Non Sum Qualis Emm. 81 



distress of which we complain. Our nobility, with their upholders and 

 abettors, have been growing richer, as the lower classes have been 

 sinking into destitution. This is a plain proof enough, when coupled 

 with the fact that the nobility have been our managers, that they have 

 been the cause of the evil. Discarding the impious, untenable position 

 that God is the author of a general extreme poverty ; unable to assign it 

 to any external cause ; precluded by common sense from supposing the 

 low^r orders to have reduced themselves to destitution ; what choice have 

 we left ? Blame must attach somewhere ; and no where can we fix it 

 but on that proud and pampered class of our own countrymen, whom 

 for ages we have permitted to extract the wealth of the nation whence 

 they pleased, to bestow it how and where they pleased. We all know 

 that the aggregate means of maintenance have not decreased in the world 

 in general, nor our own country in particular. The tenet of excessive 

 population is beginning to be deemed a sign of a shallow or muddy 

 intellect, except in a landed proprietor, in whom it is a sensible tenet 

 enough, if any thing selfish can be sensible. A fresh creation of supply 

 cannot be looked for, like Manna and Quails by the Israelites of old : 

 therefore the Community have only to look for relief to a transfer of 

 some portion of the good things of life, from those who are rotting in 

 rank superfluity, to those who are pining in want. From the luxuries 

 of one class of our countrymen must the whole retrenchment be made, 

 which the wants of millions demand. All that is to be gained for the 

 abject poverty of the masses of society must be deducted from the 

 enormous, anti-social accumulation of the class. We mean not to 

 suggest plunder to the sufferers : no lasting relief ever accrued to society 

 through plunder. A surer means of relief has begun to dawn upon us. 

 Reform in Parliament has made the first wide breach in the slavish subser- 

 vience of our countrymen to their nobility : the principle of depreciation 

 is now fairly set to work against them : they can no longer pass current 

 for the sublime and potent demigods they have in the grossness of our 

 political superstition been supposed to be: the sentiment cannot much 

 longer prevail, as it used, that the nobility of England are distinguished 

 from other nobility by their patriotism ; that they are the models to 

 an admiring world of an heroic magnanimity, a chivalrous disinterest- 

 edness, an exquisite refinement in morals and manners, unapproachable 

 by other mortals. 



On the general spread and prevalence of this principle of a just depre- 

 ciation of nobility, we, ourselves, confidently depend for the benefits 

 to be derived to society from Reform in Parliament. We have not met 

 with one of any party who is not impressed with a sense of the dimin- 

 ished importance of our nobility, in a great degree consequent upon their 

 ejection from the House of Commons ; but chiefly owing to the disgraceful 

 light, in which they have exhibited to the public during the question of 

 Reform. Indeed it is beyond dispute, that more unequivocal evidence of 

 a gross determination of heart and soul to vulgar selfishness was never 

 exhibited in the lowest transaction of petty commerce. These we have 

 lately had specimens of in a conservative and exclusive assembly : it 

 cannot be denied that more palpable proofs of inherent coarseness of 

 mind were never displayed in Billingsgate Market, than have been 

 discernable under the flimsy gauze of a conventional phraseology, in 



M.M. New Series. Vol. XIV. No. 79. G 



