The Statesman.
London, England, 1818-10-01 00:00:00

Tilt S'A'LESMAN

of the Chamber of Deputies shall be renewed every i
year. The number •f Deputies to be elected this
year is 47. The accounts from Ais.la.ChapeHe, in
these Papers, assert, that Prince METTERNICII has
declared to several persons that the Congress will be
formally occupied with nothing but the question
respecting the evuustion of Fiance ; that other
topics may be discussed in conversations, but will
not be considered iu a diplomatic or formal
way. We put no faith in this statement.--

We doubt not that many mean subterfuges. will be
practised to keep the Public is ignorance of the busi•
nest upon which this Assembly has met to deliberate;
we know that the Diplomatists have not gone to Ais-
la•Chapelle merely to converse familiarly about any
thing or every thing except the eveceation of France.
It is evidently absurd to say that these potent Mo-
narchs would travel so far for the sole purpose of giv-
jog their formal assent to a measure which every one
is well aware had been long since decided in their re-
spective Cabinets. We are well assured that every
(motion of European and American policy will come
before the review of this Congress, and that they
will formally determine upon points of no little im-
ports/1m 'lO Ake iister.esta of attic country. Their
principles Ind pursuits as already developed in their
conduct,' bode no good to the cars of liberty and
the British People; Lord C•strrxneetou is but a
poor guardian of the interests of freedom and the
British nation. lie has yet to learn how closely these
I are connected.

Thu Grand Duke MicitAxt. arrived in town yes•

tertlay morning, shoot two o'clock, from New.
market. After breakfast, soon after ten o'clock, his

Imperial Ilistline's, attended by Sir WILLIAM CON•
GREVE, left London for Waltham Abbey, to view the
powder-mills, and bee the process of making gun.
powder.
The Philadelphia Aurora of the 26th of Augost,
contradicts the report of a cruel fate having befallen
Colonel M'Dottar.n, and eleven companions, oat
the hanks of the Ofooooo, in May last. It says—
'" The object of stories of this kind cannot be
mistaken ; one fact, however, may serve to show
the value of the whole; Colonel M‘DoNALo is at
this monient in the United States, and his compa-
nions were, iu July, 11 t St. Fernando de Apure."
It was reported yesterday, that Lord ELLENiso-
ItOUati had actually tendered his resignation as Load
Chief Justice of the Coert of King's Bench, and it
was added, that his Lordship would be created an Earl

almost immediately.
The Roman Catholics of Ireland are about to as-
semble in General and County Meetings, for the pur-
pose of preparing Petitions to ['ornament for the to.
tal repeal of all laws subjecting their Catholic coon.
tryouts to civil dimahilities, in consequence of their
saiitainip* certain religious opinions.
Mgetc.at. LcClußE.—Yesterday, Mr. G !OBOE

WARR,* Gentle Man of celebrity as an artist and
musket genioa,,. entertained_ at Bunke, Rooms,
Cornhilt, a select assemblage of amateurs with a new
and highly instructive Lecture on the Science and
Execution of Music. The novel manner in which
Mr. WARE illustrated, by an unique set of appara-
tus, a variety of curious calculations and specimens
of Time, Accent, Expression, Taste, &c., accompas
hying himself ots the l'iauo.forte and Violin, were
,e Tim! by the Compiny with every complimentary
applause.
It is Colonel Di GREGOR, •f the Insurgent ser•
tics., not General WC:RI:con, as erroneously stated
in the Morning Papers, who has arrived at M'Do-
nald's Hotel, accompanied by an officer of high rank.
The Colonel has heels very active in the Insurgent
cause.—(Dshlin Evening. Post )
The annuli thpences of Drury-lane Theatre are
reduced by the economical measures adopted by the
Sub• Committee, from 70,0001. to 40,0001., a sum
below the lowest annual receipt ever experienced at
that house.

The names of the parties committed to Lancaster
Castle, on a charge of being implicated in the late
riots at Burnley are, J. Collinge, W. Bendy, T.
Broughton, J. Simpson, Margarate Holgute, Alice
Dugdole, end Elkn Slutlord.
• The will of M ATTU EISP GREGORY T.Ewrs. author
of " The Castle Spectre," " The Monk," and
other literary works, has been proved. la his will
he gives to Mrs. 11. JOHWSTON, late of the Theatre
Royal Covent-garden, the sum of 1001., to purchase
some trinket or other ornament to be worn on her
neck in remembrance of him : to the Right Boit.
Lord ilou.Atin his book of caricatures: personal
property within the province of Catterbery Sworn
under 60,0001.
M A DST() NE, SEPT. 9.B.—We believe the hop-pick-
ing is now quite finished in this neighbourhood, and
sho prndoce has far eiceeded the most tattgoine et-
' 'Potations of the elanters. Os one acre at Limos',
there was grown the amazing quantity of 14 bags, a
elecomstance, we think, onparalleled. Our market on
Thurs Jay was upon the whole tolerably brisk, and
many sales were effected ; the prices were—pockets
from 71. to 81., and bags 61. to 71. 7s.
The typhus fever is making rapid progress in the
town of Paisley and suburbs, there being at present
not less than 104 patients of that disorder under the
charge of the Medical Gentlemen of the Dispensary
and House of Recovery ; besides whom, there are
many others who do not make application for the be-
nefit of that Institution.
On the 17th instant, John Forster, of Berwick,
was tried at the Circuit Court of Justiciary, at Jed-
burgh, for illegally, and clandestinely solemnizing
Marriages at Larnherton Toll-bar, and was sentenced
td be banished from Scotland for life; but all this
does not stop him, for he has begun his old trade
again, and means to carry it on on the rivet Tweed
in a boat, near Paston, ezactly on the March be-
tween England and Scotland. On Sunday last he
married two couple.
As there is hothing stationary In this world, we
must not be surprised to hear that Milk has risen—
it was scarcely possible for London Milk to be
lowered.
The distemper had got so completely into the
racing stables at Doncaster, that almost every horse
went home with the disorder.

