THE WEEKLY RECORD.

THE PHLEGMATIC ENGLISHMAN. The phlegmatic German, the phlegmatic Dutchman, how long have these been stereotyped phrases in this country. We have flattered ourselves that we were anything but phlegmatic. We were active, lively, knowing fellows, very capable of taking care of ourselves,-But what is the fact? Are Germans, Dutchmen, or any sort of men, a tenth part so phlegmatic as Englishmen? Have the Dutch or Germans suffered an arrogant aristocracy to ride on their shoulders, and run their noses into everybody's quarrels, and made them pay for everybody's quarrels, as we have done? Where are the nations, ancient or modern, who have stood cooly and allowed a domineering faction to erect the most horrible monument of murder and violence in their midst in the shape of a national debt of £800,000,000?

Germany has flung off the despotism of its misgovernors. Dutchmen could never suffer such national plunder as we have suffered-but for ourselves, we groan and grumble under our burden and our aristocratic incubus, but take no steps to

throw them off.

The Englishman, in fact, seems to have but one idea-and that is, drudging after money, without the second idea, of securing it, when got, from the hand of the plunderer. His life is spent in the most incessant pursuit of gain, which is no gain to him, because as fast as he scrapes it together his aristocratic masters finger it away. He is the hen that lays the golden cgg, and the aristocracy is the assidious farmer who every day visits the nest and carries off the egg of the day.

The Englishman has created a great domestic trade, the aristocratic government has, however, spite of all his profits, run him into debt, and mortgaged his estate for 800,000,000! The Englishman has conquered an amazing extent of colonial country; the aristocracy has again laid hold on these, and covered them with armies, and placemen, and debt, and monoplies which are crushing them. In India alone we have a debt of at least £50,000,000! which one of these days will have to be added to the nice little debt at home, while the aristocratic governors, officers, armies, and the mo

nopolies of salt, land, and opium, have sunk that glorious country to an utter incapacity of paying it.

The Englishman has been fool enough to give a property bringing in Ten Millions Sterling a year for a church to teach him Christianity, while he has the whole system in a book that he may buy for a shilling.

The Englishman has a sea round him, and may set the world at defiance, but his aristocratic rulers tell him that in order to take care of himself, he must pay Twenty Millions a year for soldiers and sailors! There is not a thing belonging to an Englishman that is not taxed twice over-even to his daylight, and yet his aristocratic jugglers tell him that he is free, and a very high-spirited fellow-and he believes them. What wont he believe?

The Englishman grumbled some twenty years ago about these things, and about sixteen years ago he got an Act of Parliament called the REFORM BILL, but which ought to have been called the NATIONAL HOAX, and a very shallow hoax too. This was to have cured all his grievances-has it? Under colour of this hoax a little, miserable, small-souled aristocrat, called Lord John, got into power, and is now in power. Of a mental calibre which, had he not been the son of a duke would not have induced any one to entrust him with the management of a tripe stall, he has laughed outright at the Englishmau, and still laughs and holds the dupe's purse. He promised to retrench the expenses of the state-to reduce offices and their salaries has he? Ask Lord Ellenborough. He promised to reduce the National expenditure-since the Reform Bill passed it has increased so immensely that a Pro. perty Tax of Six Millions a year has been laid on, which the little mountebank this year wished to make about Nine Millions of. He promised to reduce the National Debt-since the Reform Bill, this debt has been increased Thirty-four Millions, or more than Two Millions a year! Soon after Lord John came into office, he promised to reform the church, and for several sessions he made many enormously long specches, pointing

out the necessity of these reforms-and after all-he turned suddenly round, when he thought that game had been carried on long enough, and declared that "the church was a most beneficent institution, and must not be touched!"

So now, after all his bare-faced juggling about Political Reform, after belying all his promises, and living unabashed on these proceeds of national waste and political profligacy-he turns round and declares, that neither the middle nor the working classes want any reform at all!

If they dont, then both Lord John and these classes have been making a great ado about nothing these twenty years and more.

Well, there is now a movement amongst these classes for a union to procure these reforms, will they come to anything? Will the Englishman at length prove that he is less phlegmatic than a Dutchman? We shall see, but we have great doubts of him.

With a ruined commerce, with a pauperized people, with manufacturers paralysed, with merchants shattered by scores, like so many men of glass, with colonies covered with abuses, with the debt increasing, and the case and comfort of life everywhere decaying-in a word, with profligacy in the government, perjury and bribery in the House of Commons, as lately most awfully shown, with laughing senators and a weeping people-if the Englishman does not now awake from his lethargy, and shake himself free of his political swindlers, he never will, and there is nothing for it but national decline, and every man to save himself by escape, to some other hemisphere as fast as he can. At all events, till the reforms so flagrantly needed, and so apparent to every one, are effected, let us hear no more of phlegmatic Germans, or Dutchmen with souls as stagnant as their canals.

