an increase yearly of two hundred per cent., while, in spite of the ire and venom of Whigs and Tories at our truth speaking, our advertisements have increased twenty per cent. For this we thank our political and commercial friends, and we promise that in time to come, as in times past, we shall be found, as we have ever been, the advocates of the happiness of the whole community—the untiring enemies of Aristocratic bad government.

    The Radical party now stand on high ground.  The rights of the masses are to gain, their wrongs to redress, and this is the work of the Radical Reformers—of the People themselves, and those who befriend them, and this work must be pursued whether ministries or parties rise or fall.  Here we shall not be found wanting.  We shall do as we have done already.  Universal Suffrage, the Ballot, Annual Parliaments and No Property Qualification, as the means of good government, and no Corn Laws, no State Church—no Prison house Poor Law, and no corrupt Laws as the effect of that good government, this is what must be struggled for and gained, if happiness and comfort is to revisit this land.  These things the People only can gain, and humbly but earnestly we shall help.

    With thanks to our friends—warm and fervent thanks—and defiance to our foes, be they Tories, Whigs, or Trimmers, we wish honest men and bonnie lasses, wherever found, a merry new year and many of them. 

WHIG SLANDERS AND SLANDERERS—O'CONNELL'S
ATTACK ON DANIEL WHITTLE HARVEY.

    About the beginning of the present year, the Ministerial Whigs had—by the expenditure of a great quantity of very excellent promises, and by a cunning use of the well grounded fear with which every man of common honesty regards the blood-thirsty Tory crew—bound the Radical party in Parliament to the chariot wheels of Whiggery; and whenever a man tried to free himself from the thraldom, and attempted to fight the battle of the People instead of the battle of the Whig ministry, the underlings of the Whigs were instructed to hoot him down, and their hired friends of the public press were told a proclaim him through the length and breadth of the land as a traitor to the People, and a friend of their worst and most deadly enemies.  It therefore required some moral courage to free oneself from this mesh of party interests and intrigues, and to regain the old ground of the Radicals—independence of party interests, and designs; and immoralities, and unceasing and unswerving labour in the cause of the many.  The first man who dared to set the Whigs at defiance—who dared to do his duty to the People as principle bade, was the member for Southwark, Daniel Whittle Harvey, and as the Whigs saw that his example would be follow in spite of their arts and double faced seemings, they assailed him with every slander which the most malignant rancour could dictate—the most thorough villainy conceive.  He was held up as a trading politician and a traitor—as a man of no principle and a [d??guing] knave.  But the man who had the nerve and the honesty to do right with all this in prospect was not the man who could easily be put down.  Events showed that the people were with him and his constituents backed him as he deserved in his bold and independent course.  The Whigs who had raised a [????] of congratulation over his supposed fall were fear-stricken when they found him in their path stronger than ever in his honesty and the rectitude of his conduct; and when the success of this bold stand in favour of truth and principle was seen, others followed his example, till at length the friends of the masses were as they ever ought to be—free to fight the good fight, untrammeled by party leagues; and unhindered by party interests.  That the People's friends in Parliament are now once more a free and independent body, we own to Daniel Whittle Harvey, and for this the Whigs hate him as they hate all that is truly honest.  We neither ask nor care why, but O'Connell is now a Whig, and with Whig principles, or rather no principles, he seems to have taken up Whig methods of party warfare—malignities and lies.  At a meeting of the National Association he stigmatized Harvey as a man without principle, and actually had the inconceivable meanness to give currency to the Whig falsehood that Harvey had opposed the Ministry because they refused him a place!  Harvey has replied in one of the most admirable letters ever written.  He shows his losses and sacrifices for the People to have cost him £100,000, besides causing his exclusion from the bar, by exciting the anger of the Close Law Corporation against him, and he proves that while O'Connell was retailing the slander about the place, that he knew that Harvey never asked a favour from the Ministry except to be appointed a Charity Commissioner in which capacity his services were to have been gratuitous.  Let honest men judge for themselves.  What can be thought of the man who had the baseness to retail what he knew be a falsehood?  Again has Harvey laid his enemies in the dust—again has honesty and truth triumphed, and O'Connell stands revealed a convicted slanderer.  As for Mr. Harvey, we doubt not that the approbation of the masses, whose honest and constant friend he has proved himself, and the approbation of those who admire honesty and principle, will repay him for the malignant and venomous slanders of disappointed Whiggery.  Both he and his enemies, and O'Connell among the number, will find that the man, who stands by principle, without caring or fearing for men and parties, has, like the woman in Scripture, "chosen the better part."

