the sinecure places
and pensions?

The unfortunate journeymen and labourers and their families have a
right, they have a just claim, to relief from the purses of the rich.
For there can exist no riches and no resources which they by their
labour have not assisted to create. But I should be glad to know how
the sinecure placemen and lady pensioners have assisted to create
food and raiment, or the means of producing them. The labourer who is
out of work or ill, to-day, may be able to work, and set to work
to-morrow. While those placemen and pensioners never can work; or, at
least, it is clear that they never intend to do it.

You have been represented by the _Times_ newspaper, by the _Courier_,
by the _Morning Post_, by the _Morning Herald_, and others, as the
_scum_ of society. They say that you have no business at public
meetings; that you are rabble, and that you pay no taxes. These
insolent hirelings, who wallow in wealth, would not be able to put
their abuse of you in print were it not for your labour. You create
all that is an object of taxation; for even the land itself would be
good for nothing without your labour. But are you not taxed? Do you
pay no taxes? One of the correspondents of the Board of Agriculture
has said that care has been taken to lay as little tax as possible on
the articles used by you. One would wonder how a man could be found
impudent enough to put an assertion like this upon paper. But the
people of this country have so long been insulted by such men, that
the insolence of the latter knows no bounds.

The tax gatherers do not, indeed, come to you and demand money of you:
but there are few articles which you use, in the purchase of which you
do not pay a tax.

On your shoes, salt, beer, malt, hops, tea, sugar, candles, soap,
paper, coffee, spirits, glass of your windows, bricks and tiles,
tobacco: on all these, and many other articles you pay a tax, and even
on your loaf you pay a tax, because everything is taxed from which the
loaf proceeds. In several cases the tax amounts to more than one half
of what you pay for the article itself; these taxes go in part to
support sinecure placemen and pensioners; and the ruffians of the
hired press call you the scum of society, and deny that you have any
right to show your faces at any public meeting to petition for a
reform, or for the removal of any abuse whatever!

Mr. Preston, whom I quoted before, and who is a member of Parliament
and has a l