In reflecting upon the huge system of cotton cloth manufac ture carried on in Lancashire, and the deep poverty and degradation of the majority of the persons employed in it, one can scarcely wish it to be continued. Without some change that shall improve the condition of the people employed in it, I most decidedly wish it out of the country. That it will dwindle, and be shared by other countries is very certain; and the principle of human degradation, which the Cotton Mill masters have inflicted on their work people, is a principle to drive their trade from them; because, enough of such people will find spirit enough to emigrate to some country in which they can find better wages and better treatment: and the people who do find spirit enough thus to emigrate, will certainly be the best hands, men who are conscious of their own mechanical talent. This state of things is rapidly going on, and the end of this century is very likely to see many of the huge and hell-like looking cottonmills, emptied of human beings, and the refuge of bats and owls.

The benefit of this trade to the public revenue is not deserving of a thought, while nine-tenths of the persons employed in it have not the necessaries of life, or the means of preserving health and strength. Or that two or three hundred men should accumulate large capitals, is not worth a thought, if it be done at the expence and misery of as many thousands of the working people. If then, the condition of the people employed in the cotton cloth manufactories cannot be amended, let, I say, those manufactories cease to exist. There is not a journeyman hand-weaver of plain calicoes, in Lancashire, that can earn the proper necessaries of life; at least, such was the case before Christmas, and such has been the average of their case through the last twelve years. Who then can philanthropically and patriotically wish success to such a trade? If it will furnish wholesome and fairly paid labour to the persons employed on it, then its continuance is desirable, and the more particularly so, as it presents a fine specimen of human ingenuity and mechanical power. Excepting the condition of the working people, which is every thing in such a case, the whole process of cotton working is gra tifying; but the gratification is destroyed, in every sensitive mind, when the sighs and groans are counted, which escape over the manufacture of every part of this preparation for dress. Some of our sensitive quakers and others have abstained from the use of West India sugars, because they were raised by slaves. Would it not be a little less hypocritical, a little more moral, if they were to decline the use of cottons, until the working people were more humanely treated and better paid for weaving them? The humanity that is foreign is always to be suspected. It is in a man's own neighbourhood that he should exhibit the good example of charitable feeling. All pretend to desire the improvement of the condition of the working people; but the moment that any

attempts are practically made toward that improvement, an outery founded upon the most contemptible prejudices is raised, and the effort has no encouragement. The truth is, that the aristocracy which forms the legislature of this country, flourishes upon the vices and miseries of the working people; and there will never be any serious attempt to improve the condition of that working people, but among themselves. They must begin it, carry it on, and end it. Let that working man be assured of mortification, who looks up to any man, or to any class of men, to improve his condition. He has every thing to do for himself; there is no one so much immediately interested in his improvement as himself; and if he waits for the assistance of others, he will get nothing done. He must be the reformer of his own condition; and if he is not qualified to be so, he is not the man to merit an improved condition: no change will benefit him. I would not discourage him; I would not degrade him; but I would heartily join him in helping himself. He must gain knowledge; he must throw off every superstition and every prejudice, and resolve to think and act for himself.

Subscriptions received by MR. JOHN BROOKS, Stationer, 421, Oxford Street; by MR. JAMES HUTCHINSON, 67, Wood Street, Cheapside, and by MR. RICHARD CARLILE, Publisher and Bookseller, 62, Fleet Street.

To the Editor of "The Lion."

Golden Square, Feb. 27, 1828. SIR.-If ever there was a state of society indicative of lamentable departure from the rules of reason and nature, and of subversion of all those principles and facts, which draw the line between

rationality and irrationality, and enable man to perform his duty towards his fellow, under the rules of common honesty and sense, the present is surely of that complexion.

L

With the vaunted name of freedom, a rank and desperate tyranny exists, cloaking its insidious and tortuous operations with the sacred but perverted habiliments of liberty and patriotism.

If the truth of this assertion is more conspicuously demonstrable in one class of persons than another, the conductors of the public press are in my opinion decidedly that class.

All that is honourable and great on the one hand, or unjust and contemptible on the other, is advocated from similar motives-a sordid attachment to self-interest through a pampering of the weaknesses or vices of the party which in turn may be considered most influential to the accomplishment of so worthy and exalted an object.

If this charge appears harsh and illiberal, let a single fact, as a sample of the aggregate (not overlooking the rare and honourable exceptions) be adduced, in order to shew that it really is

not so.

One Proprietary-and the practice is by no means isolatednow publishes several newspapers, in which the probable and relative influence of sentiments as distant as the heaven from the earth, are nicely weighed in the balance of sordid gain, and a simultaneous publication of matter advocating the extremes of liberality and bigotry is made from the self-same hands and means, in order to gratify one of the basest and most destructive passions to which humanity is open-avarice.

