they labour in their vocation with hearty virulence, hoping one day to change places with the attorney-general.

Men of these various descriptions have been writing to the populace for years past: they are not without employment in the daily press; but the weekly press is almost exclusively their own, and this is of far more importance, for it is the weekly paper which finds its way to the pot-house in town, and the ale-house in the country, inflaming the turbulent temper of the manufacturer, and disturbing the quiet attachment of the peasant to those institutions under which he and his fathers have dwelt in peace. He receives no account of public affairs (and these are times in which the remotest peasant feels an anxiety concerning them which was never known before) but what comes through these polluted sources. The murderers of Overbury destroyed him by seasoning with poison whatever he took, his food, his drink, and his medicine: so every thing is drugged which passes through the hands of the anarchist journalists. Victory is depreciated, and represented as matter of regret, because it tends to lengthen a war which the anarchists and the despondents have pronounced hopeless; failure is exaggerated and made matter of consolation, or ill-concealed joy, because it brings us nearer to an abandonment of the contest. With whatever enemy we may be engaged, upon whatever cause, in whatever quarrel, it is England which is wrong, it is England which ought to yield. If Buonaparte be spoken of, his crimes are palliated or concealed, his success blazoned, his talents magnified, and held up for awe and admiration; his policy described as infallible; his means inexhaustible; his power not to be resisted. Thus do these men labour to destroy in their readers all sympathy with their country; all joy in her triumph; all natural pride in her glories; all generous exultation in her name; all interest in her cause. At home every thing is represented in the darkest colours; nothing but imbecility, venality, profligacy, profusion, waste and peculation on the part of the rulers; on the part of the people distress, misery, hunger: the populace are reminded of their numbers, they are told of their strength, and they are reproached for their patience,

"Pack-bearing patience, that base property
And silly gift of the all-enduring ass."

Every topic is made subservient to the same conclusion, that things are bad and must be changed; that corruption must be cut up by the roots; that the soil must be cleared by the plough and the harrow.

When corn has become damaged it is said to evolve a specific poison for the human system: poison of this kind being adminis tered in the daily bread of the people, has been producing slowly,

but surely, the effect for which it was intended. It has now become "rank, and smells to heaven." But though the eruption did not show itself till a fit opportunity occurred last year, the infection had long been taken. The famous text* in Ezekiel, which is the watchword of the Luddites, was current among the manufacturers of the north more than seven years before they made any public manifestation of a seditious spirit. There is another circumstance equally serious in itself, and which ought to operate as a warning upon those persons whom it concerns. The secret directors of these people, who have given sufficient proofs of their ability for mischief, lose no opportunity of encouraging their confederates, by producing authorities in their favour, and they are at no loss where to look for them. Speeches which produce no other effect in parliament than that of exciting indignation at the effrontery of those who deliver them, or wonder at their infatuation, operate very differently when they are reported in a condensed shape, and all exposure of their futility and falsehood is withheld. For this, no doubt, they are designed, as far as is consistent with regular party policy; but the Luddite committees make a farther use of them, and the most inflammatory harangues of this description are printed like dying speeches, and sold through the manufacturing districts at a halfpenny or penny each. The effusions of the hot city orators, and the most incendiary paragraphs of the anarchist journals are circulated in the same manner.

"Give me the press," said Mr. Sheridan, "against venal lords, commons or princes-against despotism of any kind, or in any shape-let me but array a free press, and the liberties of England will stand unshaken." And what if the press in abuse of freedom, and to the eventual destruction of freedom, its own as well as all other, should be arrayed against king, lords and commons, and governments of every kind? What would remain unshaken then? The press, like all other powerful engines, is mighty for mischief as well as for good, and little must they be aware of the force of this artillery who imagine that any government can suffer itself to be battered in breach by it with impunity. Look to the facts, and see what the licentiousness of the press has already produced. The armed associations of Nottingham and Yorkshire adding to the secrecy and combination of the united Irishmen, the coolness and regularity of the English character, and disgracing that character by the principles which they hold, the end at which they aim, and the assassinations which they have committed; even these conspirators against life, property, and social order, are less alarming in their

*And thou profane prince of Israel, whose day is come, whose iniquity shall have an end-Thus, saith the Lord God; remove the diadem and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high.-I will overturn, overturn, overturn it.-xxi. 25, 6, 7.

acts and in their purposes, than are the symptoms which manifested themselves among the mob upon the death of Mr. Perceval. Who does not know that men, women, and children paraded the streets of a populous city in the heart of England, with flags in honour of that event-in honour of the murder of one who carried into public life the gentleness of his individual character, and in his private station was the model of every virtue? The victories of a Nelson or a Wellington would not have excited more overflowing joy in them when their natural feelings were uncorrupted, than was displayed upon this accursed occasion. Bonfires were kindled to celebrate a deed by which the peaceable part of the community were shocked as at some unwonted visitation of heaven, and for which, when they had recovered from the first stunning sensation, they grieved as for a private and peculiar calamity. The same un-english, unchristian, inhuman spirit, displayed itself in Cornwall; and in London the indication of the temper of the populace was yet worse.

