ment.

I beg you to accept the assurance of my personal respect,

And I am, Sir,

Your most obedient servant,

JAMES HOWIE.

MR. COBBETT'S ANSWER.

Kensington, August 22d, 1831.

ACCEPT of my best thanks for your

SIR, As chairman of a committee formed in this town, for the purpose of taking the necessary steps to secure your return to parliament as member for Manchester, at the first election which shall occur after the passing of the Reform Bill, I am charged with the gratifying duty of informing you that that committee have taken steps to ascertain the feeling of the town, and that the result of a very partial canvass has been so flattering to their hopes, as to determine them at once that you shall be put in nomina- SIR, tion. In a town so populous as Manches-letter, and be pleased to present to the ter, and hitherto debarred the privileges committee and to the reformers of Manof freedom, it must be a work of time chester an assurance from me, that, if and labour to ascertain, by individual their wishes be realised with regard to pledges, that we are assured of a decided their present intention, my gratitude tomajority of the future electors; but, so wards them shall be proved by my acts far as our canvass has proceeded, the much more satisfactory than I am able feeling of the electors is so unanimous, to describe it by words. To be freely and the confidence of the committee, chosen by any body of Englishmen, to founded on the manifestation of that be the organ of expressing their opinions feeling, so strong, that, anticipating the and their wishes, and to be the trustee sual course of a formal address, the of their interests, including their persoCommittee have instructed me to write nal liberty and safety; to be chosen for to you at once, and announce their de- this purpose by any body of Englishtermination, in order that they may not, men, I should deem the highest honour by any previous engagement, be de- that man can confer upon me: what, prived of the honour of sending you to then, must be my feelings upon receivparliament, and that their success with ing this invitation from one of the

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greatest hives, if not the very greatest that things are out of order, and that hive, of industry in this whole world; they cannot go on in the present manfrom a spot on which, perhaps, there ner. What do we behold at the present are more men of good sense and of great intelligence existing, than on any other spot, of similar extent, of that same world!

But, sir, in proportion as the honour that is tendered me is great, ought to be, and I trust is, my solicitude to prove myself not unworthy of that honour. If it were a bag of money, or a bauble, such as ministers and kings have to bestow, and if I were capable of receiving it, I should do as others do, enjoy the thing, giving myself very little trouble about the source whence it had come, or about any consequences that might have been anticipated by the donors. But, this is a different matter: the honour is great, but great are the duties demanded in return; and I take this earliest opportunity of offering you and the people of Manchester some observations with regard to my view of those duties. Your motive for selecting me is, as you very happily express it, a "determination, on the part of the people of Manchester, that the REFORM "BILL shall not be a barren measure.' Such, too, is my determination, if I have the power to make it fruitful.

A WEN

moment? A bill before Parliament the other day, and now a Royal Commission, for the purpose of getting the working people out of England; ships fitted out at the public expense to carry the working people away; and, at the same moment, troops of dragoons employed to protect Irish labourers against the English, on the ground that there are too few of the latter to get in the harvest! A working people living on potatoes, sometimes on sea-weed and nettles, and sometimes dying with hunger; and, at the same time, a law for the purpose of making bread dear! Paying away, with the one hand, half a million of pounds to prevent the working people from dying from starvation, and, with the other hand, taking from the working people half a million of pounds in tax on their bread! swollen up by the beggaring of the kingdom in general; swollen up to such an extent that it devours more than the nine English counties first on the alphabet; and millions upon millions still continuing to be drawn from the industrious people all over the kingdom, to pull down and to build up, I have long wished to be a member and to lavish and to squander on this of parliament, if the object were to be monstrous wen! A church nearly deobtained by honourable means. This serted by the people; nearly three desire arose principally from an opinion hundred parish churches, in England that I could contribute very greatly to- and Wales alone, actually suffered to wards producing a reform in the Com- tumble down, while those parishes still mons' House; and that I could do this pay tithes to the parsons, and while the more speedily by being in parliament whole kingdom, those parishes included, than by any efforts that I could make is taxed for the purpose of building new not being there. This object is now churches elsewhere. Five distinct paaccomplished; for, be you assured laces for the King: St. James's, in that, let what may take place in the Westminster; a palace and a noble way of opposition, this reform, or a still park and gardens at Kensington; six greater reform, will now be accomplish- miles further on, a palace, the finest ed before England will ever again know gardens in the world, and a park ten any-thing worthy of the name of settled miles round, at Kew and Richmond government. The reform of the Com-five miles further to the west, a palace, mons' House is, therefore, accom-gardens, and park, at Hampton Court, plished; but, the fruits of the achieve- grander, in all respects, than any human ment have yet to be gathered.

