Instead of coming forward to apply for a reduction of those taxes which are pressing them as well as you to the earth, what are they doing?  Why, they are applying to the Government to add to their receipts by passing Corn Bills, by preventing foreign wool from being imported; and many other silly schemes.  Instead of asking for a reduction of taxes they are asking for the means of paying taxes!  Instead of asking for the abolition of sinecure places and pensions, they pray to be enabled to continue to pay the amount of those places and pensions!  They know very well that the salaries of the judges and of many other persons were greatly raised, some years ago, on the ground of the rise in the price of labour and provisions, why then do they not ask to have those salaries reduced, now that labour is reduced?  Why do they not apply to the case of the judges and others the arguments which they apply to you?  They can talk boldly enough to you; but they are too great cowards to talk to the Government, even in the way of petition!  Far more honourable is it to be a ragged pauper than to be numbered among such men.

These people call themselves the respectable part of the nation.  They are, as they pretend, the virtuous part of the people, because they are quiet; as if virtue consisted in immobility!  There is a canting Scotchman in London, who publishes a paper called the ‘Champion’ who is everlastingly harping upon the virtues of the ‘fireside,’ and who inculcates the duty of quiet submission.  Might we ask this Champion of the teapot and milk-jug whether Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights were won by the fireside?  Whether the tyrants of the House of Stuart and of Bourbon were hurled down by fireside virtues?  Whether the Americans gained their independence, and have preserved their freedom, by sitting by the fireside?  O, no! these were all achieved by action, and amidst bustle and noise.  Quiet indeed!  Why in this quality a log, or a stone, far surpasses even the pupils of this Champion of quietness; and the chairs round his fireside exceed those who sit in them.  But in order to put these quiet, fireside, respectable people to the test, let us ask them if they approve of drunkenness, breaches of the peace, black eyes, bloody noses, fraud, bribery, corruption, perjury, and subornation of perjury; and if they say no, let us ask them whether these are not going on all over the country at every general election.  If they answer yes, as they must unless they be guilty of wilful falsehood, will they then be so good as to tell us how they reconcile their inactivity with sentiments of virtue?  Some men, in all former ages, have been held in esteem for their wisdom, their genius, their skill, their valour, their devotion to country, etc., but never until this age, was quietness deemed a quality to be extolled.  It would be no difficult matter to show that the quiet, fireside gentry are the most callous and cruel, and,