is not this change for the better? If it be not, why have we heard so much about the efforts for instructing the children of the poor?… Has it been intended that these people, when taught to read, should read nothing but Hannah More’s _Sinful Sally_, and Mrs. Trimmer’s Dialogues? Faith! The working classes of the people have a relish for no such trash. They are not to be amused by a recital of the manifold blessings of a state of things, in which they have not half enough to eat, nor half enough to cover their nakedness by day, and to keep them from perishing by night. They are not to be amused by the pretty stories about ‘the bounty of providence in making brambles for the purpose of tearing off pieces of the sheep’s wool, in order that the little birds may come and get it to line their nests with to keep their young ones warm!’ Stories like these are not sufficient to fill the minds of the working classes of the people. They want something more solid. They have had something more solid. Their minds, like a sheet of paper, have received the lasting impressions of undeniable fact and unanswerable argument; and it will always be a source of the greatest satisfaction to me to reflect that I have been mainly instrumental in giving those impressions, which I am very certain will never be effaced from the minds of the people of this country. * * * * * “I shall be as careful as I have been, not to write anything that even a special jury would pronounce to be a _Libel_. I have no desire to write libels. I have written none here. Lord Sidmouth was ‘sorry to say’ that I had not written anything that the law officers could prosecute with any chance of success. I do not remove for the purpose of writing libels, but for the purpose of being able to write what is _not_ libellous. I do not retire from a combat with the Attorney-General, but from a combat with a dungeon, deprived of pen, ink, and paper. A combat with the Attorney-General is quite unequal enough. That, however, I would have encountered. I know too well what a trial by Special Jury is. Yet that, or any sort of _trial_, I would have stayed to face. So that I could have been sure of a trial, of whatever sort, I would have run the risk. But, against the absolute power of imprisonment, without even a hearing, for time unlimited, in any jail in the kingdom, without the use of pen, ink, and paper, and without any communication with any soul but the keepers; against such a power it would have been worse than madness to attempt to strive. Indeed, there could be no striving, in such a case; where I should have been as much at the disposal of the Secretary of State as are the shoes which he has upon his feet. No! I will go, where I shall not be as the shoes upon Lord