ing stroke to the distresses under which the agricultural classes have so long been labouring, and throwing upwards of four millions of rural labourers into penury and want. It is as clear, therefore, as the sun at noonday, that the interest of the producers, of the cultivators, and of the working classes, is not the interest which is predominant in the Reform Parliament; that it is some other and adverse faction which has contrived, amidst the public transports, to possess itself of political power; and that the labouring poor are farther now from obtaining substantial relief than ever.

What, then, is the body which has really succeeded in appropriating to itself the political influence which was once vested in the heads and representatives of the great interests of the State, which was once divided among the agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial classes, and secured to each that due attention to their wants which is essential to any system of good government? We shall give the answer in the words of our bitterest enemy; of one who knew us in many respects better than we did ourselves; who was equal to Alexander in military genius, and second only to Bacon in political sagacity.

"The English," says Napoleon, "are a nation of SHOPKEEPERS." In this single expression is to be found the true secret of the pecuniary difficulties in which all classes have been involved for the last fifteen years, and of the total failure of the Reform Parliament to administer any, even the slightest relief to the real necessities of the nation. It is the undue, the overwhelming ascendency which the class of traders, mo

neylenders, and shopkeepers, have of late years been constantly acquiring over the cultivators and manufacturers, that is, over the working classes, which has produced all the false measures into which the Tories were seduced in the last ten years of their administration, and has at last precipitated the nation, bound hand and foot, into the bonds of the shopocracy and moneyocracy, riveted round their necks by the Reform in Parliament.

That this has been the chief cause of all the public distress; that it has been the remote but certain parent of the Free Trade system, the change in the Currency, and the abandonment of the Navigation Laws, the hideous infant factories, and, last of all, of the fatal Reform in Parliament, which has at once prostrated the whole working and producing classes at the feet of the buying and consuming, we apprehend to be as clear as any proposition in Euclid. We are preparing and collecting materials for this great subject, which will be fully developed in our next Number, and would have appeared in this, were it not that the instant approach of the great strike on the 1st March, imperatively calls for the consideration of the Trades' Unions, which are in fact only a consequence and corollary from the dreadful political errors into which the people, under the guidance of a political faction, whose interests were adverse to their own, have been led, and the ruinous ascendency given to that faction by the Reform Bill. *

The real interests of the Conservative Party, and of the workingclasses, both agricultural and manufacturing, are, and ever must be, the

Poor's Laws to Ireland;-and they are now preparing, at the bidding of the shopkeepers of London, and the great towns, to overwhelm the cultivators with a deluge of foreign grain, that is, to reduce to beggary and ruin four millions of persons dependent upon rural labour. Enquire in any county of the kingdom, from the Land's End to Caithness, what sort of landlords the democrats are?-how much they contribute to public institutions?-how much they bestow on private charity? You will hear in general that they are the most grasping and niggardly of the community; that they exact every thing from their tenants, and give nothing to the poor; that their names are to be seen at few subscriptions their assistance felt at few undertakings; that their general characteristic is that of being alieni appetens, without the single redeeming point in Catiline's character, sui profusus. We speak of the general character of the democratic party. Doubtless there are many honourable exceptions to these remarks.

The manner in which the democratic party who have uniformly advocated these measures, destructive and ruinous though they were to the whole productive industry of the people, have nevertheless contrived to obtain the almost entire management of their thoughts, and succeeded in wielding at pleasure their vast energies, is one of the most startling and extraordinary of the many extraordinary phenomena these times exhibit, and affords a signal instance of the facility with which men may be led, by skilful flattery and alluring expressions, to support the leaders who are really pursuing measures the most destructive to their welfare. They were incessantly told that public happiness was their great object; that the people never could be sufficiently instructed, enlightened, and free; that self-government was the true panacea for all the evils of humanity; and that if political power was only vested to a sufficient extent in the people, all the ills of life would

speedily disappear. Misled by this dazzling phantom, they generally and cordially supported the democratic leaders, and submitted patiently for a tract of years to the most acute suffering, inflicted by the measures of their demagogues, in the firm belief, which was sedulously inculcated, that it was the resistance of the Conservatives which was the cause of all the evil. We have to thank the Reform Bill for having at length put an end to this extraordinary delusion, and by seating the Movement party in complete sovereignty, for the time at least, in the Legislature, brought at once to the test the sincerity of their professions to relieve the people, and their ability to do any thing efficient for the public welfare.