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Every one is sensible that a great change is necessary every one feels, without any reasoning on the subject,

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being ought to wish for as a place of residence; fifteen miles further to the west, on the banks of the Thames still, the noble palace and castle of Windsor,

with gardens in abundance, and with point, therefore, we ought to stick, parks perhaps twenty miles round. namely, the reduction of taxes, until we Yet, in addition to all these, there have come to cheap Government: and, for been, within a few years, laid out three my part, I wish not to be at all removed millions of money in palace-building, from my present situation, unless by the while, at the very same time, the peo- free and hearty good-will of a set of ple have been driven to desperation by constituents who will resolutely stand the weight of the taxes. by me and support me in all my efforts There needs no more than a bare to effect this object. Look at the look at these facts to convince us that UNITED STATES of America! That all is out of order; that there must be country has a population much about a great change; that, by one means or equal to that of England and Wales. another, we must return to cheap go- Look at its fourteen hundred miles of vernment. Perfectly endless would be sea-coast, with so many vulnerable an enumeration of the evils we endure, points which it is compelled to fortify! and of the dangers to which the coun- Look at its two thousand miles of landtry is exposed; but the cause of all of border, against which it has to protect them is one and the same, namely, the itself against England, and against nuENORMOUS BURDEN OF TAXES. Whence merous tribes of savages! Look at it, these taxes have arisen, is another mat- starting forty years ago with three milter. It may be proper, on other occa-lions of people, and with scarcely a sions, to inquire what has been the vessel above a hundred tons: behold it cause of the taxes; but, at present, our NOW, with its population of twelve business is to get rid of them. In them millions, with a commerce and a comwe see the cause of every-thing that mercial marine rivalling those of Engtroubles us; from them comes the want land herself; aye, and with a navy of employment; from them come the carrying a prouder sail than that famous combinations of masters against work- England, which was so long the mismen, and of workmen against masters; tress of the seas! from them come the truck system, and Whence comes all this, while we are all the endless broils and heart-burnings growing so little in the world? Not that it engenders; from them come the because the lands of America are more turn-outs and all their strife, and all the fruitful; for though things ripen there violences and all the consequent unhap- that will not ripen here, England is ten piness of wives and children; from times as good as that country, acre for them come the riotings and the burn- acre of cultivated land. It is not because ings; from them come all the hard and they have a better climate than we, for harsh laws; 'from them comes the ours is infinitely the best. It is not bedisgraceful catalogue of crime; from cause the people there are more industhem comes the horrid extension of the trious than we are; for the very climate, jails; from them come the public luna- if there were nothing more, would pretic asylums now to be seen in every vent them from being so industrious, county; from them come the tread- and from performing the wonders of inmills; from them comes the thundering standing army in the time of peace; from them comes that police; that dogging of our persons by day as well as by night, at the bare thought of which existing in their country, Englishmen of fifty years ago would have gone

dustry which we here perform. Nor is it because they have a better form of Government than we have, of better fundamental laws; for their form nearly resembles ours; and, as to the laws, they are the same as ours, with the exception of those which have been made here in consequence of the taxing sysAll the evils come from the weight tem. It is none of these, then, to which of taxation; and that taxation, without America owes her happiness and tranany nominal addition to it, every day quillity, while we are in misery and grows heavier and heavier. To this turmoil: it is solely to that cheapness

mad.

of Government which, amidst all the they pay the wages that the working wars of parties, they have wisely deter- people demand, which demand, if commined to have, and resolutely continued plied with, would scarcely provide them to preserve. Of this object they have with more than half of what would be never lost sight for a moment. There deemed a sufficiency; at this very time, are corruptions most plentiful in Amer- when no creature can open its mouth, ica; and some of them it would shock or attempt to cover its nakedness, withan Englishman to behold. He would be out paying tax upon tax on the thing shocked, and justly so, to see a party which he is to swallow or to wear; at come up to the jury-box, beckoning a this very time these taxes are voted juryman out to take a glass of grog, and away, as if they had been collected from the trial go on all the while; at the a people with heaps of good clothes flagrant packing of juries, and the base lying in their chests, and with such a prostitution of judges; at the scandalous superabundance of food as to demand partiality in the administration of justice the keeping of dogs to help them to deall the way through; at the little feel-vour it. The vote of an additional ing that men show towards their twelve thousand pounds a year to the neighbours when these latter have become the victims of official oppression; at these things, which, particularly in the great State of Pennsylvania, are so common that they seldom attract any very particular attention, an Englishman would be shocked; but still he would find the people well off; he would find labour of every sort amply remunerated, and he would, until he reflected on the effects of cheap government, wonder how a people could be so well off amidst such corruptions. He would find in Pennsylvania the very basest executive Government, the very basest judiciary, the very basest legislature, in the whole world, or that ever was heard of in the world; and yet he would find the people well off; and if he took the pains to discover the cause, he would find it no where but in the resolution of the people not to be taxed except for purposes beneficial to themselves, and not to suffer any-body to live in idleness upon the fruit of their labour.

