in great measure, the unrestrained waste and the extravagant expenditure of the public money, real estate will have to bear heavier burdens. Your Committee are not surprised that those who are watchful of their personal interest relinquish investments in real estate, which are subject to, and must, under existing laws, bear all the burdens of taxation for county purposes, and turn their attention to stock and other personal securities, which are free from those enormous exactions. While they acknowledge, with pain, this state of things, they would recommend that the question, as to the amount necessary to be raised and paid by the county commissioners, be met and fairly treated at once."

And then the committee goes on to examine 47 items of extravagance and peculation, such as no country under the heavens ever allowed before, one of which, by way of sample, is Item 43; and it reads as follows:

"Public roads (opening streets), 120,000 dollars. This they would recommend not to be allowed; and here your Committee must express their entire and unqualified disapprobation of opening and grading streets for the purpose of allowing private companies to make railroads at the expense of the county. This is another great abuse which the public should frown indignantly upon-an abuse which your Committee cannot enforce their objections to in terms sufficiently strong."

When taxation becomes so enormous as no longer to be endured, the very taxers will come forward, and, by way of pacifying the people, make a report like the above. Two-thirds, I will warrant, if not the whole, of that board, were men who had a hand in levying the taxes which they here complain of, and which they shared bountifully of themselves. But of this the people, as a body, know nothing, and are, for a time, quieted by being made to believe that there are those in authority who are guarding their public interests. The system of taxation that this board complained of gets worse every hour, and it has now so involved the county in debt that it is absolutely bankrupt. The city and different townships of that county have, since then, been obliged to resort to paying their debts and their labourers with notes as low as twopence each! In the year 1837 they put out millions of these notes, and, on the face of them, promised to redeem them that day twelvemonth, in gold or silver, with one per cent. interest. Everybody, however, knew, who knew anything of their affairs, that they did not intend to pay them—indeed they knew at the time that it would never be in their power; but still they passed, from one poor man to another, till one-half of them became worn out, and, to the poor, a total loss. When the day of payment came for the rest there was great anxiety in the public mind to know what shift the villains would next resort to;

R

and The Public Ledger, of October 22nd, 1838, gave us the following information with regard to one of the townships, which I take as a sample of the whole :

REDEMPTION OF SOUTHWARK CERTIFICATES.-The commissioners of the district are redeeming their small certificates of loan by issuing script of one hundred dollars and upwards, bearing interest at the rate of six per cent. per annum, payable half-yearly, and not redeemable until January, 1849."

I cannot go on to tell all the consequences and sufferings occasioned by these things, nor is there necessity for it, because a man who has heard thus much, and whose imagination cannot so far complete the picture as to satisfy himself that in democracy and republicanism there is no security against oppression-such a man is too ignorant to comprehend, however clear and full the facts might be exhibited. I have repeatedly shown this, in the course of my letters, from the highest authority in the Union. In this letter I quote more particularly from the documents of mechanics and working men-men in the same sphere of life as I presume a great many of you to be in. They have, however, as you suppose, great advantages over you-they having had, for upwards of sixty years, all the things that your charter calls for; and I will venture to say that, if you knew their difficulties, you would not exchange situations with them. In the year 1835 there was scarcely a trade from one end of the country to the other that did not "strike for wages and time," they having, by their own showing, been reduced to the utmost misery; and from one of their circulars, on that occasion, I take the following remarks:--

Why is it that so large a portion of the population of our happy land are grovelling in ignorance, in the way to intemperance and crime? We answer, that, as a mass, we have fallen asleep-the few robbed us of our birthright, and now even deny us a mess of pottage as a remuneration. Something must be done to relieve us and our children from the thraldom of vice and ignorance into which their avarice has plunged us. . . In order that this most desirable object should be attained, we, the parents and guardians of the children, operatives of cotton and woollen mills in the town of Patterson, do most solemnly protest against working our children from twelve to fourteen hours per day. We have viewed with deep regret for years this abominable and unnatural system, which has confined them more like criminals than the children of a free people, excluding them from the free and wholesome air; no time allowed for recreation, which is so essentially neces sary to promote health; scarcely time allowed them to take their scanty meals; they retire to their beds at night worn down and exhausted with excessive labour hence they are deprived of any privilege except work

ing, eating, and sleeping. Is it to be wondered at that our country has become the great theatre of mobs, yea, we may say murders too, when we remember that the poor and their children, in manufacturing towns and districts, are kept in ignorance and regarded but little superior to the beasts that perish?

"The causes of the strike in Patterson we will here state in addition to those already presented :

"1st. The manufacturers have not only required of us to labour on an average of from twelve to fourteen hours per day, but they have added additional labour without advancing our wages.

“2nd. They have imposed upon us, against our will and consent, a system of payment, viz., an order system, which reduces us to the disagreeable necessity of paying whatever price the extravagance of the storekeeper may think proper to demand.

