The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-17 00:00:00

tors to newspapers. But, whatever may be the his- night? if he has, let him compare it with my wife's
tory of this individual labourer, we know there are! description of the English cotter's Saturday night :
tens of thousands in his very case, and hundreds of ~ Well, James, I have just been to market, I wish
thousands only a shade better off, to whom it is simply ' you would go yourself, for I really do not know how
absurd and indecent to propose those transmigrations. to lay the money out. I have paid 7s. for flour, Is.
It is all very easy to say by rote that any man can go . for coals, 3d. snap, 3d. candles, 3d. yeast, sd. for
anywhere ; but take particular cases—go to this man and '
butter, Gd. for meat, 2d. for tea. I did mean to save
that man, consider his habits and capacities, and hear .
2,1. for to buy ou one pint of beer, because
you y you
what he has to say, and you will see at once that it is a i
l
poor y for the last three days, but I
_
mere impossibility. The English agricultural labourer, have been so
once in for it, is that, and nothing more. There is not a could not spare it ; for you know our lade babe can-
more fixed, unchangeable being in the world. This is not eat his sop without a little sugar ; if he has dry
his most remarkable characteristic—his virtual serfdom. bread to eat for two or three days he is ready to
Excellent,beyond all comparison, in his line, he is nothing starve, dear little soul. I have bought one pound of
out of it—a fish out of water, a plough in the Royal Ex- I mutton, with which I will make you some broth to-
change. He is narrow-minded, bigotted, ignorant, in all night ;it will do your cold good : what you leave
beyond his daily round of labour. The Russian serf, will- make a dinner for us to-morrow. I wanted
who may become, and often is, a tradesman, a profes- -to buy some flannel for Mary, and some calico
sional man, an artist, or a poet, is far more versatile and I for myself. George wants his shoes mended,
helpful. The English labourer has utterly staked himself
;and Richard wants some trousers • he and all
and all his prospects in the narrow field of agrieul- ,
are vary thin. 010 for winter, I was
tural employment. We hear much talk of vested inns- 01 us
rests, and nowhere are they more respected than in this in hopes this week that I should be able to buy
land of privilege and prescription. We should think it a basin or two, for we have only one ill us all. Oh,
indecent to remove a Cabinet Minister without a pension, dear met I have spent all the money, and have forgot
to unsalary an old employe of the Foreign-office with 4 to buy some oil for the shoes and boot-laced. Dear
recommendation to the counting-houses of Liverpool, to rue, my heed tome round; lam bewildered when I
toll a bishop of thirty years' standing to get his bread think of our numerous wants. When you was ill, a
again by hearing little boys construe zEsychylus, or to month since, and could pot work for a weep, we
draught our generals into the rural police. Yet scarce should have perished if the shopkeeper had not kindly
is the Queen on her throne more rivetted to that one
glven us,eredit for a little grocery, and the miller for
These people expect their money i they do
only place in the State, than a labourer to his fields and
a grist.
not ask me for It, pertainly ; but I do hate to look
his tools. There he is, and there he must remain. The
labour market is no more open to him than q the empty,
vast, and wandering air," Whatever the mercy or the them in the face, because low e them so n 144, I hope
justice of the Legislature may design for him, let it not none of my dear children will over marry, fbr love
mock his humble views and powers with the suggestion le to the poor the greatest curse. Ah, James, you
of impracticable, almost unintelligible alternatives. may look at me; even my lore to you is a curse.
And- can we wonder if there is something rude flow hurtful to my feelings is it when in winter you
and gloomy in the tone these hard necessities have some home wet through, no good sloes to keep your
f inspired ? Is it strange if there is even a touch ofeet dry, day after day, in consequence of which you
