No. I.

Royal Cottage-gate, Windsor Park, July 29, 1826. "MY LORD-I have a petition now with me, which I think it my bounden duty to present, in person, to his Majesty the King. The law tells me that I have a right to petition the King:' my own judgment tells me that the subject of my petition is of the greatest and most pressing importance to the well-being of the King's subjects, and to the tranquillity of the kingdom. I therefore request your Lordship to have goodness to apply, in that manner of which you are the best judge, for permission that I may, with all the humility that becomes ine, discharge, towards his Majesty and my country, that sacred duty, a deep sense of which alone could have induced me to give your Lordship this trouble.

"I am, with the greatest respect, my Lord, "Your Lordship's most obedient and most humble servant, "WM. COBBETT.

"The Most Noble the Marquess Conyngham."

No. II.

Royal Cottage-gate, Windsor Park, 29th July (afternoon), 1826.

"MY LORD-Mr. Dowsett has just informed me that your Lordship, upon receiving the note which I had the honour, this day at noon, to address to your Lordship, directed him to tell me, from your Lordship, that you had read my note, and that you were ready to receive any paper that I wished to have delivered to his Majesty; and that you would, upon being informed of my address in town, cause to be sent to me an answer to any paper that I might leave.

"Ilament exceedingly, my Lord, that there should be any obstruction to the presenting of my petition to his Majesty. The law, my Lord, the rights of Englishmen, know of no obstruction to petition the King. However, I have done all that I am able to do towards a due discharge of my duty as a faithful subject of his Majesty. I would fain do more; but I cannot, without an abandonment of my own rights, consent to deliver my petition into the hands of any person, however respectable, who is the bearer of a mere verbal message from your Lordship.

"I am, with the greatest respect, my Lord, "Your Lordship's most obedient and humble servant, "WM, COBBETT.

To his most gracious Majesty George the Fourth, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."

The Petition of his Majesty's dutiful subject, William Cobbett, of Kensington, in the County of Middlesex, dated this 25th July, 1826.

MOST HUMBLY SHOWS,

1. THAT, though your Petitioner has, in common with the rest of the

people of this kingdom, an undoubted right to petition your Majesty, his profound veneration for your Majesty's person and office, his great fear of being deemed presumptuous, together with that diffidence which conscious inability bids him feel, would, under circumstances less imperious, have effectually restrained him from entertaining the thought of thus ap. proaching your Majesty, but that, having recently witnessed the cruel sufferings, and heard the bitter complaints of your Majesty's ingenious, industrious, enterprising, public-spirited, loyal, and every way excellent subjects in the northern manufacturing counties, having had ample opportunities of ascertaining the causes of those sufferings; having contemplated the imminent public dangers that may arise from the want of relief from sufferings so acute and irritating in their nature, and pervading such immense numbers of people; having maturely considered of the means of alleviating the sufferings, and of, at least, lessening the danger; having, for many months, anxiously waited, in the vain expectation that your Majesty's Ministers would adopt some measure of real relief; and having, at last, reluctantly come, in common with his fellow-subjects in general, to the firm persuasion that those Ministers, either from want of sufficient knowledge in such matters, or from another more easily divined than safely defined cause, have not duly informed your Majesty of the abovementioned sufferings and dangers, and that they have not in contemplation any remedy cemmensurate with the magnitude of the evils; knowing these facts, and entertaining these opinions, your humble Petitioner could not, without a cowardly abandonment of his duty, refrain from making, though at the risk of incurring the displeasure of your Ministers, this appeal to the wisdom, the justice, the patient attention, the humane, and paternal feelings of your Majesty.

2. That, thus urged on by a sense of duty towards your Majesty and his country, your Petitioner will now, with all deference and humility, proceed, first, to endeavour to describe the situation of your unhappy people, and especially of those in manufacturing counties; next, to state the causes of their sufferings; and, lastly, to point out the means of an immediate mitigation, at least. of these sufferings.

3. That, as to the situation of the people, it may be truly said that all those who do not share, directly or indirectly, in the taxes, are, in a greater or less degree, either suffering, or on the point of suffering; that a great part of the merchants and traders have already been ruined, and that a similar fate is reasonably anticipated by the rest; that, as undeniable proofs of the deplorable state of trade, commerce, and manufactures, there have been, in the last six months, 1641 bankrupts, being more than in any one former whole year; that the last six months have seen 3392 insolvent debtors enter the prison-doors, a number more than double that of any former whole year; and that the month of June alone saw 1153 insolvent debtors sent to prison, being, in one month, a number exceeding that of any whole year, until within the four years now last past; that property has long had, and now has, nothing like a fixed and permanent value; that, for a long while past, no man has been able to say whether he had property or not; that merchandise, to an immense amount, imported before last January, has fallen in value one half, after having paid a heavy duty; that a large part of these imported articles have been sold to foreigners at half the import prices; that having first paid one foreign nation for the raw material, our merchants were compelled to sell the raw material for half the cost to another foreign nation, thus enabling the latter to mauufacture at our expence cheaper than ourselves; that all establishments, and all implements, and all materials, and stock in trade, com

