Miscellaneous Papers | Page 4

in boxes, which were but another form of the celebrated
wooden walls of Old England; they never woke up till it was too
late--in which respect you might have thought them very farmers. How
is it with the police? Their buttons are made at Birmingham; a dozen of
their truncheons would poorly furnish forth a watchman's staff; they
have no wooden walls to repose between; and the crowns of their hats
are plated with cast-iron.
Are the doctors agricultural? Let Messrs. Morison and Moat, of the
Hygeian establishment at King's Cross, London, reply. Is it not, upon
the constant showing of those gentlemen, an ascertained fact that the
whole medical profession have united to depreciate the worth of the
Universal Vegetable Medicines? And is this opposition to vegetables,
and exaltation of steel and iron instead, on the part of the regular
practitioners, capable of any interpretation but one? Is it not a distinct
renouncement of the agricultural interest, and a setting up of the
manufacturing interest instead?
Do the professors of the law at all fail in their truth to the beautiful
maid whom they ought to adore? Inquire of the Attorney- General for
Ireland. Inquire of that honourable and learned gentleman, whose last

public act was to cast aside the grey goose- quill, an article of
agricultural produce, and take up the pistol, which, under the system of
percussion locks, has not even a flint to connect it with farming. Or put
the question to a still higher legal functionary, who, on the same
occasion, when he should have been a reed, inclining here and there, as
adverse gales of evidence disposed him, was seen to be a manufactured
image on the seat of Justice, cast by Power, in most impenetrable brass.
The world is too much with us in this manufacturing interest, early and
late; that is the great complaint and the great truth. It is not so with the
agricultural interest, or what passes by that name. It never thinks of the
suffering world, or sees it, or cares to extend its knowledge of it; or, so
long as it remains a world, cares anything about it. All those whom
Dante placed in the first pit or circle of the doleful regions, might have
represented the agricultural interest in the present Parliament, or at
quarter sessions, or at meetings of the farmers' friends, or anywhere
else.
But that is not the question now. It is conspired against; and we have
given a few proofs of the conspiracy, as they shine out of various
classes engaged in it. An indictment against the whole manufacturing
interest need not be longer, surely, than the indictment in the case of
the Crown against O'Connell and others. Mr. Cobden may be taken as
its representative--as indeed he is, by one consent already. There may
be no evidence; but that is not required. A judge and jury are all that is
needed. And the Government know where to find them, or they gain
experience to little purpose.

THREATENING LETTER TO THOMAS HOOD FROM AN
ANCIENT GENTLEMAN

MR. HOOD. SIR,--The Constitution is going at last! You needn't laugh,
Mr. Hood. I am aware that it has been going, two or three times before;
perhaps four times; but it is on the move now, sir, and no mistake.
I beg to say, that I use those last expressions advisedly, sir, and not in
the sense in which they are now used by Jackanapeses. There were no
Jackanapeses when I was a boy, Mr. Hood. England was Old England
when I was young. I little thought it would ever come to be Young
England when I was old. But everything is going backward.

Ah! governments were governments, and judges were judges, in my
day, Mr. Hood. There was no nonsense then. Any of your seditious
complainings, and we were ready with the military on the shortest
notice. We should have charged Covent Garden Theatre, sir, on a
Wednesday night: at the point of the bayonet. Then, the judges were
full of dignity and firmness, and knew how to administer the law. There
is only one judge who knows how to do his duty, now. He tried that
revolutionary female the other day, who, though she was in full work
(making shirts at three-halfpence a piece), had no pride in her country,
but treasonably took it in her head, in the distraction of having been
robbed of her easy earnings, to attempt to drown herself and her young
child; and the glorious man went out of his way, sir--out of his way--to
call her up for instant sentence of Death; and to tell her she had no hope
of mercy in this world--as you may see yourself if you look in the
papers of Wednesday the 17th