sidered that children when they are born are to be treated as kittens are treated. Unfortunate women, who are in a way to become mothers, seem to think that they are to deliver themselves as they can, and to get rid of their infants as soon as possible. This is a most frightful impression. "Mr Hobler said that many women

not the New Poor-Law-they know not its authors!

"MANSION - HOUSE. - Yesterday, a young woman, named Eliza Chandler, was brought before the Lord Mayor under the following circumstances:-

"Mr Cloake, of No. 3, Liverpool Street, stated that the prisoner had been servant in his family about eight or ten days before the 30th of July, when it was found that she had delivered herself of a child, and thrown it into the water-closet. She did not look at all like a person in the family way before the discovery was made, and had an excellent character. Upon being spoken to by her mistress, she admitted that the child had been born on the Saturday, the 27th of July. The porter found the child dead. Witness did not appear to charge her with having committed any offence.

"The beadle of the ward stated that the infant appeared to be a full-grown child. He attended the inquest, which was to the effect, that 'the child was found dead in the privy, but there was not sufficient evidence to determine whether it was born alive or not.'

"The Lord Mayor - Have you received any direction from any one to prosecute?

"Beadle-No. It was stated before the coroner that the person of whom the child was born was in custody, and the coroner said it was such a case as ought to be brought under your lordship's notice.

"The Lord Mayor-Did she make any statement before the coroner?

"Beadle-She was not brought before him, as it was considered that it might prove dangerous to her health to be exposed.

"The Lord Mayor--Has she made any communication as to who the father of the child is?

"One of the inspectors of the police stated, that she said at the station-house that the father was a journeyman baker.

"Mr Hobler observed that somebody ought to take the matter up, and that it seemed to be looked upon very lightly

indeed.

"The Lord Mayor-Since the passing of the New Poor-Law, it seems to be con

that opinion.

"The Lord Mayor - They deliver themselves as they please, and throw their infants into the privy or into the river, and no prosecutor appears. Is this woman to be sent to the Central Criminal Court, or to be set at large ?

"The beadle said that he had received no instructions on the subject.

"The Lord Mayor--Prisoner, have you any thing to say?

Prisoner-Nothing, my lord.

"The Lord Mayor-Is the surgeon here to give evidence?

"Beadle-No, I am not aware that he is.

"The Lord Mayor-Nobody appears to think any thing of the business, serious as it is. I, however, consider it to be my duty to commit the woman to take her trial at the Central Criminal Court. In past times the parish officers used to prosecute in cases of this kind-now it seems there are no funds with which to prosecute, and desperate offences of this description may be committed with comparative impunity. If the New Poor-Law is to be revised and altered, surely power ought to be given to the parish officers to prosecute persons guilty of disposing of their offspring in so shocking a manner. If the lives of children are to be preserved, a change of this sort must take place.

"Mr Hobler agreed with bis lordship, that an important change should be made as regarded illegitimate children. It appeared to be very extraordinary that so much money should be expended in paying those who worked the bill, and that 40s. or 50s. should be grudged where human life was concerned.

"The Lord Mayor- It is most extraordinary that commissioners, and assistant-commissioners, and clerks, should have L.54,000 per annum amongst them for carrying the New Poor-Law into effect, and yet that a parish should not be allowed as much as 20s. to prosecute, in order to prevent the practice of flinging poor children into destruction the moment they are born. There have been many destroyed since this law came into operation, more than we have ever heard of, I am convinced. Now, the matter seems to be of ordinary occurrence. In this case, if the prisoner had not been very ill, and the mistress had not entertained suspicion of her, we would never have heard a word about it. The parties never would have thought of looking into the place where it was found. The effect of the example is really frightful; we must have the surgeon's evidence, and I shall commit the prisoner for trial, and the Court, I am sure, will, under such circumstances, most readily pay the expenses.

"His lordship then ordered that the surgeon who examined the body of the infant should be required to attend and give evidence."

It might have occurred, we think, to the Lord Mayor, that as no funds were provided by the New Poor-Law to prosecute for infanticide, it must be clearly intended by its authors that new-born children should be treated exactly as kittens are treated. There would seem something personal and unfriendly in the sneer of Mr Hobler, than whom, however, a bet. ter and more respected functionary breathes not, about the extravagant rate at which people are paid for working the New Poor-Law, whilst the merest trifle was grudged where human life was concerned-personal and unfriendly, we say, because Mr Hobler must be supposed to know that one of the chief, if not the chief, workers and projectors of the law, is the identical individual of penny-aline notoriety, who heretofore figured at his elbow, and was his debtor in many pence for lines of information charitably furnished to the quasi-presspauper, then himself the slave of a serving-man, and barely existing upon reports of rapes and robberies, last dying speeches and confessions at the gallows. Infanticide, although not specially pronounced legal, is clearly as much part and parcel of the New Poor-Law as pinch-pauper diet, and the salary of the commissioners, or of Edwin Chadwick, Esq., barrister-(!!!)-at-law.

