426 A WORD FOR THE POOR TO LORD ALTHORP. 



and a most unmanageable party they will be in all future discussions, 

 if they once taste the success of an active collision with the govern- 

 ment. Perhaps you may think that I overrate the resistance with 

 which the measure would be met ; but remember that it is a measure 

 which the poor will feel, not merely as an abridgment of their 

 comforts, but as an offence to their antipathies, and an outrage upon 

 their affections. In every hut the husband will find a wife to incense 

 his animosity ; and even the children will be encouraged by their 

 parents to make more than a mimic exhibition in the quarrel. And 

 upon what local influence can you rely to allay this rustic agitation ? 

 Upon that of the rate-payers ? To a man they will stand back, and, 

 in contemptuous irony, " wish you well out of it." Let us see 

 whether the commissioners have given them no reasonable cause for 

 adopting a hostile neutrality in the struggle. 



Having settled in their wisdom the nature of relief henceforth to 

 be afforded, the commissioners next proceed to a disinterested consi- 

 deration of the AGENCY by which it should be administered. One 

 would think that those who pay might have some voice in the busi- 

 ness, and that living on the spot they must possess some judgment 

 respecting it. But no, my Lord it is impossible for parishes to 

 find men competent to the lucrative duties which the beautiful 

 system of the commissioners will impose! It would be " perverted 

 by their want of appropriate knowledge by their interest in abusive 

 administration !" They are " illiterate, ignorant men, who can neither 

 read nor write, and whose motives are often as faulty as their capa- 

 city for business is deficient !" Therefore, the rate-payers are to be 

 divested of all discretionary power in their disbursements ; they are 

 to pay, and say nothing, and to thank God that the trouble of taking 

 care of their own money is no longer to afflict them ! 



I appeal to your lordship whether any thing more untrue was 

 ever put into print. You are well acquainted with the agricultural 

 community ; in one sense you are the grand master of their order ; 

 and I ask you whether any but the grossest ignorance, or something 

 still more questionable, could have prompted such unwarrantable 

 assertions respecting them. In that room, where you annually pre- 

 side over a body of men who may be called the representatives of 

 this calumniated class, would you venture to declare that they were 

 so ignorant and illiterate, their motives so indirect, their capacity for 

 business so deficient, that they were not fit to be trusted with the 

 management of their own parish affairs ? Would you venture to 

 tell them (as the commissioners do) that no legislative enactments 

 could be relied upon to ensure that management being properly and 

 honestly performed by them, and that, therefore, you should appoint 

 some three or four thousand paid prefects to wrest it from their 

 hands ? If you were to venture thus far by way of insult, without 

 exciting too clamorous a tone of indignation, you might venture one 

 step farther by way of apology, and tell them that you wanted the 

 patronage of these stipendiary appointments to fortify your government. 

 But let me not anticipate. 



There is as little justice in charging the farmers with a want of 

 intelligence and integrity, as in charging the labourers with idleness 

 and fraud. The capital of the farmers is so reduced that few can 



