bly presumptuous if, for the purpose of elucidating this point, a hard working rustic, exposed from sunrise to sunset, should be placed in the scale with a journeyman tailor. It appears in the manifesto issued by the London tailors, in the late thread-paper rebellion, that they were actually expected to work ten hours a day, for thirty-six shillings a week! This, by the oppressed tailors, was considered as an enormous exaction on the part of their employers, and resisted accordingly. Now the Agricultural Labourer is expected, at all seasons, to work at least the same time for nine shillings a week, which is about the average Agricultural wages of the Kingdom. The tailor marries and has, according to the metropolitan average of families, in the Tables, two children and eight-tenths; but give him two-tenths of a child, and say he has three children. Here are five persons, the tailor, his wife, and three children, to be supported on 36s. a week. This is about the average wages of four married Agricultural Labourers, who have four children and five-tenths each assigned to them in the Tables. In the one cas e the sum of thirty-six shillings has to support five persons, in the other case twenty-six persons. This immense distinction should be kept in view, with all its modifications, down to the Lancashire Gentlemen who throw up their eighteen or twenty shillings a week to "be taken into the pay of the Parish." If, upon examination, it should appear that the Rural Population saves less than the Manufacturing, it may be because they earn less. If it should appear that they commit more crime, this may be from additional distress and privation; but if that Population actually saves more, and commits less crime than the Manufacturing, then the charge, so elaborately made by Lord

Other Counties.

Manufacturing Counties,

Brougham, stands without a parallel in the regions of fiction; and that is the point to be ascertained.

The first part of the following Table comprises the three great Manufacturing Counties. The other part contains that large division of the Kingdom which has been subjected to some examination in a former page. This latter division includes several extensive Manufacturing Districts: such as the West Riding of Yorkshire, the Eastern Division of Somersetshire, &c.; the Returns for which are comprised in those of the Counties in which they are respectively situated. This has increased the amount of offences by many hundred cases, but the results will still be sufficiently striking.

A Statement of the Population, the Number of Committals, and the Number of Depositors in Savings Banks, in the following Counties ; compiled from Parliamentary documents.

Here, let it be again observed, we have all Wales and eleven English Counties, with a superficies equal to more than one-half, and a Population to more than one-third of England. The number of Committals in this extensive division, containing many populous Cities, and four-fifths of the Seaport Towns in the Kingdom, is seventy-two less than the Committals in the three Manufacturing Counties. In the latter, the Committals are in the proportion of 1 to 569 of the Population; while in the former division, they do not amount to 1 in 1,241. In the Manufacturing Counties, the Depositors in Savings Banks, are as 1 to 52; while in the other division they are as 1 to 38. THUS, IN PROPORTION TO THE POPULATION, THE COMMITTALS ARE 4,242 LESS IN THE LATTER DIVISION THAN IN THE MANUFACTURING ONE, WHILE there are 30,469 more DEPOSITORS IN SAVINGS BANKS! Still it was asserted by the Chancellor, the Oracle of Government, in the House of Lords, and the assertion circulated in his Pamphlet throughout the Kingdom, that Guilt stalks through the land, that the Calendar is filled to overflowing, and that the Manufacturing Districts afford the only exception to this devastation; and this calumnious assertion, which is proved to have been so monstrously false, is made on an occasion as vitally important to the People of England, as any which ever claimed the sober attention of the Legislature.

On matters of mere idle speculation, figurative Orators, like his Lordship, may fairly address themselves to the passions of mankind. When engaged on such subjects they revel in a world of their own, and may be safely indulged, even, to the utmost limits of a distempered fancy. But this privilege cannot be conceded to them when they profess to examine, for

important public purposes, the characters, concerns, and institutions of men. The Government that falsifies these, by its Official Organs, falsifies the vital elements of Civil Society; and, in a mixed Constitution, subjects the best disposed Legislative Body to the chance of inflicting a moral pestilence on mankind. Of this crime, my Lord Brougham and his Colleagues are convicted, on the authority of Parliamentary documents. The same authority triumphantly vindicates the Rural Population from the charge so wantonly preferred against them; but it does not shield them from the consequences of that charge. Under these consequences they are now suffering. The Law which was introduced by this Official vituperation, has gone forth, in all its harshness and severity, without being redeemed by one single kindly feature. This could never have been effected had not the public mind been most grievously prejudiced against the Poor;-an infallible method of producing such a result. As human nature is constituted, designing Politicians, intent on personal aggrandizement, cannot devise a more effective mode of sacrificing one description of men to propitiate another, than by first stripping their intended victims of every virtue, accusing them of every vice, and thus offering them up a polluted and helpless sacrifice to the foul spirit of sordid ambition. The adepts in this art, compounded of adulation and ferocity, would recklessly sacrifice the Monarch or the Peasant, to propitiate any class, which, from number, turbulence, or combination, seemed capable of being moulded into effective instruments for accomplishing the crooked purposes of selfish ambition.

L

In quitting this part of the subject, it is distinctly declared, that no attempt has been made to make out a case against the inhabitants of the Manufacturing Districts; neither would it have been fair to have

done so. These persons have not come forward offensively to sound their own praises. They have been wantonly dragged forth, and indiscreetly lauded to the skies, for the selfish purpose of depressing, in public opinion, a helpless and a most injured body. In repelling the accusation so injuriously made, not an atom of evidence has been quoted which was not believed to be indispensably necessary to the vindication of the Rural Population. Even the number of Committals is not cited for any other purpose than to disprove the monstrously false assertion, that the Country is devastated by Crime, with " but one exception ;"-the Manufacturing Districts.

The next point which requires to be examined in detail, is the last that will be so treated in these pages. Nothing, but a conviction of the importance of this part of the subject, would induce to a perseverance in that minute course of examination, which, although most tedious to the writer, can scarcely be expected to be less so to the reader. The point to be examined is contained in the following passage, copied from the Report of the Commissioners.

"It is with still further regret that we state our conviction, that the abuses of which we have given a short outline, though checked in some instances by the extraordinary energy and wisdom of individuals, are, on the whole, steadily and rapidly progressive.

"It is true, that by the last Parliamentary Return, (that for the year ending the 25th March, 1832,) the total amount of the money expended