O'Connell and others in the Commons, wages are reduced in some of
the manufacturing villages to six pence a week, so that men are
forced to sustain themselves and their families at less than a penny
a day; when the most revolting expedients are resorted to for food;
when families attempt by a recumbent posture to diminish the pangs of
hunger; in the midst of this exasperation the voice of the people is
temperate and wise beyond all former example. They are intent on
personal as well as on national reforms. Jack Cade leaves behind him
his bludgeon and torch, and is grown amiable, literary,
philosophical, and mystical. He reads Fourier, he reads Shelley, he
reads Milton. He goes for temperance, for non-resistance, for
education, and for the love-marriage, with the two poets above named;
and for association, after the doctrines either of Owen or of
Fourier. One of the most remarkable of the tracts before us is "A
Plan for the Education and Improvement of the People, addressed to
the Working Classes of the United Kingdom; written in Warwick Gaol,
by William Lovett, cabinet-maker, and John Collins, tool-maker,"
which is a calm, intelligent, and earnest plea for a new organization
of the people, for the highest social and personal benefits, urging
the claims of general education, of the Infant School, the Normal
School, and so forth; announcing rights, but with equal emphasis
admitting duties.
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