Expense of the Administration of Justice. manner of ignorant and insolent men, form the highest and lowest ordersthe two extremes of society; and, therefore, the most proper for contrast. We shall make no invidious comparison of their relative utility and importance ;—we shall ask no questions whether a husbandman and a journeyman-shoemaker do not render more important services to the state than the Duke of Northumberland and the Duke of Devonshire;-we shall make no comparison of their vices and virtues, nor of their ignorance and knowledge, we shall merely put down the important fact, that those who neither cut wood nor draw water, who in short do nothing, receive, annually, fourteen times more than those who do every thing.* 2. Eminent clergymen, including the bishops and dignified clergy, amount to nine thousand, and their total income to one million and eighty thousand pounds, which is exactly £120 a year for each man, woman, and child belonging to that profession. The dissenting clergy, including itinerant preachers, amount to 20 thousand, their total income to £500,000, which is exactly £25 a year each. In Ireland there are four catholics to one protestant; in England there are four dissenters to one member of the established church. The dissenting clergy have four times the number of followers which belong to the established church; in short, they do all the work of religion; they pray and preach incessantly, daily, nightly, week days, and Sundays: and, most assuredly, if we are to be saved by such things, it is to them we shall be indebted for salvation. The eminent clergymen do nothing; some of them have never preached a sermon, nor put up a prayer of their own composing in their lives; others preach once a year a sermon stolen or garbled from the dissenters: in short, they do nothing they were appointed to do; they neither pray, nor fast, nor preach; their lives are spent in eating, and drinking, and sleeping, and in things far worse than these. Now, we respectfully ask the methodist preachers and dissenting clergy whether such a state of things ought to be supported? We respectfully ask them whether it is right or reasonable, or has either God or man intended it to be, that they themselves, who are incessantly labouring in the vineyard, should live in poverty, contempt, and obscurity, while those who are the mere lookers-on, the mere whited sepulchres, enjoy all the honours and emoluments of the priesthood? Since Mr. Colquhoun published his work, in 1814, the price of labour has fallen at least one-third; so that £7 instead of £10 is now the average income of each individual of the lower orders; this makes the proportion betwixt the income of the useless and useful classes as twenty to one. Expense of the Administration of Justice. 3. More than 100,000 persons employed in the collection and management of the revenue receive six millions a year; this revenue is principally appropriated to pay the interest of the borough debt and support the boroughmongers; it is clear, therefore, that, were there neither debt nor boroughmongers, 100,000 persons would be at liberty to till the ground or sweep the streets, and six millions of money remain in the pockets of the people to buy bread and cheese. 4. In law and physic there are 184,000 persons receiving 13 millions -annually, which is £70 a year for each individual. We have put these two professions together, because there is betwixt them several points of resemblance:first, they are the most lucrative professions in society;-secondly, in both there is a great deal of ignorance, mis-called learning, and of quackery and imposition;-lastly, both these professions have originated, and partly rendered necessary from similar causes, one from the moral and the other from the physical diseases of mankind. 5. The working classes may be compared to the soil, out of which every thing is evolved and produced; the other classes to the plants, trees, tares, weeds, and vegetables, drawing all their nutriment, nourished, supported, and maintained on its surface. 6. Leaving out of consideration physic, law, religion, and the useless, or at most ornamental parts of society, let us attend particularly to the numbers and incomes of the following orders: Here is the solid substratum on which the whole community rests. When mankind attain a state of perfectibility; when vice, crime, and ignorance are banished from the world; when we require no physic to cure our diseases, no laws to punish our crimes, nor the terrors of religion to deter us from evil; these will be the only classes in existence. They are the only classes which ought to exist in a perfect state. The other classes have originated in our vices and ignorance. As mankind become more perfect, or which is the same thing, as knowledge is more extensively diffused, then will the honorary, legal, and medicinal classes 'disappear: having no employment their name and office will cease in the social state. Expense of the Administration of Justice. Having compared the really necessary and useful classes, which, it appears to us, must always exist, with the mere frothy, ornamental, and evanescent classes, let us now consider these classes in respect of each other; which will bring us to our main point. The lesser freeholders, farmers, shopkeepers, innkeepers, and working classes, are as much dependent upon, and as necessary to each other as the mind is to the body, as oil is to the movement of a machine, or as money is for facilitating commercial exchanges. Their interests in all cases are exactly the same, and are generally opposed to the interest of other classes. This is the real case; but ignorance and a short-sighted avarice have caused them, instead of acting in concert, to be in almost constant opposition. To be more plain, while the labouring classes have been contending against the abuses of government; the trading classes have either been arrayed against them, or maintained a criminal neutrality. A crisis has occurred which renders this state no longer tolerable. The outrageous violation of the laws at Manchester-the thanks of the executive for that violation, the attack upon the press-have unmasked the horrid design of subverting entirely the remaining liberties of the people. It is now clear that every remnant of liberty is to be trampled down by open force, and a military despotism established. It is now clear that corruption is alarmed; that the plundering system cannot stand against the knowledge of the people-against free discussion, and these are to be stifled by the bayonet. It is now clear that England, the queen of the world, proudly peering above all the nations of the earth in liberty, knowledge, virtue, humanity, and valour too-it is now clear that this England is to be no better than Turkey or Algiers. Is not this enough to wake the dead? Is not this a time when men ought to buckle on their armour? Ought we, in the nineteenth century, when Germany, when even Spain is bursting her fetters, to stand tamely by, and see England retrograde; see the land which for ages has been the beacon of all the world; the land which contains the ashes of Sidney and Hampden; the land which boasts of a Magna Charta and a Bill of Rights; ought we to stand tamely by, and see these trampled down, and England plunged into eastern darkness and chains? And by whom is she to be undone? by whom are her proud bulwarks, cemented with her best and bravest blood to be demolished? By Sidmouth, Canning, and Castlereagh,-by a fanatic, a buffoon, and—oh God! what shall we term him?