made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service of the field; he denied them straw, and insisted upon their making the same quantity of bricks, and because they were unable to obey, the taskmasters called them idle and beat them.’  Was it too much to scourge and to destroy all the first-born of men who could tolerate, assist, and uphold a tyrant like this?  Yet was Pharaoh less an oppressor than the old government of France.

Thus, then, we have a view of the former state of that country, by wars against the people of which we have been brought into our present state of misery.  There are many of the hirelings of corruption, who actually insist on it that we ought now to go to war again for the restoring of all the cruel despotism which formerly existed in France.  This is what cannot be done, however.  Our wars have sent back the Bourbons; but the tithes, the seigneurs, and many other curses have not been restored.  The French people still enjoy much of the benefit of the Revolution; and great numbers of their ancient petty tyrants have been destroyed.  So that even were things to remain as they are, the French people have gained greatly by their Revolution.  But things cannot remain as they are.  Better days are at hand.

In proceeding now to examine the remedies for your distresses, I shall first notice some of those which foolish, or cruel and insolent men have proposed.  Seeing that the cause of your misery is the weight of taxation, one would expect to hear of nothing but a reduction of taxation in the way of remedy; but from the friends of corruption never do we hear of any such remedy.  To hear them, one would think that you had been the guilty cause of the misery you suffer; and that you, and you alone, ought to be made answerable for what has taken place.  The emissaries of corruption are now continually crying out against the weight of the Poor-rates, and they seem to regard all that is taken in that way as a dead loss to the Government!  Their project is to deny relief to all who are able to work.  But what is the use of your being able to work, if no one will, or can, give you work?  To tell you that you must work for your bread, and, at the same time, not to find any work for you, is full as bad as it would be to order you to make bricks without straw.  Indeed, it is rather more cruel and insolent; for Pharaoh’s taskmasters did point out to the Israelites that they might go into the fields and get stubble.  The Courier newspaper of the 9th of October, says, ’We must thus be cruel only to be kind.’  I am persuaded that you will not understand this kindness, while you will easily understand the cruelty.  The notion of these people seems to be that everybody that receives money out of the taxes has a right to receive it, except you.  They tremble at the fearful amount of the Poor-rates:  they say, and very truly, that those rates have risen from two and a half to eight