that " stupid malignity .' which this poor creature have got the rheumatism in your feet. flow do I wish
scarce ventures to repudiate, and is content to ex-
at these times T had something to nourish you In lieu of
case ? The labourer seldom speaks, His intellectual
a bit, of bread and a little toast and water, a poor re-
nature, as also his sense of suffering, has scarcely orga-
nisation, His expression is scarcely articulate. He is ward for a man who has stood the pelting of the piti-
es the brute earth with which is his daily conversation. less storm all day long. God grant that in the next
It moves but once a thousand years, area then to shake world we may not be governed by human beings, but
and bury cities. Once in a century we hear its ominous by the law of God, which wicked human beings wil-
murmurs. When the rural spokesman does comes forth fully misconstrue. There we shall no more hear the
he cannot fail to be something portentous, at once voice of our oppressors."
fgellilsohwi-41
lel
ob
uo fellow-labourers,
erre
'..e4'Sai;unrdtaytindisghattrtoueei
dwarfish and prodigious. His looks are gild and strange,
eight
ttuouret ofof
He summarily moves the cause of labour against the th!fin
whole superincumbent world besides, against every . e .se
human power and ordinance, political, religious, Bogie ten r A ay, I have put down nearly word for word
and domestic, Ids feels the reality and heavings of a P
the s eeeh that my anxious wife has often made to me.
soul which claims a place is the universe which man Let us send petitions to our good queen, stating
refuses. He only stops short of rebellion against Heaven the truth of our wretched condition. Do not make
but at its very portals, and of treason against mortal known our griefs by incendiary fires, or sit down
sovereignty but et the very footstool. It is in his mind brooding and planning schemes of revenge, as did a
all against all—an earnest, small, and feeble perhaps, but man at Rye last year, who invented a new prime,
still a veritable earnest of a conflict which snail one day, which, had it not been nipped in the bud, would have
owe for ages, be waged between the great divisions and made England one vast watch-house.
powers of humanity, when this or that law, this or that My fellow-labourers, my experience of human life
particular grievance, Ulla Pr that political faction, shall convinces me that the majority of mankincl—not-
have been lost in distant antiquity, withstanding their very stria observance of the
forms, rites, and ceremonies of religion—notwith-
standing the repeated admonitions of the still small
voice—are but half civilised, and bear too close a re-
semblance to the finny tribe, which inhabit the deep
and prey upon each other. Rut there is a glorious
minority of human beings who possess souls. To
those who possess that inestimable gem let us make
an appeal ; let us try to interest them by our re-
spectful and patient behaviour to intercede for us, and
not let us sink clown into a much worse than Egyp-
tian bondage.
I have said that bread alone will not keep a man's
strength up; nor will it. But alas ! how many
thousands of us are there that do not get enough of
that necessary food ! How many times have I my-
self been obliged to make up a dinner art raw turnips,
because I have not had bread enough for myself and
two boys; and how often have I told my poor boys
that my master gave me leave to take them, fearing
to inculcate a bad lesson in them on their first expe-
rience of life.
Why is it that fevers always stop at the poor
man's door ? The answer is as plain a the way to
the pariah ehureb—it is our low living that breeds
this miasma. I could say much on the harshness
and severity with which we are treated by guardians
and farmers when we apply for work ; but in this
case I shall at present keep in my mind the motto of
the absent Allan, " I hide my time."
I must now conclude by telling you all, that our
condition will yearly get worSe ifyou do not come
forward and state your grievances, Therefore, if you
love your wives, if you love the children whom God
has committed to your care for purposes best known
to Himself, come forward with respectful petitions,
and pray for adequate and fair wages.—l remain,
your well-wishing Triend, * • 4. it,