THE REFORM MISSION IN THE COUNTRY. On Sunday, the 28th of May, the leading members of the Co-operative League, Farringdon Hall, Snow Hill, responded to an invitation sent them by the friends of progress at Watford. They left London by the early train, and on their arrival at Watford, proceeded to hold an open air meeting, which was attended by twelve or thirteen hundred of the working men of that district, a large majority of whom where agricultural labourers. As the meeting had been previously advertised by handbills which were plentifully distributed through the town and neighbourhood, the jealousy of the inhabitants was aroused, and several of the more wealthy residents stood on the outskirts of the crowd, regarding the large assemblage with no favourable aspect. The police Inspector, mounted on horseback, was also present. Never before had the disseminators of the advanced doctrines, found their way into that secluded spot, and it is scarcely to be wondered at, that their presence on this occasion should have spread dismay among those, whose interests are bound up with the "Glorious Institutions" of the country. Among the speakers were Mr. Walter Cooper, Mr. Shorter, Mr. Ellis, and Mr. Newton. The multitude listened with amazement. The majority, who had been attracted by the novelty of such a meeting, never felt their serfdom before. "The idle man," said Mr. Cooper, "lives in the big house. You, who toil twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day, dwell in the little unwholesome cabin. And what are your prospects when you have lost your health and spent your strength? Why, the Union Bastile, and the Parish Coffin." "What you say is true," they shouted, "we never thought of this before." The assembly dispersed, and those who had composed it, were "sadder and wiser men," on the morrow. Before they took farewell of the speakers, they provided them with ample refreshment, insisted upon paying their travelling expenses, and earnestly entreated that they would speedily repeat their visit.

HORRIBLE CONDITION OF CHILDREN IN LONDON.

Lord Ashley rendered a great service to humanity on Tuesday evening last by his exposé of the condition of children, and not only of children, but of the poor in general in this metropolis. He stated that from the most careful inquiries it appeared that there were not less than 30,000 children in London who were wholly dependent for their daily existence on crime and depredation. He very fitly termed this deplora

ble and neglected juvenile population the seed-plot of all the theft and iniquity which distinguishes this so-called christian metropolis, and pronounced preaching and missionaries of no use till this state of things was changed. Lord Ashley described the haunts of the poor in London as places where it is almost impossible for any one to exist an hour who is not used to them, from the accumulation of everything that is offensive to every sense, both physical and moral. We beg our readers to peruse his speech at large and attentively. We have often said it in this journal, and we repeat it again, that while such scenes exist among us it is useless our calling this a christian country, for, let it be clearly understood that it is the public fault that these regions, extending over some square miles altogether in the metropolis in one quarter or another, exist as they are; and we will venture to say, that no quarters of the lower abodes of condemned sinners can exceed them in the foul amount of everything that is revolting in crime, in filth, or in everything calculated to destroy, to torture, or render hideous, human nature. We have had the hardihood to pene trate and explore these horrible, these stinking and pestilential dwellings of our fellow creatures, and we ask as we have asked before, what has the government, what have the clergy, what have the magistracy, and what have the publiin general been about to allow this moral and physical Gehennah to grow up and spread itself thus far and wide in the midst of us? What is the use of a government, or a church, if not to prevent such wholesale horrors and abomination. To what purpose does government spend upwards of fifty millions a-year, to what purpose the church ten millions a-year? Do not the police see all this: ought not the clergy in their rounds amongst the sick and the suffering to have seen all this? And having seen it, can any one call himself a man who delayed for a day to make the authorities acquainted with it? From the censure which this implies, and no severer can be pronounced on men making any claims to the christian name, we must except the Rev. Mr. Champneys, of Whitechapel, who has laboured zealously and made the strongest representations on the subject, and we must also except the committee of the Health of Towns Association, who have exerted themselves, spite of all opposition and indifference, both on the part of the government and the public, to bring the monstrous matter to the light of day. Well might both Lord Ashley and other members of the House of Commons declare that no subject of such importance could be brought before Parliament. It is one that concerns the very existence of life, property, and mórals in this empire, for all authorities agree that the same condition of things extends through every great town in the kingdom. Yet, we will venture to assert that it will neither excite the government nor the public to any adequate resolve for its redress. Government got rid of the question in that very bland and polite way in which they get rid of all questions of the kind, by saying that it was already under their notice, and hoping that Lord Ashley would not press his motion to a division, which accordingly he did not. And so the misery and pestilence will go on. Thousands and tens of thonsands of innocent children will daily harden into villians of the worst stamp under the noses of the police, and under our very eyes; clergymen will preach, and magistrates will condemn, and the butterfly aristocracy will crowd to morning and evening operas, and languish over delicious foreign airs and graces in the very midst of the worst regions of this "hell upon earth" till the evil has grown to that magnitude that it will at length awake them from their dreams of pleasure as their own class was awoke in Paris in the famous year '87.

