Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/11



HE following letters were written to Mr. Thomas Dixon, a working cork-cutter of Sunderland, during the agitation for Reform in the spring of the present year. They contain, in the plainest terms I could use, the substance of what I then desired to say to our English workmen, which was briefly this:—"The reform you desire may give you more influence in Parliament; but your influence there will of course be useless to you,—perhaps worse than useless,—until you have wisely made up your minds what you wish Parliament to do for you; and when you have made up your minds about that, you will find, not only that you can do it for yourselves,