Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1).djvu/397

Rh Spain, gained in behalf of a bigotted and tyrannical Government, are nothing to them. The conquests in India, by which England has gained glory indeed, but a glory which is not more honourable than that of Buonaparte, are nothing to them. The poor purchase this glory and this wealth, at the expence of their blood, and labor, and happiness, and virtue. They die in battle for this infernal cause. Their labor supplies money and food for carrying it into effect, their happiness is destroyed by the oppression they undergo, their virtue is rooted out by the depravity and vice that prevails throughout the army, and which under the present system, is perfectly unavoidable. Who does not know that the quartering of a regiment on any town, will soon destroy the innocence and happiness of its inhabitants. The advocates for the happiness and liberty of the great mass of the people, who pay for war with their lives and labor, ought never to cease writing and speaking until nations see as they must feel, the folly of fighting and killing each other in uniform, for nothing at all. Ye have much to think of. The state of your representation in the house, which is called the collective representation of the country demands your attention.

It is horrible that the lower classes must waste their lives and liberty to furnish means for their oppressors to oppress them yet more terribly. It is horrible that the poor must give in taxes what would save them and their families from hunger and cold; it is still more horrible that they should do this to furnish further means of their own abjectness and misery; but what words can express the enormity of the abuse that prevents them from choosing representatives with authority to enquire into