DOWN WITH THE CORN LAWS.

    Again and again we have returned to this most important subject—the question as to whether the People of England shall be starved to keep up the pride and pomp of the Aristocracy—and we shall return to it weekly until our readers be as fully awake as they ought to be to the horrid and crying injustice of these cruel laws.  It is not one class only which suffers by these laws—laws which prohibit honest trade for the benefit of knaves—but it is every class and order of men who have their bread to earn.  The drones of society—the pensioned and titled Aristocracy are by Corn Laws upheld at the expense of all others, and they, and they alone, gain by that which impoverishes a nation.

    What has lowered wages by narrowing the market for manufactures, and thus lessening employments?  Corn Laws.  What has lowered profits by encouraging a ruinous competition of capital against capital, owing to the restricted field for employing it?  Corn Laws.  What has doubled the price of every loaf of the artisan's bread, thus not only reducing has wages to half, but stealing the half of that half out of the mouths of his famished children?  Corn Laws.  What has raised up opposition manufactures to ours in lands, the People of which would have been our best customers had we been allowed to take the commodity which they could most profitably manufacture, in exchange for our woollens and calicos—namely, bread, or that of which bread is made?  Corn Laws.  What starves the poor, and robs them of half their wages into the bargain — annihilates the manufacturer's profits—excludes us from foreign markets—ruins the farmer by making his trade a lottery, and placing him at the mercy of his landlord—What in short is the cause of all the miseries which afflict us as a nation, which crush us to the dust and keep us there? There is be the same answer—the laws for the pampering of the Aristocracy by ordering the importation of that bread for which we pine.

    It is time that this system were ended—it is time that the Aristocracy were prevented from first robbing us of all but bread, and then taking half of that bread by means of Corn Laws.  What would raise wages by increasing employment to an inconceivable extent, and thus enabling the artizan to make a better and more advantageous bargain with his employer?  The repeal of the Corn Laws.  What would give us plenty—what would give us bread at half its present price, or only a little more?  The repeal of the Corn Laws.  What would increase profits by putting an end to ruinous competitions—by extending foreign trade, and by enticing foreigners who now manufacture against us, to take our goods and pay us in corn, which they can grow more profitably than ought else?  The Corn Laws.  What would save the farmer from ruin by rendering him a fuir trader and independant of his landlord, by enabling him to calculate fairly the probable profits of his trade and by enabling him to educate his family to profitable pursuits, which he cannot do now, because these restrictions on trade have ruined all employments?  Still the same recurring answer—an abolition of the Corn Laws.

    In our advertising columns will be found the prospectus and the list of a committee of a society which has been formed to agitate this most important subject.  If the artizans of the manufacturing towns be the men we take them for this society will be the parent of thousands.  For cheap bread—for better wages—for more comfort—for the helpless, and the orphan, and the starving—down with the Corn Laws.  Why are the Aristocracy able to crush the people of this country to the earth, and to hold our faces to be grindstone?  Why! because they rob us of bread even, and then oppress us by means of the wealth which is made up of the morsels torn from the mouths of starving men.  If there be honesty, and truth, and hatred of oppression and wrong, in the hearts of Englishmen, let them arise in despite of the bloody and cruel and hard-hearted Aristocracies and fling this shout to the winds that injustice may hear and tremble—down with the Corn Laws.

THE ORANGE SAVAGES OF CARLOW
—POOR LAWS FOR IRELAND.

    When it was stated last session in the House of Commons that hundreds of miserable starving human brings had been driven by force from their horses by their cruel and savage Orange Landlords, because they professed a faith which conscience told than was right, to make way for Protestant tenants, who did as Cumberland and his rebellious crew directed—when this was stated, and when it was likewise told that these miserable creatures, men, women, and children were driven forth in winter to beg or to starve, and die—that many of them did die, while others burrowed, like brute beasts, by the road side, and that they meant to assemble to ask from British charity that bread which their prosecutors denied, they were hindered from doing so by their merciless tyrants—when all this was told, it was met by what?  By a declaration from one of the parties, Bruen, in his place in the House of Commons, that it was false.  And this was taken by the British public as evidence sufficient.  The story of a the miserable and starving men was disbelieved, because an Orange landlord was credited with a commodity which he did not possess.  But the grave has unclosed over its victims.  This fellow, Bruen, has been dragged into open court in the city of Dublin, and there these things which he denied upon his honour have been proved in evidence to the satisfaction of a jury!  This has been proved and more.  It has been shown that the Irish Orange landlords treat their tenants like beasts—that they are driven to the poll like flocks of sheep that they dare not vote but as their landlords bid, under the penalty of ruin—and all this is proved against the same scoundrels who attempted to dethrone our King, and who make such an outcry against the priests for intimidation.  Such villainy the world never before saw.

