cutors as you can yourself feel, London, in February, in order, paper, in the form

and with a determination not, on that

any account, again to trespass on your time,

Iam, Sir,

Your most obedient Servant,

WM. COBBETT.

FARMER'S MEETING.

some short of Resolutions, or otherwise, might be adopted by us for circulation in the several counties. This was the object of the intended Meeting. Now, seeing that the farmers do already see their danger; seeing that Webb HALL'S nonsense is blown to air; seeing that the counties regularly convened are saying all that we could have said in the proposed paper; seeing that even the county of Suf

THIS Meeting, which was proposed to be held on the 19th of February, will now, in my folk has agreed to petition for opinion, be unnecessary; and, Reform; seeing all this, the protherefore, I shall proceed no posed Meeting if persevered in further in it; the reasons for could only be to bring gentlemen which I shall here state. When from their homes for the gratificaI proposed it, it was early in tion of my personal vanity, a thing November. At that time the follies of Mr. WEBB HALL were raging throughout the land; and there appeared scarcely any hope counties in England except nine, of awakening the farmers to a I beg the gentlemen, whose due sense of their danger. names have been sent, to be Nevertheless I very much wished assured, that I shall be very to do it; and, with that view, as I explicitly stated, I invited two farmers from each county to come to

which would justly expose me to their censure.. Names have already been sent me from all the

happy to see them at my house at any time, when they happen to come to London. The Landlords

seem, at last, to be convinced, that | envy do what it will, the nation Reform, and that alone, can save will award me. To see the latheir estates. The cause, they bouring classes well off; to see have now found, is theirs, as well my country rid of the curse of as that of the Labouring-Classes. | pauperism; to see her bearing They have now found, that there her head aloft, never desiring is no possibility of relief without but always ready for war; to see a great reduction of taxation; these things has been the constant that this cannot be effected to the wish of my heart; and, trusting necessary extent without a reduc- that I now shall see them, 1 am tion of the interest of the Debt; not at all anxious to put myself that this cannot be done without forward in the scenes that are at the most barefaced injustice till hand; but I shall always, I hope, the army be reduced to the mere be ready to exert in the cause colonial standard, and till the of my country whatever useful barrack system be broken up; powers it may have pleased God and, that these cannot take place to give me.-Reader, pray look without a reform of the parlia- at the Petition from the County ment. The LETTERS TO of Suffolk! If you have been LANDLORDS, the LETTERS an observer of passing events TO EARL GREY, the RUS- for any length of time, bless TIC HARANGUES, and par-yourself at the change! ticularly that at HUNTING-A word to the old Reformers here. DON, have PROVED this to the Let me beg of them not to reject Landlords. The doing of the the converts; or, be themselves thing belongs to them; and, let less zealous in the cause now, when them do it. It is an honour quite it is likely to succeed, than they enough for me to have produced were when there appeared no the conviction in their minds; chance of such likelihood. Let and this is an honour, which, let them not in their conduct resemble

those labourers in the vineyard, I consideration the propriety of petitioning the House of Commons on the subject of the distress which now pervades all the active classes of the community, and the agricultural class in particular.

whose envy JESUS CHRIST So
justly reprobated. Let them not,
like "
Glory," turn their backs

to the damsel merely because she
is in a complying humour. Let
me hope, that not a man of them

will act this part; for, to do that would be to show, that such man

never really wanted to see a Re

form, or wanted it only to gratify some selfish feeling of his own; or, at best, not from any generous motive.—At the Suffolk Meeting LORD CALTHORPE objected to Reform being part of the petition,

because immediate relief was wanted, and Reform would be a

long time about. I will, in my next, show that it might actually be accomplished and its effects be

at work by the month of May

next.

HUNTINGDON MEETING.

The Meeting was large and most respectable. A dinner was provided at the George, and the company, Samuel Wells, Esq. having been called to the Chair, sat down to it at half-past two o'clock.