-ask Mr. Finnerty. It cannot be; the very graves would open; our dead ancestors would burst from their cerements, to blast their cowardly, degenerate, stupid posterity. Expense of the Administration of Justice. It is clear, however, that this is the Machiavelian design, and whether it will succeed, and England be rendered no better than Spain now is, or France was before the Revolution, must depend upon the people. The labouring classes have done their duty manfully, and the other classes must be compelled to do theirs. We said compelled, we ask pardon for the word; we are for no compulsion; it is right, however, that they should come forward. A frightful crime has been perpetrated; the laws shamefully outraged; property violated; murder committed; and the labouring classes are the great sufferers. Is it not right then that they should seek redress? Is it not reasonable that they should exert all the influence and power they possess to obtain justice? Is it to be borne that these classes, immediately dependent upon them for their daily bread should almost, on every occasion, either openly oppose them or what is equally criminal, countenance their enemies by their silence? This is not just. Let us see then how this ingratitude and folly can be punished. The total income of the Working Classes is eighty-two millions a year; which is far greater than the total income of all the nobility, gentry, and opulent classes put together. This enormous sum is first paid away to the innkeepers and shopkeepers; these again, after deducting their profit, pay it to the farmer and freeholder; and from thence, after a certain portion is deducted, it at last ascends to the great and mighty higher orders. This is the ́mode it circulates through the community. Now, betwixt the farmers and working people, there is no immediate point of contact; the connecting link betwixt them is the shopkeeper. It is not, therefore, on the farmer, but the retailer that the people can directly act. It is quite clear, however, that any impulse of the nature to which we allude, impressed upon the shopkeeper, must be immediately communicated to the farmer; from the "farmer to the landlord, and from the landlord to the gods in the supernal sphere: so that the first impression will vibrate through the whole chain of society. The application is the easiest thing imaginable. The Working Classes are the first receivers of a great part of the annual income of the country, of which they have the distribution. Ought they to make no distinction in this distribution? Ought they to make no distinction betwixt those who tamely acquiesce in a flagrant violation of the law; and those who come manfully forward to vindicate their rights, their liberties, and the happiness and glory of England? Now for a practical example. For this purpose we shall take ourselves, and point out the plan we intend to pursue. We are RADICAL REFORMers, Expense of the Administration of Justice. To us it appears clear, that a system of military violence is about to he established, which it is our duty, in every possible way, both for the sake of ourselves and our children, to resist. To us it appears, that a number of persons do not discharge their duty as good citizens in the present crisis, We consider it, therefore, incumbent upon us to inquire what are the opinions of our baker, butcher, publican, and tailor, upon the following points-First, what is their opinion upon the Manchester Massacre, the thanks of the Regent, and the attempt to fetter the press? Do they not manifest clearly a design to trample on the laws, and establish a Military Despotism? Do they think that any thing can save the country, but a radical change in the constitution of the House of Commons? And are they not willing to come forward, and make every reasonable sacrifice to obtain that desirable object? Now, if they are not quite clear, if they do not answer affirmatively to all these points, we shall consider them either fools or knaves: they shall not have a farthing of our money; we will not support such men; we will sooner travel twenty miles to find out an honest Reformer, who loves liberty to his heart's core, who sympathises with the unparalleled sufferings of the people, and who is not only indignant, but determined to exert his utmost influence to bring to condign punishment the perpetrators of the bloody cutrage in St. Peter's Field. Here are the Publicans too. These men are wholly dependent upon→→→ they are literally fed and clothed by the Reformers. What is their conduct?. On every public occasion they enrol themselves as special constables, and, like well-trained mastiffs, are ready to howl at or bite whatever the magistrate chooses to direct. We do not blame them for offering to preserve the peace when it is really endangered. The Reformers wish, as it is undoubtedly their greatest interest, to preserve the peace. It is by holding to the laws, and by their opponents violating them, that has caused reform to roll on like an avalanche. But we blame the Publicans for their blind subserviency to the magistracy; for the alacrity with which, on all occasions, they oppose the people, without ever reflecting whether the object for which the Reformers are contending is lawful, or whether their own interests are identified with its attainment. We cannot better illustrate the conduct of Publicans generally, and show the manner in which they ought to be treated, than by relating an anecdote of what happened at Oldham, in Lancashire, on the fatal 16th of August. Previously to the meeting, the innkeepers were all sworn in as special constables; and with the Yeomanry of the town, were intended to keep in due order and subjection the "turbulent Reformers" of that place. When the |