Instead of that high and principled dignity which once attached to the character of a public writer, all is now merged in the detestable anticipation of personal gain, and the corrupting example of moral profligacy.

Unthinking men may wonder at, and good men may regret (I don't mean the fashionably good men of the present day) the extension of crime under such a system; but unless circumstances unseal the eyes of the former, and excite the latter to something more than unavailing remonstrance, Crime, in all its multifarious shapes, will continue to increase, until nature, no longer able to sustain the oppressive weight, will by some effectual if not convulsive throe, disburthen herself of the otherwise destructive load of bad principle and worse result.

Hoping, Sir, it will be your lot and mine to witness the accomplishment of this great desideratum in human happiness, either under the suggestions of reason and justice, or the operations of honorable and imperative resistance,

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

W. BIRT.

Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street, where all Communications, post paid, or free of expense, are requested to be left.

No. 10. VOL. 1.] LONDON, Friday, March 7, 1828. [PRICE 6d.

Oakham Castle, Feb. 24th, 1828. DEAR MR. CARLILE,-I date this letter from Oakham Castle, rather than from Oakham Gaol, much more from a fancy than from a reason; unless there be a reason in using an Eupheme, or pleasantly sounding word, rather than one of an opposite character; and in endeavouring to take cheerful views, and to give an agreeable turn to things, than to frighten one's self with a bolt straight gaze on their essential ugliness. I don't like to think that I am, in a gaol, and treated as a felon. No, it's a castle. It's a monastery: and I am sent here, that I might have leisure, as our pious chaplain told me to-day, "for pious meditation and reflection." But, when you come upon me with your unanswerable TRUISMS, that a gaol is a gaol, and an unjust imprisonment is unjust imprisonment, I am startled out of the pleasing reverie, into the more accurate reckoning, that it is really to no intentions of mercy in those who sent me here, that I owe it-that my situation here is tolerable. If I had not found better hearts than any that beat in Christian bosoms, I should have been indeed a martyr. Banishment, added to imprisonment, and utter destitution in that banishment, was the portion that Christian charity intended for me-my habitation would have been a horrible cell, and my bed-the pallet of anguish and of pain. For maintaining the sincere convictions of an honest heart, and of a mind capable of giving a reason for its convictions, I endure the fate of felons, and a punishment due only to the perpetrators of violence and fraud,

But if Christians were capable of a perception of the great and paramount obligations of justice and fair dealing between man and man, when 'twas the avowed opponent of their religious faith, that they had to deal with, they might be startled at the comparison of the administration of their justice to a FANATICwith their treatment of AN UNBELIEVER.

Take the case reported in the Morning Herald of the 20th, inst., Mansion House Report, and read it in parallel columns with mine-and look on that picture and on this :

Mansion House, Feb. 20th, 1827.

BROWN, MAYOR.

Case from St. Swithin's Parish,
Cannon-street, Walbrook.

ROBERT TAYLOR,

Clergyman-Infidel,

Was brought up from Giltspurstreet Compter.

Had been thrown into the felons' side of that prison, at 8 o'clock on Saturday night, and detained there till the following Wednesday.

Was charged by Thomas Collins, the Beadle of that parish, with having before his own congregation, and in his own chapel, On Tuesday evening, Feb. 6th.

then and there delivered
Certain Words,

as understood by this witness to be

"Shall God lay perjury to his soul, and that for Jesus." I say, no. "Pigs were the first martyrs for Christ.

"Did the devil drown the pigs, or did the pigs drown the devil?

"GOD, that is the name which the Deist never uses but with awe.

"I should like to know who were the eye-witnesses of what passed between Christ and the Devil, when they spent their holidays together in the wilderness.

Mansion House, Feb. 20th, 1828.

LUCAS, MAYOR.

Case from St. Swithin's Parish,
Cannon-street, Walbrook.
GEORGE HALE,
Shoemaker-Saint,

Attended according to his own promise.

Had been apprehended in the most gentle way possible, and discharged upon his promising to attend before his Lordship.

Was charged by Thomas Collins, the beadle of that parish.

with having disturbed the congregation of St. Swithin's Church, during the hours of Divine Service, and

then and there distributed Certain printed tracts, expressly purporting to be "A solemn warning to the hearers of the doctrines of the Church.

"Those wicked and abominable ministers, who turn the worship of the only true God into an awful farce.

"Those wicked ministers, whose interest it is to conform and assent to this wickedness, will be ready, with every vain excuse, to give a false gloss to such a mockery.

"God is mocked to his face, from Sabbath to Sabbath, in the most glaring and wicked manner.

"The Devil placed the Son of God upon the pinnacle of the temple.