on a popular principle; in a very few days that was changed, and the principle of centralization adopted. The present bill was founded on a report which recommended centralization."
The rights of Englishmen—"every Englishman's house his castle," indeed!! Where, we ask with the liberal and lofty-minded author of Vivian Grey—where are now those "rights"—where that "castle," sacred and inviolate so long against the profanations of despotism, and the detested intrusion of an all-pervading espionage? Proclaim the law of the curfew at once, like the wily Norman tyrant, when the noble Saxon race of a former epoch were to be ground down into villanage, and decimated of their numbers, to allay the restless fears, and swell the booty of the band of griping economists of those days. Proclaim rather the curfew, we say, at whose sullen toll fires may be raked, and lights put out, by the submissive serfs; for the despotism of William was enlightened and constitutional by comparison with the more refined malice of Lord John, whose blue-bottle myrmidons are appointed to outrage the cottager's fireside, indecently to intrude upon the sanctity of the bedchamber, and recklessly to lord it in the cottage, once inviolable and inviolate as the proudest and the strongest castle.
No man, of the slightest powers of observation and ratiocination, can doubt that the Poor-Law Abolition Bill is the root of all evil—the fretful blister-plaster by which the body politic has been gradually excoriated and inflamed into the mass of maddening humours, which at length have exasperated the unhappy patient wildly to rush into rebellion—to fire with blazing brand his neighbour's house—to flourish the dagger athirst for his blood. The conflagration and sanguinary conflicts at Birmingham—the organized outrages in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Northumberland, are but counterpart demonstrations of popular fury against the New Poor-Law Bill—of the Bristol and Nottingham burnings, and ferocious bandings of the Birmingham Union, so lauded and patronised at the time in aid of the Reform Bill. The difference—how striking that difference!—is, that the Poor-Law movement being anti- Whig, must be put down vi et armis; and, if constable and cutlass fail, by cannon and cavalry. The Reform movement, essentially Whig in its character, and conservative of Whig places, was, on the reverse, headed in its furious freaks, and palliated in its incendiary outbreaks, by the Whig Ministers themselves. They corresponded, from Downing Street, with revolutionary agitators, by despatches, as regular and as officially franked as orders to Lords-lieutenant of counties, or mandates to the colonies. Thus, in eight years—the first eight years—of Whig ascendency, the country has been brought to the very verge of two sanguinary revolutions; the one revolutionary bantling being of its own begetting, to secure office—the other a Frankenstein of its own creation no less, seeking its dispossession and destruction. All other causes of popular discontent and disloyalty sink into insignificance compared with the deep-seated and ineffaceable abhorrence of the Bast—ile law. All other causes of grievance, real or alleged, are but accessory, and contribute only to enlarge the overshadowing proportions of this upas-tree, poisoning the social atmosphere, and blighting the vegetation of kindly feeling all around. Armies may march to enforce the law deformed—rural police, staff and cutlass in hand, may threaten recusancy or execute vengeance—Sir Robert Peel may throw himself more rashly than gallantly into the breach for its defence, and fancy it chivalry—the Great Duke himself may interpose his sevenfold shield, and wave his till now invincible truncheon, in its defence—but vainly all! The fiat has gone forth—the mind, stubborn and immovable, of the land, has pronounced and sealed its doom—the peasantry and the operatives of England say, and are entitled to say, with the proud barons of old, "Nolumus leges Angliœ mutari." If now the New Poor-Law, in all the nakedness of its atrocious principle, cannot, and dare not, be more than partially carried out, how shall it be when the half million of unskilled workmen, now temporarily absorbed by railway enterprise, shall return to overlay the common labour market, where their absence has tended to maintain wages, keep down the redundancy of competition, and facilitate the working of the odious law? We assume to know, and from long intercourse and experience ought to know, quite as much
