thing to fear, will now make them know what it is to drive honest men to despair. They shall either relieve the miseries of the working people, or they shall know misery themselves." A bond dreadful, and devilish was now entered into by these two, to destroy and lay waste regardless of the merits or demerits of those on whom they committed their ravages-it was in their perverted minds sufficient that fear must do the work which neither ordinary justice, nor compassion, which neither law nor religion had done. The icy indifference of the educated and wealthy, had produced their natural fruits, wrong and indifference towards them in the victims of their system, and the devil entering into the souls of the oppressed, made them regard themselves, not as evil, but as patriots and saviours. A mutual enquiry into each other's history here took place between the confederate incendiaries. They resolved to open up their whole lives to each other. We know the story of Meldrum, let us now hear a few particulars of that of Bates. (To be continued.) CORPORATION RESISTANCE TO THE WELL-BEING OF THE WORKING CLASS. published, has furnished the complete solution of the mystery which brings about the present opposition to the bill so necessary to the well-being of the working class: "The objections of the local administrators against interference with people's management of their "own affairs," have a very close and literal meaning, when the Chairman of a Court of Sewers is the possessor of small tenements of a neglected class, which most require the exercise of compulsory powers against the owner; when leading members of the local administrative body are householders whose charges for works of house-drainage most need regulation and reduction; or when, on a Paving Board, an influential member is the retired partner who holds the coutract for paving." An example of some of the common sources of the outery may be taken from the evidence of the Secretary of the South Devon Sanitary Association. Speaking of the important town of Devonport, he says,— "Whilst engaged in making a report on the sanitary condition of the town, a tradesman complained to me that the health of his family and workmen suffered, from a very large number of pigs being kept in a yard behind his house; they were fed with offal from a slaughter-house adjoining, and a more disgusting nuisance I never witnessed. I asked him why he did not complain. He said it would be useless; at the same time mentioning the influence which would be brought to bear against him. I next asked why he did not appeal to his landlord. 'That would be useless, too,' he replied, as the pigs are his best tenants.' The landlord, a butcher, is a commissioner." This gentleman gives three or four more instances quite as flagrant of commissioners having such vested interests as this in filth and fever, and says they might be multiplied ad infinitum, as proofs of the "impossibility of carrying out an efficient plan of sanitary reform without government superintendence." The report from which we have quoted* contains a statement of the sanitary condition of sixty nine towns in England and Wales. The picture is a deplorable one. It shows in equal proportions, lavish expenditure and excessive neglect. Let us take an example from Manchester. The following is taken from the evidence of the secretary there; "What number of water-works are there at present at Manchester?-There is at present only one. "Do you know anything of the expenses connected with that; what according to their own statement have they spent? £366,000. THERE has not been for many years a measure proposed by Government so directly important to the working men of England, their wives, and families, as the Health of Towns' Bill. True, we all suffer from the present state of our towns as to sanitary matters, but it is on the poor-on the working class in general, that the intensity of the evil falls. It is they who are crowded into inconvenient dwellings, in narrow courts and lanes, uncleansed, undrained, uncared for as to the common decencies of life, without pure air and without water. It is among them that fever rages, that life is shortened to nearly one half its average length, that infants are born to sicken and die, that widows are left to go into the union workhouse, because husbands are struck down by poison and pestilence in the prime of life, and among them that cholera, if it comes, will commit its ravages. But members of corporations are comfortable burghers, tradesmen, lawyers, or belonging to professions of one kind or other. They live in substantia! "What is the quality of the water supplied?-Very indifferhouses, and have the water laid on and the drains trap-ent indeed; it is foul in taste and it is very hard; it contains a ped. Their wives and children are well lodged and great quantity of sulphate of lime. Speaking of the losses suswell fed, and if the air of the town seems not so plea- tained in Manchester by the bad supply of water, the usual calsant as might be wished, because the wind blows cerculation is that such a population consumes about 14 pounds of tain unhealthy odours from the "poorer districts," they soap each person annually. Our water spoils at least half the can go to the cottage in the country, or take lodgings in soap; that is, we use £50,000 in soap more than we need to, soap that is used; if so, we lose in Manchester about £50,000 at the sea-side. Corporations therefore say that towns which is about £10,000 more than a good supply of water need are all in an admirable state; that nothing can be bet-cost us. Out of respect to these trading interests, these works ter; that to take the management out of their hands is have had to be purchased, and an entirely new water source obcentralization, and centralization they say is bad, and tained, the community being taxed in perpetuity for the previ therefore they want to go on as they are, managing their ous local legislation, for which no one is now responsible." own affairs, and continuing to have the power of spending their own money as they like. The following remarks relate to Liverpool ; "Yes, undoubtedly!" says the Report of the Health of Towns' Association, just published "Yes, undoubtedly! spend as much as you like. You will have perfect freedom in every extravagance you choose to indulge in with what is really your own money. It is not proposed to impose the slightest restraint upon your freedom as Englishmen in this respect. The limitations in question are not upon the expenditure of your own, but of other people's money." "Are they able to supply all the town?