ever earned, by the upper and middle classes. Let the parties I have described go and fight their own battles against Russia, who, for all we care, may seize "our Indian possessions tomorrow if she likes. We, the working people of Great Britain and Ireland, have no interest whatever in defending those "possessions ", nor any colonial possessions, nor any other description of possessions belonging to men who have robbed us of our political rights and franchises. On the contrary, we have an interest in prospective loss or ruin of all such "possessions", seeing they are but instruments of power in the hands of our domestic oppressors. Yes, yes, by all means, let Russia seize them, if she can, and we shall but thank God and Russia for the seizure.

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To your 2nd question, my reply is-I care not how soon France engrosses or destroys our Mexican trade", nor to what extent her Algerine conquests may operate to the prejudice of our commerce in the Levant or elsewhere. I should rather see the whole of that commerce utterly extinguished, than see one solitary working man lose a leg or an arm, in war, to defend it. As commerce is now conducted, it is not only without profit, but it is absolutely ruinous to the productive classes of this country. When England had hardly any foreign commerce at all, (in the year 1495), an English laborer's weekly wages would buy 199 pints of wheat, and an artisan's weekly wages 292 pints of wheat. We have now more foreign trade than any other three nations in the world, and, at least one hundred times more of it than we had in 1495; yet an English laborer's weekly wages will not bring him, in this present year, more than 80 or 90 pints of wheat, and an artisan's hardly 150 pints; not to speak of the difficulty of getting employment,-a difficulty unknown in 1495. Talk of our foreign trade, indeed! And fighting for it, too! Let those who profit by it go and fight for it. Let the merchants and shipowners, and big manufacturers and capitalists, who gain rapid fortunes by it, let these persons go and fight for it. Or let our aristocracy, to whom it brings tropical fruits, and oriental perfumes, and rich furs and cashmeres, and pearls

and pieces, and shells and turtle, and delicious wines, and cordials, and ivory and lace, and silks and satins, and turkey carpets, and Chinese ornaments, and birds of paradise, etc., etc., let these parties go and fight for it. To us, the working people, it brings next to nothing in exchange for the forty or fifty millions' worth of goods we are every year sending abroad. The only commodities the working class want from abroad are necessaries, and these are excluded by our Corn Laws. No, no, Mr. Quid Nunc! If Englishmen are to fight now-a-days, it must be for something better than you imagine. But no fighting for "our foreign trade"! No fighting for it at any rate until we have obtained our political rights and reformed our commercial system. I am no enemy of commerce, if commerce means what it ought to mean; but perdition, eternal perdition to the system which, under that name, is now impoverishing and brutalising the largest and best part of the human family.

To your 3d question my reply is-I have so inveterate and mortal an antipathy to war (regarding it as but another name for murder and robbery on a large scale), that only the direst necessity could induce me to be, under any circumstances, its advocate; yet, there is one great barbarous Power in Europe against which I should gladly see a war got up even this very day.

QUID NUNC: You mean Russia?

BRONTERRE: Softly, my good Sir. I mean a power more barbarous and barbarising than all other living despotisms put together, that of Russia included.

QUID NUNC: By the ghost of Nicholas! that is impossible; but name it.

BRONTERRE: I will neither name it nor describe it. You being a disciple of Hume and Grote, and I being the very antipodes of that school, we cannot possibly understand one another. Were I simply to name it-you would laugh outright, and to describe it I am incapable. But, as I perceive

your curiosity is on the rack I will leave a copy of the last week's Northern Liberator, and from its leading article you may possibly be able to form some faint idea of the power I allude to. Farewell!

The article referred to describes the English ruling classes as "more despotic than despotism." Enumerating the evil effects of the Corn Laws, the New Poor Law, the factory system, the lack of universal suffrage, and the like, Bronterre concludes his philippic in his characteristic style:

Could despotism do more than fill the country with starvation, poverty, tears, and blood; could despotism do more than cover it with prisons, police houses, correction houses, penitentiaries, and Poor Law bastiles, where cruelties the most atrocious and crimes the most unnatural are perpetrated upon the wretched people by the horrid officials of these dens; could despotism the most devilish do more than treat a people thus, and then systematically refuse to listen to their complaints, and treat their tears with menaces and their cries with abusive calamities; in short, could the despotism of Nero, Tiberius, Helagabalus and Herod, joined in one, do more than invert and remorselessly carry into execution such a system as now exists in England? . . . Men of England, and of Scotland, and of Ireland! will you ever again shed your blood in defence of such a system? If you do, you deserve more than you have already suffered. But I wrong you by the question. I forget, at the moment, that by recent demonstrations in favor of Chartism you had virtually sealed the doom of that system. Your long and bloody anti-Jacobin war against France was the last you will ever engage in to uphold exclusive government. Henceforth if you go to war, it shall be to fight for yourselves. No more anti-Jacobin wars! No coalition ministry! No Tory-strong government! That's the ticket.

INDEX

General Convention of the Industrious London Working Men's Association,