"tended to the unhappy men now under whether here be not enough to con"sentence of death!" The same news- vince you, that the means of terror or

86

of punishment are not calculated to put an end to the fires? This is a most important question for you to consider; for, if these means fail, then there is no hope without the adoption of some other. Beseeching you to reflect most seriously upon this point, I now proceed to the next proposition, which is, if possible, of still more im

paper contains an account of five fresh fires in the neighbourhood of Norwich; and The Times newspaper of Saturday gives an account of several fires in Wiltshire, two of which it speaks of as follows. "The first fire, which I de"scribed as illuminating the country for "miles around, was, I understand, on "the premises of Mr. Rexworthy, near "Wilton. His dwelling-house, out-portauce. "houses, and corn-ricks were all burnt THIRD, that the fires, unless effec"to the ground. I had not time in my tually put a stop to, may become far "way through here to-day to get the more extensive than they hitherto have "particulars farther than that Mr. Rex-been-King's Ministers, you know very worthy had been active in bringing little about the habits or the means of "some of the late rioters to justice. The the labouring people. I do not impute "second fire, which I said was in the this to you as a fault: your way of "neighbourhood of Wimborne, was of life, your own habits and pursuits and "corn-ricks only. These also were the associations, have precluded you from "property of a person connected with possessing this knowledge; and, as to "the late prosecutions." This fire was obtaining it from others, few persons not near Wilton but near Heytesbury, approach you who do possess it, and and it was so great that it lighted the very rarely indeed will it happen that street at Fisherton, though at fifteen one of these will be found honest miles distance from it. I pray you to enough to tell you that you have not look at these words from The Times the power to do that which you wish to newspaper! I pray you to look well do. Power to induce it to listen to at the cause there stated for this objections to its own effectiveness, must tremendous fire. Pray read these words with attention. Look also in the papers of to-day at a great fire near Dover. Remember the fire in Essex the other day, in the very village from which poor Ewan had been taken to be hanged! From the single village of Pewsey there are, I am told, eleven persons taken and condemned to be transported; and when the carrier, from whom the story came to me, came away, mothers were crying for their sons, wives for their husbands, children for their fathers, sisters for their brothers, and, in short, all was frantic lamentation. Of this village one of Lord Radnor's brothers is the Rector, and he is also a prebend of Salisbury, where his elder brother a stop to by the transportings and the has been sitting on the bench with the Special Commissioners.

Without stopping to comment on these facts, and without directing your eyes towards Lincolnshire, where the fires appear to be blazing more furiously than ever, let me ask you, now,

be in the hands of those who are endued with all those rare qualities which induce wise and just judges to listen to arguments against the competence of their own jurisdiction. Hence it is that you do know and that you can know very little about the real character, the disposition, the propensities and the habits of the labourers; and especially about the means which they possess of gratifying their vengeful feelings where, unhappily, they entertain them. There was very little danger, comparatively, in the machinebreaking and the sturdy begging or rioting and robbery, if it must be so called. These would be effectually put

hangings; but as to the fires, it was quite another matter, as REXWORTHY has found to his cost. Of all acts the in this world of a criminal nature, the most easy to perpetrate, the least liable to detection, the least inconvenient to the perpetrator, is that of

195
TO THE KING'S MINISTERS.
have now had trials in Kent Sussex. Ipalings ar fatuers mar

196

setting hre to out-buildings and ricks. and good neighbours; they are unasTo convince you of the truth of this, suming, modest, content in their state what can you need more than perhaps of life; but they will not, and I thank the two thousand fires that have taken God that they will not, live on damned place, and the four or five convictions; potatoes while the barns are full of with regard to two of which the parties corn, the downs covered with sheep, convicted declared their innocence with and the yards full of hogs created by their dying breath? As to the immediate their labours. Above all things they means, I know nothing; but I believe are affectionate ; the parents love all the stories about fire-balls and air-their children, and the children the guns to be merely ridiculous nonsense. A pipe and a match, or a bit of linen rag, as in the case of the poor orphan Goodman, in Sussex, are, I dare say, the means generally used; for, how are labouring men in general, or any of them indeed, to obtain any other means, and to keep those means by them too, without the knowledge of others?

