CHADWICK, B. Ashton-und. Line, victualler. POPE, C., St. Philip and Jacob, Gloucester- TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1831. BRITTEN, D., Breda, Holland, packer. CROW, J., Bedford-ct., Covent-garden, tailor. DEWES, R., Knaresborough, merchant, DRING, J., Oxford, mercer. FOWLER, T., East Butterwick, Lincolushire, potato-merchant. FRY, J., Liverpool, merchant. LEWIS, T., King's-road, Chelsea, builder. PHILLIPS, H. N., Edward-st. Regent's-park, tavern-keeper. RIGMAIDEN, H., Liverpool, wine-merchant. WRIGHT, T., Manchester and Salford, tobacconist. LONDON MARKETS. MARK-LANE, CORN-EXCHANGE, FEB. 28.We have a short supply of Wheat this morning, and the quotation for this Grain may be given the same as on last Monday. We have a largish supply of Barley, and the fine malting qualities may be quoted at an improvement of Is. per quarter from the price of this day week, but in other sorts there is no varia. tion. We have a very large supply of English Oats, and this Grain may be given at 1s. per quarter cheaper than on this day week. In Rye, Beans, Peas, and other articles of Grain, we can quote no variation. Gouda Hams, Irish.. 42s. to 46s. ......45s. to 56s. SMITHFIELD-Feb. 28. Beef, for prime young Scots, fetches from 4s. 6d. to 4s. 10d. per stone, and in the Mutton to 5s. 6d. per stone. In Veal, the price of the trade, prime young Downs are as high as 5s. finest young Calves is 6s. to 6s. 4d. per stone, and dairy-fed Porkers sell at 5s. to 5s. 6d. per stone. Beasts, 2,407; Sheep, 14,860; Calves, 110; Pigs, 140. Petersham Beaver Great Coats .... 2 15 Talma Cloaks of Superfine Cloth... 300 A Suit of Livery...... 4 0 0 And every other article in the trade proportionably cheap! Observe that their shop is 93, Fleet-street. I recommend Messrs. Swain and Co. as very good and punctual tradesmen, whom I have long employed with great satisfaction. WM. COBBETT. R EFORM.-The OBSERVER of Sunday, Price Sevenpence, will contain the Expose of Lord Russell to the extent of five of the Observer folio columns. It may suffice to state that this Report of Lord Russell's speech is abridged from Wednesday's Morning Chronicle. A Monday Edition of the Observer, price Sevenpence, peculiarly adapted for Country and Foreign Circulation, is regularly published at Four o'clock every Monday Afternoon at 169, Strand. Printed by William Cobbett, Johnson's-court; and published by him, at 1), Bolt-court, Fleet-street. VOL. 71.-No. 11.] LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 12TH, 1831. זי TO THE LABOURERS OF ENGLAND. Particularly those of Kent, Sussex, Hants, Wilts, Dorset, Berks, Norfolk, and Suffolk. On the Scheme now on foot for getting part of them away out of their Native Country. MY FRIENDS, Kensington, 1st March, 1831. [Price 1s. 2d. to boast of by kings and governments, How comes it, then, my good friends, labourers of England, that this same you, the laborious, virtuous, excellent : Government now wants to get rid of part of you? How comes it that THERE is a bill brought into Par- this same Government, which only liament by a man who is called Lord thirty years ago boasted of your increase Howick, and who is the son of Lord in numbers as a proof of its goodness, GREY, who is now the First Lord of the now regards this increase of its numbers Treasury, and the King's Prime Minis- as a great evil, and is devising means ter. The object of this bill, which is of getting you away from your native not yet become a law, and which I hope land? Before I speak to you upon the will not, is to get a part of you to go terrible dangers which will assail you away out of your country; and it is my if you consent to be sent away, let me object to make you understand all this explain to you the reason of this change matter clearly; and to show you what in the language, views, and conduct of the consequences would be to you, and the Government; let me explain to you to the wives and children of such of you why it is that it now wishes to get rid as have wives and children, if you were of you. It wants to get you away beto consent to be sent away. But first cause you make so large a demand upon of all, let us ask what reason there can the poor-rates; because you are all bebe for sending you away out of your come what they call paupers; because, native country. It is not intended ab-in that character, you take away so : solutely to force you to go, as men who much from the farmers, the gentlemen are transported are forced to go; but it and others, who own and occupy the is intended to get you to give your con- land; and they think that if they can sent to be sent away; and let us then make you smaller in number, they shall ask, how it comes to pass that the have less to give you. But they do: Government of the country, that the not stop to inquire what it is that has Lords and the rich men who sit in Par-made you paupers; what it is that has liament, should wish to get rid of a part brought you into this miserable and of the people. You have read in the degraded state of poverty; or, indeed, Holy Scriptures, that amongst the great-they need not inquire, for