50" COBBETT'S [No. 



who are eating horse-flesh and grains (draff) in Lan- 

 cashire and Cheshire ; who are harnessed like horses, 

 and drawing gravel in Hampshire and Sussex ; who 

 have 3d. a day allowed them by the magistrates in 

 Norfolk ; who are, all over England, worse fed than 

 the felons in the jails. Go, and tell them, when they 

 raise their hands from the pig-trough, or from the 

 grains-tub, and, with their dirty tongues, cry " No 

 Popery;" go, read to the degraded and deluded 

 wretches, this account of the state of their Catholic 

 forefathers, who lived under what is impudently 

 called " Popish superstition and tyranny" and in 

 those times which we have the audacity to call " the 

 dark ages." Look at the then picture of the French; 

 and, Protestant Englishmen, if you have the capacity 

 of blushing left, blush at the thought of how precisely 

 that picture fits the English now ! Look at all the 

 parts of the picture ; the^borf, the raiment^ the game! 

 Good God ! If any one had told the old Chancellor, 

 that the day would come, when this picture, and even 

 a picture more degrading to human nature, would fit 

 his own boasted country, what would he have said? 

 What would he have said, if he had been told, that 

 the time was to come, v/hen the soldier, in England, 

 would have more than twice, nay, more than thrice, 

 the sum allowed to the day-labouring man; when 

 potatoes would be carried to the field as the only food 

 of the ploughman ; when soup-shops would be open 

 to feed the English ; and when the Judges, sitting on 

 that very Bench on which he himself had sitten for 

 twenty years, would (as in the case of last year of 

 the complaints against Magistrates at NORTHALLER- 

 TON) declare that BREAD AND WATER were the general 

 food of working people in England? What would 

 he have said ? Why, if he had been told, that there 

 was to be a " REFORMATION," accompanied by a total 

 devastation of Church and Poor property, upheld by 

 wars, creating an enormous Debt and enormous taxes, 

 and requiring a constantly standing army : if he had 

 been told this, he would have foreseen our present 

 tate ? and would have wept for his country ; but, if 