People wonder at the wickedness of the age, and at the growth of infidelity and atheism. Let them make a tour through the back streets of London, and they will only wonder that vice and easy disbelief in Providence, Christianity, and humanity do not abound ten times more. The contrast between excessive splendour and luxury, and scenes of woe, filth, stench, and every physical and moral abomination to which Lord Ashley has called attention is too startling and outrageous to the ordinary mind-and they need not go far to find it. At the back of the new, and splendid shops of Oxford street-in close proximity with Hyde Park, and all round the very. Parliament house, on both sides of the water, but especially in Westminster, and under shadow of the Abbey lie these doleful regions of unexampled wretchedness. We lately went through some of them with an American clergyman who had spent two years on the continent, and explored the condition of the poor in Rome, Naples, Paris, Vienna, and almost every large capital of Europe, and he declared that there was nothing like the misery and squalor of London in the world. Still we have no faith in the sympathies of this country, demoralized by bad government, by a bad system of theological tuition, the effeminating influence of aristocratic life, and by a love of money become, through various causes, a very national dropsy--being speedily aroused to the earnestness necessary to insure a remedy. God help the people! perishing in the midst of abundance, with a Governmemt of Fifty and a Church of Ten Millions a-year.

tion, especially in this country, by the efforts of the unrepresented classes to obtain an extension of the franchise, I have sometimes wondered that the advocates of woman's rights have never, at least, mooted the question of the right of adult females to have a voice in the election of those who make laws which they, in common with the male population, are required to obey.

I am fully prepared for the ridicule with which such a question will be treated, by those who lack more powerful weapons; but in all good faith, I am unable to perceive any reason for withholding the elective franchise from one half the adult population, and I shall feel glad if some of your correspond. ents will enlighten me upon the subject. Of course, I address myself in these remarks to those who admit the claim which is being made by the male members of the working classes for complete suffrage, and I think the onus lies with these persons to show why the same claim may not be put forward on behalf of women. The advocates of complete suffrage argue, that a voice in the election of those who make laws is the natural inalienable right of those who are called upon to obey, quite irrespective of the qualifications intellectual or pecuniary, which they possess. If this is the right of every man, why is it not also the right of every woman? Want of so-called qualification, property or intellectual (idiotism and madness excluded) being no obstacle in the one case-cannot, of course, be fairly made an objection in the other-women are required to obey the laws and pay the taxes, so far their position is the same as that of men, and their claims are so far equal. If it be said that women cannot serve the State in in the same way as men, by reason of physical weakness, I answer that the same line of argument would exclude thousands of men who now enjoy their electoral rights, and thousauds more upon whom the advocates of complete suffrage would bestow the franchise.

I shall perhaps be told that women are contented with their

position, and do not want the privilege I claim for them. I doubt not but that this is true to a great extent. 1 want to rouse them to a perception of their duties as citizens, and their rights and dignities as thinking independent beings. I consider that it is the duty of women to make their voice peacefully and intelligently heard in the land, and they cannot abnegate that duty. The only intelligible plea upon which a participa. tion in the privilege of voting for members of Parliament can be denied to women, is that of absolute intellectual inferiority. I do not think there are very many who will put forward this plea-to those who do, I can only reply that, until something like a fair trial has been instituted between the intellectual powers of the sexes, and the result very clearly ascertained, I shall take leave to doubt the inferiority altogether. I might add that whilst a woman performs (in theory at least) the im portant part of the executive, it is scarcely consistent to deny the right of a voice in the election of the people's representatives to women. Unless it is at the same time admitted that the Sovereign is a puppet in the hands of her Minister-which admission will hardly do in theory.

I shall feel glad if you will insert this paper. I am anxious to hear the subject discussed apart (if possible) from affected amusement or amazement.

LINES

ADDRESSED TO MARY HOWITT.

JUNE 8, 1818. I.

AFTER a blight that falls in Spring:
The young beech leaves, yet mindful of the sting,
With cautious fear

Slowly put forth their tender green,
And o'er the dull-red withering crispness wear
Their mellow foliage sheen;

Till the sun's beams make their true beauty clear,
Ready to meet the Summer's joyous wing.

II.

