had no property in the crop till he created it by his labour and that, therefore, labour, and labour only, is the sole foundation for any property whatsoever. Man's first duty, then, is to labour in some way or other in order to raise his means of living. If his father, for instance, have laboured. before him, and has given or left him the fruit of his labour, he has as good a right to that as if it were the fruit of his own labour; a man's next duty is, to refrain from taking by force or by fraud, the property of another man; for, to protect men in the enjoyment of their property was the great end in forming civil society. Perhaps it would not be difficult to prove, that men who are compelled to work for their bread, are, provided they earn a sufficiency of food and of raiment and other necessaries of life, as happy and even happier than those who are not compelled to work for their bread; but at any rate, such is the nature of things, such is the order of the world, that there always have been and always must be some very rich and some very poor, and great multitudes not rich; but in a just state of things, there never will be great multitudes steeped in poverty. The order of the world demands that some shall think while others work; that some shall make and execute the laws to which all are to yield obedience. Poverty, therefore, even in its extreme state, gives no man a right to view his rich neighbour with an evil eye, much less to do him mischief on account of his riches. If the laws be impartial in themselves, and be executed with impartiality, every man's conscience will tell him, that it is his bounden duty to yield them a cheerful obedience, and further, to yield respect and honour to those who are charged with the execution of the laws.

Such are the great duties of all men in civil society; and God forbid that these principles should ever be rooted out of the hearts of the very best and most virtuous of all mankind, the agricultural labourers of this land, so favoured by

God Almighty, and for so many ages the freest and happiest country in the world. But, my friends, men did not enter into civil society for the purpose of bringing upon themselves duties only: they had another object; namely, that of creating and enjoying rights. Just, indeed, as we have seen in the case of John Stiles, who had his crop of wheat taken away by the stronger man Nokes, who left him nothing but a few wheel-barrows full of accursed potatoes, and all their natural eonsequences, poverty of blood, leprosy, scrofula, pottle belly, and swelled heels! Now, whenever civil society produces such a state of things; when a laborious man like John Stiles is treated in the same way that Nokęs treated him, that civil society has not answered its purpose. Labour, as we have seen, was the foundation of all property, and must always be the foundation of property. The labourer, therefore, has a property in his labour; and, as St. James says in his Epistle, and as Moses and his Apostles and Jesus Christ himself say, to rob the labourer of his hire, that is to say, to take from him or to withhold from him the due reward of his labour, is the greatest crime that man can commit against God.

The rights of the labourer, first to have food, raiment, fuel, lodging, medical and spiritual comfort, in return for his labour, and all these, too, in quantity and quality sufficient for the preservation of his life, health, and vigour. Next, if he be unable to work, unable to earn a sufficiency for his family, or unable to obtain work so as to obtain that sufficiency; in either of these cases, he and his family have a right to have a sufficiency supplied out of the superfluities of those to whom the law of civil society has secured more than they want.. This claim of the poor man is, as Judge Blackstone states, founded in the very first principle of civil society; for it cannot be believed that men can have assented to enter civil society for any purpose other than that of the benefit of the whole: it cannot be believed that a

million of men for instance, entered into civil society in order that a couple of thousand should have all the meat and all the bread and all the good clothing, and that all the rest should live upon potatoes and go covered with miserable rags. No man upon earth, unless he be one who lives upon the labour of others, will pretend to believe that men entered into civil society, in order that those who did no work, that led idle lives, that created nothing, should have bread and flour and beer and clothing and all sorts of good things a hundred times more than they wanted; while those that laboured and made all these things, were compelled to live upon a miserable watery root or die with starvation.

Such are the duties and such the rights of labouring men. Our forefathers, who well understood those duties and those rights, cheerfully performed the one and amply enjoyed the other. They had an abundance of meat, of bread, and of all the fruits of the earth; they were clothed throughout in good woollen and linen; they had great store of household goods and of every-thing to make life easy and pleasant; and when old age or widowhood, or the orphan state, or accident, or any circumstance producing indigence, befel them, the priest of the parish maintained them out of the tithes, administering to their wants as the law enjoined, "with his own hands in charity, humility, and mercy," And this, observe, was a RIGHT which they enjoyed, and that, too, a right as perfect as that of any man to his house or his land. When our country was bereft, by means which I have not now the room to describe, of that species of protection for the poor, the poor-law was passed to supply the place of that protection; to parochial relief, therefore, the aged, the widow, the orphan, the infirm, amongst the labouring people, have just the same right as their forefathers had to that which was administered to them in so just and kind and Christian-like a manner.

That the ministers and the Parliament may be pleased to

192 Two-PENNY TRASH; 1ST FEBRUARY, 1831.

listen to the advice which I have so respectfully tendered to them in the foregoing letter; that you may live as happy lives as as our forefathers lived, and that we may all harmony once more restored in England, is the sincere prayer of Your faithful Friend,

I see

TO THE

WM. COBBETT.

LABOURING PEOPLE OF BOTLEY.

Kensington, 24th January, 1831.

IN No. IV. of this work, I addressed you on the subject of FLEMING'S (Willis) speech, made against me, at a dinner at Botley, where one of the keen WARNERS was in the chair at one end of the table. They EXULTED at the circumstances that drove me from Botley. In a few weeks afterwards we read of an attack on the homestead of Willis (Fleming); and now, in the weekly paper of yesterday, we read the following:-"A most alarming fire "broke out last night at the seat of J. Fleming, Esq. (one of "the members for this county), at Stoneham Park, four miles "from this place, which threatened destruction to the man"sion, but by the wind changing, this disastrous fire was con

66

fined to the two wings, which were completely gutted. "No lives were lost, and the property, we believe, was in"sured. It has been ascertained beyond doubt, that the "fire originated in the apartments appropriated to the servants, therefore it is not to be considered as the work of "an incendiary, but the pure result of accident." What! the two wings take fire by accident at one and the same time! This paragraph is, apparently, taken from the paper of the very villain, at Southampton who published the attack on me by WILLIS and the GRASPALLS' and their crew, They have, seemingly, something else to do now, than to o utter slanders on me. It will be curious to hear what they will have to say, when Fleming gives the GRASPALLS the next guttle and guzzle. In the meanwhile I have the pleasure to tell you, , that I sleep as soundly as you do. Wм. COBBETT.

N. B.-Any of the former Nos. may be had, in any quantity.-If more than 300 be taken, at 11s. a hundred: less, 12s. 4d. a hundred. Any bookseller will send to London for them.

[Printed by Wm. Cobbett, Johnson's Court, Fleet Street.]

TWO-PENNY TRASH

For the Month of March, 1831.

Published monthly, sold at 12s. Od. a hundred, and for 300, taken at once, 11s.

TO THE

LABOURERS OF ENGLAND,

Particularly those of Kent, Sussex, Hants, Wilts, Dorset, Berks, Norfolk, and Suffolk.

On the scheme now on foot for getting part of them away out of their native country.

MY FRIENDS,

Kensington, 1st March, 1831.

THERE is a bill brought into Parliament by a man who is called Lord HowICK, and who is the son of Lord GREY, who is now the First Lord of the Treasury, and the King's Prime Minister. The object of this bill, which is not yet become a law, and which I hope will not, is to get a part. of you to go away out of your country; and it is my object to make you understand all this matter clearly; and to show you what the consequences would be to you, and to

LONDON Published by the Author, 11, Bolt-court, Fleet-street, and sold by all Booksellers.

K