gst them it is that
you find all the peculators, all the blood-suckers of various degrees,
all the borough-voters and their offspring, all the selfish and
unfeeling wretches, who, rather than risk the disturbing of their
ease for one single month, rather than go a mile to hold up their hand
at a public meeting, would see half the people perish with hunger and
cold. The humanity, which is continually on their lips, is all
fiction. They weep over the tale of woe in a novel; but round their
'decent fireside,' never was compassion felt for a real sufferer, or
indignation at the acts of a powerful tyrant.

The object of the efforts of such writers is clearly enough seen. Keep
all _quiet_! Do not rouse! Keep still! Keep down! Let those who
perish, perish in silence! It will, however, be out of the power of
these quacks, with all their laudanum, to allay the blood which is now
boiling in the veins of the people of this kingdom; who, if they are
doomed to perish, are at any rate resolved not to perish in silence.
The writer whom I have mentioned above, says that he, of course, does
not count 'the lower classes, who, under the pressure of need or under
the influence of ignorant prejudice, may blindly and weakly rush upon
certain and prompt punishment; but that the security of every decent
fireside, every respectable father's best hopes for his children,
still connect themselves with the Government.' And by Government he
clearly means all the mass as it now stands. There is nobody so
callous and so insolent as your sentimental quacks and their patients.
How these 'decent fireside' people would stare, if some morning they
were to come down and find them occupied by uninvited visitors! I
hope they never will. I hope that things will never come to this pass:
but if one thing more than any other tends to produce so sad an
effect, it is the cool insolence with which such men as this writer
treats the most numerous and most suffering classes of the people.

Long as this Address already is, I cannot conclude without some
observations on the 'Charity Subscriptions' at the London Tavern. The
object of this subscription professes to be to afford relief to the
distressed labourers, etc. About forty thousand pounds have been
subscribed, and there is no probability of its going much further.
There is an absurdity on the face of the scheme; for, as all parishes
are compelled by law to afford relief to every person in distress, it
is very cle