You have been represented by the Times newspaper, by the Courier, by the Morning Post, by the Morning Herald, and others, as the scum of society.  They say that you have no business at public meetings; that you are rabble, and that you pay no taxes.  These insolent hirelings, who wallow in wealth, would not be able to put their abuse of you in print were it not for your labour.  You create all that is an object of taxation; for even the land itself would be good for nothing without your labour.  But are you not taxed?  Do you pay no taxes?  One of the correspondents of the Board of Agriculture has said that care has been taken to lay as little tax as possible on the articles used by you.  One would wonder how a man could be found impudent enough to put an assertion like this upon paper.  But the people of this country have so long been insulted by such men, that the insolence of the latter knows no bounds.

The tax gatherers do not, indeed, come to you and demand money of you:  but there are few articles which you use, in the purchase of which you do not pay a tax.

On your shoes, salt, beer, malt, hops, tea, sugar, candles, soap, paper, coffee, spirits, glass of your windows, bricks and tiles, tobacco:  on all these, and many other articles you pay a tax, and even on your loaf you pay a tax, because everything is taxed from which the loaf proceeds.  In several cases the tax amounts to more than one half of what you pay for the article itself; these taxes go in part to support sinecure placemen and pensioners; and the ruffians of the hired press call you the scum of society, and deny that you have any right to show your faces at any public meeting to petition for a reform, or for the removal of any abuse whatever!

Mr. Preston, whom I quoted before, and who is a member of Parliament and has a large estate, says upon this subject, ’Every family, even of the poorest labourer, consisting of five persons, may be considered as paying, in indirect taxes, at least ten pounds a year, or more than half his wages at seven shillings a week!’ And yet the insolent hirelings call you the mob, the rabble, the scum, the swinish multitude, and say that your voice is nothing; that you have no business at public meetings; and that you are, and ought to be considered as nothing in the body politic!  Shall we never see the day when these men will change their tone!  Will they never cease to look upon us [as on] brutes!  I trust they will change their tone, and that the day of the change is at no great distance!

The weight of the Poor-rate, which must increase while the present system continues, alarms the corrupt, who plainly see that what is paid to relieve you, they cannot have.  Some of them, therefore, hint at your early marriages as a great evil, and a clergyman named Malthus has seriously proposed measures for checking you in this respect; while one of the correspondents of the Board of Agriculture complains of the increase of bastards, and proposes severe punishment on the parents!  How hard these men are to please!  What would they have you do?  As some have called you the swinish multitude, would it be much wonder if they were to propose to serve you as families of young pigs are served?  Or if they were to bring forward the measure of Pharaoh, who ordered the midwives to kill all the male children of the Israelites?