London, Friday, March 31, 1854 

The Income Tax bill has been passed. %° Sir G. Pakington spoke 
against it plainly and justly, although in a dull manner, observing 
that the recent publications of the Blue Books and of the secret 
and confidential correspondence had thrown quite a new light on 
the past financial policy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. 
Gladstone brought in a peace budget on the 18th April, 1853, when 
he [must] have been quite sure of war being imminent.” Three days 
before he made his statement the Coalition had received from 
Colonel Rose the information that 

“Prince Menchikoff had tried to exact a promise from the Grand Vizier, before 
he made known to him the nature of his mission and of his demands, that he 
should make a formal promise that he would not reveal them to the British and 
French representatives.” . 

They were also aware, by the secret correspondence, of the 
Emperor’s” intention to kill the dying man lest he should slip 
through his fingers.“ With this information in his hands the 
unctuous Puseyite** comes forward and addresses the House: 

“If you will adopt the income tax for seven years, I will only ask you for 7d. in 
the pound for the first two years; I will ask 6d. in the pound for the next two 
years; and for the last three years I will only ask 5d. in the pound, and then the 
income tax will expire.” 

“ G. Pakington’s speech in the House of Commons on March 30, 1854. The 
Times, No. 21703, March 31, 1854.— Ed. 

The income tax, as your readers will remember,* Mr. Gladstone 
described as a mighty engine of war that must be got rid of in 
these times of peace. This he said with the knowledge that war was 
almost inevitable, and that it would be necessary to double the tax 
of 7d. in the pound before twelve months had elapsed. It is now 
Is. 2d. in the pound. If anybody should tell me that the 
overscrupulous Chancellor of the Exchequer deluded himself as to 
the position of affairs, I reply that only last Monday week” a fall 
in the funds occurred, because the stock jobbers said that the 
publication of the secret papers proved to demonstration that the 
Czar had determined to. pursue his schemes, and that no trust 
could be placed in his most positive assertions. The members of 
the “Cabinet of all the Talents” must be supposed to possess at 
least equal perspicacity with the members of the Stock Exchange. 

At the same time that the Duns Scotus of the Coalition, the 
Doctor Subtilissimus,* proposed his financial schemes for the 
conversion of the funds, and thus prepared, notwithstanding the 
warnings he received, an emptiness of the Treasury at the very 
moment of the “catastrophe”. The balances in the Exchequer 
were as follows, in the years named: 

1844 ......... £6,254,113 1847 s21%%: £8,457,691 1850 ........ £9,[245,676] © 
ss eee 8,452,090 1848 05.0.3. 8,105,561 ES Ps cevesss 8,[381,637] 
1846 ......... 9,131,282 1849 ....... 9,748,539 1852 a).c04: 8,[841,822] 

\ 

By the commencement of 1853 Mr. Gladstone had contrived to 
reduce it to £4,485,230, and soon there will be no balance at all, 
as this ingenious financier has to take back the remainder of the 
South Sea stock” at £100, when it can hardly be sold on ’change 
at £85. 

This financial policy of the Coalition perfectly tlakes up] with 
their diplomatic policy, which “thanks” the Czar for confiding to 
them his plans of partition; with their parliamentary policy, which 
always told the House the contrary of their information in hand; 
and with their military policy, which forced Omer Pasha to 
inaction till the Czar|had completed his preparations for invasion, 
which dispatches the troops by steamers and the horses by sail 

March 20, 1854.— Ed. 
No. 21703, March 31, 1854.— Ed. 

vessels, retains the officers at London, and disembarks soldiers at 
Constantinople, and thinks fit to occupy neither Odessa nor the 
Crimea, nor Finland, nor the mouths of the Danube, nor any 
point threatening the Russians, but Constantinople, of all other 
places, in order not to crush the Cossack,* but to teach at this 
momentous crisis both the Mussulman and the Byzantine priest 
the occidental law and civil equality. 

Notwithstanding the strong opposition of the Irish members, the 
House seems resolved to, proceed with Mr. Chambers’s motion, 
and to appoint a Committee of Inquiry for the practices and 
household arrangements of the nunneries. The principal plea on 
which Mr. Chambers’s motion intends to be based is the seclusion 
of girls forcibly held from their natura! and legitimate protectors. 
The middle classes of England shudder at the probability of girls 
being kidnapped for nunneries, but their justice, shown in a 
recent case, becomes impotent when girls are kidnapped for 
satisfying the lust of aristocrats or caprice of cotton lords. Last 
week a girl of sixteen had been lured away from her parents, 
enticed into a Lancashire factory, and kept there night and day, 
made to sleep there, and take her meals there, locked up as in a 
prison. When her father discovered what had become of his child, 
he was not allowed to see her, but was driven away from the 
factory by the police. In this case the Factory law was violated, the 
law of personal liberty, the law that gives the father the custody 
of his child under age, the very right of habeas corpus was set at 
nought. A gross and flagrant case of abduction had been 
committed. But how did the magistrates act in this case, when the 
disconsolate father appealed to them for redress? Their answer 
was: “They could do nothing in the matter.” 

Mr. Thom. Duncombe presented a petition, signed within 24 
hours by above 7600 inhabitants of the borough of Preston, 
complaining of the manner in which the laws for the maintenance 
of peace and order were administered by the local authorities in 
that borough. He gave notice that he should move for a committee 
of inquiry into the subject immediately after the Easter recess. 

“The agitators of Preston, the great fomentors of the strike—the men who 
pretended to form a new estate of the realm, and to be the nursing fathers of the 
Labor Parliament, have at length received a check. Some dozen of them have been 
arrested and examined before the local magistrates on a charge of conspiracy, 
released on bail and sent before the Liverpool assizes”. 

b "The Week”, The Morning Post, No. 25033, March 27, 1854.— Ed. 