"3rd. They have in a number of instances, where settlements have been demanded, kept back one week's work, and demanded a receipt in full.

"4th. They have been uniformly in the practice of deducting one quarter from each day's labour when we were behind the time but five minutes.'

Now I am aware that in England those employed in factories complain of similar treatmeat, and they attribute such treatment to the want of your "Charter;" that they are wrong in their opinions on this subject, they are here assured from the mouths of their brethren who live under such "Charter," and who are, as they confess, in a state of grovelling ignorance, in the way of intemperance and crime they have fallen asleep and have been robbed of all they possessed: their children are in the thraldom of vice, working from twelve to fourteen hours a-day: confined more like criminals than the children of a free people; scarcely time to eat their scanty meals, and, at night, worn down and exhausted by excessive labour. Their country is the great theatre of mobs and murderers, and the working part of the community are regarded but little better than the beasts that perish.

This, then, is their condition, as stated by themselves, and which, I trust, will enable you to judge as to how much better or worse it is than is your own. There is one thing that, without experience, you cannot know it is the excessive and oppressive heat in the summer season, which, as I believe, makes it harder to work six hours there than twelve in England. But, while you have this advantage, they have the advantage of having votes, and can, once a-year, choose a beggar from the street to represent them, and he is qualified without being worth even a bunch of matches: so that he sleeps a few nights, if it be upon straw, in the district, they can, if they please, and he is willing, send him to make

the laws of their country. To what, then, shall we attribute their sufferings? To nothing, certainly, other than that they are incapable, as a whole, of knowing what, according to the laws of nature, is good for themselves. This, granted, we must allow that the most superior and intellectual men should manage and direct public affairs, and that it is not possible for the ignorant and inexperienced to select such men. Such a duty should be left to those who are capable of judging; and who are they? If we had a public and unerring test to try them by, it would be well; but, as that is impossible, we must resort to other, though perhaps imperfect, means. That there are men who have had much education bestowed upon them, and yet, for want of capacity or other causes, are shamefully ignorant, all will agree. That there are men of property equally ignorant and very tyrannical is also too true. But all must allow that a suitable education for a lawgiver is absolutely necessary for the well-being of our country.

And, as to property, we do not believe that the want of it is any proof of a man's ignorance, want of principle, or capacity to fill important situations; but we may suppose, though it ought not to be, that property has a tendency to bind a man more strongly to the interest of his country; and, if so, he is the more likely to be careful and considerateto do nothing that has a tendency to involve that country in difficulties ; for, by doing so, he would put in jeopardy his individual property, that he or his forefathers have taken so much pains to obtain.

Every man, then, possessed with common sense will be convinced that the first-named qualification cannot, without dangerous consequences, be dispensed with; and that, from the last-named, benefits may arise. Qualifications the reverse of these have been tried at times in various countries, and have ever led to a state of things similar to that here in part described by your friend and well-wisher,

THOMAS BROTHERS.

LETTER II.

TO THE CHARTISTS.

MY FRIENDS,

Bishop's Itchington, Sept. 5, 1839.

In my last I neglected to speak of several things that I think you ought to be made acquainted with. In the first place, you appear to think that if your Charter was lawfully established there would be an end to poverty and wretchedness. In this I know you to be altogether mistaken; and, from what I am about to lay before you, you cannot do otherwise, I think, than become convinced that I am right.

You have a new Poor-law, with which your leaders generally seem very well pleased; but to that part of you who are poor and have daughters, or find it necessary to ask for relief under that law, perhaps, it may not be altogether so charming; and I dare say that you have no idea that in Pennsylvania, where a similar charter to yours is the law of the land, there is a poor-law exactly like yours, as far as yours goes, which is not near so far as to cruelty as that of the Republicans. In the neighbourhood of Philadelphia there is a workhouse lately built, anything like the equal to which, for size, I have never heard of, and any ten that I have seen in England, as far as my eye will guide me correctly, would not, in that respect, be equal to it. In this place, when the poor are received, their hair is cropped close, the uniform dress put upon them, man and wife are separated, and children from both; and, in short, all and everything that is so odious in the eyes of an Englishman, like myself, who lived in unreformed days, when there was no need of places like these, and when, in my native village, if there was a solitary being who, from whatever cause, wanted assistance, it was the special care of his fellow-creatures that it should be granted in such a manner as not, if possible, to hurt his feelings, or to let him think that his poverty might be considered a disgrace.

How different the feelings of the Americans, who are for ever exulting over their large poor-houses, their prisons, and their cruel punishment to human beings! When a stranger visits the city of Philadelphia, it is a hundred to one that the first walk he takes with his American friend will be to the Waterworks, on the river Schuylkill. These works force up the water to the top of a big hill, where there are reservoirs