58 COBBETT'S [No. 



who is under a regimen for a broken limb ; to a person 

 who does no work, and who is, nine times out of ten, 

 unable to take any exercise at all, even that of walk- 

 ing about, at least in the open air ; if the eminent sur- 

 geons of London deem six shillings and ninepence 

 worth of victuals and drink, a week, necessary to 

 such a patient ; if they think that nature calls for 

 so much in such a case ; what must that man be 

 made of, who can allow to a working man, a man 

 fourteen hours every day in the open air, one shil- 

 ling' and sevenpence worth of victuals and drink for 

 the week ! Let me not however ask what " that 

 man" can be made of; for it is a monster and not a 

 man: it is a murderer of men: not a murderer with 

 the knife or the pistol, but with the more cruel instru- 

 ment of starvation. And yet, such monsters go to 

 church and to meeting ; aye, and subscribe, the base 

 hypocrites, to circulate that Bible which commands 

 to do as they would be done by, and which, from the 

 first chapter to the last, menaces them with punish- 

 ment, if they be hard to the poor, the fatherless, the 

 widow, or the stranger ! 



62 But, not only is the patient, in a hospital, thus 

 so much more amply fed than the working man ; the 

 prisoners in the jails ; aye, even the convicted felons, 

 are fed better, and much better, .than the working men 

 now are! Here is a fine " Old England;" that 

 country of " roast beef and plumb pudding : " that, as 

 the tax-eaters say it is, " envy of surrounding nations 

 and admiration of the world." Aye ; the country 

 WAS all these ; but, it is now precisely the reverse 

 of them all. We have just seen that the honest la- 

 bouring man is allowed 2f d. a day ; and that will 

 buy him a pound and a half of good bread a day, and 

 no more, not a single crumb more. This is all he has. 

 Well enough might the Hampshire Baronet, SIR 

 JOHN POLLEN, lately, at a meeting at Andover, call the 

 labourers "poor devils," and say, that they had 

 " scarcely a rag to cover them ! " A pound and a half 

 of bread a day, and nothing more, and that, too, to 

 work upi>n / Now, then, how fare the prisoners in 