ADDRESS TO THE LABOURERS
OF StiBnX BY A FELLOW-LABOURER.

(From thelfh*" ion Herald.)
The following address is from the pen of a labour-
ing man, living in a village in this county. His
name and place of abode are affixed to the produc-
tion •, but, although it does him credit, and is evi-
dently the effusion of truth, still we think it' best to
suppress them, lest it should expose him to persecu-
tion. The writer, in his letter to us, thus describes
himself :

"I am a labouring man, with a family of five
children. Two of my boys work at wages, 2s. 6d.
each weekly. My own wages is only ss. weekly, in
consequence of my not being so strong as my fellow-
labourers. It is on this account that I wish to do
something better for my family if I can. I have
wrote it in haste, in my wife's absence, because the
authorities of - have told my wife that my pen
will one day be the ruin of me. Alas ! my fate
must be bad indeed, if I fare worse than I do
now. Had I time to reflect before I wrote, I
doubt not I should have wrote better and
spelled better. People in towns are little aware
of the petty tyranny existing in villages. The gen-
try take a deal of pains to convince the poor that they
have a soul, but if we should presume to say we
know it, they are at great pains to convince us that
we ought to keep it with as much secresy as the Pro-
testants did their Bibles in the dark ages of Romish
bigotry."

The following is his address :
My Fellow-Labourers,—Dr. Johnson has ob-
served that ' the poor look up with stupid malignity
at the rich.' But he did not tell us that this bad
feeling arises from the hardships and privations we
undergo, and the little comforts we enjoy, in com-
parison to all other classes. Let us respectfully ask
the three gentlemen whom we maintain in luxury
out of our labour—viz., the landlord, clergyman, and
farmer, not to grind our faces as they hitherto have
done. Let us pray them to stretch forth their hands
to save us from that squalid poverty towards which
we are approaching with gigantic strides. Our con-
dition gets worse every year. The cry of the farmer
now is that *e are too numerous : this is a falsehood.
We must first cultivate every acre of waste land, in-
cluding the various parks throughout England, ere
we can say this. Human pride will try to forbid our
cultivating the numerous parks, but, in the eyes of
Him who sent us here to till the land, what has
human pride to do with His laws and the natural
rights of man ? We are Nature's out-door cooks,
and we are the only cooks in this world who are not
allowed to take a sop in the pan.
There are those who think that bread alone is
sufficient to keep a man's strength up who has to la-
bour in the fields. I rash that those who think thus
would accompany me on a cold winter's morn, with
the bitter biting north wind blowing in his face, with
rain, sleet, or snow. Let him work in the fields for
five hours, and afterwards sit under a wet cold hedge
and eat for his dinner a bit of bread day after day.
He would then, like me, and thousands more, in the
words of Burns, " find every sad succeeding night
and joyous morn the same." He would wonder why
he, of all created beings, should be so wretched, How
often have I envied the birds and beasts ! " You,"
said I, " have a table spread in the wilderness ; you
eat and drink from it without anxiety or care." When
I look around on the providence of God, everything
I see is conducted with so much benevolent care to
every living being, that I am quite convinced that
Ile never sent a human being to pass through a life
of misery,
The new poor-law was a direct robbery of 24 per
cent. from the labourer's wages. The difficulty of
bringing up a family at this time is extreme, more espe-
cially if the two first-born are femalas. Boys get to
work much sooner than girls,
Surely it is very laudable and kind . to send out
missionaries abroad to ameliorate the condition of our
sable brethren ; and it would be also very laudable
to inquire into the condition of our own labourers.
And it is very kind of the gentry to send us religious
tracts—to teach the rustic moralist to die ; and it
would also be very kind if our superiors would teach
us how to bring up a family upon 103. a week. We
beseech the three gentlemen whom we are keeping
in luxury, when they make laws for the people, to
recollect that we form part of the community—a low
part certainly, yet we are a link in the great chain of
society.
Brethren, our state is worse, much worse, than it
was in our fathers' time ; and I am sorry to say it
will yearly get worse, unless we are allowed to till all
the waste land in Britain, or emigrate to some of our
colonies—not under the present syitem, but under a
well organised system of emigration. Leave not your
native land to starve on a foreign shore, as thousands
have done lately. We often see accounts of the de-
pravity of man, but can there be an instance of greater
depravity than the following fact ?—ln consequence
of the rapid increase of the population we have not of
late years grown corn enough for our consumption;
we are, therefore, obliged to buy many thousand
quarters of foreign corn to supply and tnake up the
deficiency, How kind is God to send us a supply
from other countries! And how wicke lly depraved
are those who try every means in their power to
starve .us by refusing to take the gift a kind God
sends us ! _ _

VACCINATION IN ITALY.

(From a paper by Mr. E. Lee in the Medical Gazette.)
In no part of the world perhaps, was the discovery
of Jenner received with a greater degree of faith and
enthusiasm than ie Italy, and the Government sought
by every means to prevent the ravages of the small-
pox, and favour the progress of vaccination. In Milan
for instance, if parents refused to have their children
vaccinated, a proves verbal is signed by the vaccina-
tor, the curate of the parish, and the syndic of the
district, stating the opposition that has been made,
and this is sent to the provincial delegation. Charit-
able institutions do not grant assistance to those who
cannot show a certificate of having been vaccinated.
The curates are obliged to send every three months to
the vaccinator of the district a list of the children
born and baptised in their parishes; to read from the
pulpit every three months the names of those who
have died from the small-pox, and at the same time to
remind parents of their duty towards God and the
Prince, which command them not to omit to avail
themselves of so great a benefit as vaccination.
When an individual is attacked by the small-pox,
the head of the family, and the physician or surgeon
in attendance, were bound to make an immediate de-
claration thereof to the municipal authority, under a
penalty of 100 francs, or a fortnight's imprisonment.
The Administration causes to be placei over the door
of the house, the follow
is ing inscription, in large let-
ter :—" The small-poxin the family of -- re-
siding in this house." 411 those who have had com-
munication with the patient are shut up in the same
the body is car-
riedbeing accompanied
by a priest, and is buried without funeral ceremonies
house
to untilth e
burial-ground
ri cureal
lt. o
rro
u death t h
without ensues
in a spot apart.
According to the new regulations issued by com-
mand those who have
ornmaintdtedoftotahveailKtihnegmsoeflvNesaopflevsa,ccination are incapa.•
citated from enjoying the sovereign munificence : peti-
tions are not received by the Ministers, nor in any
charitable institution, unless accompanied by certifi-
cate that the individual has been vaccinated. The ad-
ministrators of hospitals are bound to cause children to
be vaccinated in the month following their admission.
Directors of colleges, ecclesiastical, civil, 'or mili-
tary, are prohibited from receiving any pupils who
have not been vaccinated.

