ritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall
despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I
purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!" It is
infamous, this charity of a Christian bourgeois! And so writes "A Lady;"
she does well to sign herself such, well that she has lost the courage to
call herself a woman! But if the "Ladies" are such as this, what must
the "Gentlemen" be? It will be said that this is a single case; but no,
the foregoing letter expresses the temper of the great majority of the
English bourgeoisie, or the editor would not have accepted it, and some
reply would have been made to it, which I watched for in vain in the
succeeding numbers. And as to the efficiency of this philanthropy, Canon
Parkinson himself says that the poor are relieved much more by the poor
than by the bourgeoisie; and such relief given by an honest proletarian
who knows himself what it is to be hungry, for whom sharing his scanty
meal is really a sacrifice, but a sacrifice borne with pleasure, such
help has a wholly different ring to it from the carelessly-tossed alms of
the luxurious bourgeois.

In other respects, too, the bourgeoisie assumes a hypocritical, boundless
philanthropy, but only when its own interests require it; as in its
Politics and Political Economy. It has been at work now well on towards
five years to prove to the working-men that it strives to abolish the
Corn Laws solely in their interest. But the long and short of the matter
is this: the Corn Laws keep the price of bread higher than in other
countries, and thus raise wages, but these high wages render difficult
competition of the manufacturers against other nations in which bread,
and consequently wages, are cheaper. The Corn Laws being repealed, the
price of bread falls, and wages gradually approach those of other
European countries, as must be clear to every one from our previous
exposition of the principles according to which wages are determined. The
manufacturer can compete more readily, the demand for English goods
increases, and, with it, the demand for labour. In consequence of this
increased demand wages would actually rise somewhat, and the unemployed
workers be re-employed; but for how long? The "surplus population" of
England, and especially of Ireland, is sufficient to supply English
manufacture with the necessary operatives, even if it were doubled; and,
in a few years, the s