Infanticide is the wholesale practice in China, if not the law of Confucius. More advanced in the arts and sciences of civilized life than that world of antediluvians, here the successors of a mission apostolic and almost of divine origin are found (Oh! shame) colleagued with Utilitarians, Unitarians, and Nothingarians, in a legislation by which infanticide is indirectly legalized by the absence of the customary provision for its prevention or

punishment. The profit-and-loss cashaccount is, however, cited-the balance-sheet appealed to triumphantly, in vindication of the New PoorLaw and Whig principle of-KILLING NO MURDER. Perish for ever the wretches, who-debited on the debtor side with human life coolly immolated in rueful numbers-would salve the public as their own seared conscience, and interest public avarice by credit on the other sheet for one or more millions sterling of savings. Theirs is the infernal system of the Thugs, who affect hospitality, and sympathetically press assistance and asylum to unsuspecting travellers, in whose murder they afterwards exult exactly in proportion to the purse and the prize balance resulting. But, were the Poor-Law Abolition Commissioners honestly desirous, as they are capable, of rendering true accounts, how would the balance stand? In their reports on various Unions in which imposture was attempted, as imposture is systematically practised throughout, it has not only been shown, but the disgraceful fact has by themselves, on compulsion, been openly admitted and published, that credit was taken for hundreds or thousands saved under the new system, and for rates reduced, where on the contrary thousands expended and rates laid and paid had been in excess; or where, as in Southwark, the thousands had been saved and the rates reduced solely by defying their orders aud excluding their system. flagrant have been their falsehoods-so self-convicting their forced, yet still incomplete admissions, that we stand entirely acquitted of a judgment too harsh, when we assert our conscientious impression that, in their own case, they are not worthy of credence when unsupported by testimony of a less suspicious and more unimpeachable character.

So

From this hateful exhibition of depraved principle and ossification of heart, let us hasten to escape. Fortunately, we have now only to request attention to figures, and to leave the New Poor-Law Commissioners to fill up the blanks. Against their wilfully deceptive account of savings effected, let them furnish a bill of particulars of the charges shifted now on parish rates, other than poor's rates as before, or rendered necessary to carry the New Poor-Law into effect, or thereout resulting.

1. Amount of coroner's and jury's fees and expenses formerly charged on poor's rates.

2. Expenses of criminal trials resulting from inquests.

3. Savings by the toleration of infanticide.

4. Commissioners' salaries and expenses.

5. A levy of 5000 regular troops to enforce the law.

6. A standing Rural Police of 25,000 men, with commissioners, &c., to overawe the people, and guard workhouse prisons.

7. The cost of new barracks, to be constructed against Union work houses.

For the end will be, that every Union workhouse must have its barracks, so that the country will at length present something in appearance like the Owenite parallelograms of social life; with the difference, that the barrack fortress is built to keep in check the workhouse prison and pauper felonry.

Such is the state of the country, as represented in the special department

lieve that the rural police, as it was pro. posed to constitute the body by this bill, and as it had been brought into operation in some districts already, could fulfil both these duties. He wished to call the attention of the House to a document which seemed to have been studiously kept out of sight in the course of the discussion on this bill the Report of the Commissioners of Enquiry into the State of the Constabulary Force of the country. There were some curious details in the evidence annexed to that report, which he thought it was the duty of the House not to overlook, clearly showing what must be the character of a rural police formed upon the principles of this bill. It was proved that the practice of the police, in those rural districts where the force had been called into existence, was to enter cottages and order lights to be extinguished, because, according to one of the witnesses examined, cottagers had no right to have lights to serve as signals to poachers and marauders. It was also proved to be their practice in other districts to enter cottages in the daytime, and see if there was mutton boiling in the pot on the fire, because a sheep might have been killed in the neighbourhood. He asked the House if these

practices were sanctioned, what would be.

come of the celebrated national dogma, that every Englishman's house was his castle? It might be said that these were very salutary regulations, and referred only to the

tions: - official

pily afforded by Mr D'Israeli of the latent objects of the intended working, or the destructive tendency of the Rural Police Bill to constitutional liberty. There is nothing speculative about his observations; -- official documents prepared under the eyes of the Government, and by its own paid officials, are referred to, and his argu. ment is founded upon the system as now practically, although partially, in operation in Cheshire and elsewhere.

