preparation and of talk, to pro-" country, smiling in plenty, a pose a measure with so much con- "contented, happy, united, and fidence, and to go so far as to get grateful people." You shall not my proposal printed; if, after all hear the last of this presently. this, I were to see my proposition Here are more proofs" of the rejected,and, particularly, if I were truth of what you said. Here is to see people shake their heads and (from the Bolton newspaper) a shrug up their shoulders at it, how Petition to the Lords of that very should I be able to look folks in Treasury, of which you are head the face? Oh, no! "Perish, ra- man; or, at least, head talker, ther, the town and the suburbs!"" Over- Production" being the as Doctor Sangrado said in the head man. Here is a petition case of his book. To throw out from "distressed manufacturers. $!" the Bill will not be to get rid of it; All your farrago: the whole of it: for here it is upon record. Nothing every bragging word: all was can rub it out of this Register. It false! The proof of the falsehood must remain; pass or pass not, will come out bit by bit; and here here it is; and Mr. STUART WORT-is one bit now tossed down under LEY will live in history as the au- your nose. The jolterheads are in thor of it. If it become a law, we a fine plight: if wheat be cheap, shall hear and see enough of it; they get no rents if dear enough ebut, if it do not become a law, we to get them rents, they must sally ought to take some method of forth to keep down the manufac-causing it to be read by every per-turing "loyalists." Mr. ELLMAN, son in the country. A little book jun, tells you, that, as long as you may be made of it for the " na-give him high prices he will be tional schools," JOSHUA WATSON, loyal; and these Bolton heroes wine and brandy and gin merchant, Treasurer of the School Society, might be applied to for his aid in circulating a "tract." The dear children will so delight in reading about rabbits and snipes and widgeons, and about springs and traps. It will form such a nice little rural composi tion. Well, Mr. WORTLEY, I wish you great luck with it, with all my heart; and so, for the present, 1 bid you farewell. WM. COBBETT. say, that their loyalty requires low prices to keep it alive. However, here is enough for the present. Take the Memorial, (not Petition, I see,) and keep it as a proof of your veracity. WM. COBBETT. The Memorial of the Hand-Loom Cotton Weavers of Bolton-leMoors, convened by Public Advertisement, Hun bly Showeth, That whilst it is stated in His Ma jesty's recent and most gracious Speech to both Houses of Parliament, that an increasing activity pervades almost every branch of British manufactories, whilst agriculture is reviving from the depression under which it has laboured, it is with unfeigned sorrow that your Memorialists have to approach your Lordships with complaints of their general conditions, forming a striking, and a melancholy and solitary exception and contrast to this cheerful picture of national domestic prosperity.. hand-loom Cotton Weavers, as competitors, could fail fearfully to in crease the mass, and reduce almost to nothing, the price of labour. Your Memorialists respectfully im plore your Lordships to take into your serious consideration the tre mendous evils they have suffered from the Power-loom system of weaving; how very few are the individuals who profit by that system; the awful train of public disasters and private misery, of which it has been the prolific parent; that those Power looms produce neither soldiers nor That whilst the importation and consumption of raw cotton has long been progressively increasing, and has, during the year last past, swollen to a sum total never known before; whilst the foreign demand for British manufactured Cotton goods has also been regularly progressive, and no excuse is to be found on the score of declining markets, the price or rates paid to your Memorialists for weaving were never in such a state of depression. That as the great bulk of the operative Cotton Weavers of Bolton-le- sailors to fight the battles of the Moors, were not able during the period when agricultural products were at the lowest point of deprecia. tion, to supply the moderate wants of their families with plenty of the coarsest food, it must inevitably have resulted, that the recent increase of price of the necessaries of life, which has afforded efficient relief to the agricultural interest, has grievously increased the privations and the sufferings of your Memorialists and their families. country; but as the absorbers of profitable manual labour, are eminently injurious to the agricultural interest, by diminishing the consumption of agricultural products; and that they menace with utter ruin and desolation the resources whence nearly half a million of families belonging to the Hand-loom Weavers might derive a plenteous support. Upon a calm and elaborate examination of the sources of their present gloomy situation, your Memorialists Your distressed and desponding distinctly trace, as one of its first supplicants respectfully remind your great and influential causes, that deLordships that, in better times, none structive competition amongst Manuwere more loyal than the Weavers of facturers, who have competed to unLancashire; that in the hour of peril, dersell each other by arbitrary dethey went forth as soldiers and as ductions made from the wages of sailors; have bravely fought, and the operative weavers; from which freely