But this is not all. Not only do the working classes see that they have gained nothing whatever by the Bill, but the woeful fact is now beginning to open to their eyes, that they have been made a great deal worse than they were before; that they have been placed at the mercy of a body of men, who have little or no sympathy with their industry; and that the prevailing interest which now rules the determination of Parliament, is not only not theirs, but is actually an adverse interest.

With all their professions of patriotism, liberality, and a regard for the poor, there is no Parliament in the memory of man, which has done so little for the interest of the working classes, as that which was borne into St Stephen's on the transports of the Reform Bill. This is a fact, the existence and universal perception of which is completely demonstrated by the votes of the Legislature, and the simultaneous growth of Political Unions in all parts of the country. They have thrown out, by a majority of nearly 200, the proposal of Mr Attwood for an extension of the currency; the only measure which can put a stop to the incessant and increasing distress of the last ten years, and without a speedy adoption of which all attempts to revive industry, or avert ultimate national insolvency, will prove utterly nugatory. They have done nothing towards extend ing the Poor's Laws to Ireland, a measure imperatively called for, not less by the wide-spread and heartrending suffering of the working classes in that unhappy and deluded country, but by the privations to which the British house-owners are exposed, by the enormous mass of Irish mendicity thrown upon them for relief. They have resisted and thrown out Mr Sadler's factory bill, and substituted a weak and nu

gatory act in its stead; thereby per petuating, without intending it, in the heart of Britain, a system of infantine slavery, and sexual demoralization, a bondage of body and prostitution of mind, unparalleled in the annals of Christian oppression, and unexampled in the history of Mahometan slavery. They have thrown out all attempts to restore protection to British shipowners and manufacturers, adhered steadily to the reciprocity system, and the dogmas of free trade, when every nation on earth is loading with additional duties the import of our manufacturers. They have retained the assessed taxes, the most ruinous tax on the industry of the poor, next to the income-tax, which ever was invented, because it is a direct burden on the funds from which alone labour can be maintained, and a duty, not on the comforts or luxuries of the working classes, but their necessaries; not on their spirits and tobacco, but their bread and their beef. They have adhered to the low duties on beer and spirits, thereby perpetuating the growth of drunkenness and demoralization, multiplying, at a fearful rate, the progress of vice and profligacy, and literally realizing a revenue out of the wages of prostitution, and the brutality of intoxication. They have, at one blow, inflicted an irreparable wound on eight hundred thousand comparatively happy and contented labourers in the West Indies, deluding them by the name of a liberty which they are incapable of enjoying, and depriving them of a protection, and a state of rural comfort, which they have themselves confessed was (6 precedented in any civilized state." They are now strongly urged by the interest in the State which has obtained an ascendency in the Reformed Parliament, to repeal the Corn Laws, thereby giving the finish.

un

ing stroke to the distresses under which the agricultural classes have so long been labouring, and throw ing upwards of four millions of rural labourers into penury and want. It is as clear, therefore, as the sun at noonday, that the interest of the producers, of the cultivators, and of the working classes, is not the interest which is predominant in the Reform Parliament; that it is some other and adverse faction which has contrived, amidst the public transports, to possess itself of political power; and that the labouring poor are farther now from obtaining substantial relief than ever.

What, then, is the body which has really succeeded in appropriating to itself the political influence which was once vested in the heads and representatives of the great interests of the State, which was once divided among the agricultural, manufactumanufacturing, and commercial classes, and secured to each that due attention to their wants which is essential to any system of good government? We shall give the answer in the words of our bitterest enemy; of one who knew us in many respects better than we did ourselves; who was equal to Alexander in military genius, and second only to Bacon in political sagacity.

"The English," says Napoleon, "are a nation of SHOPKEEPERS." In this single expression is to be found the true secret of the pecuniary difficulties in which all classes have been involved for the last fifteen years, and of the total failure of the Reform Parliament to administer any, even the slightest relief to the real necessities of the nation. It is the undue, the overwhelming ascendency which the class of traders, mo

neylenders, and shopkeepers, have of late years been constantly acquiring over the cultivators and manu. facturers, that is, over the working classes, which has produced all the false measures into which the Tories were seduced in the last ten years of their administration, and has at last precipitated the nation, bound hand and foot, into the bonds of the shopbcracy and moneyocracy, riveted round their necks by the Reform in Parliament.

