humanity and liberality, have made it _felony to take an apple off a tree_, which last year was a trivial trespass, and was formerly no offence at all! However, even this _is necessary_, as long as this bank-note system continue in its present way; and all complaints about severity of laws, levelled at the poor, are useless and foolish; and these complaints are even base in those who do their best to uphold a system which has brought _the honest labourer to be fed worse than the felon_. What, short of such laws, can prevent _starving men_ from coming to take away the dinners of those who have plenty? "_Education_"! Despicable cant and nonsense! What education, what moral precepts, can quiet the gnawings and ragings of hunger? Looking, now, back again for a minute to the little village of _Stoke-Charity_, the name of which seems to indicate that its rents formerly belonged wholly to the poor and indigent part of the community: it is near to Winchester, that grand scene of ancient learning, piety, and munificence. Be this as it may, the parish formerly contained ten farms, and it now contains but two, which are owned by Mr. Hinton Bailey and his nephew, and, therefore, which may probably become _one_. There used to be ten well-fed families in this parish at any rate: these, taking five to a family, made fifty well-fed people. And now all are half-starved, except the curate and the two families. The _blame_ is not the land-owner's; it is nobody's; it is due to the infernal _funding_ and _taxing_ system, which _of necessity_ drives property into large masses in order to _save itself_; which crushes little proprietors down into labourers; and which presses them down in that state, there takes their wages from them and makes them _paupers_, their share of food and raiment being taken away to support debt and dead-weight and army and all the rest of the enormous expenses which are required to sustain this intolerable system. Those, therefore, are fools or hypocrites who affect to wish to better the lot of the poor labourers and manufacturers, while they, at the same time, either actively or passively, uphold the system which is the manifest cause of it. Here is a system which, clearly as the nose upon your face, you see taking away the little gentleman's estate, the little farmer's farm, the poor labourer's meat-dinner and Sunday-coat; and while you see this so plainly, you, fool or hypocrite, as you are, cry out for supporting the system that causes it all! Go on, base wretch; but remember that of such a progress dreadful must be the end. The day will come when millions of long-suffering creatures will be in a state that they and you now little dream of. All that we now behold of _combinations_, and the like, are mere _indications_ of what the great body of the suffering people _feel_, and of the thoughts that are passing in their minds. The _coaxing_ work of _schools_ and _tracts_ will only add to what would be quite enough without them.