bled, and by their valour con- unwise and improvident system, a tributed to carry the glory of their great number of once opulent ManuKing and Country to its present state facturers have become, and are liable of lustre; and they have found, in- to become, bankrupts; that the sastead of that liberal remuneration crifice wrung from the ill-requited for their labour at the loom, of which toil of the weaver, has been and is the return of peace held forth a flat-prodigally given, without any fair tering prospect, an incessant falling equivalent, to foreigners, and has off in their wages, and a never-ceas- helped to fill foreign exchequers; ing diminution of their household that many of the poor and oppressed resources; your Memorialists, with operative weavers have been, are, and great deference, appeal to your Lord-are likely to be, in increased multiships, and, submissively presume to tudes, as a resource against starvaask, if at a period when husbandry- tion, compelled to apply to their relabourers, in the flower of their days, spective parishes for relief; hence it and blessed with health and strength, inevitably follows, that the proprieare, from want of remunerating la-tors of houses and lands are the ultibour, driven in crowds to the work-mate sufferers, and are made to conhouse as a place of refuge, the addi- tribute towards that deficiency of tion of four or five hundred thousand wages which barely enables the wretch ed weaver to sustain his embittered and cheerless existence. cation of the net proceeds of that tax,” as a bonus to be paid to the exporters That so complicated are the roots of Cotton goods manufactured by of the evil by which they are op- Hand-looms, in order to bring the pressed, your, Memorialists scarcely two systems nearer on a level, and know for what specific relief to pray protect the greater interest-that of your Lordships; but as a preliminary the Hand-loom weavers. measure, your Memorialists respect- Your Memorialists, deeply imfully ask your Lordships to receive pressed with sorrowful recollections, a deputation from their collective remind your Lordships of that rustic body, and allow them an opportunity prosperity which many of the elderly of stating more in detail their griev-enjoyed, when, as master weavers, ances, to which no limits can be as resident in villages and hamlets, signed; because in almost every ad- they ranked amongst the most subvance of the price of cotton yarn, the stantial and prosperous yeomanry of Manufacturer, to prevent the fair and the county; when they reared their natural resulta corresponding ad- children in a respectable and religious vance of price in the markets-have manner, under their own eye, and immediately had recourse to their far removed from the demoralizing old expedient, of making an arbitrary pollutions of large towns. Into those deduction in the price of weaving. towns, the adverse causes recited soon drove them, and their wages sinking gradually, they have had the misery to behold, without the power to remedy-their progeny more or less demoralized by a promiscuous and unavoidable intercourse with children less carefully reared. A Your Memorialists might have petitioned both Houses of Parliament, and prayed to have been heard by their counsel and witnesses, in support of these allegations; but, that their general poverty is so extreme, it is not practicable for them to raise funds to defray the incidental ex- Your Memorialists have also to depenses; and, if a parliamentary exa-nounce the unexampled depreciation -mination of Manufacturers and of wages, under which they are sufWeavers should be deemed expe- fering, as a prolific source of juvenile dient, that your Lordships will hu- crime in these districts; for the Masmanely allow your Memorialists ter Weavers in those parts, most are funds to send up witnesses, that they in the habit of taking parish apprenmay not again suffer unmerited dis-tices, being unable to give them grace by false, exaggerated, or er-sufficiency of good and wholesome parte statements. food in return for moderate labour, As the most efficient remedy for their apprentices are too often so exthese evils, your Memorialists con-cessively worked, and immoderately template a minimum for the regula-beaten, and so ill fed, that they elope tion of wages; and, to prevent, as and take to bad courses, thinking, perfar as possible, the exportation of haps, any risk of punishment preferCotton goods being diminished, and able to the endurance of the miseries that multiplication of the number of attached to their wretched servitude. Power-looms ensuing, which might Lastly, your Memorialists very reresult from increased wages being spectfully state, how greatly the re-paid to the Hand-loom Weaver, your venue suffers by so large a body of Memorialists, with humility, suggest workpeople having so little money -the moral justice and political expe- to expend; and with deference rediency of imposing a tax upon Cotton mark, that were the same oppressive goods produced by the Power-loom, system to be extended to all other at least equal to two-thirds of the dif- artisans and mechanics in BOLTON, ference in the cost of weaving Cot-the consequences would immediately ton goods between the Hand-loom be felt so heavily by agriculturalists and the Power-loom, and the appli- and tradesmen, that it would be found impossible for them, except by the exposed for sale, in our most resacrifice of capital, to pay rent and spectable shops, in the course of the