The Sun.
London, England, 1836-12-31 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

In Tait's Edinburgh Magazine for January, there is a
letter, from Mr. Ebenezer Eliiott, on the subject of the
new Poor Law Bill, which we would recommend to the
serious attention of the more sensible Tories, affording, as
it does, a proof of the failure of the attempt to excite the
working classes against the law. Mr. Elliott, whose evi-
dence on this subject is perhaps the very best that can be
obtained, from his intimate acquaintance with the working
classes, states that "the aristocratlings of Sheffield arc as
busy as so many m eggots in the carcass of a dead horse,
with a view, it would seem, of helping the Tories and an-
noying the Ministry, by exasperating the working classes.
I have only been able, however, to meet with one work-
man with whom they havo succeeded." Only one work-
man in the large manufacturing town of Sheffield! The
Tories, then, will gain nothing from their unprincipled
opposition to the New Poor Law ; and this must be
exceedingly mortifying to them, after they have incurred
the disgrace of endeavouring to excite odium against a
measure which received the support of all parties in Par-
liament, Tories, Whigs, and Radicals, the opposition only
amounting to 18 in the House of Commons. The his-
tory of the change in the Poor Law is toi, recent to
allow of deception being practised with Success on the
working classes.
" If we inquire," says Mr. Elliott, " into the origin and
authorship of that alteration in the ancient poor-law which
enable Tory magistrates to debase the people, and bribe their
own dependents, by and through the distribution of what is
called out-door relief to the poor, we shall find that the self-
supported poor have no reason to quarrel with its abolition.
* * * * * Mr. Pitt first bribed by
his Bank Restriction Act the bankers and the landowners, the
latter of whom were not then aware that it was to make pau-
pers of them ; and then for a time placed the landowners in
security by his alteration of the poor-laws, which enabled
them to garrison their neighbourhood with idle ruffians, who
thenceforth had nothing to do but to damn the French, rob
and perhaps kill the Jacobins, cat the bread of the poor. and
thank the rich for it ; doffing their bats to the parson justice, who
was to be seen anywhere except in the pulpit. Why, then, if the
altered law so well answered the purpose of the Tories, did they
repeal it by acclamation ? Because it had ceased to answer
their purpose. They discovered at last—what their own per-
I sonal and hereditary experience ought at once to have taught
them—that persons who are kept by others (as the Tories
have ever been and mean to be) will do nothing for them-
selves ; and if proof were wanting that whom God bath
doomed he infatuates, it is furnished by the fact that they did
not make this awful discovery (though it is the Tory's in-
stinct) until they were literally in danger of being eaten in
their own drawing-rooms, half-a-dozen for a breakfast, by the
hundreds of thousands of wretches whom, by the altered law,
they had impoverished and unsouled."
The same reason that made the Tories repeal the old
law by acclamation will prevent them from proceeding
futther in opposition to the new than embarrassing the
Ministry. Were the Tories in place to-morrow they
would no more :regard the ravings of the Times than
they did when it succeeded in inducing Mr. John Walter,
with eighteen Members of the Commons, Radicals and
'Tories, to divide against the new Bill. They know that a
return to the old system would literally swamp them. We
must, in justice to the working men in towns, say that in
general they are not the dupes of the outcry which has been
raised against the new Bill. The parties who profit by
parish jobbing must not be confounded with industrious
mechanics. It is only necessary that one or two shrewd,
and well-informed men in each town should take the trouble
to place the question fairly before the working classes to
rustrate the machinations of the Tories.—Morn. Chronicle-

Lord Denman will attend at Sergeants' Inn Hall on
Tuesday next, the 33 of January, to transact public business.