CHAPTER V. THE WRONGS OF THE PEOPLE. PROLOGUES OF QUOTATIONS. "An Indian and a Kentuckian once made an agreement to hunt in company, and divide equally the game which they might chance to kill. Unfortunately, a crow and a wild turkey were all they shot. Well,' said the Kentuckian, at the end of the day,' As we are to divide equally, you take the crow, and I'll take the turkey; or I'll take the turkey, and you take the crow.' 'How's that?' inquired the Indian. The Kentuckian, in rapid accents, repeated his proposal, to which the Indian, after a blank and puzzled look, consented, but with the remark, 'It sounds all very fair; but somehow or other, you always get the turkey, and I always get the crow.' This is an admirable illustration of the mode not only in which the Americans have treated the Indians, but in which the aristocracy in all countries and ages have dealt with the people." JOHN HAMPDEN, JUN.-Aristocracy of England. "The world is under the direction of two antagonist principles, the desire to keep and the desire to take away. The past history of the world is in the main a history of the conquest of the latter principle; and it is only in comparatively modern periods that the other has made head against its antagonist with any marked success. The foreign and domestic policy of those who are styled the ancients may be summed up in the maxims, that every thing possible was to be taken by force from foreign nations, and every thing produced by the industrious at home was for this purpose to be at the service of the takers. CHAPTER V. A BATTLE WITH A BEE-ANTIQUITY AND PREVALENCE OF WRONGDOING DR. WOODWARD-POPE- PREVALENCE OF WRONGJUDICIAL WRONG-WAR, AND THE INJUSTICE OF THE TAXATION INDUCED BY IT-BUTLER-CUSTOMS-ALIENATION OF COMMONS -SOCIAL INJUSTICE-MALTHUS THE PEOPLE PARTIES TO THEIR OWN DEBASEMENT A GENERAL ELECTION-WANT OF FREEDOM -FREEDOM DEFINED-NATURAL RIGHTS-DISCUSSION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF POLITICAL CHANGE-PHYSICAL FORCE-CONSERVATISM THE JACQUERIE OF FRANCE-IMPORTANCE OF WISE POLITICAL TEACHERS-THEORISTS-HOPES FOR THE FUTURESTATIONARY STATE OF SOCIETY-THE TARDINESS AND YOUTHFULNESS OF CIVILIZATION-EVANESCENCE OF IMPRESSIONS OF RIGHT OR WRONG REBUKED. SINCE I penned that somewhat common-place little parable of the bee-hive, a chapter or two since, I have been engaged in a long conflict with a bee. Passing over one of the wild moors in the east of Yorkshire, one bright summer day, I had to force my way through a lovely patch of yellow broom, where a poor honest bee was heartily drinking his cup of honey and piping his merry song; he fancied in the wayfarer a foe, and, the very picture of hot-headed ignorance, he unsheathed his sting, and made a fierce attack upon me. What could I do?-the sting of a bee is no way desirable. On he came, sounding his battle-charge, darting round about me-now seeking to settle here, now there now following me in my retreat, now meeting me in attack. Thought I, thou art but a sorry ignoramus, didst thou but know it; vast fields of gorse and broom, and purple heather, all around thee, and thou here spitefully fighting with one, a friend and lover of thee and thy whole order. At last, victory sat upon the side of strength; my stick was lifted-one blow, and poor industry, with its angry assertion of rights and fierce resentment of wrongs, lay there with broken wing, Alas! I thought, for many a long summer day thy buzzing song might have sounded over the moors, the sun shining on thy beautiful gauze plume; thou hast been wronged, poor fellow, but the most of the wrong was of thy own seeking and making. Yet thou wast no mad red republican, no Marat, no furious demagogue, though thou hast most visibly got the worst of it. Thought I, this poor, rough, boisterous, dangerous industry, is very like his human brothers: they too are wronged, they are trampled, their wing is broken, and not unfrequently is it that the worthier of the race endure the most cruel wrong. Cute impudence sees its course, feels no disposition to measure its weakness by an encounter with strength; poor industry, for want of but a little intelligence, strikes its blow at random, thinks only of its own supposed justice, thinks not of its adversary's superior power, till at length, worsted in a struggle of fearful odds, it lies dying with panting and indignant breast, not unfrequently arraigning providence and society as the authors of consequences rather to be traced to its own ignorance and precipitance. Alas! poor industry-alas! poor bee. The wrongs of the people; it is a very long chapter and a very painful one to read, we have seen that from the days of William the Norman down to the present time, the people have groaned beneath unintermitted wrongs, the line of monarchs and princes might be broken, but the succession of the dynasty of wrong doing has been constant and perpetual. STRENGTH and CUNNING have incessantly tyrannised, and defrauded, and outraged. The pampered and the luxurious, idly as they loll along, talk of "the dispensations of providence," and speak as if the gross injustice which we in this age denominate "the arrangements of society" were the arrangements and ordinations of God; but no one walking through the city or the country, no one even superficially acquainted with the poverty of the people, and the injustice of our legislative administration, could for a moment suppose that all this had been other than the work of subtlety and fraud. The high wrong of this day especially, is that the power of governing is in the hands of men evidently unfit for the task, who are on the whole the most feeble and ineffective men in the empire, who would become bankrupt in twelve months if they had the management of commercial transactions, who only contrive to carry on a government firm or company, because aided by a large amount of superstitious reverence on the one hand, and soldier force on the other, who "put down" riots by display of cannon, and suppress revolts and extinguish claims by convictions and transportations, and then lull themselves to sleep with the belief that all is loyal tranquillity, forgetful that if force is resorted to at all, it can only be of avail as was said |