CONDITION or THE LABOURING CLASSES.

TO THE F.DITOK OF THE STATESMAN.,
Ssi,—ln most of the Daily Papers, the conilition
of the Labouring Poor has been grossly misrepresent:
ed; bet this is only what is to be expected from thole,
whose trade it is to traduce and deceive. They re.
present them as a " set of factious and discontented
fellows, who are always complaining, and never sa-
tisfied ; who are as well off as they deserve to be."-tetj
Should the poor meet to deemed an amelioration •
their condition, and to adopt measures for their pro-
tection against the desirettive and unprincipled
roads made to monopoly, and every system of dr;
ganized oppression, then these advocates for RO-
ligion and Social Order say, 66 it is hum:Sully to
coerce them by military force ;" and, as to wages,
66 they manage to subsist upon what they nowitet,
end if they bad more they would eat it and drink
it." These sort of remarks betray a dirk and un-
principled policy, and excite only disgust In every
feeling mind. The condition of the Labouring
Cleaves in the manufacturing districts beggars de-1
scription. They are deprived of admen every IC-
constodation thin can render life tolerable or se-
core; their utmost industry scarcely enables them
to support existence; the women and children
hear with an intolerable weight upon the efforts
of the men ; so that • large family among the
industrious poor is become proverbial, for an
uncommon degree of misery and wretchedness.—
Let any one who is possessed of the least portion of
humanity, view the situation of the Labouring
Classes in our large manufacturing towns, it matters
not where, whether at Manchester, Leeds, Mac-
clesfield, Sheffield, or Birmingham, it is still the
same : be will see them gasping under endless taxes
and poverty, and all to support a wanton and lux-
urious Oligarchy ; their children, too, as soon as
they are able to run, most work at a severe and ilk-
some task, fourteen at:J sixteen hours each day—
mast be forced out of bed before day-light, not be-
cause they have had rest enough, but that they are
compelled to go to work. Their health is miserably
impaired, and their lives cat short, by being con-
fined in the crowded rooms and heated atmospheres of
the large factories, and without the least hope of be-
ing delivered from such a state of intolerable slavery.
The Masters in Manchester, in proportion to the
Workmen, are calculated at about one to three or
four hunched, and in many places less ; being an few
ia number, they can combine with facility, and there-
fore are able to force the workmen into submission
to whatever terms they think proper to dictate.
The manufacturer can subsist upon his property for
years, hut few of the workmen can subsist one month
without employ went. The laws, in cases of combina-
tions, if they were to have any bias at all, ought to
be.riii the side of the poor, not of the rich, who bare
every advantage. We have no Acts of Parliament
against combinations to lover the prices of labour,
but many against combining to raise it. Some
time back the Master Spinners mutually bound them.
selves, under a penolly, to the observance of certain
articles, the first of which wail, that they would bear
equally any etpence they might incur by resisting
their workmin on account of wages or otherwise;
also, that no master should employ a journeyman
without first consulting his last emoloyer, and ascer-
taining the cause of his discharge. With these sort of
examples of lawful comilinations before them, are not
the workmen justified in associating to obtain a better
coropeosation for their labour? The present system
of usage, by driving them into pauperism, destroys
all self-dependence and energy of character—it
makes them listless awl abject slaves, or else renders
them sullen, gloomy, and discontente6 ; or, as rene-
negade Souxuzz said, 66 One half Luddite, and the
other half La;zcroni." The increase of crimes and
capital punishments, as might be expected, has been
commensurate with the increase of poverty—for them
64 Life has no charms, and death no terrors."
It will be recollected by many, that Manchester
and Birmingham were once the theatres of Church
and King mobs ; they at that time little dreamt what
sort of • reverse an adherence to the system they were
so riotously defending,would doom them to experience.
These towns, before capital had merged into the bands
of one order of men, and when Ell Manufactures
were performed by in-door labour, Were in a thriv-
ing condition; at that time a mechatiio could, with
the assistance of his wife, by moderate labour,
fain his flimily in a state of domestic comfort. Af-
ter the War commenced, in the same ratio that taxes
end the prices of provisions increased (or to speak
correctly, as paper money became depreciated), the
price of labour decreased. The itstrodettiou of large
apitinihg-machinea todk Pearly all the in-door labour
from the women employed in cotton spinniotr, which,
with the introduction of machinery genetrally,stld the
erection of large factories, nearly annihilated the
far more useful class of Men—the small manufaelarers
—and conttibuted altogether to raise the Notts (tales
from one million to twelve. It is tree thgt the ca-
pitalist and the overgrown manufacturer have
'perished ; but what of that ? Elroy step they rdse in
affluence, precipitated the labouring Class one Step
lower into poverty. A day's common labour in !hal
lime of Queen ELIZASETH would earn upwarda of
six quartern loaves ; about thb period of the Revolei.•
lion, when commerci had Increased; but was coma
paratitely low to what it is at present, a day's com-
mon labour would earn five'nuartern loaves; at the
commencement Of the last war it would earn upwards
of three quartern loaves; but now it will not vain
two, and Sometimes not one goartern loaf ; thus the
true criterion of the real prosperity of a State, that
is, of the great Majority of the People of a Stale, is
Simply the quantity of the wens of esistesca
a day's labour will procure; and by this plain•but in-
fallible criterion may the comparative prosperity. of
any nation be truly estimated. its Franco, tbs• la.
boorer can obtain - -third*
the lime of c'ketiptes
by one-half,
I Os. per day,
most of the

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