laws were next made to prevent them from obtaining parochial relief as heretofore: we complain, that, within these twelve years, two acts bave been passed, one to throw the power of vestries into the hands of all the landowners, and another to enable those landowners to set at defiance even the power of the magistrates to cause relief to be given: we complain, that in consequence of these taxes, this monopoly in corn, and the severities on the working people, of which we have here given merely a specimen, the working people. of England, once the best fed, best clad, and most moral in the world, have become the most miserable and degraded to be found on the face of the earth, those of unhappy Ireland only to be excepted: we complain, that the landowners compel them to draw carts and wagons like beasts of burden, that they keep men forcibly from their wives for a purpose too gross to mention, that others forbid them to marry upon pain of being left to beg or starve, and that others sell them by the week or month by public auction: we complain that the House of Commons, though fully apprised of all this suffering, though they have, in evidence given before their committees, proof upon proof of the wretchedness of the people, though they have in evidence, that the honest working mau is fed worse than the convicted felons in the jails and the hulks, though it has been proved to them that the working people commit crimes for the express purpose of getting at the better fare in the prisons; though they have been fully informed upon all these points, though they must be acquainted with the notorious facts, that the working people have, in many instances, resorted to the food of hogs and dogs, and have in many others been actually starved to death, they have adopted no measure for their relief, but measures innumerable for their punishment, closing, at last, with a bill to authorise the keepers of poor-houses and hospitals to sell their dead bodies for dissection, and thus, in this signal respect, putting the honest, worn-out or unfortunate man upon a level with the murderer.

That to our gracious and just and merciful King we complain, as of the real cause of all these oppressions and sufferings, that we are not represented in that which is called, and ought to be, the Commons' or people's House of Parliament: we complain, that though it had been stated to that House in 1793, without an attempt at contradiction, that one hundred and fifty-four peers and great commoners and the treasury put a decided majority into the House, had proof tendered (which it would not receive) that two of the Ministers had actually sold a seat in the House, yet when, in 1817, we petitioned for such a reform as would put an end to these odious practices, that House, instead of listening to our humble prayers, passed a law which enabled the Ministers to put us into dungeons at their pleasure, deprived of the sight of friends and of the use of pen, ink, and paper, which law was carried into effect with unheard-of severity and cruelty: we complain, that, in 1819, a body of persons peaceably met at Manchester for the purpose of petitioning parliament to adopt a reform of the Commons' House, were attacked by soldiers, and, to

the amount of some hundreds, either killed, crippled or wounded: we complain, that the soldiers were by Lord Viscount Sidmouth thanked, in his late Majesty's name, for their conduct on that sanguinary day: we complain, that the House of Commons refused all inquiry into that memorable and horrible transaction, but that it, in that same session, passed six distinct acts, each of which further and greatly abridged our rights and liberties, and particularly two of them, by which the liberty of the press was, in effect, as far as related to the working people, nearly extinguished, but above all things, we humbly beseech your Majesty to remark, that that House, with the records of 1793, 1809, and 1819, before it, passed a law, inflicting fine, imprisonment, and even banishment, on any man or woman who should write, print, or publish anything having even a tendency to bring it into contempt.

Thus, may it please your Majesty, we have, in all humility and dutifulness, submitted to your wisdom and justice a statement of a part of our manifold grievances and sufferings: we have, in the sincerity of our hearts, expressed to you our firm conviction, that all these have arisen from our not being represented in parliament; and as the means of restoring us to liberty and happiness, as the means of uniting all hearts in preserving the peace of our country and upholding the dignity and true splendour of your Majesty's crown, we humbly but earnestly pray, that of those great powers with which your Majesty is invested for the good of your faithful people, you will be graciously pleased to make such use as shall produce a reform in the Commons' House, ensuring to all adult males, not insane and not tarnished by indelible crime, a voice given by ballot, in the choosing of representatives, and as shall shorten the duration of Parliaments.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

I have just room to tell you, that the people of BELGIUM, the common people, have beaten the Dutch armies, who were marched against them to compel them to pay enormous taxes. This is excellent news. This event will make the GRASPALLS mourn; for they like taxes, because they make you pay them, and, in fact, pay none themselves. The taxes keep you down, and do not touch them. Mind that.