-They supply about one-half. "When works bearing upon purity and decency are completed, works of ornament and splendour are admissible. The very reverse is usually the order of works adopted by the trading classes represented in Town Councils. Even the works of more direct utility are most partially distributed. Front and main streets, occupied by the influential classes, are opened up, whilst back streets, which nevertheless contribute to the rates, Report of the Sub-committee of the Health of Towns Association on the answers to questions addressed to the princi The Health of Towns' Association in this Report, just pal towns of England and Wales, 1848. the true statement would be, that it requires fifty householders to initiate a large economy. As matters now stand, any one or two individuals may involve a town in the enormously expensive inquiry for a local Act; and moreover in excessively wasteful expenditure for inefficient works." Even if we had as much faith in the honesty and disinterestedness of corporations, as we have cause to doubt the existence of either we should still have to contend with their ignorance and should protest against the folly of entrusting works which require skill and knowledge in various branches of sciences to men who however well they may understand their own trades or professions know nothing bearing on the subject in question. It is truly observed; "The very assumption on the part of the local authorities or their representatives, that they can carry out the requisite works by themselves, is only a deplorable proof of the ignoThe baker rance of both, as to what is required to be done. who is the Chairman of the City Commissioners of Sewers, has declared that he and they are willing' to carry out complete works of sanitary improvement. He might as well say, that he is willing to construct a well-working locomotive steam-engine. Such assurances from such men, only show they know not what they promise." "The heaviest burthen, however, which they bear, is what is left in addition to this misdirected expenditure, namely, the The people themselves are equally incompetent to burthen of excessive sickness, loss of labour, premature mortal-mend the matter. They have no redress. They cannot ity, and excess in the number of deaths and funerals. The excess of deaths, even above Tiverton, was, in the year 1841, 332, and the numbers have not lessened since that time. The pecuniary loss from that excess could not be less than £50,000 for that one year. This burthen is found to be reducible by means of a much lower amount of expenditure; but it must be expenditure otherwise directed than by such a body as the existing burthens have been imposed by; it must be by the application of science and skill, which ignorance and prejudice, and want of care and sympathy, as regards the labouring population, would repudiate." The outcry of our own "Dirty City," still rings in our ears. The following relates some of its doings; "The Corporation of the City of London, besides spending about a quarter of a million upon ignorantly and mischievously constructed sewers, an expense at which, it is declared, three cities might have been sewered completely, have charged by a coal tax upon the whole metropolis, a sum of £1,000,000, and upon public property an outlay of £750,000 for new edifices. Some of the works, such as the widening of streets, were undoubtedly good in their time and order, though they are all the subject of complaint for their extravagance. It is, however, proper to note, that this expenditure, employed at the scale of expense requisite for constructing model lodging-houses, would have sufficed to substitute salubrious, in the room of insalubrious, dwellings for 85,000 out of the 129,000 inhabitants of the corporation jurisdiction." Our limits alone prevent us from multiplying instances. The sums spent in litigation alone, would suffice to convince any one who became aware of them of the ruinous extravagance of the present system ;- "I believe I am within the mark,' said Mr. E. Rushton, the Stipendiary Magistrate of Liverpool, in his evidence before the Committee on Private Bills, speaking of the expense of obtaining private Acts, when I say that, within the last ten years not much less than £100,000 has been expended in these matters, including the expense of parties in resisting local Acts.'" "Besides the profits of the applications for the acts themselves," observes the report, "they yield profitable crops of fees in the proceedings under them, and then again in applications for their amendment." These things make us perceive the force and justice of the following remarks;- "It is objected to the proposed measure that it permits any fifty householders to involve the town in an 'expensive' inquiry; possibly improve the condition of their dwellings as to sewerage, water supply, and ventilation; nor can they remove to better. Where can they find better? All are defective, and if one neighbourhood is worse than others, still in that worst of all, must the work-man