יו

That this has been the chief cause of all the public distress; that it has been the remote but certain parent of the Free Trade system, the change in the Currency, and the abandoument of the Navigation Laws, the hideous infant factories, and, last of all, of the fatal Reform in Parliament, which has at once prostrated the whole working and producing classes at the feet of the buying and consuming,- -we apprehend to be as clear as any proposition in Euclid. We are preparing and collecting materials for this great subject, which will be fully developed in our next Number, and would have appeared in this, were it not that the instant approach of the great strike on the 1st March, imperatively calls for the consideration of the Trades' Unions, which are in fact only a consequence and corollary from the dreadful political errors into which the people, under the guidance of a political faction, whose interests were adverse to their own, have been led, and the ruinous ascendency given to that faction by the Reform Bill. *

The real interests of the Conservative Party, and of the workingclasses, both agricultural and manufacturing, are, and ever must be, the

Mr Bernard and Sir

same. The great bulk of the Conservatives live, and ever must live, upon the surplus produce of labour; and it is on the magnitude of this surplus that their prosperity is entirely dependent. What is the rent of land, but the surplus produce of agricultural labour above the expenses of cultivation? The Conservatives, accordingly, are and always have been the strongest advocates for such a protecting duty as shall secure remunerating prices to the farmers, because they know that it is on the existence of such remunerating prices that their own prosperity is entirely dependent; and that this surplus produce was in former times, before the fatal changes in the currency, fairly divided between the landlord and farmer, is proved by the fact that they were both thriving, and in many cases becoming rich; that the produce obtained by the farmer was about equal to that drawn by the landlord; and that the growth and extension of the farm-steadings even outstripped in cost the more splendid edifices constructed by the landlords.

In like manner, and for the same reason, the Conservatives have ever been the steady supporters of manufacturing and operative industry in all its branches. Who but they carried through the Navigation Laws,* which, as Adam Smith observes, were the great bulwark of our shipping interest, and the foundation of our maritime power? Who but they imposed the protecting duties on every branch of manufacture, under the shelter of which they have risen up to their present unexampled height? They have also in every age been the steady friends of the poor. They originally framed, and have since steadily supported the Poor's Laws, amidst all the obloquy thrown on them by the combined influence of liberalism, selfishness, and infidelity; and if that relief is not as yet afforded to the Irish mendicants, it is because the Reform Parliament and the popular party have steadily resisted the extension. They strongly advocated Mr Sadler's factory bill last session, and it was

ultimately thrown out by the democratic party in the Legislature. They steadily uphold the Established Church, the great instrument for the gratuitous instruction of the poor, in the most important of all knowledge, that of their religious duties, and as steadily resist those selfish politicians, the pretended friends of the people, who would lay the maintenance of their religious teachers, not, as at present, on a portion of the landed proprietors, but on the hardearned wages of the poor. Every county in Great Britain knows and can testify, that the Conservatives are uniformly the most indulgent landlords, the most beneficent patrons of every useful institution, the warmest supporters of every benefi cent charity. We are confident we are within the mark when we assert, that nine-tenths of the charity of the kingdom flows from Conservative hands.

On the other hand, what have been the practical measures of the liberal or democratic party for the relief or support of those working classes for whose interests they professed such uncommon solicitude? They have abandoned the Navigation Laws, thereby exposing to a ruinous foreign competition the numerous and important classes of shipwrights and carpenters;-they have abandoned or lowered many of the protecting duties on manufactures, and exposed our opera tives to a flood of foreign manufac tures, which have entirely swamped many important branches of industry;-they have forced upon the Conservative administration, by incessant clamour and delusion, the monetary system of 1819, and the suppression of small notes in 1826, measures which at once doubled the weight of all debts public and private, and inflicted a blow on the industrious classes, greater than all the power of Napoleon had been able to effect;-they have obstinately adhered to the reciprocity system, in the face of the clear evidence af-. forded by the conduct of other states, that it was all on one side;— they threw out Mr Sadler's Factory Bill;-they resist all extension of the

Poor's Laws to Ireland;-and they are now preparing, at the bidding of the shopkeepers of London, and the great towns, to overwhelm the cultivators with a deluge of foreign grain, that is, to reduce to beggary and ruin four millions of persons dependent upon rural labour. En quire in any county of the kingdom, from the Land's End to Caithness, what sort of landlords the democrats are?—how much they contribute to public institutions?-how much they bestow on private charity? You will hear in general that they are the most grasping and niggardly of the community; that they exact every thing from their tenants, and give nothing to the poor; that their names are to be seen at few subscriptions-their assistance felt at few undertakings; that their general characteristic is that of being alieni appetens, without the single redeeming point in Catiline's character, sui profusus. We speak of the general character of the democratic party. Doubtless there are many honourable exceptions to these remarks.

-The manner in which the democratic party who have uniformly advocated these measures, destructive and ruinous though they were to the whole productive industry of the people, have nevertheless contrived to obtain the almost entire ma

nagement of their thoughts, and succeeded in wielding at pleasure their vast energies, is one of the most startling and extraordinary of the many extraordinary phenomena these times exhibit, and affords a signal instance of the facility with which men may be led, by skilful flattery and alluring expressions, to support the leaders who are really pursuing measures the most destructive to their welfare. They were incessantly told that public happiness was their great object; that the people never could be sufficiently instructed, enlightened, and free; that self-government was the true panacea for all the evils of humanity; and that if political power was only vested to a sufficient extent in the people, all the ills of life would

speedily disappear. Misled by this dazzling phantom, they generally and cordially supported the demo cratic leaders, and submitted patiently for a tract of years to the most acute suffering, inflicted by the measures of their demagogues, in the firm belief, which was sedulously inculcated, that it was the resistance of the Conservatives which was the cause of all the evil. We have to thank the Reform Bill for having at length put an end to this extraordinary delusion, and by seating the Movement party in complete sovereignty, for the time at least, in the Legislature, brought at once to the test the sincerity of their professions to relieve the people, and their ability to do any thing efficient for the public welfare.