they must est blessings which God has promised know the cause very well; they must to an obedient and good people is, a know that it is the taxes and the present multiplication of their numbers, an in-application of the tithes, and not any crease of them on the face of the earth; fault of yours, not any over-increase of and, until now, it has been a great thing your numbers, that have brought you M into that state of pauperism which plate the project for sending a part of makes you so burdensome to their house you out of the country. Now, mark and land. All of you who are sixty well what I am going to say: it is the years of age can recollect that bread taxes and the misapplication of the and meat, and not wretched potatoes, tithes, that have produced this terrible were the food of the labouring people; change. Fifty years ago; nay, only you can recollect that every industrious, forty years ago, the whole of the taxes labouring man brewed his own beer, for a year, amounted to fifteen millions and drank it by his own fire-side; you of pounds. They now amount to upcan recollect that, at every wedding wards of sixty millions of pounds. These and every christening, such labouring taxes take away so much from the man had a barrel of ale in the house owners and occupiers of land and provided for the occasion; you can houses, and from all persons carrying recollect when the young people were on trade, manufactures, or commerce, able to provide money before they were that they have not enough left to pay married, to purchase decent furniture the working people a sufficiency of for a house, and had no need to go to the parish to furnish them with a miserable nest to creep into ; you can recollect when a bastard child was a rarity in a village, and when husbands and wives came together without the disgrace of being forced together by parish officers and the magistrates; you can recollect when every sober and industrious labourer, that was a married man, had his Sunday-coat, and took his wife and children to church all in decent apparel; you can recollect when the young men did not shirk about on a Sunday in ragged smock-frocks, with unshaven faces, with a shirt not washed for a month, and with their toes peeping out of their shoes, and when a young man was pointed at if he had not, on a Sunday, a decent coat upon his back, a good hat on his head, a clean shirt, with silk handkerchief round his neck, leather breeches without a spot, whole worsted stockings tied under the knee with a red garter, a pair of handsome Sunday shoes, which it was deemed almost a disgrace not to have fastened on his feet by silver buckles. There were always some exceptions to this; some lazy, some drunken, some improvident to the tax-gatherer, in one shape or anyoung men; but I appeal to all those of you who are sixty years of age, whether this be not a true description of the state of the labourers of England when you were boys. wages. Then again, when a working man gets his wages, he has to pay, on his beer, his hops, his malt, his soap, his candles, his tobacco, his tea, his sugar, on the calico that he wears in his shirt, and that his wife wears in her gown, twice as much, on an average, as he would have to pay for them if it were not for these taxes. For instance, the sugar which costs seven-pence a pound, he would have for three-pence; the tea which costs him five shillings a pound, he would have for eighteenpence, if not for a shilling. This is the cause of the great change in the cir cumstances of the labouring people of England, and the country people have been further greatly injured by that misapplication of the tithes of which I shall speak more by-and-by, and which is one of the crying sins of this nation. Now, the working people, being thus borne down by the taxes and misappli cation of the tithes; being, in the first place, deprived of the wages which they would receive if it were not for the taxes laid upon their employers; and having, in the next place, to give one half of the wages which they get other; being thus borne down, I say, by the taxes and the tithes, they are reduced to this choice; to lie down and die with starvation, or to obtain, something out of the poor-rates. By Well, then, my friends, why is it not degrees, they have been stripped of so now? What has been the cause of the nice little furniture of their houses; the horrible change? We must ascer- by degrees, they have been brought tain this cause first; and then contem- down to have their bodies covered with To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ire land, in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned Labourers, at Barn-Elm Farm, in the parish of Barnes, in the county of Surrey, Most humbly showeth, miserable rags; by degrees, they have been reduced to the necessity of living upon miserable potatoes, instead of having their bellies filled with bread and with meat, as their forefathers had; by degrees, they have been brought down to this low and wretched state; that, according to the reports laid before Parliament, the honest labouring man is allowed less to live on