"This abuse springs from the nature of the legislation itself--more ready to preserve large fortunes than small. Let our new schemers say what they will, great proprietors are a nuisance in the State. They cover the lands with forests and stock them with fawns and deer; they lay out pleasure-gardens; and thus the oppression and luxury of the great is daily crushing the most unfortunate part of the community. In the year 1769 not only beggars, but even the poorer class of citizens were treated with much savage barbarity by secret orders from the Government. In the very dead of night old men, women, and children were suddenly seized upon, deprived of their liberty, and thrown into loathsome gaols, without the assignment of any cause for so cruel a treatment. The pretence was that indigence is the parent of crimes, that seditions generally begin among that class of people who, having nothing to lose, have nought to fear. The ministers who then wished to establish the corn-law dreaded the effect it would have on that world of indigent wretches, driven to despair, as they would be, by the advanced price of bread which was then to be imposed. Their oppressors said: 'They must be smothered;' and they were. As this was the most effectual method of silencing them, the Government never took the trouble to devise any other. When we cast an eye abroad, it is then we are convinced of the forlorn condition in which our lower sort of people drag out their miserable life. The Spaniard can cheaply provide himself with food and raiment. Wrapped up in his cloak, the earth is his bed; he sleeps soundly, and wakes without anxiety for his next meal. The Italians work little, and are in no want of the necessaries, or even luxuries, of life. The English, well fed, strong and hale, happy and free, reap and enjoy undisturbed the fruits of their industry. The Swede is content with his glass of brandy. The Russian, whom no foresight disturbs, finds abundance in the bosom of slavery; but the Parisians, poor and helpless, sinking under the burden of unremitting toils and fatigue, ever at the mercy of the great, who crush them like vile insects whenever they attempt to raise their voice, earn, at the sweat of their brow, a scanty subsistence, which only serves to lengthen their lives, without leaving them anything to look forward to in their old age but indigence, or, what is worse, part of a bed in the hospital."