Star.
London, England, 1831-01-07 00:00:00

•
AN APPEAL TO THE JUSTICE OF HIS JUDGES AND
HIS COUNTRY FROM AN AGRICULTURAL LABOUR.
RR, ON HIS TRIAL AT SALISBURY.

MY LORDS—I plead guilty to the charge of which lam
accused. But I humbly beg to urge the following circum-
stances in extenuation of my offence :—My Lords, I have
long felt that the share *bleb, as a labourer, I have received
of the produce of my labour, was less than in fairness it should
have been, less than it was worth to those who purchased it.
1 have been so assured by many respectable and well-informed
who compassionated the pitiable situation from
=, 7th the utmost efforts of industry, I could not
Nape. Hume been told that this is neither the natural nor
necessary condition of the labourer ; and that if a Govern-
ment acted with wisdom in the interest of the people, for
whose good it is appointed, such a state of things could not
exist. All I have desired is to be enabled to earn a' decent
maintenance by honest industry ; but this privilege has been
denied me. lam told that in other countries—in America,
in Canada, in New South Wales—a day labourer can earn
ten times as much as is necessary to maintain him. If so,
why am I not allowed to go there ? True, my, poverty pre-
vents my paying the expenses of the passage. But there is
wealth enough in the country to pay them. Should not the
Government which spends so many millions a year profes-
sedly for the people's happiness, expend something to pre-
serve me, and such as 1 am, from extreme distress ? The
law which protects property, prevents me from helping my-
self to the means of removal to those happy countries.—
Surely the law ought to provide me with those means. The
law now confines me in this country, where the legal owners
of wealth make a profit of my misery, by hiring my labour
for the mere pittance which can keep me alive ; and the
same law stops me at every point from bettering my condi-
tion by my own efforts. The law then is not made fir me.
It gives some persons a property in my wretchedness—bet it
' gives me nothing. The law regards not -me. Is it wondir-
, fill I should disregard the law ?
But I am told that I am indebted to the benevolence of
the law for a provision against want. My Lords, it is the
mode in which this benevolent law is administered by the
legal authorities that has brought me into the unhappy po-
sition in which I now stand. I ant unmarried; and, for
this reason alone, during nearly one half of the year, 1 am
refused all employment by the farmers of my neighbourhood.
They prefer the men with large families, because, as they
truly say, they must keep them, and whatever wages
they pay them, go to save the poor-rate ; whereas, if they
employed me, the same wages would be far more than I can
claim from that rate, and, by not doing so, they save that
•
difference.
My Lords, I humbly beg to represent that the difference
which they save, as employers and rate-payers, I lose. I
em prevented, through no fault of my own, but solely
through my being unburdened with a family, from earning
fair wages in an industrious employment, and driven to ap-
ply to the Overseer to save me from starvation. The Over-
seer sends me to work for those very farmers who refused
to employ me voluntarily—to work, on their farms and for
their profit, at a rate of pay of 6d. a day. My natural sense
of justice revolts at being requited to do- the same work for
sixpence, for which other and weaker men than myself,
working by my side, receive two shillings, because they
have a wife and family. The Overseer takes me before a
Magistrate for not doing as much work as the man who re-
ceives four times as much pay as myself, and the Magis-
trate commits me to gaol. Thus in every way I feel the
severity of the law, while its protection is in every way de-
nied to me. Once more, I uk, is it wonderful that the
law fails in obtaining my respect?
But I have been informed that the making up from the
poor rate the wages of fernier, labourers, to which practice
is owing their refusal to employ me, with all the' cruel con-
sequences I have described, is itself illegal; that, in truth,
neither overseers have the power to make, nor magistrates to
order, any payments to able bodied labourers already in full
work for private individuals, and consequently that I have
been deprived of the opportunity of earning fair
by the law, but by its abuse and infraction. M;aesrtis,
this be so, am I alone to suffer for breaking the law!
those who have sot only broken the law. but, by doing
have driven me to disregard and break it, to escape afl
nishment, all blame, even all notice ?
It cannot he urged that their motives were charity to
men with large families. It could make no difference
them whether they were paid their parish allowance b-
.parish alone, or partly by the parish and partly by
mere. The object of the farmers and overseers who .
*had the•prectice was, as I have said, to save the difference
between the wages I should have received as a fanner':
bourer, and the pittance I did receive as a parish pauper—to
take this difference from me, and put it into their -
,pockets. I will not presume to say the Magistrates
this motive, but every Magistrate who owns land
his rents, experience the benefit of a contrivance which
daces the gross amount of wages and poor-rate, at
pence of the unmarried and unburdened labourers.
If, then, this practice is authorised by law, I
complain of it as cruel and unjust to me, and such
my circumstances; if it is, as 1 am informed, unauthorised
law, then I say the law has been'broken to my groat;
and I claim its protection. I claim to be allowed to I.
injury I have suffered from its infraction, and require
pensation from the parties who have so conspired to
for their own benefit. In either case I humbly and
entreat the attention of your Lordships, and of
men at large, to the injustice which has at all events
inflicted on me, aid which has driven me unwillingly
position of an offender against those laws, which,
ever felt their beneficial influence, I should have been
most to respect and 'support.
My Lords, lam a prisoner—l am a pauper. But,
are here to administer justice, then I call on you to -
ter it impartially.. Let not the rich and educated
escape, while the poor and ignorant feel your ieverity,
the rank, the station, or the difficult circumstances in r
the Magistrates and farmers have acted, are admitted
excuse for their infraction of the law, surely the
cuses plead a thousand times as strongly in palliation
offence of the labourer.

MARRIED.
Tuesday, at Mitchm, the Rev. T. L. Rae
Harriet, ringlet daughter af the Isle Idesiudlei.
of Mitcham HAL Surrei—The Mb his. alt Walla* Obarah.
D.A. Nlalcolm, of the Bombay anigos Omellis Chadsas, 0
of the kte W. Swig, Esq. of liselloWlpsist, 11$01.

DIED.
Saturday in the 9M year of his ate, the Hew.'
Unwed, Sant. only surviving son of the Right Hon. Henry
tenth Lord Teynham.
Oit the 17thilt. at Neufchatel, Switserland;NenrY Vines
L.L.D. late fellow of Trinity-hall, Cambridge.

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