BOOK THE FIFTH. SOME GLANCES AT THE SUFFERING AND CRIME, THE IGNORANCE AND DEGRADATION, CAUSED BY THE OPPRESSIVE BURDENS LAID UPON THE BRITISH PEOPLE. Glorious days for the Church! and such displays well worthy the followers of the meek and lowly Jesus! Services of gold for idle, port-bibbing, over-fed churchmen, when thousands-nay, millions of families are wanting bread! There must be an end to all this by-and-by; the people's eyes are beginning to open, and their lips to be unsealed. —London Satirist March, 1842. We have offended, oh! my countrymen! And been most tyrannous. From East to West, bartering freedom and the poor man's life A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight Fortune's unequality exhibits under the sun.Carlyle. STATE OF THE COUNTRY. On the evening of Friday week, Sir James Graham announced in the House of Commons, the terrible fact, that twelve hundred thousand people are at present receiving parochial relief in England and Wales! One in every thirteen of the population is on the poor rates, and we may safely assume that one in every ten is destitute. This state of distress is unparalleled, we do believe, in the history of any nation on the face of the earth, Aberdeen Herald, June. 1842, BOOK FIFTH. SOME GLANCES AT THE SUFFERING AND CRIME, THE IGNORANCE AND DEGRADATION, CAUSED BY THE OPPRESSIVE BURDENS LAID UPON THE BRITISH PEOPLE. The Reader who has gone with me through the previous chapters, in which I have spoken of the principal burdens that press upon the lower classes in the British Islands, is now prepared to contemplate the results of all this oppression as they are developed in the sufferings of wronged millions. The throne and aristocracy have had all control over legislation for a thousand years, and the necessary result of this system of things has at last been worked out, -the experiment which has been in trial for ages, is finally perfected, the aristocracy are princes, and the poor are beggars. In turning over a file of London papers last summer, I saw two or three facts on the same 1 page, which will illustrate the subject upon which we are now entering. "A noble Lord," (the earl of Scarborough,) had taken his seat in the House of Peers, and voted before taking the oaths and going through the other prescribed and requisite forms. By violating the laws of the realm, the noble Lord had incurred numerous and severe disabilities, (according to the 30th Charles II. Stat. 2, Cap. 1.) It was considered of course out of the question to execute the law's penalty upon a nobleman; and the House of Peers, violating the standing rules of that body, (that no bill shall be read twice in one day,) introduced a bill to relieve the offending Earl, and passed it through all its stages into a law the very day it was introduced. Perhaps this was all right. The next item in the column, was the following: "A tradesman of Shrewsbury, travelling in a taxed cart, on the Atcham road, was on Sunday charged a toll of 10s. 4d. in passing through Emstrey gate, for having the name of the owner of the cart affixed on the wrong side of it!!" In the Examiner I saw an account of the trial of Lord Waldegrave, in which that nobleman was acquitted, and it was thought in violation of justice, by Chief Justice Denman. Immediately after the same eminent Jurist sentenced a poor letter-carrier, who had stolen a penny from a letter, to transportation for life. These facts illustrate the spirit of English law and English society. The poor letter-carrier who |