That the evils under which the labouring classes now suffer, and which have produced the formida ble organization of the Trades' Unions, are in no respect likely to be removed, but, on the contrary, greatly increased by the greater ascendency of the democratic party, is farther illustrated by the fact, that they exist to fully a greater extent in North America, notwithstanding the drain of the back settlements and a boundless soil, than in the densely peopled realm of Britain.

"The North Americans distinctly admit, that ever since the Revolution which separated them from the mother country, and conferred upon them the blessings of self-government, magisterial and even parental authority has been upon the decline, and that now, at last, combinations exist amongst working men, to such a fearful extent, for overthrowing the institution of property, that a subversion of all authority is apparently at hand, there being absolutely nothing left in that country to preserve its social system from being torn in pieces, but education only."*

What security education is calculated to afford against these enormous evils in an old and corrupted state like Great Britain, has already been fully considered in the former number of this series.t

higher wages, political working-men's parties, and fearful signs of resistance to the highest authority in the Federal Union. Nor is this change passing only upon a large scale, where we can survey it, or much of it, at least, as a mere matter of speculation. It is coming home to our cities and villages, and very dwellings. Aristocratical influence, and magisterial power, and parental authority, too, have been declining among us ever since the Revolution. There are abolitions of peerages in our towns; there are reform bills in our families; and our children are educated so freely, as to threaten rebellions, if not combinations, for securing their rights. There are, indeed, tendencies of this sort, which must be controlled and regulated, or society cannot exist; tendencies to a radical reform, so radical, indeed, that if not restrained it will tear up every social institution by the roots, and leave nothing behind but disorder, waste, and ruin."

The same truths are forcibly ilIlustrated in Mr Hamilton's recent and admirable work on North America.

"In the city of New York," he observes," a separation is rapidly taking place between the different orders of society. The operative class have already formed themselves into a society under the name of the Workies, in direct opposition to those who, more favoured by nature or fortune, enjoy the luxuries of life without the necessity for manual labour. These people make no secret of their demands, which, to do them justice, are few and emphatic. They are published in the newspapers, and may be read on half the walls of New York. The first postulate is, 'Equal and Universal Education.' It is false, they say, to maintain that there is at present no privileged order, no practical Aristocracy, in a country where distinctions of education are permitted. There does exist, they argue, an Aristocracy of the most odious kind,-an Aristocracy of knowledge, education, and refinement, which is inconsistent with the true Democratic

principles of absolute equality. They pledge themselves, therefore, to exert every effort, mental and physical, for the abolition of this flagrant injustice. They proclaim it to the world as a nuisance which must be abated, before the freedom of an American be something more than a mere empty boast. They solemnly declare that they will not rest satisfied, till every citizen in the United States shall

receive the same degree of education, and start fair in the competition for the honours and the offices of the State. As it is of course impossible—and these men know it to be so-to educate the labouring class to the standard of the richer, it is their professed object to reduce the latter to the same mental condition with the former; to prohibit all supererogatory knowledge; to have a maximum of acquirement, beyond which it shall be punishable to go. But those who limit their views to the mental degradation of their country are, in fact, the moderates of the party. There are others, who go still further, and boldly advocate the introduction of an Agrarian Law, and a periodical division of property. These unquestionably constitute the extrême gauche of the Worky Parliament, but still they only follow out the principles of their less violent neighbours, and eloquently dilate on the justice and propriety of every individual being equally

supplied with food and clothing."

We give the operatives due warning; they have no relief to expect from the democratic party, and as little from the frantic anarchical course they are now pursuing. That their sufferings are great, we lament to hear; that they neither can, nor will be relieved by the party to whose guidance they have hitherto and blindly surrendered themselves, is capable of demonstration.

