mfort;--that policy which, originating with
'great statesmen now no more,' has survived the dead to become a curse
on the living, unto the third and fourth generation! These men never
destroyed their looms till they were become useless,--worse than
useless; till they were become actual impediments to their exertions in
obtaining their daily bread. Can you then wonder that, in times like
these, when bankruptcy, convicted fraud, and imputed felony, are found
in a station not far beneath that of your Lordships, the lowest, though
once most useful, portion of the people should forget their duty in
their distresses, and become only less guilty than one of their
representatives? But while the exalted offender can find means to baffle
the law, new capital punishments must be devised, new snares of death
must be spread for the wretched mechanic who is famished into guilt.
These men were willing to dig, but the spade was in other hands: they
were not ashamed to beg, but there was none to relieve them. Their own
means of subsistence were cut off; all other employments pre-occupied;
and their excesses, however to be deplored or condemned, can hardly be
the subject of surprise.

"I have traversed the seat of war in the Peninsula I have been in some
of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never, under the most
despotic of infidel governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness
as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian
country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and
months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand
specific, the never-failing nostrum of all state physicians from the
days of Draco to the present time. After feeling the pulse, and shaking
the head over the patient, prescribing the usual course of warm water
and bleeding--the warm water of your mawkish police, and the lancets of
your military--these convulsions must terminate in death, the sure
consummation of the prescriptions of all political Sangrados. Setting
aside the palpable injustice and the certain inefficiency of the bill,
are there not capital punishments sufficient on your statutes? Is there
not blood enough upon your penal code, that more must be poured forth to
ascend to heaven and testify against you? How will you carry this bill
into effect? Can you commit a whole county to their own prisons? Will
you erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like scare-crows? or
will you pro