1826.} r 33) J 
THE CORN LAWS. 
He who discusses at Grillon’s, in company with a fine woman, an 
excellent dinner at two guineas a head, perceives, with reason, that 
every thing goes well. The wines of France and Italy load his table. 
The ice that cools them is brought to him from the shores of Norway. 
He inhales the perfumes which grow upon the western shore of the 
Mediterannean ; and listens to the song which is borne upon the east. 
Commerce is flourishing—and manufactures ;—knowledge and morality 
are making progress with us every day! We have given up the vice of 
« Lotteries,” for ever ; and there shall soon be no more human degrada- 
tion in the West Indies. Half a million of money was won and lost 
only at Epsom and Ascot races; and Signor Velluti, for five hundred 
ineas a week, will stay at the Opera a few nights longer! Then we 
have beat the Burmese ; and we shall get thirty thousand pounds more 
voted in the next year for the National Gallery. A bishopric is talked of 
to be got up for converting the Gypsies among us to Christianity ; and 
the new square, to be built on the site of Carlton House, will be the most 
splendid in the world! We are a great nation—a wonderful people— 
are we not, my love? He embraces his love ; dips his fingers into rose- 
water; doubts for a moment whether the Chasse Café is genuine ; 
but sinks upon the sofa, and composes himself to rest. 
But while this Sybarite dreams on—smiling at the fairy visions which 
his own fancy has created—far different are the sensations of the poor 
cotton spinner at Manchester; who, rising an hour and a half before 
people at “ Grillon’s” go to bed—not because he has any thing to do when 
e is up, but because a straw bed, when a man is hungry, offers little 
temptation for lying long in the morning—hurries out of doors to get 
away from a crying wife and the fretting of half a dozen half-starved 
children, and goes—with a bitter heart—to take a stroll about the town, 
until the hour for getting “‘ relief” at the workhouse has arrived. The 
streets are empty, except of wanderers like himself: and he passes (in 
the town) only empty manufactories; in which he once worked hard, 
and now ponders whether he shall ever be so happy as to work hard 
again ! or, if the “New improved patent Machine”—if that succeeds—will 
make up cottons and woollens without any handicraft labour whatever ! 
Passing to the suburbs, he walks by splendid mansions and gardens, 
which have been raised out of the profit of his labour; and sees the 
notice of “spring guns,” and “ prosecution for trespass,”—the only 
notice he ever receives from the proprietor—threatening him, from the 
top of a long pole, half a mile off; while the watch-dog bays furiously 
at the gate as-he approaches. Returning homeward, he reads, in a 
printed bill upon a barn end, the “unanimous resolution” of a great 
meeting of “agriculturists, and land-owners’—“‘that the country is ruined, 
if ever bread comes to be sold for less than nine-pence half-penny a loaf 
in it’; and, seeing his family stand waiting round the Poor-house door for 
the little oatmeal that is to feed them all day, he thinks that times must 
alter before they will ever be able to purchase much bread at that price. 
By this time, being in an excellent temper for any outrage that can be 
roposed to him, he joins a small party of rioters; and—if he is not shot 
first —helps to break as many power-looms as a rich manufacturer has 
paid five thousand pounds jor. After this, setting down in a corner 
moogily, without bread, beer, or tobaceo, he listens to the reading of 
some back number of “ Cobbett’s Register,” which at least so far speaka 
' MLM. New Series,—Vor, If, No. 7. r 