merce, and manufactures, have, in the course of the last eight months, fallen in nominal value more than one half; that the ship-owner, the merchant, the manufacturer, the shopkeeper, have, therefore, been unable to pay their debts, and have, accordingly, become bankrupts or insolvents; that while the whole of the middle class have been thus sinking in the scale of property, and while a large part of that class have been sinking into the class below them, that lower class have been gradually sinking, from a bare sufficiency of food and raiment, down to absolute hunger and nakedness; that the system of taxing, of funding, and of monopolies, has for many years been pressing down the working-class; that now, however, that class is reduced to a state of misery and degradation, that would almost seem to deny them the right of life and limb; that, with the exception of the unfortunate Irish, the English working-class have long been the poorest, the worst fed, the worst clad people in the whole world, of which their forefathers were the best fed, the best clad, and most happy; that of this mass of miserable beings, the working-class in the manufacturing counties are now the most miserable; that, at this moment, the question with thousands upon thousands probably is, whether it be better to die quietly with hunger, or to obtain food at the risk of the scaffold; and that, when the mind is once brought coolly to entertain this question, the law loses all its terrors, and even the sword gleams, and the cannon roars in vain.

4. That with regard to the causes of this deplorable state of things, your humble petitioner begs leave to state to your Majesty that it has not arisen from natural causes, but wholly from acts proposed by your Majesty's Ministers, and passed by the Parliament; that these causes are, first, enormous taxation-second, repeated and arbitrary changes in the value of money-and, third, the monopoly of the supply of corn, which monopoly is now pressing on the manufacturing class with peculiar force and severity; that, while it is notorious that a considerable part of the people are in danger of starving, while your Majesty's Ministers are urgently recommending charitable subscriptions, and are actually subscribing them selves, iu order to prevent the people from dying with hunger; while these facts are notorious, it is not less notorious that these same Ministers are enforcing a law which imposes an enormous tax upon bread, and which, in fact, prevents an abuudance of food from being brought into the country; so that, while the poor manufacturer receives a farthing in the shape of alms, a shilling, perhaps, is taken from him by the Corn Bill. That, at this time, wheat sells for about 20s. a quarter on the Continent of Europe, and flour for about 16s. a barrel at New York; that these prices, including all the charges of bringing the articles to England, are much less than half the present prices of our wheat and flour; that, therefore, when the working man pays a shilling for a loaf, he, as things now stand, pays, in fact, sixpence for bread, and sixpence for corn-tax, which corn-tax goes into the pockets of the landlords and of the beneficed clergy. That, besides this, the corn-tax leaves the people in general less money to expend on wearing apparel; that thus the manufacturers are injured by want of sale for their goods; aud that on them, who are thus doubly and cruelly oppressed by this unnatural monopoly, a further and still greater injury and wrong is inflicted by the want of that export of manufactures which would take place in exchange for the corn and flour imported.

5. That such being the causes of the present distress, and of the daily increasing danger to the State, a general remedy must, to be efficacious, apply to the taxes, and also to the value of money, and must embrace extensive and equitable reforms and arrangements; that, however, as a special remedy, applicable to the particular and urgent case of the now suf

fering manufacturing districts, a speedy repeal, and utter abolitiou of the Corn Bill, are loudly called for by sound policy, by bare justice to the industrious classes, by a due regard for the peace of the country, and by those feelings of humanity which the late gracious acts of your Majesty will, your humble petitioner would fain hope, tend, at last, to awaken in the breasts of the great owners of the land.