That the evils under which the labouring classes now suffer, and which have produced the formida ble organization of the Trades' Unions, are in no respect likely to be removed, but, on the contrary, greatly increased by the greater ascendency of the democratic party, is farther illustrated by the fact, that they exist to fully a greater extent in North America, notwithstanding the drain of the back settlements and a boundless soil, than in the densely peopled realm of Britain.

"The North Americans distinctly admit, that ever since the Revolution which

separated them from the mother country, and conferred upon them the blessings of self-government, magisterial and even parental authority has been upon the decline, and that now, at last, combinations exist amongst working men, to such a fearful extent, for overthrowing the institution of property, that a subversion of all authority is apparently at hand, there being absolutely nothing left in that country to preserve its social system from being torn in pieces, but education only."*

What security education is calculated to afford against these enormous evils in an old and corrupted state like Great Britain, has already been fully considered in the former number of this series.†

"There are, in our own country," says the North American Review, "combinations of the employed to procure

higher wages, political working-men's parties, and fearful signs of resistance to the highest authority in the Federal Union. Nor is this change passing only upon a large scale, where we can survey it, or much of it, at least, as a mere matter of speculation. It is coming home to our cities and villages, and very dwellings. Aristocratical influence, and magisterial power, and parental authority, too, have been declining among us ever since the Revolution. There are abolitions of peerages in our towns; there are reform bills in our families; and our children are educated so freely, as to threaten rebellions, if not combinations, for securing their rights. There are, indeed, tendencies of this sort, which must be controlled and regulated, or society cannot exist; tendencies to a radical reform, so radical, indeed, that if not restrained it will tear up every social institution by the roots, and leave nothing behind but disorder, waste, and ruin."

The same truths are forcibly il

lustrated in Mr Hamilton's recent and admirable work on North Ame

rica.

"In the city of New York," he observes," a separation is rapidly taking place between the different orders of society. The operative class have already formed themselves into a society under the name of the Workies, in direct opposition to those who, more favoured by nature or fortune, enjoy the luxuries of life without the necessity for manual labour. These people make no secret of their demands, which, to do them justice, are few and emphatic. They are published in the newspapers, and may be read on half the walls of New York. The first postulate is, 'Equal and Universal Education.' It is false, they say, to maintain that there is at present no privileged order, no practical Aristocracy, in a country where distinctions of education are permitted. There does exist, they argue, an Aristocracy of the most odious kind, an Aristocracy of knowledge, education, and refinement, which is inconsistent with the true Democratic principles of absolute equality. They pledge themselves, therefore, to exert

every effort, mental and physical, for the abolition of this flagrant injustice. They proclaim it to the world as a nuisance which must be abated, before the freedom of an American be something more than a mere empty boast. They solemnly declare that they will not rest satisfied, till every citizen in the United States shall

receive the same degree of education, and start fair in the competition for the honours and the offices of the State. As it is of course impossible and these men know it to be so-to educate the labouring class to the standard of the richer, it is their professed object to reduce the latter to the same mental condition with the former; to prohibit all supererogatory knowledge; to have a maximum of acquirement, beyond which it shall be punishable to go. But those who limit their views to the mental degradation of their country are, in fact, the moderates of the party. There are others, who go still further, and boldly advocate the introduction of an Agrarian Law, and a periodical division of property. These unquestionably constitute the extrême gauche of the Worky Parliament, but still they only follow out the principles of their less violent neighbours, and eloquently dilate on the justice and propriety of every individual being equally

supplied with food and clothing."

We give the operatives due warning; they have no relief to expect from the democratic party, and as little from the frantic anarchical course they are now pursuing. That their sufferings are great, we lament to hear; that they neither can, nor will be relieved by the party to whose guidance they have hitherto and blindly surrendered themselves, is capable of demonstration.

The Reform Parliament is governed by an adverse interest to that of the producers. It is entirely ruled by the monied interests and TRADERS. This class has by the bill acquired a monstrous-an irresistible preponderance in the Legislature. We grieve to say this; but it is self-evident; and the supporters of the Reform Bill have themselves to thank for having riveted the fetters of an adverse interest about their necks.

TO BUY CHEAP is the grand object of all the measures which now emanate from the Legislature, and have emanated for many years past. This is the foundation of the repeal of the Navigation Laws-of the diminution of the protecting duties-of the contraction of the currency-of the Free Trade system of the incessant and ruinous repeal of indirect taxes-of the threatened repeal of the Corn Laws. For