Duchess of Kent; the vote of a hundred thousand pounds a year as a dower for the Queen; the vote of fourteen thousand pounds for this year for the British Museum; the vote of about a hundred thousand pounds to be sent to Hanover, and other parts abroad, for half-pay officers, their widows and children. The enormous votes for the dead-weight of various descriptions; the votes for what are called retired allowances: these things, together with what is called the Civil List, without mentioning the army, navy, and debt, amount to more than sufficient to carry on every department of the Government in England, and to maintain besides such a navy as would make England once more what she ought to be in the eyes of the world.

In another paper, which I intend to do myself the honour to address to the electors of Manchester, I will show in detail how the expenditure might be reduced to this standard: The GovernThis, this, my friends, is the resolu- ment of the United States, including tion that we must form and stand to; the state governments, including their or a reform of the Parliament will be a army, their great and growing navy, mere name, something to cajole fools, and also including their debt, do not and to be a screen for knavery. The amount to any-thing approaching five votes of money by the present Parlia-millions of pounds sterling a year, notment, and in the present year, notwithstanding the well-known sufferings of the people, have been such as to fill me, for my part, with indignation that cannot express. At the very time when farmers and manufacturers are complaining that they must be ruined, if

withstanding their fourteen hundred miles of coast, and their two thousand miles of land border. Cannot this kingdom, then, be governed with a cost of ten millions a year? Was it not governed when I was born, though loaded with a great debt even then, at a cost

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For, let this always be present in your minds, unless this can be accomplished, the reform of Parliament is a farce; all the talk about Schedule A and Schedule B, and all the rest of it, is a miserable delusion, unless the effect be this reduction of taxation. In answer to these complaints about voting away the people's money, it is quite fashionable to exclaim, "What is a "hundred thousand pounds a year for "the Queen! What is a hundred "thousand pounds to the poor officers "and their widows at Hanover: and, particularly, what are those two piti"ful sums to the Duchess of Kent and "to the British Museum! What are "these trifles, when the revenue of the "nation amounts to nearly sixty millions a year!" These exclaimers first assume that the nation can afford to pay the sixty millions a year; and then they take the different items one by one, compare them severally with the great aggregate amount, and then call you niggard because you complain at the laying out of such a trifle. First, we are pressed down by a sack of stones, which, like one of old savage Queen Elizabeth's instruments of torture, nearly makes the blood start from our fingers' ends, and the eye-balls start from our heads; and then, if we complain and request that more stones may not be put into the sack, each individual stone is held up to our noses, and we are reproached with complaining of such a trifle!

of less than ten millions a year? It can children, is equal in amount to the whole be well governed, and its name and power of the poor-rates for the county of Nornobly maintained, for less than ten thumberland; the sums given this year millions a year; and in my next address to the Duchess of Kent and the British I will show you the detail how it can Museum, put together, are equal to a be done. year's poor-rates for the county of Westmoreland; and the whole of these four sums, put together, fall very little short of the whole of the rental of either of the counties of Monmouth or Westmoreland. Are these trifles, then? Take another view of the matter; the sum voted to the Duchess of Kent is sufficient to maintain four thousand working people, at twenty-five pounds a year each. The vote to the Hanoverians would do much about the same. The vote to the Museum would maintain five hundred and sixty labourers and their families; and the additional vote to the Duchess of Kent would maintain four hundred and eighty labourers and their families. These are not trifles then. These are the things to attend to; and if they be not attended to, and resolutely assailed, all the talk about rights and liberties is noise and nonsense. The winter before last, Sir JAMES GRAHAM clearly showed us that one hundred and thirteen of the aristocracy (not including the Royal Family or the Bishops) received out of the taxes annually six hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling; and there were even upon that occasion men profligately impudent enough to exclaim, "What is that, when the nation raises sixty millions a year in taxes? What is it! Why, it is about a ninetieth part of the whole, at any rate. But, what is it? why, it amounts to more than the whole of the rental of either of the counties of Berks, Bucks, Cambridge, or Hereford; it amounts to as much as the whole of the rental of the Let us see a little what would result two counties of Bedford and Huntingfrom the taking of a different standard don, and it amounts to as much as the of comparison. The amount of the whole of the rental of the three counpoor-rates is, like every-thing else which ties of Monmouth, Rutland, and Westis claimed by the poor, deemed a mon- moreland; and it amounts to as much strous hardship upon the suffering rich. as the whole of the poor-rates of the Now, the dower to the Queen is a sum nine counties of Bedford, Berks, Cumequal to the amount of the poor-rates berland, Huntingdon, Hereford, Monfor the whole of the county of Cam-mouth, Northumberland, Rutland, and bridge; the annual payment to the Westmoreland! So that while there Hanoverian officers, their widows and are everlasting projects on foot for