or ten millions since the beginning of the wars against the people of France; they think, and not without reason, that these rates will soon swallow up nearly all the rent of the land.  These assertions and apprehensions are perfectly well founded; but how can you help it?  You have not had the management of the affairs of the nation.  It is not you who have ruined the farmers and tradesmen.  You only want food and raiment:  you are ready to work for it; but you cannot go naked and without food.

But the complaints of these persons against you are the more unreasonable, because they say not a word against the sums paid to sinecure placemen and pensioners.  Of the five hundred and more Correspondents of the Board of Agriculture, there are scarcely ten who do not complain of the weight of the Poor-rates, of the immense sums taken away from them by the poor, and many of them complain of the idleness of the poor.  But not one single man complains of the immense sums taken away to support sinecure placemen, who do nothing for their money, and to support pensioners, many of whom are women and children, the wives and daughters of the nobility and other persons in high life, and who can do nothing, and never can have done anything for what they receive.  There are of these places and pensions all sizes, from twenty pounds to thirty thousand and nearly forty thousand pounds a year!  And surely these ought to be done away before any proposition be made to take the parish allowance from any of you who are unable to work, or to find work to do.  There are several individual placemen, the profits of each of which would maintain a thousand families.  The names of the ladies upon the pension list would, if printed, one under another, fill a sheet of paper like this.  And is it not, then, base and cruel at the same time in these Agricultural correspondents to cry out so loudly against the charge of supporting the unfortunate poor, while they utter not a word of complaint against the sinecure places and pensions?

The unfortunate journeymen and labourers and their families have a right, they have a just claim, to relief from the purses of the rich.  For there can exist no riches and no resources which they by their labour have not assisted to create.  But I should be glad to know how the sinecure placemen and lady pensioners have assisted to create food and raiment, or the means of producing them.  The labourer who is out of work or ill, to-day, may be able to work, and set to work to-morrow.  While those placemen and pensioners never can work; or, at least, it is clear that they never intend to do it.