VOL. 41.-No. 2] LONDON, SATURDAY, JAN. 12, 1822. [Price 6d. Published every Saturday Morning, at Seven o' Clock.

NOTICE,

The STAMPED REGISTER is now regularly published; and, therefore, it can be sent to any part of the Kingdom, postage free.

almost in these very words, is acknowledged in the Report of the Agricultural Committee. This nation is now taxed to a degree almost beyond endurance; for, as I said in 1814, and had said in Paper against Gold," to pay in cash was to double or triple the taxes. The tax on a pound of candles, for instance, is now, when the labourer's wages are reduced to 8s. a week, just as much in nominal amount as it was when his wages were 12s. a week. But threepence taken out of 8s. is more than threepence taken out of 12s. In short, it is clear, that Peel's Bill has, by reducing prices one half in general, and, in some

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what it may, lessens, in propor-cases, a great deal more, doubled tion to that amount, the enjoy- or tripled the taxes; so that these ments of a people. This, and are now become absolutely into

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lerable. Nous demandons à to submit to taxation without regrands cris," said the French peo- presentation, and brought to its ple in their eloquent Cahirs; present hideous size by the war "We ask, we cry aloud;" and, against the people of France to for what? Why, for a reduction force back on them the Bourbons, of those taxes, those heavy and and to crash those, who were engalling imposts that were produc-deavouring to obtain a reform of ing amongst them famine and dis- parliament in England. It is the

traction.

It is the Debt which is the cause of this dreadful scourge. It demands thirty millions of hard money a year to pay the bare interest, and it is made the exeuse

.

Debt here, as it was the Debt in
France! The French revolution
was a financial affair. I remem-
ber, that the late Mr. GARLIKE,
who was then at the court at the
Hague, wrote to me, in 1791, in
somewhat these words:
"The

for raising about ten or twelve millions more for sinking fund ""revolution was a thing of neces and other like purposes. Then,"sity. The government could to collect these suns amidst the "not have gone on another month. sufferings that the collection of" It was like a spider, twisted up them occasions, demands a standing army in time of peace. This army is made the ground for a staff quite enormous, and for barracks and other establishments equally enormous. These again add to the weight of taxation. So practical proof is now, or very that, it is the Debt, that work of shortly will be, before me, the Whigs of the Glorious Revo

« in his own web." I, who had then been a soldier for about seven years, thought it very strange, that a government that had an army. could not go on! I have since discovered how this is; and the

The old French government

lution, swelled up by an endea-did not possess the power to lighten your to compel the Americans the burdens of the people. It

was compelled to call for the as-Hall are row become subjects of sistance of the people themselves. ridicule amongst all classes of I beg your Lordship to remember men. There are few that remain this; for the same call must, in unsatisfied of the truth, that there some shape or other, take place must be a complete revolution in here. The old French Govern- property, unless the operations of ment called upon the people too the Debt be stopped. We already late, in the first place; then, in see four, if not five, noblemen's the next place, it did not act in a estates in the hands of one single fair and frank manner with the family of "loyal" Loan-jobbers, people; thirdly, it endeavoured whose father would have brushed, to maintain all the greatest abuses and, perhaps, did brush, Lord in full vigour; and, fourthly, it Shelburne's coat! And, good God! the nobility of this country? while they haughtily and scornfully cast from them a supplicating people, who cannot be their rivals, take to their bosoms, hug, cherish and pamper a race of reptile

was in want of what we have, the

forms of freedom and of representation. There was, when they

came to act, nothing short of a new government that would do in France; while we, with similar, precisely similar difficulties, stand loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers and in need of nothing but such a jews, who are actually at this mochange as shall make the House ment pocketing their rents, by

of Commons the real represen

tatives of the people at large;

but to be that they must be chosen

"by the people at large.

the means of which they will purchase from them the land and the parchments!

My Lord ASHBURNHAM, who

Without a reduction, and a presided the other day at a meetlarge reduction too, of the interesting at Battle in Sussex, who is of the Debt, it is in vain to talk said to be a very good landlord of a remedy. The follies of Webb and an excellent man in private

life; and whose conduct upon the that, if the Debt were not arrested occasion here alluded to was re-in its progress, the nobility and markable for candour and for the church must finally fall; for mildness, very feelingly observed, that, their long existence was that, in whatever degree the farm-wholly incompatible with the exers were suffering, he could assure istence of that Debt. The unthem, that they did not suffer more principled SHERIDAN, who, for than he did. Why, my Lord, some vile purpose or other, was what a thing is this to hear from a at that time giving his support to nobleman of large landed estate, Addington, denounced me, in the prudent in the management of House of Commons, as a man his affairs, and squandering in aiming at the destruction of pubnothing! What a thing to hear lic credit, and did his best to mark from such a person; and, when me out for public resentment and we know too, that this is only a to render my writings a subject specimen of what exists in every of criticism with that great master part of the kingdom! Several of style, the Attorney General. years ago (in 1816) I wrote, in I Ived to see that profligate sport, some lines now literally politician descend to a disgrace

trné :

Of paper-coin how vast the pow'r!
It breaks or makes us in an hour.
And, thus, perhaps, a beggar's shirt,
When finely ground and clear'd of dirt;
Then re-compress'd by hand or hopper,
And printed on by sheet of copper,
May raise ten beggars to renown,
And tumble fifty nobles down.

ful grave; and, I shall live to see fully verified the opinion for the stating of which he would have had me sacrificed; for, who is there,"

my lord, that does not now see, that the ancient nobility and the church must fall, unless the Debt be, by some means or other,

In 1808, when the vapouring nearly, if not quite, put an

Addington' was putting forth his

end to?

schemes of "solid finance," I said,

The nobility, by which I mean

the ancient families of the king- down, reformers. They have disdom, whether peers or not, suf- covered great ingenuity, in pre

scribing the price and bulk of pamphlets, and in taking means to prevent the crime of making

fered Pitt to create a new race of statesmen. The Roses, the Longs, the Addingtons, the Ryders, the Castlereaghs, the Cannings, the" breakfast powder "out of wheat Scotts, the Percevals, the Jen- and rye. They have never been kirsons, the Laws, the Dundasses, backward to make provision for and many others. These have preventing the landowners from had the active powers in their losing their hares and pheasants; hands. Out of their system has but, for the soul of them, they arisen the Barings, the Smiths, the Peels, the Curtises, the Luke Whites, the Alexanders, the Ricardos, and thousands of that description. The ancient families, basis of legislative power; about in all times lethargic, have been the "designing demagogues" who, content with the protection, the "bankrupt in character and forease and safety, which the new tune," wanted to get at the prorace of statesmen promised them.perty of the rich; about the But, at last, they begin to find credness" of property they have (and I would fain hope that they spoken volumes; how to prevent

cannot find out the means of preventing them from losing their estates! They have talked very fluently about property being the

will not have made the discovery the hedge-stakes, the nuts and

the haws, from being stolen, they have well understood; but, as to

too late), that it is not ease and safety that have been the result of their confiding the nation's the estate itself, to preserve that affairs to the new race of states-to the owner, makes, it seems, no nien. These have been pretty part of their province! And, my "vigorous" gentlemen. They lord, if this be done at all, be you have been very able in keeping assured, that it will be a work in