Page:Conciones ad populum. Or, Addresses to the people (IA concionesadpopul00cole).pdf/70

 tional Antipathies; but this powerful stimulant has been so unceasingly applied, as to have well nigh produced an exhaustion. What remains? Hunger. Over a recruiting place in this city I have seen pieces of Beef hung up to attract the half-famished Mechanic, It has been said, that , though not the best preceptor of Virtue, procures us security from the attack of the lower Orders.——Alas! why should the lower Orders attack us, but because they are brutalized by Ignorance and rendered desperate by Want? And does Government remove this Ignorance by Education? And does not increase their want by Taxes?—Taxes rendered necessary by those national assassinations called Wars, and by that worst Corruption and Perjury, which a reverend Moralist has justified under the soft title of "secret Influence!" The poor Infant born in an English or Irish Hovel breathes indeed the air and partakes of the light of Heaven; but of its other Bounties he is disinherited. The powers of Intellect are given him in vain: to make him work like a brute Beast he is kept as ignorant as a brute Beast, It is not possible that this despised and oppressed Man should behold the rich and idle without malignant envy. And if in the bitter