“The writings of Malthus, who considers men as mere animals, may have had influence in the producing of this change; and we now frequently hear the working classes called the population, just as we call the animals upon a farm the stock. It is curious, too, that this contumely towards the great mass of the people should have grown into vogue amongst the country gentlemen and their families, at a time when they themselves are daily and hourly losing the estates descended to them from their forefathers. They see themselves stripped of the means of keeping that hospitality, for which England was once so famed, and of which there remains nothing now but the word in the dictionary: they see themselves reduced to close up their windows, live in a corner of their houses, sneak away to London, crib their servants in their wages, and hardly able to keep up a little tawdry show; and it would seem, that for the contempt which they feel that their meanness must necessarily excite in the common people, they endeavour to avenge themselves, and at the same time to disguise their own humiliation, by their haughty and insolent deportment towards the latter: thus exhibiting that mixture of poverty and pride, which has ever been deemed better calculated than any other union of qualities to draw down upon the possessors the most unfriendly of human feelings.
“It is curious, also, that this fit of novel and ridiculous pride should have afflicted the minds of these persons at the very time that the working classes are become singularly enlightened. Not enlightened in the manner that the sons of Cant and Corruption would wish them to be. The conceited creatures in what is called high life, and who always judge of men by their clothes, imagine that the working classes of the people have their minds quite sufficiently occupied by the reading of what are called ‘religious and moral tracts.’ Simple, insipid dialogues and stories, calculated for the minds of children seven or eight years old, or for those of savages just beginning to be civilized. These conceited persons have no idea that the minds of the working classes ever presume to rise above their infantine level.… The working classes of the people understand well what they read; they dive into all matters connected with politics; they have a relish not only for interesting statement, for argument, for discussion; but the powers of eloquence are by no means lost upon them.… In the report of the Secret Committee of the House of Lords, it is observed that, since the people have betaken themselves to this reading and this discussing, ‘their character seems to be wholly changed.’ I believe it is indeed! For it is the natural effect of enlightening the mind to change the character. But 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 Sidmouth’s and Lord Castlereagh’s feet. I will go where I can make sure of the use of pen, ink, and paper; and these two lords may be equally sure that, in spite of everything they can do, unless they openly enact or proclaim a censorship on the press, or cut off all commercial connexion with America, you, my good and faithful countrymen, shall be able to read what I write.
“And now, my countrymen, before I set off, let me caution you against giving the smallest credit to anything that Corruption’s Press may assert of me. You have seen what atrocious falsehoods it has put forth in my presence; what, then, will it not do in my absence? I have written thousands of letters to various persons in all parts of the kingdom. I give any one leave to make public any letter of mine, accompanied by the certificate of any respectable friend of mine, that it is in my handwriting. I challenge all those, whom I ever conversed with, to say, that I ever uttered a wish to see overthrown any one of the Constitutional establishments of the kingdom; and, I most solemnly declare that I never associated with any man who professed, even in private, to entertain any such wish; but, on the contrary, all those with whom I have ever been intimate in politics, have always had in view the preservation of all the establishments and orders of the kingdom, as one of the objects of a timely reform of the Parliament.