live, whose employment necessitates his living thereabouts. There are people who will say that there is power sufficient, if the law were enforced, to do away made of a gentleman who writes a pamphlet to the efwith all nuisances. We find in this report, mention fect, that the common and statute law of England is sufficient for all sanitary purposes. This reminds us of the gentleman who argued that the law of England was open to the poorest man as well as the richest, and of the reply he received from Professor Porson. "True," said Porson," and so is the London Tavern." The reply needs no comment, at all events, to any one who ever experienced the cost of a law suit. Let There is not a doubt that what we require in order to work any sanitary measure, is a controlling power. We want an authority competent to see that the people's money is well applied and not wasted; that the people's health is cared for, not wantonly destroyed; that the people's lives are valued, not recklessly suffered to be extinguished by tens of thousands yearly from fever. Local bodies require looking after, as we all do. Irresponsible power is bad for every one. the people then petition (we again enforce the necessity of this). Let the people petition, that the bill which so deeply concerns their interests, may pass into law, and that to work it, there may be a controlling power, a central authority, composed of those men who have proved their earnestness in the cause, by years of labour and their knowledge of the proper means to ensure it by their able and vigorous proceedings, since they were constituted as a metropolitan commission. Without this nothing will be done. It is the people want protection and support. Let them bestir themselves in time. ין THE WEEKLY RECORD. See Louis Philippe. Here is a man elected by the people, the terms on which he was chosen made known to him; the principles of his government clearly defined; yet with the fatal warp of royalty he betrays his trust, and works industriously THE BLOOD-GUILTINESS OF KINGS. DAWN OF THE MIL- to reduce his benefactors and elevators to the miseries of a des LENNIUM OF FREEDOM. There is nothing so notorious in history as that its pages are drenched with human blood. It would appear as if mankind were a race far exceeding any idea of devils that has been furnished to us, in crime and cruelty, far exceeding any extent of conceivable folly in their foolishness. Their great avowed purpose has been to seek happiness; their great business from age to age to destroy each other. Nation has risen against nation, and people against people, and the more than march madness of it has been that they have denominated their murderous deeds-national glory! If we come to look, however, more clearly into this, we perceive that it has all resulted from the sole absurdity of submitting themselves and their affairs to kings. The idolatry of kingship has been punished in every age, with the infatuation of the furies, the dipping of each other's hands in blood. Blinded as it were by the curse of heaven for this idolatrous crime, with a ten-fold blindness these idol kings of theirs have led them up to mutual destruction, as butchers lead up sheep to the slaughter-house. The earth has groaned under the curse of perpetual carnage, civilization has been arrested, and misery and stupidity have prevailed. Thank God! the delusion more pregnant than all other delusions put together, with horrors and calamities, with crimes and abominations, is, however, coming to an end! The events of the last month more wonderful than any since the foundation of the world, testify to the awakening of the people, and the permanent spread of the spirit of civilization. From end to end of Europe the spirit of revolt against regal tyranny and deception has gone like a stroke of electricity; or rather like what it is, the voice of the Almighty, which has cried once more in the hour of a second and a greater creation-"LET THERE BE LIGHT! AND THERE WAS LIGHT!" potism. If ever a man might have known the consequences of such a proceeding, it was he. The French had sufficiently shown that they would tolerate no such treachery. But the traitor pressed the daring treason to extremity, and the consequence has been the murder of some hundreds of his people, whose blood cries against him from the ground. In He Look again at this Prussian assassin. His father promised his people the freedom for which they had fought, and which had been guaranteed to them as the price of victory. He died the violator of his word. The son repeated spontaneously the promise; and refused to keep it. The consequence is, that his streets are drenched with blood, and the souls of 2,000 slaughtered men cry against him from the ground. the hour of his humiliation, the crafty monarch, to turn away the accusations of his people, promises them the supremacy of Germany, and to elude the demand of domestic justice, plunges into a crime against the whole Germanic race. declares himself the King of Germany. This was sure to produce a cry of universal execration from every other German state; and it is come. From Austria, Baden, Bavaria, everywhere resounds the voice of indignation. On the walls of Frankfort, Mayence, Mannheim and other cities is displayed a handbill, in which is pronounced the opinion of the German people of his persevering perfidy, and unprincipled ambition. They tell him that they would sooner acknowledge a "butcher's dog as the head of Germany, than he." He who has sacrificed the children of the land to his puppet play of deceit and lying. They tell him that he can no longer deceive them; that he has torn off the mask; that he has spoken out, confessing that he grasps at the crown of Germany. "Let there be truth between us," add they, using his own deceitful words. "We and our house will not serve thee. We