66 66 "men the valuable, the precious, privi- | excepted. In Cambridgeshire not a singlelege of paying taxes and of fighting working man would have had a vote, 'for those who have the votes!" and the same in Huntingdonshire, RutLong before he arrived at this sentence, landshire, and Leicestershire. There happy man would he be if nothing harder were absolutely no places at all the than rotten eggs saluted his eloquent suburbs of London, Norwich, Bristol, mouth; and, if he exclaimed, that he and the great towns in Warwickshire, had a right to say what he thought, he and Staffordshire, Derby, Nottingham, would be answered by being reminded and the great towns in Lancashire, that he denied to the Duke of Newcastle Yorkshire, and further to the North, the right to do what he liked with his including the great towns in Scotland, own. Such, however, must be the sub-and four or five great towns in Ireland; stance of his speech, if he were to give there were none but these populous spots, his vote for such a bill. He might en- in which there would have been one deavour to varnish the matter over. single working man entitled to a vote; He might tell the people of Nottingham, and yet this was too much, and the that houses were rented higher in Not-famous patriot Brougham was "ready tingham than in the towns of Hamp-to reconsider" even this! Here, how shire; and that, therefore, it would not ever, I take my stand. Not one shilling be fair, it would be ununiform, to give of rise in the qualification; no trick of a vote to as low a rent in Nottingham shifting the suffrage from rent to rate, as in Winchester. But his clever and so as to enable the owners of houses to sharp-sighted constituents would tell nullify the right of voting by letting him, that the way to make the thing their houses free of rates and paying uniform would be to make the ten- the rates themselves: as touching this pound rent the highest qualification, matter, I will never give my assent to and to go on lowering it according as any alteration that shall, in any manner, rents were lower in other places. The raise the suffrage in any towns, great or 66 patriot" Colonel DAVIS wanted a small; or that shall, in any way, tend scheme of proportion; but he was for to diminish the number of voters, raising the qualification in the great whether in the towns or the counties. towns, and lowering it in the small towns, in which he was not afraid of adding to the number of voters; because, in those towns, the aristocracy would have great and immediate influence. Amongst all the schemes of disqualification, I do not hear of any one for disqualifying any persons who live upon the taxes or the tithes! Pensioners in general are nothing more than state Even according to the rejected bill, paupers. Lord ALTHORP said, that there are many whole counties in which many of the pensions were given as not a single working man would have charity. While parish paupers are dishad a vote. The ten-pound rent shuts qualified, why not disqualify state pauout every working man in every town pers? Our fathers, when they, in evil in Sussex'; in every town in Hampshire, hour, consented to mortgage the counexcept, perhaps, Portsmouth; in every try and to establish a revenue to be town in Kent, except, perhaps, a few at raised by internal taxation, disqualified Rochester and Chatham; in every town revenue-officers from voting at elections in Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Devonshire, of members to serve in Parliament; Cornwall, and Somersetshire, unless because such officers had a manifest Bristol be deemed a part of Somerset-interest in choosing such men as were shire; in every town without exception likely to heap taxes upon the people. in the whole of Wales, North and South; Even so late as the date of the estain every town in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, blishment of the paid justices of the Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire; and in Wen, this principle prevailed; and short, in every town even in Lincoln- these paid justices cannot vote at elecshire; and, it is the same to the east, tions in consequence of a clause in the Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, Norwich first police act, moved, I believe, by yourself, or, at least, I recollect well tion will be their resentment if they see that it was supported by you. This was themselves studiously marked out as very proper; to introduce the clause creatures' fit only to be trodden underwas a very meritorious act; but, my foot. Lord, are these police magistrates more Besides the injustice and the insodeeply interested in returning to Par-lence of such an alteration, there is the liament men disposed to heap taxes flagrant impolicy of it; that is to say, on the people, than are the pen- impolicy on the part of the aristocracy sioners, sinecure people, grantees, re-particularly, who, as a permanent privitired-allowance people, dead-weight, leged body, have nothing so justly to and even the officers of the army and dread as the rivalship of an aristocthe navy, and all the long train of com-racy of money, which in this country missaries and commissioners and must always be powerful, always interclerks? If there was good ground, posing, always full of envy of the noand never was there better, for disqua- bility, and must always be desirous to lifying officers of revenue and magis-pull that body down to their own level. trates of police, is there not equally I have known the dispositions of a pretty good ground for disqualifying all others who have a manifest, a vital, interest in returning such men to Parliament as shall be likely to heap taxes upon the people? many men in my life-time, and I have always observed that the most bitter enemies of hereditary rank and hereditary wealth are to be found amongst monied men, who measure lords I by no means impute blame to by the scale of pounds, shillings, and vour Lordship for not attempting to do