46 COBBETT'S [No. 



hold communities of men ; though, without poverty, 

 there could be no charity, and none of those feelings, 

 those offices, those acts, and those relationships, which 

 are connected with charity, and which form a con- 

 siderable portion of the cement of civil society : yet, 

 notwithstanding these things, there are bounds beyond 

 which the poverty of the people cannot go, without 

 becoming a thing to complain of, and to trace to the 

 Government as a fault. Those bounds have been 

 passed, in England, long and long ago. England 

 was always famed for many things ; but especially 

 for its good living ; that is to say, for the plenty 

 in which the whole of the people lived ; for the 

 abundance of good clothing and good food which they 

 had. It was always, ever since it bore the name 

 of England, the richest and most powerful and most 

 admired country in Europe ; but, its good living, its 

 superiority in this particular respect, was proverbial 

 amongst all who knew, or who had heard talk of, the 

 English nation. Good God ! How changed ! Now, 

 the very worst fed and worst clad people upon the 

 face of the earth, those of Ireland only excepted. 

 How, then, did this horrible, this disgraceful, this 

 cruel poverty come upon this once happy nation? 

 This, my good friends of Preston, is, to us all, a 

 most important question ; and, now let us endeavour 

 to obtain a full and complete answer to it. 



55. POVERTY is, after all, the great badge, the 

 never-failing badge, of slavery. Bare bones and rags 

 are the true marks of the real slave. What is the 

 object of Government? To cause men to. live hap- 

 pily- They cannot be happy without a sufficiency of 

 food and of raiment. Good government means a 

 state of things in which the main body are well fed 

 and well clothed. It is the chief business of a gov- 

 ernment to take care, that one part of the people do 

 not cause the other part to lead miserable lives. 

 There can be no morality, no virtue, no sincerity, no 

 honesty, amongst a people continually suffering from 

 want ; and, it is cruel, in the last degree, to punish 

 such people for almost any sort of crime, which is. 