will have no fellowship with the oppressor of the people, the originator of the Silesian famine-fever, and the exterminator of his unarmed subjects." This is the language of a people awakened to a sense of their own power. May every nation which has now won by its blood, and bravery its freedom, know how to maintain it, and secure the world against the recurrence of the destructive murrain of royalty. : At that voice every idol of regal paganism has fallen like Dagon flat on its face, and the palms of its hands have been cut off. God once more has crazed the chariot wheels of the Pharaoh of Despotism, and plunged all its hosts into the Red Sea of popular indignation. Before the spirit of God manifested in the spirit of the people, every mighty heart has trembled, every proud knee has failed, every throne has shaken, and cast its oc- For us in this country the principle is fast-rooted in the concupant prostrate before it in the dust of humiliation. The Peo- stitution since 1688, that "all power is inherent in the people have shown that they are truly-and without any fiction-ple." That is the great language of the Bill of Rights. The the Sovereign People; they have now to show that what they British people decided practically its right to choose its own can so easily assume, they can as easily maintain. That they kings. William III confirmed this right by refusing to accept do and shall maintain the rights which they have thus vindi- the crown on any other ground. It is not the monarchy which cated is a duty holy and inviolable; a duty more religious than pinches us here. That has been sifted, and settled on so simple any other, except the worship of God himself, for it is the a basis, that it can no longer injure us. With our worthy pledge of peace and happiness to the whole earth; it is the gua- Queen we have no quarrel. After the licentious reigns of her rantee against the return of these old evils and oppressions, and predecessors, her own domestic life is a welcome spectacle to for the steady progress of freedom, truth, knowledge, and reli- the nation. We believe that from her, no exercise of popular gion. For this there is no security but the extinction of the right would receive a check and we believe as firmly that, kingly superstition, the establishment of the power of the people should the popular voice to-morrow demand a change in the through the medium of a wise and extensive representation. form of government, she would receive not the most distant The institution of royalty is so unnatural, that it invariably cor- shadow of injury. Was she requested to descend from the rupts those whom it involves, and converts them into faithless throne to make way for a republic, she would descend with the and treacherous individuals. Scarcely one man in a million is love and respect of the nation, and to a station of private seproof against its sorcery; and therefore it is that an Alfred is so curity, honour and plenty, which would secure all the true rare. By creating kings, nations create traitors to themselves. sources of human happiness. They elevate men only to plot and strive against their liberties, and inflict on the public the everlasting strife of politics. The eternal business of nations is to endeavour to wring from their princes their own natural liberties, which these men with an inconceivable infatuation are perpetually striving to extinguish. It is time to put an end to this troublesome and pernicious condition of affairs: if there be one thing more ignominious and disgraceful to the human intellect than another, it is to see thirty or forty millions of men subjected to the will and caprice of one single individual, perhaps the most foolish and depraved in the nation. If we look at what has just taken place on the continent, we behold but another exhibition of the treachery of kings to their trust, and of their blood-guiltiness towards their subjects. Every drop of blood which has been shed in every country where it has been shed-what is it but the result of the resistance of monarchs to the just claims of their people, and in many cases of their refusal to keep the terms on which they have been admitted to their thrones. But there is another power which has a huge debt to discharge to the nation, and which, if we do not mistake the signs and the spirit of the times, will ere long, be demanded of it. That is the Aristocracy. This power has usurped everything in this country which can be called national right as private property. It engrosses the throne, the parliament, the church and the property of the people. It has cursed us with the debts of its national murders, and taxing the poor man's loaf, the poor man's labour by which it is earned-has exempted itself from its own share of the burden. If the people be true to itself, this monstrous power, this power destructive to our liberties, our progress, and our commerce, must be put down and annihilated. Well has Lamennais said, that "the English aristocracy is the last remnant of the feudal institutions in Europe, and that England is the battle-ground on which the contest for its extinction must be fought out!" Well has Lamartine declared,— "A l'époque ou les Aristocraties tombent, c'est lá que les nations se régénèrent. La sève des peuples est là." "The epoch when Aristocracies fall, is that in which nations regenerate themselves. The sap of the people is there!" Against the bloody treasons of kings, and the aggressions of aristocracies, hostile to the progress of peace and civilization, the voice of God is gone forth, and it will be the crime of the people if the will of Heaven on its behalf be not fulfilled. Christianity is arising from its hindrances and perversions to speak to the nations from the seats of governments in voices like that of Lamartine. When did kings, or priests, or