    Where is the man after this who pretending to be an honest man, will dare to say a word against a full, sufficient Poor Law for Ireland?  Here is the proof of its necessity.  The People are at the mercy of such wretches as this Bruen, and a Poor Law is their only safety.  The miserable holders of the land are ruled over by those who know not humanity or religion—by those who scruple not to turn out hundreds of their fellow men to perish of want and cold, and hunger, and there is but this one cure—a cure which all the friends of Ireland, of justice, of truth, of religion, of humanity should struggle for—an efficient Poor Law to make these cruel Orange Landlords keep the victims they ruin.  This is the only plan for placing Irish misery with Bruin’s honour—nowhere.  Let the honest and the good make one right good hearty effort for an Irish Poor Law and it will be gained.  Since the abolition of slavery, there has not been a question so worthy the attention of humanity as this—a cure for the wrongs and miseries of Ireland and a bridle for her accursed oppressors.

THE CRUELTIES OF CENTRALIZATION
THE NEW POOR LAW.

    Centralization, under every form, is an instrument of despotism—it is a cunningly devised plan for schooling men into a system by which their most important affairs are placed under the management of others—thus gradually accustoming them to submit to the government of others, or, in other words, to despotism.  Once allow the local affairs of a village, a parish, or a county to be managed by a system of centralization, which places power in the hands of unknown and irresponsible men unknown to those who are to be affected by their acts—and the first great step is made towards a thorough despotism—a system of general government existing for the use and benefit of the governing few at the expense of the governed many.  For these reasons, centralization is to be abhored as men abhor slavery, and apposed as men oppose that which is vilest and worst in the plans and projects of the foes of the human race.

    This system of centralization which makes the local board of guardians puppets, and blinds, and places all power in the hands of one a two commissioners living hundreds of miles from the spot, which they are allowed to rule over, is the most shocking and disgraceful part of the New Poor Law.  It is disgraceful, because it takes the power over their own local matters out of the hands of the people—disgraceful because it places every Poor man in England under a perfect despotism, and doubly disgraceful because the regulations of these commissioners cannot be formed with reference to the actual state of things in the different localities and thus misfortune will be, and must be, and is punished as crime; thus striking a deadly blow at the foundations of public morality.  Had we a poor law, however strong administered—as all such laws ought to be—by those on the spot who know and see the exigencies of each particular case—inhumanity and immorality might be avoided; but when the local administrators of the law are but the puppets of a hidden despotic power, when they are compelled by that power to obey a certain set of regulations formed at a distant without reference to the actual state of things, what must be the result?  Why the most inconceivable cruelty and inhumanity.  If the law is administered by responsible men chosen on the spot and known—it can be suited to each particular case, and the man who GOD has visited with sickness and misfortune will not be degraded to a level with the felon or the brute, but under this despotic and cruel centralizing system the administrator of the law has no alternative.  These are the inflexible rules made by men of whom nobody knows anything—made by men quite irresponsible, and these rules say alike to the unfortunate and the criminal, that if their wants must be relieved, it shall be in a prison, and at the expense of every tie which God has made, and man has hallowed.  Now we will not say one word of the inhuman and impious cruelty of the provisions of this law as interpreted by the Commissioners—we will sink that altogether, but will appeal to the interests of the community.  This law decrees that all who apply for relief shall receive it only in the prison and that in this prison families will be separated from each other.  One man is brought by misfortune to go into this prison—another is compelled by his criminal dissipation, and both are treated exactly alike.  Now what must be the reasoning of the young who see this?  Just this, that as misfortune in poverty and crime in poverty are treated alike, they must be alike and hence crime and immorality.  If not for humanity's sake at least for the sake of morality, for the interest of society, let us have an end of this horrid system, which assails the happiness of the whole people, by assailing the morals of the community—by seeming to teach us that there is no distinction between misfortune and crime.

