No. 151.] 279 



more than sixty-two times as much as our president and his family 

 cost the United States. 



The salary of the lord high chancellor amounts to fourteen thou- 

 sand pounds sterling, or sixty-seven thousand two hundred dollars a 

 year; exceeding the aggregate salaries of our vice-president, the 

 four heads of departments, state, treasury, war and navy, the nine 

 judges of our supreme federal court, together with those of the post- 

 master-general, attorney -general, and solicitor of the treasury. 



The vast importance of the services rendered for these enormous 

 sums, are not probably well understood in this country; but we can 

 understand that so much paid to the dignified clergy, royal family, 

 lord chancellor, and other high officers of the government, can leave 

 but little to be divided among the laboring poor, whose hard earnings 

 must pay for all. 



A British weaver receives for his incessant labor, eight shillings 

 sterling, per week, or about one hundred dollars a year; so that the 

 services of the Lord Chancellor are deemed equivalent to those of 

 six hundred and seventy weavers; a striking instance of high and 

 low wages. In the Constitutional Convention of this State, a very 

 different estimate would be formed of the relative merits of the 

 chancellor and the weaver, by those who consider the whole chan- 

 cery system as worse than useless. 



The whole landed property of Great Britain belongs to about 

 one-sixth part of the population, and many of the nobility have in- 

 comes to the amount of from two to three hundred thousand dollars. 

 a year. To increase the enormous incomes of the land-holders, the 

 corn-laws have been enforced for many years, and will still continue 

 to be enforced, under certain modifications, till the month of Febru- 

 ary, 1849. 



An opinion has been expressed and published in the British pa- 

 pers, that the corn-laws brought to an untimely grave twenty thou- 

 sand human beings a year. This is probably an exaggeration. But 

 the queen, in her speech of January last, says: '*I have to lament 

 that, in consequence of the failure of the potato crop in several 

 parts of the United Kingdom, there will be a deficient supply of an 

 article of food, which forms the chief subsistence of great numbers 

 of my people." What must be the sufferings of millions of her la- 

 boring poor, whose chief subsistence is potatoes! 



