, the _Times_, and other emissaries of corruption, are
constantly endeavouring to direct your wrath against bakers, brewers,
butchers, and other persons who deal in the necessaries of life. But,
I trust that you are not to be stimulated to such a species of
violence. These tradesmen are as much in distress as you. They cannot
help their malt and hops and beer and bread and meat being too dear
for you to purchase. They all sell as cheap as they can, without being
absolutely ruined. The beer you drink is more than half _tax_, and
when the tax has been paid by the seller he must have payment back
again from you who drink, or he must be ruined. The baker has numerous
taxes to pay, and so has the butcher, and so has the miller and the
farmer. Besides, all men are eager to sell, and, if they could sell
cheaper they certainly would, because that would be the sure way of
getting more custom. It is the weight of the taxes which presses us
all to the earth, except those who receive their incomes out of those
taxes. Therefore I exhort you most earnestly not to be induced to lay
violent hands on those who really suffer as much as yourselves.

On the subject of lowering wages too, you ought to consider that your
employers cannot give to you that which they have not. At present,
corn is high in price, but that high price is no benefit to the
farmer, because it has risen from the badness of the crop, which Mr.
Hunt foretold at the Common Hall, and for the foretelling of which he
was so much abused by the hirelings of the press, who, almost up to
this very moment, have been boasting and thanking God for the goodness
of the crop! The farmer whose corn is half destroyed, gains nothing by
selling the remaining half for double the price at which he would
have sold the whole. If I grow 10 quarters of wheat, and if I save it
all and sell it for two pounds a quarter, I receive as much money as
if I had sold the one-half of it for four pounds a quarter. And I am
better off in the former case, because I want wheat for seed, and
because I want some to consume myself. These matters I recommend to
your serious consideration; because it being unjust to fall upon your
employers to force them to give that which they have not to give, your
conduct in such cases must tend to weaken the great cause in which we
ought all now to be engaged, namely the removal of our burdens through
the means of a reformed Parliament. It is the interest of vile men of
all