LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18TH, 1830.

sincere and most disinterested friend of freedom; and has the further great and unequivocal merit of having been most infamously calumniated by the GREAT LIAR OF THE NORTH, the base and hypocritical BAINES of Leeds. Mr. JOHNSTONE, too, it appears, who also outlived the dungeons of Sidmouth, had a prominent hand in this good work; this work of just vengeance on the base boroughmonger crew, and on all the vile miscreants who have been their abetMem-tors, to the whole of whom it is a slap in the face that makes the lights dance before them.

me by the hand? Where are they all? Do they not begin to think that the hour of retribution is arrived?

at his contemptuous, language; look at the aristocratical prig, crammed with the conceit that he had just entered on the career of official power; see the FIFTH. But the fellows in the House future Pitt in idea, and wonder how the itself! What will they do? Will they insulted crowd could have kept their all run out of it? And yet, if they hands off him. The proud reptile has, do not, what are Hobhouse and Burhowever, got the best sort of blow, and dett and Scarlett and Baring to do? in the best place; and now let him, after And will Baring, or, rather, the four being dragged through some villanous Barings, call Hunt" the honourable hole of corruption, go over to regale the gentleman?" and yet they must do it, noses of the potato-eaters on the other or leave all he says unnoticed. But, side of St. George's Channel, where the Baring! How is this fellow to get people lie down and receive the extreme down the bitter bolus! He and SCARunction in preparation for death from LETT, in particular, have taken occastarvation. Let him go covered, as Ision, in that House, to speak consaw him, with the spittle of the pretty temptuously of "the BLACKING-MAN," girls of Preston. more especially BARING; and here, in order to show to what an extent this loan-monger will now be mortified, I must stop to take from the Register a letter from me to Baring, enclosing a letter from "the blacking-man" to the loan-man.

THIRD. The triumph over the base and greedy and ferocious attorneys is no trifling matter. These at once insolent and servile vagabonds; these hard, these brow-beating, these impudent vagabonds, now complain of having been rudely treated, overawed, and even beaten. I have only one single question to ask on this subject: Is there a whole bone left in any one of the skins of any one of these obdurate vagabonds? If there be, they have been treated with too much lenity. OLD GRIMSHAW, too, was the MAYOR again! What a triumph over OLD NIC!

The letters are curious, particularly as relating to the warnings which they contain. How serious Baring will look as he re-peruses these letters now! He will begin to think, that the profit of loans, and that rotten boroughs, are not every thing. He will begin to imagine, that "the itinerant patriots" had, after all, some little foresight. And will he not begin to smell, that FOURTH. And where are now the that inquiry, which I tell him will rich ruffians of MASTERS, who bade their come, is not a thing wholly impossible? men not to vote for me on pain of star- For my part, if I thought that inquiry, vation? I told them, only last winter, a strict inquiry, as to how men, without and to their faces, that their day of hu- any visible means, came to gain milmiliation was near at hand. And the lions of money, while the industrious Manchester magistrates and Parson Hay, farmer, tradesman, artizan and labourer and the yeomanry cavalry, who chop- were sinking down into poverty and ped down, or shot or trampled under starvation; if I thought that strict infoot, hundreds of innocent persons who quiry would not be made into this matmet to petition for parliamentary re-ter; if I thought that parliamentary form? Where are the managers of the reform would not, and right speedily inquest at, Oldham? Where are the ma- too, produce such inquiry, I should degistrates of Bolton, who put John Hayes spair of the country. But, now, before in prison for ten weeks, for announcing I go any further, let us see those letters that I was come home in good health? of and about "the blacking-man" to And where are the rich ruffians of Man- the loan-man. What a convenient chester, who came in crowds to insult thing this Register is! It serves me as I come back from Preston? And every-body to dip into. It has said where is 'Squire Lavender, who knocked every-thing beforehand. When any the people down like cattle, because event takes place, I have only to look they gathered about the door to shake back to the time when I foretold it.

But, now, loan-monger, do sit down," about of which no man has contributed surrounded with your whole brood of" with a more unsparing hand than members of Parliament, and read these " Alexander Baring; then, Sir, the letters over again.

Blacking-man, as you in your elegant phraseology are pleased to call him, "will be found quite as good and efficient a member of the community, whether “within or without the walls of Parliement, as the Loan Monger or the StockMonger.