After the cloth was removed, and after some matters of ceremony

of minor importance,

The CHAIRMAN introduced.

the subject of the petition in a neat and appropriate speech, of which the following is the substance :-He said, that after sixteen years of arduous struggle against the corruptions and violences of the fatal system of Mr. Pitt, he had, thank God, lived to see some hope of a change. He could wish that this hope had been inspired by any thing rather than the distress which had called them together; he could wish that the gentlemen and yeomen of the County of Hunting

WM. COBBETT. don and the vicinity had been awakened to the dangers of that system in their days of delusive prosperity; he could wish, that while they themselves were prosperous and happy, they had foreseen, that in the end they must suffer from this system as well as others were then suffering; but, at

On Tuesday last, the 22d instant, a Meeting was held at the George Inn, at Huntingdon, to take into

1

19

any rate, he rejoiced that they now | however, that at last a change had
saw the system in its true light, arrived. He rejoiced at the change,
though taught by severe suffering; though produced by suffering, since
for unless they did see it in its true it was to be produced by no other
The proof of that change
light, and unless they resolved to means.
change it for a better, there must was now actually before his eyes;
be an end to those liberties for for when was there a meeting like
which their ancestors had fought the present in the County of Hun-
and bled. Many now present could tingdon? They all knew, that on
bear witness to the zeal, the dis- the day of their great triumph (and
interested exertions that he had a most glorious triumph it was,)
made against that wicked system when they dined in that very room
for the last twenty years of his to celebrate the return of their
life. After many, many years of amiable, upright and excellent Re-
the vilest political slavery, the presentative, Lord John Russell,
county had gained something like who was an honour even to his il-
freedom when it returned its pre-lustrious house, they could muster
sent noble and excellent Repre- only eighty-two persons to sit down
`sentative, Lord John Russell. But to dinner.; and he now saw, in that ́
there was much more to do in order same room, something approach-
to arrive at that complete victory, ing to double that number. "Well
with any thing short of which they then," said he, “I have not labour-
ought not to be contented. Goded in vain; I have not suffered
knows what difficulties he had had persecution for nothing; and I.
to struggle with during the period have, Gentlemen, no hesitation in
to which he had alluded.—When
he looked back on the series of
persecutions that he had had to
endure, he sometimes felt astonish-
ed that he was still in existence.
To describe the mortifications, the
insults, the persecutions of all sorts
that he had had to endure, was
quite beyond his, or the power of
any man that ever existed. To
have an idea of the thousandth
part of them, they must be felt;
and he did not wish even his ene-
mies to gain the knowledge by so
cruel a proof. He thanked God,

saying, that this is the proudest day of my life." He proceeded to observe, that it was not now, that a new light had broken in upon him. He had seen so long as sixteen years ago, that something like what had now taken place, would take place. It was impossible that so profligate a system should last for any great number of years, and equally impossible, that it should not be attended with consequences such as they then beheld and had to deplore, though he must again say, that even these consequences,

melancholy as they were, were to look still higher? Then behold the be hailed with joy, as the means of favourite child of apostacy, seated dissipating that blind infatuation where I need not describe; he, in which the far greater part of the companion and even crony of those around had so long lived, and Mr. Horne Tooke; far too much which infatuation alone had so long of a Reformer for the Whigs; prolonged the reign of that Faction, stopping at nothing on the score whose counsels had at last brought of something more serious than real and tangible ruin home to the politics: look at him, the former fire-side of every mạn, not draw-reviler of the Pitt Faction-the ing his means of support out of scoffer by excellence. See him now the property or industry of his on his seat on high, the willing, the neighbours. He had kept his eye ready, the officious agent of the upon the faction of Mr. Pitt; and Pitt Faction, surpassing them all he could trace almost every man in piety, and surpassing them all of them, who had made any con- in political apostacy and cruelty. siderable figure in the ranks of I conclude, Gentlemen, with propersecution, to some signal act of posing, for your adoption, a peapostacy; and it is a maxim, as old tition, the draft of which I hold in as Iscariot himself, that apostates my hand; and I shall only add, are the cruelest of persecutors.-that, in my opinion, it accords with Mr. Pitt himself started in the the advice of our worthy Reprerace of power with being an apos- sentative, Lord John Russell, who, tate from the cause of Reform. in his Letter addressed to us, and Lord Castlereagh was a violent just published, says, let your PeReformer, far more radical than tition be firm, strong and resolute. any man of the present day. Look, too, said he, at the Lawyers, of whom apostacy has to boast as its converts. See how sleekly they look in their official garb.-Was equity ever so snug as when in the hands of a pupil of this repentant school? and did an ex-officio ever thunder more melodiously than coming from a solicitor, who had almost worn himself out in execrations on the persecuting faction to whom he has disposed of the remnant of his days? Will you

The Petition was then put, and, after some little objection on the part of Michael Wells, Esq. was carried with only three hands held up in the negative..

The Petition, which, we understand, was signed in a few hours by upwards of ninety persons, was in the following words:

"To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled ;