present, that any addition whatever should be made to the Settlement adopted by Parliament in the Year 1816.

It is quite a folly to talk of imposing new burdens upon the people, they cannot bear any more, and we doubt much whether an increased taxation, in any other shape than an income tax, would add a farthing to the revenue. Such a generous concession is ill-timed, and does not carry the appearance of a good disposition with it. There is much room for retrenchment in every part of the Civil List. It has just been discovered that the public have been robbed of near 400,0001. by George the Third, in addition to the enormous grants made to him by the parliament during his reign. He has actually made away with this enormous sum, which is as foul a robbery, as if he had sent a troop of soldiers to plunder a few of his rich subjects for it.

My Lords and Gentlemen,

Deeply as I regret that the machinations and designs of the Disaffected should have led, in some parts of the Country to acts of open violence and insurrection, I cannot but express my satisfaction at the promptitude with which those attempts have been suppressed by the vigilance and activity of the Magistrates, and by the zealous co-operation of all those of my Subjects whose exertions have been called forth to support the authority of the Laws.

The machinations and designs of the disaffected are too visible in the whole of this speech. Those are the men, who are disaffected to the interest and welfare of the country, who by their profligacy and extravagant expenditure have reduced the majority of the people to a state of distress and want, to a condition in which death becomes a blessing. That feeling which pervades the whole country cannot be rooted out by the vigilance of the magistracy, nor the terror of a standing army; it will go on increasing unless means can be taken to furnish the sufferers with a sufficiency of food and raiment. When a man feels himself in the depth of distress and misery, and feels also that it does not arise from any negligence on his part, he, as a matter of course, attempts to discover the true cause of his distress; by enquiry he finds it to result from the excessive taxation which this country is struggling under; he looks still further, and examines what is done with the enormous sums of money wrenched from a miserable people; here at once his indignation is excited, he sees those sums dissipated to support a profligate aristocracy, and to corrupt and bribe the whole channel of the legislature, and the sources of justice; he then feels an hostility towards those who are at the helm of the

affairs of the government, and fancies that nothing but their removal can relieve himself from want and wretchedness.

The wisdom and firmness manifested by the late Parliament, and the due execution of the Laws, have greatly contributed to restore confidence throughout the kingdom; and to discountenance those principles of sedition and irreligion which had been disseminated with such malignant perseverance, and had poisoned the minds of the ignorant and unwary.

I rely upon the continued Support of Parliament in my determination to maintain, by all the means entrusted to my hands, the Public Safety and Tranquillity.

The ministers here make the royal automaton trumpet forth their own praises. Does not every day's result give the lie to the assertion that the measures of the late parliament have restored confidence throughout the country? At no one period since the peace, have the mass of the people been so eager to co-operate with arms, and to restore by force what both reason and petition have applied for in vain. The same ebullition of feeling will continue until the object be effected. The late measures of the parliament has, in some measure, lessened the number of political pamphlets sold, in comparison to those sold in the fall of the last year, but the aggregate number sold at 6d. is greater than that in the spring of the year 1817, after the Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended by 3 to 1, although they were then sold at 2d each.

Deploring, as we all must, the distress which still unhappily prevails among many of the labouring classes of the community, and anxiously looking forward to its removal or mitigation, it is in the meantime our common duty, effectually to protect the loyal, the peaceable, and the industrious, against those practices of turbulence and intimidation, by which the period of relief can only be deferred, and by which the pressure of the distress has been incalculably aggravated.

It is a mockery to talk of deploring the distress of the labouring classes of the community, without making the slightest effort to relieve them, but on the other hand proceeding studiously to aggravate those distresses by insult and ribaldry. It is generally understood that that arch buffoon, Canning, has the drawing up of those speeches, and we are well aware that he has missed no opportunity to mock the miseries of the nation. It appears according to this disgraceful speech, that the royal definition of loyalty is, that those who can obtain nothing to eat should betake themselves to the hedges and die quietly, without annoying the pimps and parasites of the Court.

T

I trust that an awakened sense of the dangers which they have incurred, and of the arts which have been employed to seduce them, will bring back by far the greater part of those who have been unhappily led astray, and will revive in them that spirit of loyalty, that due submission to the laws, and that attachment to the Constitution, which subsist unabated in the hearts of the great body of the people, and which under the blessing of divine providence, have secured to the British nation the enjoyment of a larger share of practical freedom, as well as of prosperity and happiness, than have fallen to the lot of any nation in the world.

It is impossible that any thing can bring back the people of this country to a state of happiness, unless the persons who are wallowing in luxury on the produce of the taxes, are prepared to throw up their ill gotten gains, and to take upon themselves some small share of the distresses of the country. Let them walk in the channel of misery-partake of it-endeavour to alleviate the sufferings of those who have long known nothing else, by a soothing attention and kindnesslet them resolve to partake of nothing but what is essential to the preservation of their own health, until the distresses of the labouring classes are removed, they will then find that a British people are not naturally discontented, but that beyond all other people, who talk of being free, they are patient in suffering to a fault. To talk of the irreligion of the people, and to recommend them to hope for the blessing of divine providence, whilst those who put forth this complaint and advice, are the cause of all that is evil in the country, is the height of impiety, it is a disguised blasphemy. The taxes must be reduced, or the country involved in civil war, and let those be-. ware who are managing the affairs of the nation, how they urge the people to this last extremity. All the hangings and beheadings will avail nothing, it is calculated more to enrage than to intimidate. Those who remain will take a lesson from those who are gone, and avoid an inevitable death, without at first rendering the nation some benefit by their death. There are thousands in the country who are willing to sacrifice themselves, if a sacrifice could forward the object nearest their hearts, that is, to rescue their families from want and misery. We speak feelingly, we have felt the distress, and the disposition to pursue any measures that were calculated to relieve it. From experience we can tell these royal speech-makers, that their intention to rule by intimidation will have no other effect than to irritate the sufferers, and to prepare them for desperate

measures.

EDITOR,

themselves Christians on the scaffold-but, no-the men shewed, by their heroic firmness to die, that they were worthy to live, and worthy of their country. By whatever means they were seduced into the fatal snare, their moving springs of action were good. They are a sample of the millions who wait for nothing but judicious leaders in whom they can place confidence. Let those who survive them, beware how they suffer themselves to be acted upon by the spies and agents of that Government whose religion is to starve, massacre, and hang.

EDITOR.

A LETTER TO MRS. DAVIDSON, WIDOW.

. Madam, I feel it a duty incumbent upon me to endeavour to make you a reparation for the painful feelings my late observations on your husband must have occasioned you. To the person who accompanied your late husband to me in the King's Bench Prison, I shall address a private note; as his name has not been made public, I consider it sufficient. In making the observations, for which I now feel the deepest regret, I mentioned that a fourth person came into my room whilst your husband and his companion were present, and that this fourth person expressed his surprise at the presence of my visitors, intimating that they were strongly suspected of being the spies and the agents of the government. This fourth person was the infamous Edwards, whose object no doubt, was to lay the same net for me in which he has of late been but too successful with others. As your then husband was quite a stranger to me, and as I had noticed his former zeal towards me with suspicion in two instances, that suspicion, from the suggestion of Edwards, became very strong, and led me to view him throughout in a very different light to what I now look back and view him in. The bursting forth of the unhappy affair of Cato Street, filled me with the same surprise and astonishment as it must have filled every other person, and I was most anxious, and felt it most important, to avert the stream of horror which flowed from it, and to throw it back on those who had planned and instigated the whole scheme. I knew Ings from September last up to the moment that I left London: the man had unfolded his bosom and his distress to me, and I knew at that time, that he was totally

unconnected with any political party whatever, and almost a stranger in London. I was sorry to see him drawn into that hopeless condition, as I was convinced that some fiend had taken an advantage of his despair. But little did I think that villain Edwards was the spy, agent, and instigator of the government, and Mr. Davidson his victim. I now regret my error, and hope that you will pardon it as an error of the head, without any bad motive. I know not how to offer you consolation, or what can console you for your loss. Be assured that the heroic manner in which your husband and his companions met their fate, will in a few years, perhaps in a few months, stamp their names as patriots, and men who had nothing but their country's weal at heart. I flatter myself as your children grow up, they will find that the fate of their father will rather procure them respect and admiration than its reverse Accept the small sum of £2 as an acknowledgment of my injury towards you: it is all my means at present can afford you, but should it ever be my lot to fill any situation in life in which I may be enabled to render you or your children any service, you may at all times command my attention. I hope that those few individuals whose means might enable them to spare without injury to themselves, will not forget that the only consolation that can now be offered you is to endeavour to place you above want and distress in pecuniary matters. I would at the same time commend the families of your fellowsufferers to the public notice. With a due feeling for your distressing situation,

I am, Madam,

Your obedient Servant,

R. CARLILE..

TO THE READER.-I regret to state, that through the officiousness of some person in London, the leading article of the last number was dreadfully mutilated by leaving out the whole of the example and the inference I had drawn from the premises laid down, thereby destroying the general tenor of the article. It has been my unfortunate condition to have much of what I have written here mutilated and perverted to a meaning that I had not intended. The alteration of a sentence has often destroyed the tenor of the piece, and the frequent suppression of sentences have often left the remaining matter unintelligible nonsense. I shall endeavour to put a stop to this mischievous mutilation which has arisen from the officious timidity of the friends of Mrs. Carlile.

R. CARLILE.