he common
state. Not in sharp fever-fits, but in chronic gangrene of this kind
is Scotland suffering. A Poor-law, any and every Poor-law, it may be
observed, is but a temporary measure; an anodyne, not a remedy: Rich
and Poor, when once the naked facts of their condition have come into
collision, cannot long subsist together on a mere Poor-law. True
enough:--and yet, human beings cannot be left to die! Scotland too,
till something better come, must have a Poor-law, if Scotland is not
to be a byword among the nations. O, what a waste is there; of noble
and thrice-noble national virtues; peasant Stoicisms, Heroisms;
valiant manful habits, soul of a Nation's worth,--which all the metal
of Potosi cannot purchase back; to which the metal of Potosi, and all
you can buy with _it_, is dross and dust!

Why dwell on this aspect of the matter? It is too indisputable, not
doubtful now to any one. Descend where you will into the lower class,
in Town or Country, by what avenue you will, by Factory Inquiries,
Agricultural Inquiries, by Revenue Returns, by Mining-Labourer
Committees, by opening your own eyes and looking, the same sorrowful
result discloses itself: you have to admit that the working body of
this rich English Nation has sunk or is fast sinking into a state, to
which, all sides of it considered, there was literally never any
parallel. At Stockport Assizes,--and this too has no reference to the
present state of trade, being of date prior to that,--a Mother and a
Father are arraigned and found guilty of poisoning three of their
children, to defraud a 'burial-society' of some _3l. 8s._ due on the
death of each child: they are arraigned, found guilty; and the
official authorities, it is whispered, hint that perhaps the case is
not solitary, that perhaps you had better not probe farther into that
department of things. This is in the autumn of 1841; the crime itself
is of the previous year or season. "Brutal savages, degraded Irish,"
mutters the idle reader of Newspapers; hardly lingering on this
incident. Yet it is an incident worth lingering on; the depravity,
savagery and degraded Irishism being never so well admitted. In the
British land, a human Mother and Father, of white skin and professing
the Christian religion, had done this thing; they, with their Irishism
and necessity and savagery, had been driven to do it. Such instances
are like the highest mountain apex emerged into view; under which lies
a whole mountain regio