"As to the tradesmen and common people in France, they are worse than I suspected them to be. For the most substantial will impose where they can, and the petit monde are in general down right cheats. Perhaps their extreme poverty is the occasion of the latter's knavery with them.' Dirt, ignorance, and boldness, without any sense of shame, univer. sally prevail."

In the country, as "The revenues are farmed out to individuals, who are thereby empowered to oppress the industrious poor in every manner they can contrive: many of the poor who wish to keep a cow, durst not do it for fear of being thought rich, and consequently taxed higher.'

Such instances of wretchedness, among all warlike nations bearing the name of civilized, show a radical defect of virtue, and a potent principle of vice, which, like the great tree seen by Nebuchadnezzar, covers the whole earth with baleful fruits and branches. And vices in the great beget iniquities in the poor.

The oppressive and premature labour of the youth of Great Britain, in some manufactories, produces lamentable consequences to these innocent young creatures, whose health and morals are corrupted and injured, if not ruined. In proof of this, Dr. Aikin writes thus :-"The invention and improve. ment of machines to shorten labour, have had a surprising influence to extend our trade, and call children for our cotton mills. In these (at Manchester) children of very tender age are employed: many of them are collected from the work-houses in London and Westminster, and transported in crowds, as apprentices to masters resident many hundred miles distant, where they serve, unknown, unprotected, and forgotten by those to whose care, nature and the laws had consigned them. These poor children are usually confined too long to work in close rooms; and often during the whole night. The air they breathe is injurious, and but little attention is paid to their cleanliness. Frequent changes from a warm, and then to a cold and dense atmosphere, are predisposing causes to epidemic fevers and sickness. They are not generally strong to labour, or capable of pursuing any other branch of business, when the term of their apprenticeship expires. The females are wholly uninstructed in sew. ing, knitting, and other domestic affairs requisite to make

The want of early religious instruction and example, and the numerous and indiscriminate associations in these buildings, are very unfavourable to their conduct in life."

them notable and frugal housewives and mothers.

It was stated in 1801, that 2,136,726 persons were employed in Great Britain in the manufactories, in trade and in handicraft-work: and many children's morals, healths, and constitutions, are ruined in the manufactories.

Though the benevolence of some pious and humane people in London do much by way of alms and eleemosynary institutions, yet many times as much ought to be performed to relieve all the poor and needy. At an exhibition of charity children in St. Paul's Church, so called, A. D. 1815, it is said the number of 8,000, between 7 and 14 years of age assembled; none of whom belonged to the numberless private institutions of benevolence. It appears, from official authority, that more than 40,000 are instructed by the national society. May the spirit of love be extended!

Silk-mills, introduced into England, 1734, are very oppressive, and injure the children of the poor more than cotton mills. Their bodies and limbs are distorted by their premature and forced labours at such machines. Ten such mills were worked, A. D. 1774, in the single town of Derby, and produced in the labourers of them, the most abject poverty, dependence, and deformity. And Dr. Darwin asserts in his Zoonomia, that hundreds of the children of that town were starved into the scrophula, by reason of their unwholesome food, and either perished by that miserable and corroding disease or lived in a wretched state of debility. When one considers the great opulence and indigence of the members of society, to be produced essentially, and almost wholly by interests, rents, tythes, duties, taxes and inheritances, how wretched is he made by such views of the miseries of his fellow-creatures, and brethren in the flesh! Individual histories of such wretchedness exist every where, the narrative of whose sufferings is afflicting beyond description, and sufficient to soften the stoutest hearts, and most tyrannical dispositions.

By Bell's Weekly Messenger, of March 10, 1816, it appears that the burden on the farmers for rents and poor rates, is so intolerable, that all the farmers but one, in a parish of Huntingdonshire, had thrown up their farms. The poor

If a farmer

rates on a hundred pounds rent are about £50. pays £150, annually, for rent, he pays £70 for the support of the poor of the parish. Curwen says the poor rates are at least 7 millions annually. In Ireland poor rates are not thus collected by tax, and the consequence is horrible! The poor perish by cold, hunger and want of necessaries.

Western, a member of parliament, speaking on the taxes, declared, "that whole parishes in Cambridgeshire, were now left as wild and desolate as any of the British colonies." And no wonder, when the labouring and productive class of the community, (so called) pay to the fund-holders and sinking fund, 44 millions of pounds sterling, or 206,460,000 dollars, and about 16 millions of pounds to the support of government, or more than 71 millions of dollars.

And then to read in an official letter laid before the house of Parliament, of an item of £6000, or 26,640 dollars, for the queen of England's riding for pleasure from London, 56 miles to Brighton, in 1817, and which sum, (more than our president's salary) was paid to her out of the treasury!

