claim to all the world the tyranny
under which they suffer. You know that in South Wales, at this moment,
there is an insurrection of the most extraordinary character going on,
and that the Government is sending, day after day, soldiers and
artillery amongst the innocent inhabitants of that mountainous country
for the purpose of putting down the insurrection thereby raised and
carried on. You know that in the Staffordshire ironworks almost all the
workmen are now out and in want of wages, from want of employment and
from attempting to resist the inevitable reduction of wages which must
follow restriction upon trade. You know that in August last, Lancashire
and Yorkshire rose in peaceful insurrection to proclaim to the world,
and in face of Heaven, the wrongs of an insulted and oppressed people. I
know that my own neighborhood is unsettled and uncomfortable. I know
that in your own city your families are suffering. Yes, I have been to
your cottages and seen their condition. Thanks to my canvass of Durham,
I have been able to see the condition of many honest and independent--or
ought-to-be-independent--and industrious artisans. I have seen even
freemen of your city sitting, looking disconsolate and sad. Their hands
were ready to labor; their skill was ready to produce all that their
trade demanded. They were as honest and industrious as any man in this
assembly, but no man hired them. They were in a state of involuntary
idleness, and were driving fast to the point of pauperism. I have seen
their wives, too, with three or four children about them--one in the
cradle, one at the breast. I have seen their countenances, and I have
seen the signs of their sufferings. I have seen the emblems and symbols
of affliction such as I did not expect to see in this city. Ay! and I
have seen those little children who at not a distant day will be the men
and women of this city of Durham; I have seen their poor little wan
faces and anxious looks, as if the furrows of old age were coming upon
them before they had escaped from the age of childhood. I have seen all
this in this city, and I have seen far more in the neighborhood from
which I have come. You have seen, in all probability, people from my
neighborhood walking your streets and begging for that bread which the
Corn Laws would not allow them to earn.

"Bread-taxed weaver, all can see
What the tax hath done for thee,
And thy children, vilely led,
Singing hymns for