    Much has been said about the slender quantity of food allowed in the poor house prisons, and much needed to be said; but there is another point which strikes us more forcibly, and that is, the separation of husbands and wives, which takes place in workhouses.  The poor have many trials and many sufferings—sufferings which those who never tasted them can know nothing—and yet the poor man's home is often a happy one, for honesty and affection make it so.  The happiness of a poor man's fireside is the best safeguard of a nation’s happiness and worth—it is God’s appointed method of ennobling the poor man's heart, and making him, amid all his toils and sorrows, happier and better; and yet by this law it is ordained that when grief and misfortune fall heavy on a poor family—when they are compelled to beg that bread which the tears of dependence render bitter, before their wants can be relieved—their hunger assuaged—every tie which renders life a blessing must be burst in twain, and those whom God joined in suffering, and toiling, and enjoying, must be separated from each other in the hour when comfort and sympathy are most needed, to suffer and to weep in silence.  This is the fate of the poor—the honest poor—the unfortunate poor, and how long shall it be suffered—how long shall poverty be made a crime, and misfortune an offence? The felon who steals a purse, or who takes a life, is not more harshly used than he whose only crime is poverty; for what greater punishment can there be data that above noted?  If the poor have a crust it is dearly paid for.                      

    There is a genuine spirit of humanity and love in England yet, which will not allow this unholy system to exist.  It has many cruelties and crimes, and its cruelties and crimes are traceable to the system which places the poor of this country, and the pockets of the rate payers under the regulation and control of irresponsible commissioners.  A bold and a wide demonstration must be made against the centralizing system, not only for the cruelties of the New Poor Law, but for the sake of liberty itself, which is by this plan brought into jeopardy.  The Aristocracy must be taught that the People know them for what they are—the selfish robbers and oppressors of the masses—and show that the People can, when they will, overthrow any system however cunningly planned, which threatens as in this case of Poor Law centralization, not only to brutalise the People, but strike at the foundations of public liberty by taking away the power of the People to manage their own 1ocal affairs.

THE POLITICAL MARTYRS OF THE LAST
CENTURY.

    When truth is triumphant, it is easy to believe and admire and shout; but the time to try men's souls is when truth is persecuted, and evil-spoken of and reviled.  Yet we thank God for it, in the darkest days, when the sun seemed dimmed and the light departed, he left not the cause of righteousness without witnesses—witnesses who toiled to spread and died to maintain that which has now become man's common heritage.  Since the world began, there never lived such a race of cruel and bloodthirsty and tyrannical and low-minded and vicious men, as ruled the country towards the close of the last century.  Aristocracy had vomited forth her vilest and worst, to be the instruments of her vengeance on those who dared to kneel before the alter of truth, and mutter a prayer for truth’s triumph and for man’s happiness; and if the government of this country was in such hands, never, never, never was the cause of the people upheld by men more lofty in moral or intellectual power, save when Milton and Vane dwelt among men like beings of a better world, so just and true and good and honest, that their lives were a very unwritten gospel—a revelation of moral might in a good cause—Muir and Palmer and Gerald and the other martyrs, whose blood the Aristocracy drank, and whose blood they shall yet answer for, committed but this crime—they found their fellow men oppressed and tyrannised over and miserable, and they tried to help them.  This was their crime, and truly it was crime enough in the eyes of the men who lived by tyranny and crime—who existed but by corruption and oppression; and these good and honest men were foully murdered by the wretched minions of enraged Aristocracy, under the cover and sanction of laws which they themselves had made to entrap and to punish honesty and honour and truth as crimes.  These men died, but died in hope.  They died as good men die in a good cause, far from the land they loved so well, and their last prayers went up for the cause to which they had borne testimony.  They died, and their blood lies on the head of these men and their children—of those who are now provoking the storm which will consume them utterly.  In dying, these men conquered.  They sowed the seed which now grows and flourishes; and thanks be to God, for sending such men to stand up for truth in such an age.  If where they now are, with the spirits of just men made perfect, and can look to earth, are they not repaid?