"A great woman's wealth is her strong city," while "the destruction of the poor is their poverty.' "I considered," said the wise man, "all the oppressions that are done under the sun; and beheld the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter." "On the side also, of their op. pressors, was power, but they had no comforter!" Not only power, but law and custom have been on their side from the days of Nimrod, the mighty hunter of men and tyrant of Assyria, to the modern days of Bonaparte, a greater than Nimrod. Let the Assyrians and French, not Ninus nor Napoleon, be principally criminated for the vices their nations loved. The wicked world frame mischiefs by their laws, and rejoice in their conduct. Who shall convince them of the folly of national iniquity? Nations, old in wickedness, will not be changed to holiness or virtue.

I conceive that the root of all national vices is blind selfishness; which, operating in conquerors and governors, has induced them to make potency the criterion of equity, and war and revenue the foundations of their thrones. The great ones are cemented to their monarchs and leaders, by their incomes, rents, interests, banks, or other contrivances and inventions, to deceive and oppress the little ones of the nation.

It has been observed, that the majority of clerks in the city of London are obliged, from sheer oppression, to be bachelors. And, according to Colquhoun, about 20,000 miserable individuals, of various classes and characters, rise every morning, without knowing how, or by what means they are to be supported during the day, or where, in many cases, they can lodge the succeeding night. It is also calculated, that one-third of the population of England, Scotland, and Ireland, are paupers, who are broken down with labour and hardships, wretched and pitiable. A writer says, "That poverty and irresistible necessity to labour every day, dictates submission to the rich. That this irresistible necessity to labour; this long established and all pervading aristocracy of insolent wealth and rapacity, over merit in poverty, has made slaves, beggars, or dependants of one-half of the people of England, by grinding the multitudes subordinately engaged in its astonishing manufactories and extensive commerce, between them, as between two mill-stones. For whether the aristocracies consist of the proud-knee-distorting master-cutler of Sheffield; of the proud child-starving master-silk-throwers of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Congleton, &c; or the more proud and potent first rate merchants of the city of London; their moral and physical effects on the human character, in producing slavery, poverty, and degrada. tion on the one hand, and tyranny, opulence, and brutality on the other, are precisely the same.

Thus I have endeavoured to seek out and exemplify the chief causes of the wicked oppressions of men; and they are resolvable into a selfish love and indulgence of power, wealth, and pleasure, acquired and supported by the sword, and the law of interests, rents, unequal duties, taxes, and inheritances. May this testimony advance, and the Prince of Peace and Righteousness establish his temple of love over all nations.

SUCH THINGS ARE UNSCRIPTURAL AND IMPIOUS.

Since all these accumulated evils arise from injustice, from the oppression of the poor, and incomes of the opulent, or from interests, rents, duties, and unjust laws and customs, framed by the avaricious and ambitious, therefore it may be said, Psalm 10: "Why standest thou afar off, O Lord, why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? The wicked in his

He

He

pride doth persecute the poor, and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth. He lieth in wait in secret places, as a lion in his den; he lieth in wait to catch the poor. doth catch the poor, whom he draweth in his net. croucheth and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones. He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten; he hideth his face; he will never see it. Arise, O Lord, lift up thy hand: break thou the arm of the wicked and evil man, seek out his wickedness till thou find none.'

I really think, since God works by his saints and servants, that it is the duty of many of them to investigate the causes of the afflictions and sufferings of the poor and needy. It is the interest and duty of the rich and exalted to do it; for they suffer, and perhaps as greatly as those, whose labour and want enriches them. "Their sword," as says king Da vid, Psalm xxxvii, 15, (which pierces the poor) "shall enter into their own heart." Besides, says he, (Psalm xli) "Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble: the Lord will make his bed in sickness, &c."

Agur's prayer was very judicious; he was sensible that riches, as well as poverty, were very pernicious. Give me, said he, neither riches nor poverty; lest, being rich, proud, and full, I belie thee impiously, and say, "who is the Lord," and so become atheistical: or lest, being poor, I should steal, and lie, and then swear to it, taking the name of my God in vain.

Let the rich reflect that "wise men die, likewise the fool and brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others; that their inward thought is, that their houses (and demesnes) shall continue forever (in their lineal descendants); and their dwelling places to all generations. They call their lands after their own name. But the inspired Psalmist adds"This their way is their FOLLY." See also Jeremiah, xvii, 11. The kingdoms of this world are not the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ, or the poor and fatherless; the afflicted and needy would be delivered out of the oppressive hand of the rich and powerful, and justice done to all, poor and wealthy, weak and potent, without respect to persons. At present, the powerful oppress the imbecile; and the cunning cheat the honest, and simple; therefore, no wonder if the