tubble_. The _Courier_
newspaper of the 9th of October, says, 'We must thus be cruel only to
be kind.' I am persuaded that you will not understand this kindness,
while you will easily understand the cruelty. The notion of these
people seems to be that everybody that receives money out of the taxes
has a right to receive it, except you. They tremble at the fearful
amount of the Poor-rates: they say, and very truly, that those rates
have risen from two and a half to eight or ten millions since the
beginning of the wars against the people of France; they think, and
not without reason, that these rates will soon swallow up nearly all
the rent of the land. These assertions and apprehensions are perfectly
well founded; but how can _you_ help it? You have not had the
management of the affairs of the nation. It is not you who have ruined
the farmers and tradesmen. You only want food and raiment: you are
ready to work for it; but you cannot go naked and without food.

But the complaints of these persons against you are the more
unreasonable, because they say not a word against the sums paid to
sinecure placemen and pensioners. Of the five hundred and more
Correspondents of the Board of Agriculture, there are scarcely ten who
do not complain of the weight of the Poor-rates, of the immense sums
taken away from them by the poor, and many of them complain of the
idleness of the poor. But not one single man complains of the immense
sums taken away to support sinecure placemen, who do nothing for their
money, and to support pensioners, many of whom are women and children,
the wives and daughters of the nobility and other persons in high
life, and who can do nothing, and never can have done anything for
what they receive. There are of these places and pensions all sizes,
from twenty pounds to thirty thousand and nearly forty thousand pounds
a year! And surely these ought to be done away before any proposition
be made to take the parish allowance from any of you who are unable to
work, or to find work to do. There are several individual placemen,
the profits of each of which would maintain a thousand families. The
names of the ladies upon the pension list would, if printed, one under
another, fill a sheet of paper like this. And is it not, then, base
and cruel at the same time in these Agricultural correspondents to cry
out so loudly against the charge of supporting the unfortunate poor,
while they utter not a word of complaint against