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ordeal of those inquisitorial assessors, commissioners, and others, which you have appointed. Many also of aged men and bed-ridden women must of necessity suffer your imposition. But assuming the act of future retribution, with its long train of trouble and vexation, effected, it can never justify a present act of despotic spoliation. Moreover, Sir, how is it that you have, perforce of a law which received the Royal sanction in the month of June only, mulcted the people with your sevenpence in the pound upon all their earnings for the whole of the last half year? Here again appear promises of refunding and restitution at some future period; but again we say, such promises do not justify these arbitrary acts of despotism and injustice. Many of us will be quite out of the reach of your promise at the time appointed for its fulfilment.

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These are not the only instances of your trayal of the confidence the nation bestowed on you. Your approval of the New Poor Laws,of the deprivation of all paupers of their vested rights and interests acquired under Acts of Parliament passed in by-gone times,-amounts, in our estimation, to as complete a case of despotism,-of the exercise of might over right,

as the worst part of our history can show. Let us remind you that one of the most enlightened men of the age,-the highest authority of the land,—the late Lord High Chancellor Eldon, denounced this New Poor Law as the most atrocious act of aggression committed against the poor. In terms not less condemnatory the opinions of other astute jurists of the day have been expressed on this "atrocious" law. Yet do you, Sir, as the Premier, uphold it with all the influence of your Government. At the elections you suffered your adherents to create far other hopes, when the seals of office were the stakes you were playing for.

Again, Sir, we impugn your indifference, not to say opposition, to the benevolent schemes of the kind-hearted and pious Lord Ashley, formed for the purpose of delivering poor women and infant children from factory slavery, and from dark and under-ground labour. Such conduct, we submit, must ever remain an indelible blot It reminds us, too, upon your escutcheon. how little you can conquer the prejudices almost inherent in you, and of the truth of the fact that you owe all your greatness and elevation in the world principally to your wealth,-to wealth wrung from the vitals of little children

under the now condemned, and always accursed, factory systems. Would it not otherwise be most strange, almost incredible, that because Lord Ashley was determined to persevere in his endeavours to emancipate all this inhuman thraldom and misery, that therefore he could not become a fitting member of your newlyformed Administration? Who shall account for this? Our rude apothegm,-Mammon, a sorcerer,-resolves it all.

How to depose this sorcerer, and thereby to clear the way for the advance of the Christian. Dispensation now upon the earth, whilst it is an object worthy of the highest talents and most exalted intellects, is, nevertheless, a work in which it may please the Lord Jehovah to employ the most insignificant agency.-[I Corinthians, i, 26.]

We have alluded to certain specimens only of your political morality; we might add to them, but they are already enough to prove the truth of the lesson we learnt at school from the Spanish novel 'Gil Blas,'-that "An honest politician is a mere scrupulous fool."

But farther, Sir, it is said that you are a man

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of prayer. We are sorry to hear it, because it is clear that, being a professed Conservative, you cannot pray for the first of Christian boons. Esto perpetua to things as they are must be the burden of your prayers. You cannot ask, or expect, that the existing state of affairs amongst us should undergo such a change as that the will of your Heavenly Father may be done on earth even as it is by ministering angels in heaven, or that the Messiah's kingdom may completely supersede and abolish our present Mammonian institutions and contrivances. We consequently deprecate your piety, because Christianity must continue to be treated, even by you, as a man of piety, not as the all in all, but as 66 part and parcel of the law of the land," that is, a useful but subordinate adjunct to the British Constitution! We take the liberty to observe that you have much to learn. You have to know, not only that "Christian is the highest style of Man," but that he is an empty pretender to philosophy that thinks he can resolve the major into the minor in his politics, and is no sincere Christian who would make the Redeemer's Dispensation an aliquot part of any human institution what

ever.

This, it appears to us, is a sad bill of indictment to be preferred against a gentleman of your rank, standing, and endowments; but, Sir, the only question we care about is, Are the allegations true,-are you fairly and properly exposed to these animadversions? Because if our statements be all TRUTH, it follows of course that such TRUTH ought to be brought to light and made manifest. Finesse and manœuvre in politics must all be exposed and exploded; a simulated Christianity must be condemned; and the reign of MAMMON in the land must be denounced ;-must, we say, so long as these things stand palpable and impassable barriers in the way of the Messiah's kingdom on earth. We know, Sir, that you may produce high authority in upholding that spurious Christianity of which we speak. It is gravely asked by us, the common people, whether our pastors and masters, whether our leaders in the Church, as well as in the State, are not all confederate with you against the advance of the Christian Dispensation on the earth; a dispensation of regeneration and deliverance for all mankind, both for TIME, and for eternity: for time antecedent to eternity. We know not whether to call our archbishops and bishops true and faithful

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