aristocrats, speak from their assumed altitudes, language like that? Instead of demonstrations of war, and proclamations of oppression, we hear the accents of peace, love, and liberty breathed from the chambers of government, and the great German nation is uniting to embody in the constitution of their country, the principles of sound philosophy, which they have made universal. Thanks to Christianity, the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, which is rolling on now manifestly to fill all lands. Thanks to the pen which, in many a dark and terrible day, and in many a day of seduction has still held on its silent but invincible way. Thanks to thousands of poets, and other martyrs of the spirit who, in contempt, in prison, in exile, and in death, have sown the seeds of fire, and leavened the huge popular mass to its present glorious condition, and made one day of present existence, worth a century of the past. EXCELLENT USE FOR NEWSPAPERS WHEN READ. An intelligent friend of ours has suggested a plan of diffusing much satisfaction and information at no cost whatever. We are apt to commit the most extensive waste without reflection. We are now coming to the consciousness that we have been committing a waste of from one hundred to two hundred millions of pounds sterling annually in this kingdom by washing away all our sewerage into the rivers. That will be realized, and future ages will wonder at our folly in thus recklessly destroying the great sources of fertility. But we commit an almost equal waste of newspapers-those sources of civilization and intelligence. We take our weekly or daily paper, read it, and fling it aside. Many of us have whole piles of newspapers sent from one quarter or another, which are a nuisance rather than anything else to us when once read, if ever read they are. But if we exist in such newspaper plenty, there are thousands and millions who exist in an equal dearth. That which is useless or next to it to us, would be of infinite service to others: that which is quite in our way is quite out of the way of numbers of others we have a plethora, but our poor neighbours have a vacuum-our surfeit leaves them equally in starvation. Now how easily is all this remedied; what a source of benefit and pleasure to others is in our hands. What a mass of the seeds of information we destroy, when we might fling them to the wind, and make them generate all over the country. Let us never destroy or fling aside a newspaper. Let us reflect how many thousands and millions of our fellow men would be glad to pick up what we fling down. Let us reflect how many mechanics' libraries and news rooms there are; what numbers of clubs and mutual improvement societies, and coffee houses of the working classes there are at which every one of these newspapers would be thankfully received. thus throw open. It is surprising what a source of intellectual fertility we may Do you wish our labouring brethren to read, to think, to get a habit of preferring the reading-room to the tap-room? Do you want all to inform themselves of the actual condition of things, of the real state of every social and political question, that they may exercise their rights powerfully, and their powers rightfully? Scatter abroad then your newspapers. Get a list of all the Mechanics' Libraries, and reading. rooms of all kinds, and send your papers to some of them-and let those who have more than they want, send such as they do not want to others. A few penny post letters of inquiry, both from those who have to send, and those who want, would soon organize a system of distribution. A list of such parties and societies as wished for a number of papers, might be furnished from time to time in popular journals and newspapers in answer to enquirers, which would facilitate the diffusion. The great thing would be to avoid sending a shoal to some and none to others. It would be quite requisite for public-spirited members of any institution where an unnecessary quantity arrived, to give public notice of that, or to apply themselves to direct the stream on to remote and obscure localities. By a little care, zeal, and patriotism, the bulk of once read newspapers might be soon directed into the proper channels-and these channels -let it especially be remembered, are those where there are not funds to purchase. We should not make our good will to the necessitous an injury to the press itself, which in its great work of diffusion of knowledge, deserves and must enjoy as extensive a patronage as possible. That which applies to newspapers applies to literary papers also, to any species of printed sheet, in fact, which can be transmitted, cost free, by post. We are quite sure that a great moral and intellectual revolution lies in our hands, through this plan, and that our newspapers and literary and scientific papers may thus be made to do a vast and almost incalculable service, without diminishing the number of purchasers, nay, with the ultimate certainty of increasing them. POPLAR WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION. The following Lectures are also about to be given :- Views. Admittance Free. April 18.-On Astronomy, by Mr. M. A. Austin. May 2.-On the French Revolution, by the Rev. Fitz-Herbert Bugby. May 9.-On Charles Dickens and his Writings. May 23.-On Ancient Egypt, by the Rev. J. A. Baynes. June 13.-On the Fine Arts, by Mr. J. D. Wrillett. We have read with pleasure the particulars of this meeting in the Manchester newspapers. Oliver Heywood, in the chair, the President of the Institute, and amongst those taking part in the business of the evening, were George Cook, Elkanah Armitage, Mayor of Manchester, Abel Heywood, Councillor, and many other gentlemen. 6s. 2d. from proceeds of tea and coffee parties; the total income the year. attend al all. PRICE 1d. STAMPED, 23d |