parents, with more ardour than is to be met with among the richer tribes: the constant participation in each other's hardships and toils tends to bind them more firmly to one another: if you commit an act of injustice towards one, the whole village feels it individually and collectively. Even the villages themselves are connected with one Do, I pray you, look at the situation another; and thus a whole county or of this species of property; consider the district is imbued with one and the utter impossibility of watching it effec- same vengeful feeling. Is any man. tually. In the case of houses, factories, or so stupid as to imagine that there is a buildings of any sort, which are usually single soul in all Pewsey, man, woman inhabited, the case is wholly different. or child, who will not remember the Here the parties must either be inmates transportation of eleven men of that or must commit the act by open vio- village? lence. It is difficult for a man even to It is a great mistake to suppose that set fire to his own house without detec- the farming stock is all collected in the tion. Not so in the case of farm pro- homesteads; if it were, it would not, duce and buildings; where there is no that I know of, add to the security. I trace, no clue, nothing to lead to detec-have a barn, for instance, now, at Barn tion, if the perpetrator be alone and Elm, one of the largest that I ever saw hold his tongue; and that perpetrator in my life. It was crammed full of may be your own servant! And who corn in the summer, trodden down in are to be your servants! Why, in the mows by oxen. Four men have Hampshire and Wiltshire particularly, the father, the son, the brother, the uncle, the nephew, the cousin or the friend of some one who has been hanged, transported, or manacled, by you or by some one connected with you. The loan-monger or Jew or Scotch feelosopher brute may call the labourers of England peasantry; the insolent vagabonds who live on their labour may call them ignorant; calumniate while they starve them; talk of their want of education. They want no education; they understand their business well; they are not ignorant, they know their rights, and the wrongs that are done them; they are tender parents and dutiful loving children; they are obedient and faithful servants, and kind

been thrashing there constantly from
that day to this, and they will be at it
some time longer. There is no soul
living in the farm-house, and there is
no house within more than a quarter of
a mile; the barn is at all times assail-
able from the bank of the Thames,
which is very close, and the whole has
been uninsured all the time.
Now
what protection had I for this between
three and four hundred pounds' worth
of corn, and, at one time, seven hun-
dred pounds worth of seeds into the
bargain? Why, I had the protection
of the good-will of the working people,
my neighbours, who never were
wronged or oppressed by me, and on
whose good-will therefore I had
reason to rely.
To numbers of them I

have occasionally given pretty good people. I have seen thousands of stacks scoldings and angry words; but I never (in one single ride of mine) of wheat did them injury, gave them no ground and barley, as well as of hay, standing for revenge, and I can truly say that I out at from a quarter of a mile to a mile never had a moment of inquietude with distant from any house, tree, or hedge. regard to the safety of my property. What in all the world is there but a Yet there has not been one single night sense of moral right and wrong, to preduring the last three months and a half vent the destruction of property thus when the whole of this property might situated? If, upon coming up to a rick not have been destroyed, barn and thus situated, a man finds it guarded, house and all, without a possibility of he turns about and goes away, that's detecting the offender, if he had gone all. In short, to shut out the rooks alone and held his tongue; and if I from a pea-field of a hundred acres is had been generally hated in the neigh-just as easy as to preserve this species bourhood, where was I to have found watchmen, and how was I to have prevented the watchman from setting fire himself?

of property without the good-will of the labourers, or, at least, in defiance of their vengeful feelings. The exposition of the law, as Scott Eldon called it, has taught them the danger of Ellenborough's Act, and of the softened code of George the Fourth; but it has not taught them to be content with potatoes and water.

I pray you to observe, that to go into a rick-yard or homestead is no crime at all! It is only a trespass at the utmost, punishable to be sure without trial by jury. Suppose a man to be found in a rick-yard, or in a barn, with- Besides these dangers to barns and out breaking in, with a pipe in his stacks, are there no dangers to fields of mouth, and matches in his pocket, he corn! A gentleman mentioned this to is merely a trespasser. He must ac- me the other day as the greatest danger tually set the fire before he incurs the of all. A piece of wheat, barley, rye, guilt of committing the crime; and, in or oats, fit for the sickle or the scythe, all human probability, this species of set fire to on the windward side, would reconnoitreing always takes place. Be-be demolished in a twinkling; and here sides, every labourer in the neighbour- the facility of execution, and the safety hood knows every one who lives in the of the perpetrator are so complete! Alhouse; and the labourers having been most every-where there are foot-paths driven from the farm-houses, there is or roads of some sort; and if there be seldom any male in the farm-house ex-not, and if the perpetrator be found out cept the master and his sous, if he have of the road, a trespass is his offence at any, and a sort of a groom. These are all away from home together very frequently; so that, in fact, there is no protection at all other than the goodwill of the neighbourhood.