These, then, are the feelings of the pot-house politicians who have for years past been sucking in the venom and virulence of the demagogue journalists with their daily potations. When Sir Francis Burdett heard how the wretches who would have rescued Bellingham huzzaed his name, we certainly believe that no man regretted it more than himself. At that hour, and in these rejoicings, their temper disclosed itself without disguise, the temper of that rabble who vociferate for purity of election, throw up their hats for him, and lackey the heels of his processions. They ratified the murder; they made it their own act and deed, and even contracted in it a degree of guilt which did not attach to the perpetrator. For that unhappy man, though never was the forfeiture of life more imperiously required for the sake of society, it was impossible not to feel something like compassion; but what shall be said of those writers who by their pestilent perseverance in preaching evil, prepared the people to rejoice in his deed, and who have been wicked enough to hold up the victim as a warning, instead of the murderer!

Mr. Sheridan has said that there are three ways of destroying the liberty of the press; "one is by oppressive acts of parliament, another by ex officio informations and the unconstitutional banishment of printers to distant gaols, and the third by raising the price of cheap publications." In this country, heaven be praised, the press is in no danger from either; but there is a fourth and far more effectual way, which Mr. Sheridan overlooked-by giving full play to its licentiousness. Among the truths of universal application which history teaches to those who are capable of receiving its lessons, there is none more certain than that the abuse of liberty is always followed by the loss of liberty; it is not more the

rightful punishment than it is the necessary consequence of the crime. Check the abuse of the press before the crisis is produced, and its inestimable blessings will be preserved; but if the anarchists be suffered to carry on their sapping and mining, and to keep their batteries in full play, the liberty of the press would not indeed be destroyed by their triumph, but it would be perilously endangered after their destruction. The immediate horrors of the Jacquerie would be our portion; the fatal consequences would be felt by our children and our children's children. As for those persons who, misunderstanding this, or misrepresenting it, would take shelter in the common-places of their orators, and tell us that the freedom of the press is like the reputation of a woman, not to be touched without injury; that it furnishes always its own remedy, and conveys the antidote as well as the bane-such reasonings, if they were not likely to proceed sometimes from well meaning men, would be too silly to deserve refutation. A word suffices to refute them. What reason have you to suppose that they who swallow the bane will be persuaded to take the antidote? and would you suffer books of obscenity to be distributed in your family, because you can give your boys and girls sermons and treatises of morality to counteract their effect?

The incendiaries have succeeded in kindling a flame; it is in the power of the laws to prevent them from extending it, and adding fuel to the conflagration. There are other causes which tend to shake the fabric of our prosperity, over which government indeed has no control. The wide-spreading defection from the national church is one; another is to be found in those attempts to reform the English laws, which, if they were successful, would change the very principle upon which those admirable laws have been founded, and which even now loosen their hold upon the hearts of the people. More direct mischief is produced by the paltry proceedings of those save-all politicians, who boast of their economy in banishing newspapers from the public offices, and who calculate to the fraction of a pen what quantity of quill-barrel ought to be allowed for a clerk's daily consumption. This pitiful spirit courts popularity by addressing itself to the meanest feelings of the multitude, and the anarchists need wish for no better assistance than that which is given them by these mole-eyed and unintentional coadjutors. But the more these causes, which are not within reach of the executive government, aggravate the existing danger, the more necessary is it that speedy and vigorous measures should be taken for removing such as are under its control.

The first duty of government is to stop the contagion; the next, as far as possible, to remove the causes which have predisposed so large a part of the populace for receiving it. We shall do little

if we do not guard against a recurrence of the danger by wise and extensive measures of prospective policy. The anarchists may be silenced, and the associations of their disciples broken up; but while the poor continue what they are, continuing also, as they must, to gain in number upon the more prosperous classes, the materials for explosion will always be under our feet.

The first and most urgent business is to provide relief for those upon whom the pressure of the times bears hardest. Charity is nowhere so abundantly and munificently displayed as in England, not even in those countries where alms-giving is considered as a commutation for sin; but mere charity is not what is needed in this emergency. The various plans which have been devised, and the local and partial experiments which have been made, for bettering the condition of the poor, as reported by the society embodied for that purpose, are highly honourable to the members of that society, and to the land in which they exist. The society which has been formed under the auspices of the Duke of York, for the immediate purpose of affording assistance to the distressed counties, is doing much; and there is cause to hope that the benefit which must result from its encouragement of the fisheries will continue after the emergency is past. The food which is thus brought into the market is so much clear gain; it is nutritious; it is the cheapest which can possibly be procured; it is drawn from a source of supply which is inexhaustible, and the mode of procuring it adds to our best defence, by keeping up a nursery for our fleets.

There is another way by which employment might be provided for many of those whom want of work renders not only burdensome, but dangerous to society, and from which permanent good would ensue to the community. These ends might be attained, if our great landholders could be persuaded, instead of adding estate to estate, till they count whole districts, and almost whole counties within their domains, to apply the capital, that is thus directed, to the better purpose of doubling the value of the lands which they already possess, by bringing them into the highest state of cultivation of which they are capable. How many are the marshes which might thus be drained, the moors which might be reclaimed, the wild and lonely heaths which would be rendered productive, and where villages would grow round the first rude. huts of the labourers! Great, indeed, is the present relief which might thus be afforded to those who need it, the permanent advantage to the country, and ultimately to the principal landholders themselves: but that they should thus see their true interest, and act upon it, is rather to be wished than expected. Of all the maxims of proverbial wisdom which experience has bequeathed to mankind, there is none which is so seldom practically applied.

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