"Mr D'Israeli rose and said, - He had opposed this bill on its original stages, although he had offered no factious opposition. Now that the measure had arrived

at its last stage, he thought he was justified in entering his protest against it, and dividing the House against its passing. Her Majesty's Government, and those who supported this measure, seemed to have taken up the view that the first and sole duty of a police was to maintain order; but he (Mr D'Israeli) apprehended that in a free country like England, there was a co-ordinate duty for a police, and that was not merely to maintain order, but to respect liberty. He could not bring himself to be

looked upon their rights as equally sacred with those of the rest of the community. Another part of the evidence was to the effect that the magistrates of Chelmsford regretted extremely that trampers, as they were called, were not exposed to be arrested for hiring beds in lodging-houses, whereas, if they only slept in the open air, they might be apprehended; but they congratulated themselves that the police under their direction had entered houses and examined beds to ascertain the character of the occupants. How was this to be reconciled with the sanctity of private dwellings, which had always been considered a very important principle of our social arrangements? He could not support this bill when he looked to the hurried and unsatisfactory manner in which, at the end of the session, this and other measures of police had been introduced. Although there might be a variation in the circumstances of the cases to meet which they were brought forward, yet when he con. sidered the manner in which they had been introduced, he must believe that there was an identity of purpose and a similarity of principle in all. The Birmingham Police Bill, on its introduction, was founded on a popular principle; in a very few days that was changed, and the principle of centralization adopted. The present bill was founded on a report which recommended centralization."

The rights of Englishmen" every Englishman's house his castle," indeed!! Where, we ask with the liberal and lofty-minded author of Vivian Grey-where are now those "rights" -where that "castle," sacred and inviolate so long against the profanations of despotism, and the detested intrusion of an all-pervading espionage? Proclaim the law of the curfew at once, like the wily Norman tyrant, when the noble Saxon race of a former epoch were to be ground down into villanage, and decimated of their numbers, to allay the restless fears, and swell the booty of the band of griping economists of those days. Proclaim rather the curfew, we say, at whose sullen toll fires may be raked, and lights put out, by the submissive serfs; for the despotism of William was enlightened and constitutional by comparison with the more refined malice of Lord John, whose blue-bottle myrmidons are appointed to outrage the cottager's fireside, indecently to intrude upon the sanctity of the bedchamber, and recklessly to lord it in the cottage, once inviolable and inviolate as the proudest and the strongest castle.

No man, of the slightest powers of observation and ratiocination, can doubt that the Poor-Law Abolition Bill is the root of all evil-the fretful blisterplaster by which the body politic has been gradually excoriated and inflamed into the mass of maddening humours, which at length have exasperated the unhappy patient wildly to rush into rebellion to fire with blazing brand his neighbour's house-to flourish the dagger athirst for his blood. The conflagration and sanguinary conflicts at Birmingham-the organized outrages in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Northumberland, are but counterpart demonstrations of popular fury against the New Poor-Law Bill of the Bristol and Nottingham burnings, and ferocious bandings of the Birmingham Union, so lauded and patronised at the time in aid of the Reform Bill. The difference-how striking that difference!-is, that the Poor-Law movement being anti-Whig, must be put down vi et armis; and, if constable and cutlass fail, by cannon