A central Royal Vaccine Institution is established
in the capital, composed of ten ordinary members, and
two superadded, who have under their orders twelve
ordinary vaccinators, and as many extraordinary, as
also six employes for the correspondence. Each vac-
cinates gratuitously at his residence daily. Every
three months vaccine virus is sent to the provinces,
from the Minister of the Interior, and its receipt, in a
good state, is acknowledged by the provincial vacci-
nators. The children vaccinated must be brought se-
veral times to the vaccinators, in order to ascertain
that the effect is produced.
Vaccine Commissions excite in the chief town of
every province and district; which are bound to act
according to the instructions transmitted to them, and
to endeavonr to diffuse the propagation of vaccination
in their respective localities.*
All employ4x, and those who live at the expense of
Government, must have their children vaccinated. The
clergy are charged to preach to the people, respecting
the usefulness of vaccination, and the duty which is
imposed by God and the King upon each father of a
family to preserve by its means from sickness the lives
of their children.
The vaccine junta of each district causes midwives
to be instructed and convinced of the utility of vacci-
nation, and obliges them to promote its practice as
much as possible. The junta meets every month to
ascertain that its regulations are obeyed, and in what
degree vaccination has prospered or declined.

This careless, hard-hearted behaviour to the la-
bouringthe aristocracy, people, has created in us a disgust and hatred
often adnidspllayeadm
bsoyrrtyhetobuhrenairng n
that
f
corn. This is wicked, and indeed very stupid. The
gentry do not pay us just wages to enable us to bring
up our families, and in order to be revenged on them
we do a very wicked, stupid, and malicious act, which
injures those people who do not injure us, via., the
people who keep the fire offices, for every stack and
rick is insured. Let us petition Parliament to take
up our cause.
1 made, some little time since, a calculation. I
took the amount of meat consumed by ten of the fa-
milies of the aristocracy, and I found each of the
members, including servants and all, amounted to
each member per day to one pound and a half, which
is ten pounds and a half to each individual weekly. I
also took the amount of meat consumed by ten fami-
lies of poor people, and it amounted to only half-
an-ounce per day, or nearly half-a-pound per week.
So that we see that the idle eat or waste three times
as much per day as the poor do in one week. Did
they but know the faintness and langour that so often
come over the hard-working labouring man who eats
only bread, the gentry would U 3. I am not
speaking about those labouring people 111• Ye
grown-up children and able to work, hut those who
have to bring up families with only the man's wages
to Jive on.
Some little time since I saw this shameful para-
graph in the Agricuhurtil xpress i--" hf Wr, 19°4
into the beer-shops on a Saturday night we shall sof)
the cause of the distress among the agricultural
labourers." A more gross falsehood against a suffer-
ing class of the community was never uttered. Per-
haps the man that wrote that insinuation against us
has ma gunge; description r o fettAr' Saturday

A BLow Ur.—ln our obituary will be found the
death of Mr. G. Durant, of Tong Castle ; and here we
may menti-m a rather singular circumstance that took
place on the occasion. In the year 1820 Mr. Durant
took legal proceedings against the first wife, and in con-
sequence of the jury having decided in his favour, he
erected a monument on an eminence on his estate at
Tong Knowle, to commemorate the event. The monu-
ment was a conspicuous object from the road from
Shiffnal to Wolverhampton, and resembled a church
tower, jentneciiat,el)..
on his death being known to his
family, two of his sons, accompanied by twenty-nine
labourers, went to the place, and commenced excavating
round it to the depth of six feet ; after which they made
a hole in it, and placed 501 b. of gunpowder in a cask,
aid 20Ib. in another pickap,e, under the monument, and
e
at three o'clo:ilt in the morning of the 39thfugo was
tilt d to it, and siit, fire to, and in a
few
minutes the
monument was laid tilt on the ground without any acei•
dent. Thu eldest son and heir to the estate died some
years ago,and on his death-bed he requested the younger
branches of the family, that as soon as their father was
dead, they would cause the monument to be blown up,
that it miglit cease to exist with the founder, and that
lue memory of the scwialous catise fur r(hiGh It was
ei.e.•ted and he raiA* perish t,teetlier. Tbe ruins were
visited on Sunday last by lart'ts numbers of per,ons,
many of whom came from a
„,,,reat distance. The 'Tog
Castle estate goes into the hands of the executors of the
late Mr. Durant, jun. who reside in Ireland, and will
ti-4 • -•-•
who is now sixteth,
stave _ e trAh„,go4-ieat of t4e property until the heir,
attains his inajoiity,—Shrewsbury
Journal.

Dispatches were sent off at evening from the
Colonial-office for the Governor of Jamaica, and also
for the Governors of the other West India Colonies.