than is allowed to a felon in the jails; but stilling people out of the country, upon the ground, they must live, or else there would be nobody to do the work and without their work, the land is worth nothing. Scheme after scheme has been tried to make them live upon less and less; till at last, the bow has been strained so tightly, that there was danger of its breaking. It never seems to have occurred to those who have had the making of the laws, that it would be better to take off the taxes, and to make a new application of the tithes. This never seems to have come into their heads. They have seen the poor increase, in proportion as the taxes increased; and yet they never seem to have thought, that, to reduce the taxes, was the natural and effectual way of putting a stop to the increasing poverty. On the contrary, they have gone on increasing the taxes; they have gone on increasing the number of the soldiers and sailors, though in time of profound peace; of the placemen, the pensioners, the sinecure people; the half-pay people; they have increased these to numbers prodigious; they seem to grudge them nothing, while the amount of the poor-rates seems to alarm them beyond all description. Last spring, my labourers at Barn-Elm, in Surrey, having heard of this project for sending a part of the working people out of the country, presented an humble petition to the two Houses of Parliament upon the subject, a copy of which petition I here insert, begging you to read it with the greatest attention. It was presented to the House of Commons by Mr. PALLMER, the member for the county of Sussex: that which was their case is the case of you all therefore, read this petition with attention. there is a proposition before your honourable That your petitioners have perceived that House, for mortgaging the poor-rates, and for imposing taxes, in order to raise money for the purpose of sending a part of the workthat, owing to their excessive numbers, they cause a charge upon the land so great as to threaten to swallow up the whole of the rents. That your petitioners have heard, and they believe, that, out of about eleven thousand parishes in England and Wales, there are one thousand and four, the population of which is, on an average, under a hundred souls to a parish; and that they know, that you have, the statements of experienced farmers, that in the evidence given before your committees, there are not too many work-people to cultivate the laud properly, but that the taxes take from the farmer the means of giving the maintenance; and that from this cause the work-people wages sufficient for their proper land is not cultivated so well as it used to be, and does not yield so much as it used to yield, while the labourers are compelled to resort to parish relief. That, deducting the amount of the countyrates, militia-charges, highway-rates, churchrates, and the law expenses, the poor-rates, that is to say, the money actually paid in the way of relief to the poor, does not, especially if we deduct the salaries paid to hired overseers, amount to six millions of pounds in the year; while the other taxes, imposed by the Parliament and collected by the Government, amount to about sixty millions a year; and think it strange, that your honourable House that, therefore, your petitioners cannot but should be alarmed at the prospect of seeing the rents absorbed by these six millions, while you appear to be under no apprehension at millions, especially as they cannot for the life all of those rents being absorbed by the sixty of them imagine how it is that your honourable House can fail to perceive, that it is the burden of the sixty millions, which is the real the six millions; daylight not being more eviand evident cause of the necessity of raising dent than the fact, that it is the enormous taxes which disable the farmer and trader and manufacturer to pay sufficient wages to his work-people. That your petitioners have been told, that of late years, one million and six hundred thousand pounds, or thereabouts, have been voted by your honourable House, out of the taxes, for the relief of the poor clergy of the church of England; and that they have just seeu millions upon millions voted by you for the support of half-pay people and their widows and children; that they have been told, that L shall, on account of our numbers, swallow up the rental, while they actually vote away our food and raiment to increase the numbers of those who never have produced and never will produce any-thing useful to man. there are numberless women and children as of similar idlers; and that to your petitioners well as men, maintained as pensioners and it does seem most wonderful, that there should sinecurists; that there are many of these men be persous to fear that we, the labourers, (who have no pretence to have rendered any service to the country), each of whom receives more, every year, than would be sufficient to maintain two or three hundred labourers and their families; and that, while all these are all supported in part on the fruit of our labour, while all these, who do not work at