the most. Here detection, except by a man's own confession, seems to be absolutely impossible. And you, the King's Ministers, should be informed that farmers are talking of this everyBut how many hundreds of thousands where. I know nothing of the immeof wheat-ricks, and oat-ricks, and bar-diate means of setting fire in this way. ley-ricks, are not only built out in the Samson did it by tying brands of fire fields, but at a distance from all dwell-to the tails of young foxes. Our fellows ing-houses whatsoever! How many would, most likely, not do the thing in thousands upon thousands of ricks of so open a manner, though as yet there clover, upland grass, and saintfoin, are is, I believe, no law making it felony. built out in the middle of immense I think it is only a trespass, subjecting fields, to be given to the sheep while the party to action of damages It is a they are eating off the turnips in win-deed which, if done maliciously, and ter. These can have no earthly protec-without monstrous provocation, ought tion but that of the general good-will to be punished with death; but the and common consent of the labouring truth is, that until the hellish workings

of loan-mongers came into the world, | demeanour punishable with heavy fine law-givers never imagined the exist- and imprisonment for any overseer or ence of a state of society in which such other person in parochial authority to laws would be necessary: they never subject the indigent poor to work like imagined the existence of a state of so- beasts of burden, to put them up at ciety when the whole body of the la-auction, or otherwise wantonly to debourers would be the deadly enemies of grade them, taking as the preamble of the occupiers of the land; a state of the bill that text of holy writ which society which it is impossible should says, "Oppress not the poor because exist for any length of time without he is poor !" producing something very like the dissolution of that society.

IRELAND.

passed amidst the shouts of the whole kingdom. I propose to you nothing REPEAL OF THE UNION. new, be it observed; not only nothing revolutionary but nothing new do My readers remember that, when the propose; nothing but a return, in four Catholic Emancipation Bill was passed, apparently unimportant particulars, to I distinctly said, over and over again, the long-established laws of the land; that it would not at all tend to better the nothing do I propose touching the pro- lot of the people, or to tranquillize that perty of any body of persons; nothing part of the kingdom. I said that the to meddle with any institution of the measure was of no use unless it were country, even so far as to correct its followed, and that too right speedily, by acknowledged abuses; but I simply a repeal of the Protestant Established propose an act of graciousness and Church in Ireland. This has been the goodness which would reflect eternal canker-worm in the heart, the blister honour on yourselves and on the King, plaster, on the back, the goad in the the love of whose people to him it is side, the every-thing that is evil to that your first duty to preserve; and I pro- Island, which, if man did not appear to pose to you the repeal of four Acts be resolved to counteract and defeat the which you yourselves, upon reflection, intentions of God, might be one of the must lament to see in the statute-book. happiest on the whole globe. The inAnd, Gentlemen, if you believe that juries of Ireland began with the creation these measures would extinguish the of this Protestant hierarchy, which was fires, you will not, I am sure, suffer forced upon the people by every one of false pride to restrain you from the those means, which are known of in the performance of a duty so sacred. There catalogue of oppressions. From that is no remedy but that which goes to day to this day wrong and insult seem the root of the evil. That root is in to have contended with each other for the hearts of the people: you must ex- pre-eminence in the treatment of the tract the root or tear out the heart, or Irish people, who have never been disthe evil must remain. I meddle not loyal to the King any more than Cornin this case with the rate of wages, or wall or Devonshire has. with any other detail: restore the law; It is a false and villanous assertion restore protection to the labourer, and that they want or have ever wanted to he and his employer will speedily come be separated from England, except as to an equitable adjustment of their re- far as relates to this church. This is spective claims. If you have even a well known to every man who undermisgiving upon your minds upon the stands any-thing of the real state of subject, disdain me, I pray you, as Ireland. There is something so unmuch as you please, but do not disdain natural; something so monstrous; the advice which I have respectfully something so insulting to the common tendered you, and which I press upon understanding of all mankind, in comyou with all the earnestness and anxiety pelling the people of a country to mainthat the heart of man is capable of en-tain, at prodigious expense, an establishtertaining. Thus, at any rate, I have ment called religious, and which that done what I deemed to be my duty to people in all sincerity and from the botyou I must now leave the matter; with this assurance, however, that if you follow this advice, amongst all the millions in whose hearts you will create feelings of gratitude, in no one will you create more than in that of

WM. COBBETT.

tom of their souls regard as a damnable heresy, the sure leader to everlasting perdition; there is something so insulting to human nature in this, that the wonder is how one single man upon the face of the earth is to be found, not ashamed to utter a single breath in defence of upholding such an establishment under such circumstances! Emancipation, indeed! How can men be said