Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/287

271 halfpenny worths of bread cut off the loaf, are what the shopkeepers of Bolton deal out to the inhabitants of their Jerusalem. I saw a woman come for one halfpenny worth of bread, which was to be the dinner of herself and children twain; and when I reflected that of this transparent slice the other half was gone to buy the landlord's sack, astonishment possessed me at the endurance of that long-bearing ass the public, and the extent to which ignorance and divisions will prop the rich man's robbery.

"I saw another mother of a family, who said she had not tasted meat for many months; and on one of the children being sent off to the butcher's for some of that strange luxury, she was discovered making many efforts to intercept the messenger. Her anxiety was to instruct the boy to bring back nothing but one pennyworth of bacon ; there was a to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, for which she had conceived the idea of spinning out existence by means of the remainder of the fund.

"If you are curious in human misery, if you are anxious to know what a shabby tyranny can bring the rank and file to suffer, come, at your leasure, to the leaguer' of Bolton and see what the people sleep upon, if they do sleep. Chopped dirt, the sweepings of a hen house mingled with a proportion of sparrows' nests, to show that men had heard of straw, would be the best representatives of what they huddle upon in corners, and call it resting. And all this because Sir Having Greedy votes in the House of Commons for closing honest trade, as the means of doubling his rents.

"The minister, meanwhile, and his associates are racking their tender hearts to find a remedy. As in O'Connell's celebrated story of the horse, 'WILL THEY THY CORN?' They will try anything except allow the sufferers to keep themselves ; for that would interfere with the plans of those who, being rich already, use their riches as the means of doubling them by confiscation of the poor man's bread.

"There is danger in these schemes. Already people of all kinds are parodying the sentiment of the Italian's "AD OGNI NOMO PUZZICA QUESTO BABBABO DOMINIO; which may be translated for English use, 'Neither man nor woman will endure this dynasty of clodhoppers.' It wants nothing but for the privates of the regiment to know what hurts them, and to get rid (as they are doing fast) of the various false lights thrown out to induce them to run in every direction that will preserve the evil; and a quicker end than pleasant may be put to mischiefs, which nobody would remove by an earlier application of the prudential virtues.—Yours, very sincerely," T. PEBOHETT THOMPSON,"