pence, and who, having been the this act of justice at this time; nor makers of their own fortunes, take spedo I argue, from your not doing cial care never to look behind them, it, the want of a disposition in and have not the smallest regard for you to do it; but I beseech your any-thing that bears a traditionary chaLordship to consider, how mortifying, racter. All the world is the same to how galling, how provoking it must them; and, as all men have ambition of be to the working man, who pays some sort or other, the ambition of such taxes and who receives none, to see men is, not to see a greater man than perked up by the side of him a person themselves; and as the order of nobility who lives upon the taxes, qualified to tells them, thus far shall you go, and vote at elections, while he himself is no farther, they have a natural desire disqualified! If the editor of the to pull down that order. Now, this is Morning Chronicle, in the fulness of by no means the turn of mind of the his contempt for the knowledge of the working people, whose utmost ambiworking people, think them too ig-tion is that of attaining excellence in norant to perceive, or too blunted to their several callings, and whose desires feel, the injustice and insolence of this, all terminate in being able to live well, he knows less of the working people of in exchange for their constant labour. England than he knows of the Hebrew From thousands of men in the middle tongue. They do perceive the insolence rank of life I have heard invective of this distinction; they do feel upon against the order of nobility; from no the subject as it becomes them to feel: working man did I ever hear such in their good-nature; their generosity; my life; and I am perfectly satisfied their proneness always to think well of that there would be more danger to the the Government; their natural abhor-order of nobility from voting confined rence of every-thing tending to dis- to twenty-pound householders than from honour the country and to tear it to voting on the principle of a suffrage pieces, made them eagarly seize the perfectly universal. Nay, I am satisfied Reform Bill as the olive branch; but that if the twenty-pound householder in exact proportion to the sacrifice scheme were tried, the peers would, for which they willingly made to concilia-their own safety, be compelled to resort and to raise the suffrage and thereby diminish the number of voters in the great towns; and 1 further believe, that this is the conviction of every well-informed man in the whole kingdom. to universal suffrage, as Henry the Seventh, to preserve his kingly powers against the encroachments of the barons, was compelled to call in the people. But, my Lord, the peers who oppose the bill seem to have thought of no- Such a thing as this never before disthing but the present moment. They graced any body of rulers upon the face saw, as I saw, that the members coming of the earth! What a surprising thing from the great towns, and chosen by that a man, literally bred up at the the working people, would never suffer plough tail; never having been put to a that working people to be borne down school; never having had a patron of to the earth as they now are; and they any description; having had to work clearly saw that there was no possible all his life like a horse, to maintain and way of relieving the working people, breed up a numerous family; having other than that of taking off the taxes had no one contingency that has fato a very great extent; and they knew voured his progress in life; having had that this could not be done without no one earthly resource out of himself; beginning by taking from them and never having written a line to catch the their families and dependents the enor- thoughtless, or to flatter any description mous sums which they now receive out of persons, high or low; having preof those taxes. They saw, for instance, ferred living on a crust to riches and that the ten-pound suffrage would, if I ease obtained by any of those means chose it, put me into Parliament, where by which literary men usually obtain they well know that I never would be, wealth and exaltation: what a surprising without making the most strenuous thing that such a man, leading such a efforts to cause this object to be ac- life, should become so formidable to two complished. I am fully warranted in great parties, dividing between them believing that the certainty, or nearly the whole of the powers of the Governthe certainty, that the ten-pound suf- ment of the greatest and richest country frage would put me into Parliament, in the world, as to make those two was one of the reasons for their rejecting parties (waging eternal strife as to the bill. I am fully warranted in be-every-thing else) unite like children from lieving this, because, while almost every the same mother, in efforts of every deone of them who spoke against the scription, to keep that man down! Yet, bill made allusion to me and to Man- surprising as it is, it is not less true than chester, no less than four of them it is surprising. Before the Reform named me and that town, and cited the Bill was brought in, and when we were : intention of that town to choose me as all on the tiptoe of expectation, I said an instance of the great danger to be to a friend, who was sitting talking with apprehended from the ten-pound suf- me on the subject, "What sort of refrage in great towns; and, my Lord, I" form do you think they mean to give would not take my oath that it was not "us?" His answer was: "I think they Cobbett and Manchester that convinced" will give just as much as will your colleague, Lord BROUGHAM, of" enable them to keep you out of Parthe propriety of being "ready to re"liament." I told him that I made no consider" his opinions relative to that doubt, that that would be the wish; but part of the bill! that if they gave so little as that, they would soon become more odious their predecessors; and that they could