The Reform Parliament is governed by an adverse interest to that of the producers. It is entirely ruled by the monied interests and TRADERS. This class has by the bill acquired a monstrous-an irresist ible preponderance in the Legislature. We grieve to say this; but it is self-evident; and the supporters of the Reform Bill have themselves to thank for having riveted the fetters of an adverse interest about their necks.

TO BUY CHEAP is the grand object of all the measures which now ema

nate from the Legislature, and have emanated for many years past. This is the foundation of the repeal of the Navigation Laws-of the diminution of the protecting duties-of the contraction of the currency-of the Free Trade system of the incessant and ruinous repeal of indirect taxes-of the threatened repeal of the Corn Laws. For

whose behoof is the incessant prosecution of this object undertaken? Is it for the interest of the producers, whether agricultural or manufacturing, whether rural or urban? No! It is for the interest of the buyers, of the traders who hope to get their sales augmented by a diminution of the price of their articles, and their profits increased by the reduction of the prime cost of the goods in which they deal,of the holders of money, and other classes in town who have fixed incomes, derived from the Funds, mortgage, or other unchanging sources, and therefore benefit immensely by every reduction which takes place. But this class have no interest in common with, or sympathy for, the producers of any description, that is, the great bulk of the labouring classes, rural or urban, in every department; on the contrary, their interest is just the reverse. To sell cheap, and buy still cheaper, is the great object of the monied and trading class; and it is the point, accordingly, to which all their efforts are directed. If they can only get corn cheap, they care not though half the agricultural labourers-that is, two millions of souls-are reduced to beggary; if they can only get cottons cheap, they care not though a million of operative weavers are forced to live in garrets on a shilling a-day; if whisky and gin are cheap, they care not though crime triples under its influence, and millions of human beings are precipitated into profligacy by the spread of the fiery poison. If silks and ribbons are cheap, they care not though the weavers of Spitalfields and Macclesfield are reduced by the free (comparatively) trade in French silks to ruin; if they only get freights cheap, they care not though, by the repeal of the Navigation Laws, the whole class of ship owners and builders are brought to the verge of insolvency, and the "wooden walls of old England" sent to the bottom.

This single observation furnishes the key to the Free Trade system, the change of the Currency, the abandonment of the Navigation Laws, and all the disastrous measures of the last fifteen years. It is the progressive increase of the monied and trading interest, the ascendency of

VOL. XXXV. NO. CCXIX.

the race of consumers over that of producers, which has gradually obtained for them the dominion of the Legislature, and precipitated the nation into that abandonment of Conservative principles and the protection of producers, and that submission to the dictates of towns, which distinguished the concluding years of the Tory Administration. By an infatuation which has few parallels even in the wide-spread annals of human folly, the manufacturing classes, the urban producers, were led, when the final struggle arose, to join their forces with those of their worst enemies, the urban consumers, and under the guidance of the democracy, and the banners of Reform, fought and gained the great battle against the remnant of the producers, reduced, by this unnatural union, and the delusion of republican principles, to a third of their natural forces.

This truth, the real secret of all the distresses and disasters of the present times, and the clear and general perception of which is indispensable towards any thing like a righting of the national vessel, is put in a very clear light by Mr Bernard, to whose able and original work we have already alluded.

Mr Ricardo, a great fundholder and dealer in loans and stockjobbing, was one of the chief authors of the change in the currency in 1819.

"This gentleman," says Mr Bernard, "had obtained considerable celebrity amongst his brethren of the Stock Exchange, as well as amongst all that class of Reformers, whose real object is,

not so much to benefit their country, as to enhance the value of money, by various publications on Political Economy; the leading principle of which is

to exhibit landowners and farmers in the most odious light possible to their fellow

countrymen, by representing their interin which case their prosperity would ests as adverse to those of all other people, alone depend on the degree of injury they could inflict upon others. The doctrine would indeed be true, were all working people, the public as they are called, consumers in a greater degree than they are producers, and were production chiefly confined to landowners and farmers only; but, fortunately for these latter classes, as working people, whether in agricul