"I am, Sir,

"Your obedient humble servant, "H. HUNT

WHAT do you think of the thing now?" Do you think that it is now under the workings of a hot fit or cold fit? And, have you any idea when the thing will be well again, or when it will get better?" To Alexander Baring, Esq., M.P." If you live a few years, BARING, there will come a time for Mr. HUNT to remind you, with all due form and ceremony, of the Speech you made about him in Parliament, in 1826; and that you may be prepared, by having the thing somewhat fresh in your memory, here insert a copy of the letter which he wrote to you on that occasion. I call you LOAN-MONGER, monger meaning dealer, and you being a notorious dealer in loans. Mr. HUNT has, as the public will see, given you, with great propriety, the same name. The letter of Mr. HUNT was as follows.

36, Stamford-street, Feb. 14, 1826.

I

Now, loan-monger, or loan-man, do you believe that there is any person of sense in the whole country that does not think a blacking-man as good as a loanman or a stock-man? Let the crisis come, and do you believe that no inquiry is to take place with regard to the past! The blacking-man will have been found to have had nothing to do in producing the crisis: not so with others; and, for my part, I should despise the man who would be content unless full inquiry and You investigation were gone into. thought that you might, with perfect impunity, throw out your imputation against the Blacking-man" and his "fellow

"I see by the report of the Parlia-patriots," as you sneeringly call them. I trust I shall live to see you more modest. ❝mentary proceedings, published in the I remember you for very nearly thirty newspapers this morning, that you years past in this country; and I also "have done me the honour to notice me remember you in another country. I shall say no more to you at present. Having just reminded you of these things, I shall leave you to ruminate upon them, until we shall see you come forth with an apology, I suppose, for the strange state of things which we now behold.

"and my business as a manufacturer of "blacking, in your second speech upon "the Currency last night, in the Hon“ourable House. (Vide Morning Herald "this day.) The Blacking-man would go «round with other itinerant patriots; "and, the stomachs of the people "being empty, and their ears open,

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WM. COBBETT.”

they would believe every thing which There, Baring, take that, and, like was told them with too great cre- a good, well-behaved loan-monger, “dulity.'—In the first place, permit "watch the turn of the market" for me, Sir, to offer you my best thanks something more. You have, amongst "for thus publicly advertising my black-you, already got the estates of five or "ing within the walls of the House of "Commons, and for which I beg your acceptance of a bottle of my very best "matchless. Having done this, I take "leave to add, when that crisis of Na“tional distress arrives, which you so "feelingly anticipate, and to the bringing

six LORDS and those of a dozen or two of 'SQUIRES; these are the "nice pickings" of one single family of loan-mongers; and yet the oafs fawn upon you, and encourage you in attacking all those who stand forward for the people! You have, amongst you, four seats in Far

here is a pleasure enjoyed. The devil himself, if left to work his free will, cannot take that from us. I enjoy of this pleasure a greater portion than any other man; and, therefore, I owe you a greater portion of gratitude.

liament. Now, then, call the "black-future what it may, here is a good done; ing-man" the "honourable gentleman"; and from that day lead what life you may. From the moment you pronounce those words, you will feel yourself an altered man, and you will begin seriously to calculate the consequences. "I wish (God forgive me!) that the saucy and calumnious Canning were still alive! How many of these fellows have been cunning enough to slip out of the way! There are some, however, who remain; and let us hope that the day of reckon-frankly and fully. In the first place ing with them is not far off.

But, now, WHAT PART AM I PREPARED TO ACT towards the man that you have chosen? I dare say that this question has been put a hundred thousand times; and I will answer it

"every private consideration shall be banished from my mind; the remembrance of all things injurious, or intended to be injurious, to me, shall be blotted out of that mind. But, this is on the condition that he do his duty, the contrary of which I will not antici pate, and which contrary would be ex ceedingly mortifying to me, because it would be mortifying to you, and because it would cast a slur on the cause of radical reform. This, however, as I said before, I will not anticipate even hypothetically; and, therefore, I am prepared to give him all the support in iny power in the effecting of every good that he shall attempt to effect.

These, my excellent friends, are amongst the many reasons for which I offer you my thanks upon this occasion, and for which you merit, and will receive, the thanks of every good and sensible man in the country. Then, it must be such a gratification to the good fellows of the North, who have, for so many years, been kept down like so many slaves; who have been dragooned and crammed into jails and dungeons by scores; who have been knocked about by police fellows, as if they had been so many cattle, under goads and cudgels of drovers. I remember that, in 1817, a weaver, who was going over the bridge at Blackburn, in Lancashire, Nay, I shall even go further than this; met a drunken Irish soldier, who, in a for I shall be ready to call upon you frolic perhaps, snatched the hat off his for patience and indulgence towards him, head, and flung it over the bridge. The knowing, as I do, the great difficulties poor weaver, thus robbed of his hat (in that he will have to encounter. You a cold winter's day), seized the soldier, will expect a great deal at his hands, who instantly drew forth his bayonet, and a great deal you will have a right which made the weaver let go his hold, to expect; but, observe, there must be but it did not prevent him from re-time for it: and, if the effort does not, proaching the ruffian. A parson hap- all at once, come up to your expecpening to come up, "That's right," tations, it will be but reasonable in you said he to the soldier: "that's right; trample them under your feet"!