6. That, at this moment, this kingdom, once so great and so happy, exhibits to the world scenes such as your humble petitioner verily believes that that world never saw before; that, with feelings of the most profound respect, he beseeches your Majesty to behold our immense quantity of goods, made and making; then to be pleased to look at the foreign wheat and flour; then to be pleased to consider that the owners of the wheat and the flour want the goods, and the owners and makers of the goods want the wheat and flour; then to be pleased to hear the law say, that the wheat and the flour shall not come; that of course the goods shall not go, and that the makers of them shall die with hunger, or be degraded into paupers, while abundance of food is teudered them in fair exchange for their labour and when your Majesty's gracious condescension shall have induced you further to observe that your people are afflicted with evil, the co-existence of which is wholly at variance, not only with all ordinary moral rules, but even with the laws of nature; when your Majesty shall be pleased to observe that, according to reports laid before, and to acts passed by the Parliament, your unhappy people are suffering, at one and the same moment, from hunger and from surplus produce-from nakedness and from a glut of clothing-from over-trading and over-working-and from want of trade and want of work-from panics occasioned by too much wealth, and by too much debt-from bankruptcy and insolvency, the fruit of unexampled prosperity-when your Majesty shall have observed these things, and shall, moreover, have been graciously pleased to reflect on the quantity of food and raiment consumed by the well-fed, well-clad, well-mounted troops, now stationed amongst the people, who and whose helpless children are half naked and crying for bread, partly, at least, in consequence of that Corn Bill, which was originally passed with soldiers drawn up round the Houses of Parliament; when your Majesty shall have been graciously pleased thus to behold, thus to observe, and thus to reflect, your humble petitioner will not doubt of a conviction in the mind of your Majesty that there is some great and radical error pervading the whole system of management of the affairs of your Majesty's now impoverished and sinking kingdom, and still less will he doubt of your Majesty's most anxious desire to apply to these evils a speedy and radical remedy.

7. That, therefore, your petitioner, emboldened by your Majesty's well-known indulgent disposition, presumes humbly to represent that, leaving, for the present, other matters aside, the heavy tax upon bread, so injurions to your Majesty's subjects in general, and so cruelly oppressive to the working, and especially to the manufacturing classes, operates exclusively to the benefit of the aristocracy, including the loan-makers and the beneficed clergy; that, for the sake of this class, so small in number, the millions of the community are, by the present system, doomed not only to incessant and uncompensated toil, but, in large part, to be placed in danger of perishing with hunger; that, in all sorts of ways, in places, in offices, in pensions, in sinecures, in grants, in emoluments, of every species, in advantages, direct and indirect, of every description and of every degree, has this class been favoured and enriched at the expence of the rest of the nation, who, for more than thirty years last past, has seen this one class engross a large part of the enormous taxes, and of the not less enormous loans, collected and raised within that period: that a very great portion of the land of this kingdom is owned by this class; that the ownership generally rests on grants from the Crowu, or has been

acquired by means derived directly from the public taxes; and that now, in order to uphold the rents of this land, while all other property is fallen in value, foreign food is excluded from the country, though, in defiance of those principles of free trade, so recently applauded in the speeches of your Majesty, and though to the manifest injury of all the other classes of your Majesty's subjects, while amongst a large part of those unfortunate subjects, this selfish, and cruel, and insulting prohibition is, at this moment, producing all the horrors of pestilence and famine. 8. That your humble petitioner is one of those who suffer from these abuses and these evils; that experience has convinced him, that no remedy can be effec tual, whether for relieving the people, or saving the state, until there shall be such a reform as shall enable the main body of your Majesty's subjects to secure them selves against the power of this particular class; that he deems it an undeniable fact, that the monopoly in corn is one great immediate cause of the present distresses and dangers, while it is evident to all the world that that monopoly springs from the self-interest of this particular and ever-encroaching class; and that, therefore, he humbly, but most earnestly prays, that your Majesty will be most gracionsly pleased to exert your royal prerogatives and authority in such way as shall tend to produce a radical reform of the Parliament, and as shall, with all possible speed, cause an importation of foreign food of every sort, free from all obstacles and from every species of tax.

And your Majesty's humble petitioner, as in duty bound,
will ever pray,

WILLIAM COBBETT.

TO MR. CARLILE, EDITOR OF "THE REPUBLICAN."

SIR,

PERMIT me to offer a few remarks upon the article signed F. P., which appeared in your last, extrated from "The Trades" newspaper.

The able author of that article appears to be somewhat surprised that "even Mr. Thomas Single of Mile End has not been denied a place" in the columns of the above mentioned journal. I heartily thank the Editor for his impartiality: whether Single or Double or Anatomie Vivante, let every one be heard: let the circulation of opinions through the medium of the press be, as it is expressed by the public-spirited electors of Westminster, "free as the air we breathe."

Mr. Single may be wrong in his opinions; I know nothing of the letter in question but from F. P.'s reply; it has, however, at least done some good, in giving occasion for that reply. But is Mr. Single really so "ignorant," so "wayward," so much "the enemy of the improvement of the working classes," as he is represented by F. P.?-I think not. He may possibly want that happy fluency and clearness of expression, which characterize more experienced (and consequently better educated) writers, but is he altogether wrong in his statements and opinions upon the important subject of machinery? Let us examine the matter a little.

F. P. charges Mr. Single with asserting that the "scientific