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COBBETT'S

TWO-PENNY TRASH:

For the Month of November, 1830.

FIRES IN KENT AND SUSSEX.

TO THE WORKING PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.

Bolt-Court, London, 1830.

MY FRIENDS, AMONGST all the crimes that men committed against their neighbours, that which the law calls ARSON, and which is a malicious setting fire to their buildings or their stacks; a crime always held in great and just abhorrence, and always punished with death; and so necessary has this punishment been deemed to the safety of society, that children not more than ten years of age have been put to death for it; because it is a crime so easily committed, committed with so much secresy, and in the commission of which a very young person may be the instrument of grown-up, persons. It is a truly abominable crime, because the commission of it may cause innocent persons to perish in the flames; and, at the very least, it may, in a moment, ruin whole families, reducing them from competence to beggary.

When, therefore, we hear of acts of this description being almost nightly committed in England, our first feeling is that of resentment against the parties; but, when we have had a little time to reflect, we are, if we be not devourers of the fruit of the people's labours, led to ask, What can have been the cause of a state of things so unnatural as that in which crimes of this horrid kind are

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committed by hundreds of men going in a body, and deemed by them to be a sort of duty instead of crimes? When we put this question we are not to be answered with the assertion, that the crimes arise from the vicious disposition of the working people; because then we ask, what it is that has made them so vicious. No; this cannot be the cause. The people are of the same make and nature that they always were; the land is the same, the climate the same, the language and the religion the same, and, it is very well known, that schools and places of worship, and the circulation of the Bible and of religious books, have all been prodigiously increasing for many years, and are now more on the increase than ever. There must, therefore, be some other cause, or causes, to produce these dreadful acts in a people the most just, the most good-natured, and the most patient, in the world. I know this cause; or, rather, these causes; I know also that there is an effectual remedy of this great and melancholy evil; and I need not say, that it is my duty to state them both with perfect frankness; a duty which I shall perform as briefly and with as much clearness as I am able.

The great and general cause is the extreme poverty of the working people; or, in other words, the starving state in which they are. That Bible, which they have been taught to read, as the means of saving their souls, tells them, from one end to the other, that their bodies also are not to be left to perish for want, while the land abounds with plenty, and that plenty arising, too, from their own labour. It tells them, and they know it, that the "labourer is worthy of his hire," and they know that that hire means a sufficiency, not only for the man who works but for his wife and children, and of clothes and fuel and lodging too, as well as of victuals and drink, Can God, who commanded that even thẻ or should not be muzzled as he trod out the corn, be pleased to see men, who have tilled the land, sowed the corn and reaped it and housed it, forbidden to touch the flour, and condemned to eat roots, or herbage, not sufficient to keep a pig in good plight? Every line of Holy Writ tells them, that this cannot be the will of God, while tradition, while all the sayings of their forefathers, tell" them, that such a state of things is contrary also to the laws and customs of their native country.

The natural consequence is discontent ; that leads to resentment. No man can suffer what he deems a wrong without feeling anger against somebody. He may be in error as to the object of his anger; but he must feel anger against somebody; and that anger will vent itself in acts, whenever he finds himself able to act. It does not signify that he gets no redress by such action. He gets revenge, and that is redress to a certain extent. Now, the working people of England know that they work hard, and that they are fed like dogs and hogs. They know, too, that their forefathers were not thus fed. That they are thus fed now is a fact, not resting upon my assertion, or upon the assertion of any man; it is a fact proved by witnesses examined before Committees of the House of Commons. I will, now, first state the case of the labourers of England;