ensuing summer. taxes.. Your Memorialists, therefore, humbly Jay their deplorable condition before your Lordships, and if your beneficence deigns to afford them such redress and protection as in your wisdom may appear just and reasonable, you will cheer many thousands of desponding hearts. Earnestly imploring an early consideration of their case, Your Memorialists, as in duty bound, STRAW BONNETS. SIR, To Mr. Cobbett. I HEAR the Society of Arts has received, at least, twenty claims for the Premium No. 241*, offered "for a hat or bonnet made from indegenous British grass, that shall be equally good, in texture and colour, as those imported from Leghorn. The Silver Medal, or fifteen guineas." The claimants are spread over the United Kingdom; Ireland and Scotland having competed with the neighbouring counties in England, One claimant, I understand, states, that but for the discovery made by you, last year, to the Society, for which, most of your readers will recollect, you were presented with a Medal by the Society, the women and girls now employed in the claimant's service, upon British Grass Bonnets, amounting to 1500 women and girls, would have been thrown out of employ. I am, Sir, Your most obedient, A B. I have reason to believe, that the facts stated in the above letter are perfectly correct. But, this is a mere beginning of the thing. It will become an immense branch of manufacture, and that, too, of the greatest benefit to the people at large, whom it will feed, clothe, and comfort, and not make the slaves of a set of greedy and insolent and basely persecuting Lords of the Loom and of the Anvil. There are thousands and thousands of wretches, who wish this great national good not to be accomplished, and this, too, because I must have the merit of it. Amongst these monsters are those who deal in the London Press, who are, without any exception, the vilest miscreants on earth. More than a half of them are real bona fide Jews and Jewesses. What would I give if I could drag out, in their proper persons, and exhibit in some field near London, the whole of this.tag-rag crew all in one rabble! The wretches do great mischief; but, less than they did. The people know them better than they did. "PRACTICAL BOTANISTS." I CAN tell Messrs, SWEET and COLVILLE, that I have by no You may now safely congratu- means done with them, and with late the public on the timely pub-the jury and the famous witnesses lication of this discovery in your to character. That trial presents COTTAGE ECONOMY; as by that us with something which we have means, an entire season has been not witnessed in England for more saved to the industrious persons than half a century. I have used engaged in this manufacture, my best endeavours to come at which may now be expected to be fuller information than I possessed MARKETS. Average Prices of CORN throughout ENGLAND, for the week ending 28th Feb. before; and this I will lay before than ten pounds. If I send to the my readers next week if possible. Country, I shall send in linen In the meanwhile, let me remark bags, besides a bag of paper. The upon the conduct of the base Lon-linen bags will be sewed up; and don press, as connected with this I shall charge nothing for the matter. There was a public exa-bags or for the booking at the mination at Bow-street, when coach-office. Sweet was committed. Not one word of it appeared in the newspapers! But, observe, when CAPT. HOOK'S PRIVATE examination took place, it was. [in all the papers! What, then, kept Sweet's examination, out? Did all the newspapers so feel for him? Had they all so much fellow feeling for this" great Practical Botanist"? I fancy Sweet's friends must have been more skilled in palmistry than in Botany, or the examination at Bow-street would have appeared. I shall return to this subject, and shall endeavour to do it justice before I have done with it.Sweet's witnesses to character ought to be put safely upon record. TURNIP AND MANGEL WURZEL SEED. I HAVE Some Swedish Turnip Seed, sowed under my own direction, and from plants of my own selecting, in Hampshire. I will pledge myself for its being as good as it can possibly be. I have some Mangel Wurzel Seed, grown by a man on whom I can place perfect reliance; I sell the former at fifteen pence a pound for any quantity under ten pounds, and at a shilling a pound for any larger quantity. The Mangel Wurzel Seed at eighteen-pence a pound for ten pounds, or any quantity above it; and two shillings a pound for any quantity smaller Per Quarter. Wheat. Rye Beans Peas .64 7 41 10 .36 7 25 7 ..41 1} .....40 8 Corn Exchange, Mark Lane. Quantities and Prices of British Corn, &c. sold and delivered in this Market, during the week ended Saturday, 28th Feb. Qrs. £. 8. d. Wheat:. 6,980 for 23,841 18 2 Average, 68 3 .39 4 Barley 5,066....9,963 10 6. .40 9 .41 0 Friday, March 5.-The arrivals of Grain this week are only modeweather. Wheat fully supports the rate, chiefly owing to boisterous terms quoted on Monday last. Barley is unaltered. Beans and Peas are inquired after at Monday's quotations. There has been a dull trade for Oats to-day, but the prices of the beginning of this week are maintained." Monday, March 8.-The arrivals of last week were considerable, but this morning there are only moderate quantities of Corn from Essex, Kent, and Suffolk, with not The quality of Wheat is damp, and many vessels from distant ports. sales are consequently heavy, so that the trade is reported hadly so good as this day se'nnight.. |