and cavalry. The Reform movement, essentially Whig in its character, and conservative of Whig places, was, on the reverse, headed in its furious freaks, and palliated in its incendiary outbreaks, by the Whig. Ministers themselves. They corresponded, from Downing Street, with revolutionary agitators, by despatches, as regular and as officially franked as orders to Lords-lieutenant of counties, or mandates to the colonies. Thus, in eight years the first eight years-of Whig ascendency, the country has been brought to the very verge of two sanguinary revolutions; the one revolutionary bantling being of its own begetting, to secure office-the other a Frankenstein of its own creation no less, seeking its dispossession and destruction. All other causes of popular discontent and disloyalty sink into insignificance compared with the deepseated and ineffaceable abhorrence of the Bastile law. All other causes of grievance, real or alleged, are but accessory, and contribute only to enlarge the overshadowing proportions of this upastree, poisoning the social atmosphere, and blighting the vegetation of kindly feeling all around. Armies may march to enforce the law deformed -rural police, staff and cutlass in hand, may threaten recusancy or execute vengeance-Sir Robert Peel may throw himself more rashly than gallantly into the breach for its defence, and fancy it chivalry-the Great Duke himself may interpose his sevenfold shield, and wave his till now invincible truncheon, in its defence-but vainly all! The fiat has gone forth-the mind, stubborn and immovable, of the land, has pronounced and sealed its doom-the peasantry and the operatives of England say, and are entitled to say, with the proud barons of old, " Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari." If now the New Poor-Law, in all the nakedness of its atrocious principle, cannot, and dare not, be more than partially carried out, how shall it be when the half million of unskilled workmen, now temporarily absorbed by railway enterprise, shall return to overlay the common labour market, where their absence has tended to maintain wages, keep down the redundancy of competition, and facilitate the working of the odious law? We assume to know, and from long intercourse and experience ought to know, quite as much of the middle classes, and infinitely more of the labouring classes, than either the Great Duke or Sir Robert; and presume, therefore, to tell them, that, while the first may be perhaps somewhat equally divided in sentiment, influenced by high authority, and therefore apathetic either way, there exists no such division of opinion-no such torpidity of feeling among the labouring classes. Never were they on any given question so unanimous. With them the New Poor-Law is the question of life and death: they will have it not they will brave all the pains and penalties of disobedience. Is the Great Duke equally prepared to en. counter all the consequences of their resistance? Let him, we beseech him, listen no more to the Richmonds and the Salisburys, disqualified witnesses as they are in the mighty cause at issue. Red-herring diet is not too luxurious for parish paupers, as by the one conceived; nor are they enamoured of their Bastile cages, or fattened and overfed to sauciness with their pork-water soup, as earnestly insisted on by the other, a noble guardian and chairman of a Sussex Union. Some people have strange fancies. Thousands will crowd on a hangingday to the gallows, and feast on the agonies of the dying wretch, from the sight of which tens of thousands flee with horror. Some noble lords, there may be, who have morbid appetites, and grave-digging propensities, only for human suffering and mortal putres Let them indulge: they may ransack churchyards, when Newgate felonry has been gloated on to satiety, and new rigours have been imagined, and torments feasted on. There they may be in their proper sphere; but let them refrain from the workhouse; there, if the tenants are paupers, they are not felons. It is one, and not the least curse of the New Poor-Law, that even professing Conservatives are to be found among its hardened advo

cences.

cates.

How various and inconsistent the policy of the Cabinet! Whilst Lord John was carrying starvation and imprisonment among the honest labouring classes of England, because work they cannot get, and to beg they are ashamed, Lord Normanby, the Viceroy of Ireland, was making royal progresses, and evacuating jails of all their criminals and assassins. In the

course of one single jaunt, during one single summer, his Excellency discharged no fewer than 240 of these ruffians, with a light-heartedness and nonchalance adding peculiar grace to the clemency. He referred not for character or circumstances of mitigation to the judges who tried, but to the jailer in whose custody they were; and in the jail of Clonmel, fifty-seven felons were thus discharged in one hour, as, it may be supposed, not fitting company for the 200 more honest men left behind. Not only were the sacred functions of judges invaded, but venerable judges themselves, and the chief judges above all, grossly outraged before the eyes of the whole people, with all the reckless levity of a pampered buffoon. We shall not dwell on the disgusting compost of farce and fraud, of perjury direct and prevarication constant, which were the only distinguishing features of the Normanby Viceroyalty, and the Secretaryship of Lieutenant Drummond, as brought out in the highest judicial court in the land; where the latter was cited and compelled to become the reluctant evidence, not alone of his own doings, but of the misdemeanours approaching to treason, and the lesser impeachments of falsehood, folly, and perfidy of his own chief. Excellent was the rebuke of Lord Brougham in the House of Lords, on occasion of the contempt of these men for the forms of justice, of their insult towards the persons, and scornful reversal of the decisions of judges.

"Whoever had practised in our courts, whoever had presided over them, whoever had observed the mode in which the judicial business was carried on, whoever had meditated on the constitution of these realms, as regarded its executive, legislative, and judicial branches, must be prepared to say with him, that of all the branches of that constitution, the pure, correct, and inflexible administration of

justice was by far the most material, (hear, hear.) It was this great power, this prodigious clamp, which bound society together. It was this great solar belt which guided and strengthened the whole system, formed as it was of discrepant materials, of various sizes, from the lowest to the most exalted. As long as that great belt continued firm and strong, and retained its binding force, he utterly disregarded all perils with which the constitution might be threatened. Give the Crown all the desire to tyrannize imagin