    A meeting is shortly to be held us London, Mr. Hume in the chair, to take measures for erecting a monument so our martyrs.  These men need no monument to key them in remembrance, for while one language is spoken will they be remembered and gloried in as the noblest and the best of earthly men; and yet, we are right glad that steps have been taken to erect a monument to these men.  It will shew that we have not forgotten the constancy and the sufferings of these men—it will shew that we have not forgotten their lives and deaths—it will shew that the cause which they died for is now triumphs—and it will shew that we have not forgotten, and never will forget their blood thirsty murderers.  Look around.  Wherever the Tories are, with their hatred of the people and their love of oppression; these are the men who forty three years ago murdered Muir, Palmer and Gerald, because they were what the people of England are now; aye, and there, as they stand Wharncliffe, Beckett, and the rest, they would do the same now if they dared.  Mark them well, men of England!  There is blood on their hands— other blood than that shed at Peterloo.  The Tories murdered Muir and Palmer,—the Whigs did not help them—let the aristocracies be scorned and hated, and their victims loved, and wept, and honoured for evermore.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF TORY VILLANIES. No. III.
THE LEGACY DUTY.

    There is no use in mincing the matter—those who contrived our present system of taxation did so with the full consciousness that they were laying a plan for robbing a whole People to benefit the corrupt and greedy Aristocracy.  All the burdens of the state, and all the burdens of the Aristocracy besides, never were placed on the backs of the poor by a blunder.  There was villainy to conceive, and audacity to execute, before this system was brought into operation, and this villainy and audacity were, and are displayed, in no one of the ten thousand grossly unjust taxes and impositions more openly than in the Legacy Duty.

    In 1796 Pitt—the heaven born minister of the blaspheming Tories—introduced two bills into Parliament, one imposing a tax on the descent of personal property; the other imposing a tax on the descent of real property.  The bill for taxing the descent of personal property—the property of the industrious masses—passed into law in 1797; but the other, imposing a tax real property—the property of the Aristocracy, the Whigs and Tories, was abandoned by Pitt because the country gentlemen—the bulk of the Tory bloodsuckers— threatened him with their opposition if he persevered with it.  The property therefore of the People has been taxed in this way down to this moment, but the property of the Tories and the Aristocracy—to whom Beckett and the rest belong—has not been taxed one farthing.  Thus for a period of thirty-nine years have the industrious classes been subjected to this grievous wrong through the power and the impudence of men who have the audacity to rob their fellows openly, and to trample them down with yeomanry as at Manchester if they resist.  If a poor Artisan dies and leaves £50 behind him to his wife, his son, or his friend, it is taxed to pay pensions and sinecures, from one to ten per cent as the case may be, but were the Marquis of Westminster or Lord Grosvenor to die to-morrow, and leave their £300,000 a year, it would not be taxed on farthing. Was there ever such a piece of scoundrelism as this before heard of?

    From the year 1797 to the year 1831, the amount of personal property which had paid legacy and probate duties, was £897,000,000, and the amount in tax on that sum going by descent was £44,000,000 nearly.  Of this immense sum were the People robbed by the bloody and impudent Tory crew, for land which ought to have paid equally, paid nothing.  The rural oligarchs in this as in other matters, robbed us to pay for our own oppression.  The sabres of Manchester were paid for out of the bread of the People whom they slew.

    This horrid iniquity of this legacy duty continues to this hour, and is at a matter of wonder, though the Wortleys and the rest of the gang uplift their slender most sweet voices for the irresponsibles when they find such comfortable injustices such as this slipping out of the fingers of the Tory aristocracy?  When the Radicals speak of Universal Suffrage the Tories say with Beckett and his crew that the poorer classes will rob all others.  We defy any man to point out a single case in history in which poor men robbed the community, and we offer to prove that all aristocracies have done so and our Tory squad most of all.

    Last week we showed up one Tory villainy and here is another as shameful.  We ask again do the honest operatives and the honest portion of the middle classes mean to bear this?  Universal Suffrage would soon end it all and therefore it is that the Tory gang hate it and their hate ought to be its best recommendation.  Extend the suffrage, and gross as these villainies in taxation are they will be mended.

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THE LEEDS TIMES,
JANUARY 7, 1837.

THE DUNDEE RADICALS AND THE EDITOR
OF THE LEEDS TIMES.

Mr. Robert Nicoll, author of "Poems and Lyrics," and Editor of the Leeds Times, having occasion to be in Dundee a few days ago, a number of the Radical Reformers of that city sent a requisition to him, inviting him to a public dinner there, as a testimony for his talents, displayed in the additions he has made to Scottish song, and in the force and ability with which he advocates Liberal principles.  Mr. Nicoll, however, has respectfully declined the very flattering invitation of his late townsmen, as, owing to circumstances over which he has control, finds it impossible that he can accept of it at present.—Scotsman.