all, have our dinners, in fact, handed over to them by the acts of your honourable House, we cannot very patiently hear of projects for sending us out of our native land, on the ground that we threaten to swallow up the whole of the rental. That your petitioners have recently observed, that many great sums of the money, part of which we pay, have been voted to be given to persons who render no services to the country; some of which sums we will mention here; that the sum of 94,0001. has been voted for disbanded foreign officers, their widows and children; that your petitioners know, that ever since the peace, this charge has been annually made; that it has been, on an average, 110,9007. a year, and that, of course, this band of foreigners have actually taken away out of England, since the peace, one million and seven hundred thousand pounds, partly taken from the fruit of our labour; and if our dinners were actually taken from our tables and carried over to Hanover, the process could not be to our eyes more visible than it now is; and we are astonished that those who fear that we, who make the land bring forth crops, and who make the clothing and the houses, shall swallow up the rental, appear to think nothing at all of the swallowings of these Hanoverian men, women, and children, who may continue thus to swallow for half a century to come. But that, as appertaining to this matter of check marriages and the breeding of children, the vote, recently passed, of 20,9861. for the year, for the Royal Military Asylum, is worthy of particular attention; that this Asylum is a place for bringing up the children of soldiers; that soldiers are thus encouraged and invited to marry, or, at least, to have children; that while our marrying and the children proceeding from us are regarded as evils, we are compelled to pay taxes for encouraging soldiers to marry, and for the support and education of their children; and that while we are compelled, out of the fruit of our hard work, to pay for the good lodging, clothing, and feeding of the children of soldiers, our own poor children are, in consequence of the taxes, clad in rags, half-starved, and insulted with the degrading name of paupers; that, since the peace, half a million of pounds sterling have been voted out of the taxes for this purpose; that, as far as your petitioners have learned, none of your honourable members have ever expressed their fear that this description of persons would assist to swallow up the rental; and that they do not now learn that there is on foot any project for sending out of the country these costly children of soldiers. That your petitioners know that more than one-half of the whole of their wages is taken from them by the taxes; that these taxes go chiefly into the hands of idlers; that your petitioners are the bees, and that the tax-reThat the advocates of the project for send-ceivers are the drones; and they know, ing us out of our country to the rocks and further, that while there is a project for sendsnows of Nova Scotia, and the swamps and ing the bees out of the country, no one prowilds of Canada, have insisted on the necessity poses to send away the drones; bat that your of checking marriages amongst us, in order to petitioners hope to see the day when the cause a decrease in our numbers; that, how-checking of the increase of the drones, and ever, while this is insisted on in your honour- not of the bees, will be the object of an Enable House, we perceive a part of our own glish Parliament. earnings voted away to encourage marriage, amongst those who do no work, and who live at our expense; that 145,2677. has just been voted as the year's pensions for widows of officers of the army; and that your petitioners cannot but know, that while this is the case, few officers will die without leaving widows, especially as the children too are peusioned until of a certain age; that herein is a high premium given for marriage, and for the increase of the numbers of those who do not work; that for this purpose more than two millions of pounds sterling have been voted since the peace, out of those taxes, more than the due share of which your petitioners have had to pay; that, to all appearance, their children's children will have to pay in a similar manner for the encouragement and support That, in consequence of taxes, your petitioners pay sixpence for a pot of worse beer than they could make for one penny; that they pay ten shillings for a pair of shoes that they could have for five shillings; that they pay seven-pence for a pound of soap or candles that they could have for three-pence; that they pay seven-pence for a pound of sugar that they could have for three-pence; that they pay six shillings for a pound of tea that they could have for two shillings; that they pay double for their bread and meat, of what they would have to pay, if there were no idlers to be kept out of the taxes; that, therefore, it is the taxes that make their wages insufficient for their support, and that compel them to apply for aid to the poor-rates; that knowing these things, they feel indignant at hearing |