Your faithful friend, and most obedient servant, WM. COBBETT.
_Hurstbourne Tarrant (called Uphusband,)_
54. In the foregoing Numbers, I have shown, that men can never be so poor as to have no rights at all: and that, in England, they have a legal, as well as a natural, _right_ to be maintained, if they be destitute of other means, out of the lands, or other property, of the rich. But, it is an interesting question, HOW THERE CAME TO BE SO MUCH POVERTY AND MISERY IN ENGLAND. This is a very interesting question; for, though it is the doom of man, that he shall never be certain of any-thing, and that he shall never be beyond the reach of calamity; though there always has been, and always will be, poor people in every nation; though this circumstance of poverty is inseparable from the means which uphold communities of men; though, without poverty, there could be _no charity_, and none of those feelings, those offices, those acts, and those relationships, which are connected with charity, and which form a considerable portion of the cement of civil society: yet, notwithstanding these things, there are bounds beyond which the poverty of the people cannot go, without becoming a thing to complain of, and to trace to the Government as a fault. Those bounds have been passed, in England, long and long ago. England was always famed for many things; but especially for its _good living_; that is to say, for the _plenty_ in which the whole of the people lived; for the abundance of good clothing and good food which they had. It was always, ever since it _bore the name of England_, the richest and most powerful and most admired country in Europe; but, its _good living_, its superiority in this particular respect, was proverbial amongst all who knew, or who had heard talk of, the English nation. Good God! How changed! Now, the very worst fed and worst clad people upon the face of the earth, those of Ireland only excepted. _How, then, did this horrible, this disgraceful, this cruel poverty come upon this once happy nation?_ This, my good friends of Preston, is, to us all, a most important question; and, now let us endeavour to obtain a full and complete answer to it.