if you were called upon to
pay taxes, or to make subscriptions in money, to furnish the means of
protection to the unfortunate rich people in Hampshire, would you not say,
and with good reason, "No: what should we do this for? The people of
Hampshire have the SAME LAW that we have; they are under the same
Government; _let them duly enforce that law_; and then they will stand in
no need of money from us to provide for their protection."

5. This is what common sense says would be _your_ language in such a case;
and does not common sense say, that the people of Hampshire, and of every
other part of England, will thus think, when they are told of the
sufferings, and the starvation, in Lancashire and Yorkshire! The report of
the Manchester ley-payers, which took place on the 17th of August, reached
me in a friend's house in this little village; and when another friend,
who was present, read, in the speeches of Mr. BAXTER and Mr. POTTER, that
tens of thousands of Lancashire people were _on the point of starvation_,
and that many had already _actually died from starvation_; and when he
perceived, that even those gentlemen uttered not a word of _complaint_
against either overseer or justices of the peace, he exclaimed: "What! are
there _no poor-laws_ in Lancashire? Where, amidst all this starvation, is
the overseer? Where is the justice of the peace? Surely that Lancashire
can never be _in England_?"

6. The observations of this gentleman are those which occur to every man
of sense; when he hears the horrid accounts of the sufferings in the
manufacturing districts; for, though we are all well aware, that the
burden of the poor-rates presses, at this time, with peculiar weight on
the land-owners and occupiers, and on owners and occupiers of other real
property, in those districts, we are equally well aware, that those owners
and occupiers _have derived great benefits_ from that vast population that
now presses upon them. There is _land_ in the parish in which I am now
writing, and belonging to the farm in the house of which I am, which land
would not let for 20_s._ a statute acre; while land, not so good, would
let, in any part of Lancashire, near to the manufactories, at 60_s._ or
80_s._ a statute acre. The same may be said with regard to _houses_. And,
pray, are the owners and occupiers, who have gained so largely by the
manufacturing works being near their lands and houses; are they, _now_, to
complain, if the vicinage of th