O ye thousands famished in cellars! O ye multitudes with hunger and cold biting with "dragon's tooth" your very vitals! shout, if you can find breath enough, "Long live Lazarus!" In those days there was a "Pauper's Corner" in _Punch_, in which the cry of the people found frequent and touching utterance. We have quoted from "The Prayer of the People" as a heading to this chapter. Another short poem deserves to be rescued from these old files, and added to the lyrics inspired by the Anti-Corn Law movement:-- Disease and want are sitting by my hearth-- The world hath left me nothing of its good! The land hath not been stricken by a dearth, And yet I am alone and wanting food. The sparrow on the housetops o'er the earth Doth find its sustenance, and surely HE Who gave the mighty universe its birth Would never love the wild bird more than me. _Punch_ had no illusions as to the genuineness of the Chartist movement, as may be gathered from his comments on the presentation of the Great Petition in 1842. There might, he owned, be dangerous demagogues who offered evil counsel, but the Chartists themselves had a degree of intelligence, a power of concentration, a knowledge of the details of public business, heretofore unknown to great popular combinations of dissentients:-- There are among the Chartists hard-headed logicians--men keenly alive to their sufferings, and what is more, soundly schooled as to the causes of them. We grant that their petition presented to Parliament contained many follies, very many extravagances--that it prayed for what the timidity of poverty will call revolutionary measures; but is it not an axiom in politics, that to get even a little it is necessary to ask a great deal? We only call upon Toryism, or Whiggism either, each to show us its army of 3,000,000 of spotless politicians. But we contend that the Chartists are foully maligned when they are branded as thieves and spoilers. It is an old cry that property has its rights; it has been added--and well added--that property has also its duties. To these let us subjoin--property has also its cowardice. Inquiries and investigations into the condition of agricultural labourers and of artisans were already bringing to light many disquieting facts. The physical destitution and spiritual forlornness of the workers in the Midlands were painfully illustrated in the evidence of Mr. Horne on the condition of the operatives of Wolverhampton:--