Labour 



starving peasantry, flit the figures of great states- 

 men: Pitt, Bolingbroke,Ellenborough, Wellington, 

 Peel, Melbourne, and even Grey, stand out with 

 ugly emphasis. The amiable Melbourne emerges 

 the most brutal Home Secretary that England 

 has ever known, when judged by his own records 

 at the Home Office. Evidently in the opinion 

 of the authors the French peasant before the 

 Revolution was better off than the English 

 peasant of this period. One M.P. remarked that 

 if the poor had lost the means of obtaining their 

 fuel, they should keep themselves warm by sleep- 

 ing in the stables with the cattle." 



You notice that the landowner and large 

 farmer were growing fat all the time, the one 

 by enclosing commons, the other by the price 

 of taxed wheat which reached .£5 per quarter, 

 but the gold was tarnished, it was blood money, 

 the blood of women and children, and there came 

 a day of retribution, such as is certain to overtake 

 Lancashire presently because of the thousands 

 of children worked to death in her factories. 

 The labourers were deprived of the allotments 

 and commons lest they should be " too in- 

 dependent," they were squeezed into towns to 

 spread commerce (and help to abolish Corn Laws), 

 and squeezed into other countries to cultivate 

 them and bring about the day of retribution — 



49 e 