Such are the words in which The Morning Post announces an 
event”! which I was prevented from writing about earlier by the 
pressure of other matter. The charge against the leaders rests 
upon the fact that the masters had sent to Manchester and 
induced men to come down to Preston. They were mostly 
Irishmen. The people met them at the railway station, where they 
presented a scene of misery and wretchedness. About fifty-four of 
them were persuaded to go to the Farmer’s Arms* where they 
were regaled all day, and, having consented to return, were 
escorted in the evening to the railway station amidst the 
exclamations of 15,000 persons. The employers got hold of seven 
of these people and brought them back to Preston to convict Mr. 
Cowell and his colleagues of conspiracy. Now, if we consider the 
[real facts] of the case, there remains no doubt on the question 
who are the real conspirators.” 

In 1847 the Preston cotton lords reduced wages on a solemn 
promise to restore them as soon as trade should have become 
brisk. In 1853, the year of prosperity, they refused to keep their 
word. The working men of four mills struck, and were supported 
by the contributions of the remaining at work. The masters now 
conspired together that they would lock their mills, and entered 
each into a £5,000 bond to enforce their conspiracy.” The 
operatives then appealed for support to the other towns of 
Lancashire, and that support was given. The employers had sent 
emissaries to persuade and incite the cotton lords of other towns 
to lock out their hands, and succeeded in their endeavor. Not 
content with this, a vast subs[cription was] opened among them to 
counterbalance the [subscription] of the operatives. When they 
found that all these efforts were of-no avail, they sent their agents 
far and near to induce laborers and their families, needlewomen, 
and paupers from the workhouses of England and Ir[eland to 
come] to Preston. Finding the surplus did not flow in fast enough 
for their wishes, they tried to provoke the people to a breach of 
the peace. They aggravated them by their insolence. They forbade 
meetings in the Marsh, but the people held meetings in Blackstone 
Edge and other interdicted localities. They introduced one 
hundred new police, they swore in special constables,” they 
turned out the fire-brigade, they kept troops under arms, and 

went so far as to read the riot act™ in order to provoke a riot. 
Such was the conspiracy of the masters [but] they were defeated in 
each of their attempts. Notwithstanding these facts, an indictment 
of conspiracy is charged, not against the masters, but against the 
men. Besides, there is a special case bringing the masters under 
the law of conspiracy. The men of a certain factory resumed the 
work. The masters’ committee and the men’s committee alike 
called for explanations. The men published a placard to the effect 
that they had gone to work on condition of payment at a certain 
rate. The masters’ committee threatened proceedings against the 
master* of that mill to recover £5,000 as penalty on a bond given 
to support the masters’ strike. The mill-owner thereupon said 
something which, being a flat contradiction of men’s statement, 
occasioned them all to withdraw. If [making] of this bond of 
£5,000 was a conspiracy in the terms of the law, the menace to 
enforce it was still more so. But this is not all. The very indictment 
of the men’s leaders was brought about by a conspiracy committed 
by the magisterial benches at Preston. According to The Times” 
itself, the magistrates got up evidence, sought for it, brought up 
their surplus slaves‘ in cabs to their council chamber, dreading the 
publicity of the town hall, there to arrange their evidence, and 
there, in the dead of night to pounce on their intended victims. 

The expectations of these little Napoleons of Lancashire [were,] 
however, set at naught by the good sense of the working people, 
who neither allowed themselves to be provoked into a breach of 
peace, nor to be frightened into[submission] to the dictates of the 
Preston parvenus. 

A public meeting was held in London on Wednesday night in 
St. Martin’s Hall, Long Acre, for the purpose of affording the 
working classes of the metropolis an opportunity of expressing 
their opinion on the conduct of the Preston masters. The 
following two resolutions were unanimously accepted: 

“That the present Lord Chancellor of England, when Baron Rolfe’, [and] in his 
capacity of judge, laid down the law thus: 

“That if there were no other object than to persuade people that it was their 
interest not to work except for certain wages, and not to work under certain 
regulations, complied with in a peaceful manner, jt was not illegal. 

“That the operatives of Preston have for a period of thirty weeks been engaged 

> “The Wages’ Movement”, The Times, No. 21694, March 21, 1854.— Ed. 

in a contest with their employers, and during the whole of that time have 
conducted themselves in the most peaceable and orderly manner. 

“That, notwithstanding these facts, four* members of the Operatives’ Commit- 
tee have been committed to take their trial at the present Liverpool Assizes on a 
charge of conspiracy, although neither violence nor intimidation has been proved 
or even charged against them. 

“This meeting is therefore of opinion that the conduct of the manufacturers 
and magistrates of Preston is reprehensible; that they have been guilty of an 
unwarrantable assumption of power; that they have destroyed at once the equality 
of the law and personal freedom; and that such proceedings ought to be 
condemned by the unanimous voice of the people. 

“That the sympathy and help of the entire of the working classes of the United 
Kingdom should be devoted to the vindication of justice and the maintenance of 
right. This meeting, therefore, pledges itself to an extraordinary and continuous 
support of the Preston operatives in their present trying position, and earnestly 
exhorts all who have an interest in the elevation of labor to join with them in 
supporting its best interests.” 

[The] London press generally condemn the proceedings [of the] 
Preston masters, not from any sense of justice but [from fear] of 
the probable results. They apprehend that [the] working classes 
will now understand that the indivi[dual] capitalist who oppresses 
them is backed by the whole machinery [of state], and that in 
order to hit the former they [must] deal with the latter.