to see the impediments that are to be overcome. A length of time, indeed, You, my good friends, have, in this such as the "city-cock," Waithman, one act, avenged all your ill-treated has taken would be a little too much: countrymen as well as yourselves. You fourteen years I should not like to see have given pleasure to every oppressed you wait for the fruit of your labouts man in the country, and, which is more and sacrifices, and not to get it even valuable still, pain to every corrupt vil-then; No: that would certainly be to lain. So that here is a positive good. carry patience to too great an extent. You have given a pang to the heart of But still I say that you ought to be every parson in Hampshire and Wilt-patient; and that you ought to put, as "shire; and to ninety-nine hundredths of I shall, the most candid construction the rest. I will not anticipate disap-upon every act, whether of commission · pointment on your part; but, be the or of omission.

there, then." His seat certainly has been of no use to any-body but himself. It has given him about 2007. a year in the right of sending and receiving letters free of that tax, which his constituents have had to pay all the while. But, though he could do nothing, another may do something.

Such shall be my conduct, and such, beginning, at any rate. Old shillyI hope, will be yours. As to the peti- shally Burdett used to tell us, that no tion against the return, which the fool man could do any-thing in that House. STANLEY is talking about, on what Every one said, "You'd better not go ground are the fellows to petition? They are pretty fellows, indeed, to talk about petitioning! They, who had Old GRIMSHAW'S TRAPS and DRAGOONs to keep me out; they complain that you have beaten the Attorneys. Have you left a morsel of the carcases of those base ruffians unbruised? Have you? If you have, I shall never forgive you, unless you prove to me that you could not get at those carcases. What is an election to be set aside because you have thumped those brazen vagabonds who so baited you at my election; fellows that nature seems to have made to be food for carrion-crows! Is an election to be set aside for this! STANLEY "protested," did he and so did I, and he laughed at me, and Old Nic laughed, and Corruption laughed.

A petition, indeed! Those who have given him his fat place and a good parcel of the public money, may, indeed, let him petition; but he will not do it without their assent, and I do not think it likely that he will get that.. There was, indeed, a time when such a petition would have been sure to succeed; but that time is gone by. But, suppose the petition to come, and to succeed, all the world will see that you will have been beaten by money; all the world will see that you will have been defeated by foul means; and the effect will be universal indignation against STANLEY and his patrons. Besides, this petition cannot be presented until after the recess. It will be the month of May before it can put Baring's blacking-man" out. He will be amongst them, sitting alongside of Baring and Scarlett, for three months, at the least; and three months is a pretty good spell, it is length of time sufficient for the doing of something. By that time, too, the great question of parliamentary reform will have been discussed, if not finally settled. The Parliament will adjourn in about a week; but there is plenty of time for taking the seat before that, and for making a

When WAITHMAN got into Parlia ment, I, who was then in Long Island, wrote over to say, that he would now be put to the test, and would be found to be worth nothing; or, at least, that such I feared would be the result. I observed that he was the city-cock, trimmed and spurred for the battle; that all eyes were upon him; that the expectation was very great, and that as great would be the disappointment. Waithman, however, had brass; but, as I reminded him, though brass was a good thing, in such a case, "bare brass, brass and NOTHING ELSE," would certainly not do. And such has been the result. He has been in the House thirteen or fourteen years, and we do not experience a feather less of calamity and disgrace than we should have suffered if he had never been there. However, those were to blame who expected any-thing good from him; for, however honest he might have been, what good soever there might be in his wishes, men should have seen, as I saw, that he wanted the talent necessary to the effecting of any good; and by talent I did not mean the faculty of pouring words, however volubly and at whatever length, to the delight and wonder of the Guildhall auditors; I did not mean this capacity of pouring out words, but I meaned the possession of knowledge. A man that knows nothing can do nothing, except injure any cause that he attempts to support; and this was precisely the case with Waithman. The worst of it is, too, that, in proportion to the lack of knowledge is always the conceit; that is to say, that the latter is great in the exact proportion that the former is small. What, in all the world,