Never despond, oh, spirit pure! Good comes to all who hopefully endure A painful lot,

While youthful health and willing hand Early and late work round the garden-lot. We cannot countermand

Our fate and suffering; but no mortal shot Reaches the heart within itself secure.

R. H. HORNE.

GREEN BOUGHS FROM THE FOREST.

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S LOdge.

THE TWO THOMPSON S.

BY WILLIAM HOWITT.

THE bells burst forth with a merry peal, and remind us that it is Whitsuntide! At once a world of glad and beautiful things rush over our hearts and our memories. Days of darkness and trial, scenes of fraud and faithlessness, a world of iron men and things, all that is sad and oppressive disappear, and blue skies, and green fields, and far-away woods, and villages where the merry bells, too, call to prayer and to social festivity the toiling race of rural simplicity, are present with us. We rise out of the foggy atmosphere of the care-paved city-we burst from the bondage of mammon and all his gins and traps and machinery of lined books and tall stools, the porches of dolorous office-birds, and are away! once more free! once more men; Yes, in the land of pleasant memories, the sun is still shining, the grass and the trees, and the corn are green; the streams are flowing as heartsomely as ever--the lark and the thrush sing as joyously-and God and nature receive us to their arms, as from a dismal dream, to the eternal reality of beauty and of peace. No

Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her! 'Tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this, our life, to lead
From joy to joy, for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of common life
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all that we behold
Is full of blessings.

WORDSWORTH.

With the pealing bells, then, we break the spell of town dreariness, and are once more in the midst of the woods.

neath the green covert of the close boughs of the hornbeam trees. We pass on, and wonder where are the hundreds of people that in caravans have gaily driven from town to enjoy the forest freshess. We seek them in vain. We come upon the highway, and find them dancing in the heat and the dust of the yards of the public houses, red as lobsters, and labouring harder, both men and women, than they have laboured at their shop or their household tasks for the last six months, while beer and tobacco constitute the heaven of the rest. Such are the ruralities of Londoners of a certain class. Could they not have been as rural at Copenhagen House, or the Shepherd's Bush ? The schoolmaster must be surely abroad! Certainly he is not at home as he should be. We plunge once more into the woods, and gladly lose the sound of the fiddle in the cry of the cuckoo, and the murmur of the fresh boughs.

We are once more seated in a pleasant opening of the forest at our pastoral dinner. Our friend, Henry C. Wright, sits, as he sate twelve months ago, amongst a group of children opposite to us, and tells them of the different scenery and creatures of the vast forests of America. After an hour spent more de lightfully than in any city or any king's palace, we arise and stroll into the brown solitude of High Beach. There the bare dry ground, the scattered leaves of last year, the old and noble beeches, carry us away to many a forest scene in the old and beloved Germany. We walk and dream-and miles of profoundly solitary woods, and old solitary Jager houses, and primitive villages in deep remote glens, and antiquated inns, in rarely visited regions, rise before us as we go. But the gipsy who fain would tell your fortune, though you know too much of it already, and the laughter of parties of young people pic-nicing here and there, with lots of baskets, and some fiddles, and heaps of cloaks, and horses still harnessed to gig and chaise, hanging their heads in sleepy posture near, awake us from our pleasant reveries, and we take one long view from the hilltop of the far-spread country, and mount our own vehicle, and away.

Away! but whither? To the old Lodge of Queen Bess. Old Lodge, we salute thee for thy venerable antiquity, but we owe thee no respect as the one-time resort of the boasted virgin queen! No, we revere not the den of the assassin- we have no worship for the hand of the murderer, whether clad in royal or in ragged apparel Foh! The blood of a queen and of a cousin is on the hands of that wretched old woman! Let the interested courtier doff his hat and fling his mantle in the way of that ancient hag and Jezabel-we owe more respect to hat and mantle and to our own self, than thus to desecrate them. Foh! She thought Amias Paulett a dainty fellow, because he would not take off her captive cousin privily at her command. She kept Sir Ralph Sadler as her royal commissioner of murder at Berwick. She imprisoned and ruined poor secretary Davison as her scape-goat for the foul murder of a captive rival. Shall I lift my hand to do the royal tigress homage? The bloody stump of the printer who dared to print a pamphlet against her projected Spanish marriage, rises up and warns me. Get thee behind me she Satin! and all those who have painted thee as a noble mother in Israel. Old Lodge-it is not that there the gallant but time serving Raleigh, the wife-assassin Leicester, the man-spider Walsingham, or the grave and cold-blooded Burleigh came thither with hawk and hound in that bad old woman's train-but for the days that have passed over thee in thy forest solitude, leaving thee venerable to the eye, and welcome to the quiet-seeking heart, that I love thee: and still more that from age to age, and year to year, thou hast been the resort of the innocent and the happy for a few fleet

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