not very well exclude me by hammer as they had very nearly done in the SIX ACTS, two of which might asel have had the name; for every man in the kingdom saw that the Acts were inten ed solely for the man. To be plain, I do verily believe, that · Cobbett and Manchester had great weight in the rejection of the bill, and also great weight with most of your colleagues, if not with your Lordship, in forming that design, which I believe to have been entertained, if it be not still en*tertained, to alter the bill in this respect, possessing what are called honours and dignities, and who would not pass one evening amongst the guttlers and gossippers and spitters and belchers of the boozing-ken of Bellamy, even on condition of thereby adding five years to the length of my life; can I, for my own sake, sigh after a seat in the Parlia ment? What adds to the curiosity of the lived all my life as free as a bird in the thing is, that I never have wished to woods; who have never been thwarted possess any public power of any sort, in my will by any-body, and who have except that of being in Parliament, and never had on my shoulders responsibility that wish arose from a desire to assist in to any living soul; who value not effecting a Parliamentary Reform I wealth, who cannot gain a particle of cannot but know the prodigious difficul-fame, who despise the very thought of ties that must surround a man who shall now undertake to assist in putting the affairs of this great and troubled country to rights. I know well that my thirteen propositions, which Lord WYNFORD (I think they call him), who was once the renowned SERJEANT BEST, lamented that he had lost, and therefore could not read them to the House, and which I will subjoin to this letter, that Yet, what a fuss, what a contriving, the late Serjeant may have them another what a plotting, to keep me out of that time; I know, my Lord, that these hole of candle-light confusion, to sit in thirteen propositions must be adopted which, more than one session by candleto the very letter, or that the discontent light, would demand a motive much, after the reform will be even greater stronger than I can at this moment than it is at this moment. And am I, conceive! What an intriguing, what a of all men in the world, so stupid as not plotting, what a prosecuting, by both to perceive the great difficulties attend- the parties; and what terrible calamiing that adoption? Am I so short-ties to this our country! And, at once sighted as not to foresee the turmoil horrible and ludicrous as is the thought, which will arise in consequence? Do I verily believe that, at last, both parties I know so little of mankind as not to would prefer a going upon the rocks to be aware, that he who inflicts present the seeing of me in that Parliament, in evil on a comparative few, is sure to which I do not want to be, but to go find but weak apologists in the many, into which I will never decline, if any on whom he is bestowing future and body of electors shall freely, and of permanent good? Do I not know, their own accord, choose me to be the that reproaches follow the knife of the representative of their will; and in which surgeon, though it be necessary to the Parliament the nobility, if they had had saving of life? Can I behold in pros-common sense, would have taken care pect, as I do, as clearly as I behold the to have me long and long ago, seeing paper on which I am writing, swarms that, while I would not have suffered of clamorous pensioners, sinecure peo-them to take one penny unjustly out of ple, retired-allowance people, discarded the pockets of the people, I would not commissioners, dead-weight people, by have suffered them to be despoiled by thousands upon thousands, growling loan-mongers and Jews; always having fundholders, and dependents of all been convinced, as I still am, that an these, swarming like locusts upon the aristocracy of title and of privilege, banks of the Nile, and all directing a when kept within due and constitutional good share, at least, of their reproaches bounds, brings none of that oppression towards me: can I behold all this, and upon the working people which is albehold, at the same time, the delivered ways brought upon them by a damned the freed, the benefited, the happy na-aristocracy of money. tion, leaving me to bear the reproaches I have, thus, my Lord, very frankly, as well as I can: can I behold all and, I trust, with becoming respect, this, and, still possessing my senses, offered you my opinion upon a subject embark in the perilous concern as on a deeply interesting to those industrious party of pleasure? Can I, who have and laborious millions to whom our country chiefly owes its greatness. I am fully persuaded, that it is your individual wish to act justly towards them; glebes; and, for the rest, leave them to the voluntary contributions of the people. and that you may have the resolution 5. To take all the rest of the property, to give effect to that wish, or to appeal I am, my Lord, (and most humble servant, WM. COBBETT. P.S. The following are the 13 pro- cures, grants, allowances, half-pay, 2. To discharge the standing army, ex cept such part of the ordnance and 3. To make the counties, each accord- 4. To abolish tithes of every descrip tion; to leave to the clergy the churches, the church-yards, the parsonage houses, and the ancient commonly called church-property; all the houses, lands, manors, tolls, rents, and real property of every kind, now possessed by bishops, chapters, or other ecclesiastical bodies, and all the misapplied property of corporate bodies of every sort; and also all the property called crown-lands, or crown-estates, including that of the Duchies of Corn] wall and Lancaster; and sell them all, and apply the proceeds to the discharge of the Debt which the late parliaments contracted with the fundholders. To cease, during the first six months To divide the proceeds of all the pro- 9. To abolish all internal taxes (except |