The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-23 00:00:00

realm.

1808-9 will be a sadly-memorable year for the
working classes. The same twelvemonth which has
seen them enfranchised for the first time, has seen

them also flying from the country in thousands,
because it is impossible for them to earn a livelihood
in it. To give a man a vote at the very time that
you declare your incapability to give him work,
is painfully suggestive of the stone which was
offered in reply to the prayer for bread.
What are politics to a man who has not
a subsistence ? Of what avail is it to
him that ke has a twenty-thousandth part in the
selection of a six-hundred-and-fifty-eighth portion
of one House of the Legislature, when no legislator
is able to tell him how he is to keep body and soul
together ? Three or four years ago he might have
cared to stand before the hustings on nomination
day, and to announce his vote to the clerks on
polling-day. Yet now it is not to the hustings but the
workhouse whither he wends his steps, it is not the
poll-clerk but the relieving-oflicer with whom he
has to make acquaintance. It is a sad termination

to the political enthusiasm of the last few years.
The Whitechapel stone-yard is a miserable anti-
climax to the Hyde Park demonstration. Can
nothing be done for him ? Has he become an elector
only to lose his new inheritance by becoming a
pauper ? Cannot the wisdom of that body which
he and his fellows have helped to constitute, devise
some means to redeem him from the sore bondage
of poverty, to supply the honest man with
all that he wants work for willing hands
that are idle through no fault of theirs ?
Such questions as these are being asked on all sides
by our labouring class. They cannot safely remain
unanswered. It was such questions which led to the
French revolution of 1848, and to the brief, but
bloody, reign df Red Republicanism. Red
Republicanism is not dead, it sleeps only, if indeed
it do sleep. Of that we feel by no means certain
when we read the reports of the International
Working Men's Congresses. At any rate, no Govern-
ment can afford to ignore such a condition of things
as exists among our working-men at the present
time.

It is under these circumstances that the Poor-law
Board has at last promised to deal with the pauperism
of London. The deputation which waited upon Mr.
GOSCUEN on Monday obtained from him a distinct
proposal that a central committee should be formed
out of the various metropolitan boards of guardians,
for the express purpose of forwarding emigra-
tion to the colonies. This committee will obtain
information from the colonial Governments as
to the openings which there are - for
emigrants, and will, perhaps, be able to persuade
those Governments to make a grant to assist
emigration. The boards of guardians on their part
will be at liberty to grant relief out of supplementary
funds to persons who arc not actually on the rates,
but who, if they do not leave the
country, will come upon the rates. It is
clear that a few pounds spent in conveying a
probable pauper out of the country will save a
good many pounds spent in support:ng him
here. Formerly, under the old vicious law
of settlement, a board of guardians did not hesitate
to spend a considerable sum of money in deporting a
pauper from one end of England to the other. The
only effect was to save the rates of the parish which
did this. The pauperism was not cured ;it was
simply shifted from Cornwall to Northumberland,
from Norfolk to Cork. Neither the country nor the
pauper was benefited. But by transporting a
pauper to Canada or Australia a parish will not
only relieve its rates, but convert a pauper into a