MR. Oliver's address. 17 



as well as pitifully poor. Could some enterprising Yankee 

 from our town of Lynn, get a government contract out of 

 Louis Napoleon, for supplying the French peasantry with 

 shoes, what a glorious speculation he would make of it, — for 

 there are millions of them, who never had leather upon their 

 feet. And yet they are a cheerful race, like all other French- 

 men, making the best of their condition. Of their habits of 

 personal cleanliness, you may form some idea, by looking at a 

 picture which Punch gives of a group of them, all grizzled 

 with hair, on head, lip and chin, and gazing, in wondering ig- 

 norance, at what you and I immediately recognize to be a wash- 

 stand, with its concomitant pitcher and basin, tumbler, soap 

 and towels. I need not speak of the Irish laborer — you see 

 him in the midst of you, and may judge what he was, under 

 the landlord-system at home. The Scotch laborer is far su- 

 perior to the English in point of education, — and he is consid- 

 ered a more valuable hand. Yet in Scotland even, he is very 

 far below a proper level. I am speaking all along, of the non- 

 proprietor, not of the farm-owning farmer, in Great Britain, 

 and I say of him that his case is hopelessly incurable. He 

 cannot rise. The government keeps him down, — the soldi- 

 ery, taken though many, if not most of them be, from his own 

 class, and constituting in their aggregate great standing armies, 

 — and of the many direful curses that have cursed and crushed 

 the nations of the earth, these rank among the direst, — these 

 keep him down, and his own ignorance keeps him down, 

 down, down, — chained to labor, with a pot of beer and a pipe 

 of tobacco, for luxuries, — if he can get them. 



That you may know something of the Scotch laborer's con- 

 dition, let me tell you, what one, who was once one of them, 

 told me within a month. " Sir," said he, in reply to my in- 

 quiry "my food was parritch, — dinna ye ken what that is? — 

 which I prepared in my ain pot over the fire, stirring in the 

 oat-meal for myself, and when it was cooked, I dipped it 

 out and ate it, — and this was my food, morning, noon and 

 night, — week in and week out. And I wore corduroy breech- 

 es and a corduroy jacket, with a blue bonnet and nought 

 to keep the sun from my e'en. My feet had ne'er a shoe, 

 3 



