Notice.-The Purchasers of "Cooper's Journal" Are respectfully informed that with No. 9, (the number for the week ending March 2nd,) Will be CIVEN AWAY, No. I. of 66 OR CAPTAIN COBLER; LINCOLNSHIRE INSURRECTION:" An Historical Romance of the Reign of Henry VIII. By THOMAS COOPER, Author of 'The Purgatory of Suicides.' The succeeding Numbers will be published weekly, at ONE PENNY, until the Romance is complete. Each Number will contain Sixteen Pages. James Watson, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. WORKS OF THOMAS COOPER, Already Published, to be had of JAMES WATSON, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. THE PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. A Prison Rhyme. In 10 Books. (To be had also in 18 numbers, at 2d each; or in 6 parts at 6d.) s. d. 3 6 WISE SAWS AND MODERN INSTANCES. A series of Tales illustrative of Lincolnshire and 5 0 1 6 THE MINSTREL'S SONG AND THE WOODMAN'S SONG. The Peotry and the Melody by THE BARON'S YULE FEAST. A Christmas Rhyme. In 1 volume, sewed,.. Two Orations against taking away Human Life under any circumstances,. Eight Letters to the Young Men of the Working Classes. (Collected from the 'Plain Speaker,') SOCIAL AND DEMOCRATIC NEWSPAPER. Now Publishing. 0 6 The WEEKLY TRIBUNE, a Stamped Newspaper, price 4d., devoted to Democratic and Social Reform, aud specially addressed to the advanced and growing class of thinkers who, believing the present industrial, as well as political, institutions to be based on Force and Fraud, are seeking to effect a radical social, as well as governmental, change in the existing system of society. The current numbers, besides the news of the day, and leading articles thereon, contain Proudhon's BIRTHDAY OF THOMAS PAINE. A TEA PARTY to commemorate the Birth-day of the immortal THOMAS PAINE, will be held in the Hall of the Literary Institution, John Street, Fitzroy Square, on Sunday afternoon, Feb. 3rd, at 5 o'clock. Mr. JAMES WATSON, in the Chair. After Tea the Meeting will be addressed by Mrs. Martin, Messrs. Holyoake, Hart, B. O'Brien, Walter Cooper, Buchanan, Campbell, and Thompson. The Apollonic Society will perform appropriate music between the Speeches. Tickets 9d.; Members 7d. each; admission after Tea at 7 o'clock, Hall 2d.; Gallery 3d. The February Number of the DEMOCRATIC REVIEW, Contaius Original and very Important Letters Now ready with the Magazines for February, No. 9, of OF BRITISH AND FOREIGN POLITICS, HISTORY, AND LITERATURE. CONTENTS: 1. The Editor's Letter to the Working Classes The Taxes on Knowledge. 2. Taxation and Terrorism. 3. The Grave of a Tyrannicide. 4. A Glance at History.-Part I. 5. Memoir of Fourier. 6. Revelations of the Building Trades.-Part I. 7. Pictures of the Poor. 8. The Charter, and Something More! 9. Literature: "Ledru Rollin, and the 13th of June." 10. Letter from France. 11. Letter from Germany. 12. Political Postscript, &c., &c. Forty Pages (in a coloured wrapper). PRICE THREEPENCE. London: Published by J. WATSON, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. London; Printed by SHIRREFS AND RUSSELL, 190, High Holborn; and Published by JAMES WATSON, 8, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. OR, UNFETTERED THINKER AND PLAIN SPEAKER FOR TRUTH, FREEDOM, AND PROGRESS. "AND though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple! Who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?"-Milton's Areopagitica. No. 6.—Vol. I.] FOR THE WEEK ENDING SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1850. [Price One Penny. TO THE YOUNG MEN OF THE WORKING CLASSES. "He knew not what he would be at. So we Made plain our wills; and wondrously it helped His judgment. Straight, he vowed he always meant The Statesman. MEN OF THE FUTURE,-The concluding paragraphs of the Queen's Speech merely confirm the report that it would allude to the Ministerial purpose of altering the law relative to the Franchise. It leaves us entirely in the dark as to what kind of alteration is intended, and how far it will be an extension. The Delphic oracle was never more enigmatical. "The favour of Divine Providence has hitherto preserved this kingdom from the wars and convulsions which during the last two years have shaken so many of the states of the Continent of Europe. It is her Majesty's hope and belief that by combining liberty with order, by preserving what is valuable, and amending what is defective, you will sustain the fabric of our institutions, as the abode and the shelter of a free and happy people." 66 If the Weekly Chronicle, professing to have official sources of information, had not told us that an extension of the Franchise" would be unfolded in the Royal Speech, as a Ministerial intention,-if Admiral Dundas, a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty, had not assured his constituents at Greenwich, that the Government he served would most positively introduce a measure for the extension of the Franchise, this session,-if expectation and belief had not thus been created,-who could have ventured to interpret the peroration of the Queen's Speech as having any such substantial meaning? Lord John, during the recess, has evidently been studying Herodotus, perhaps, in Mr. Bohn's newly translated edition, for one cannot give him credit for much Greek scholarship, and has noted the slippery skill with which the priestess was wont to give her replies from the tripod. "Combining liberty with order," and "preserving what is valuable, and amending what is defective"-may mean not attempting the suspension of Habeas Corpus, or any other curtailment of English liberty, temporary or permanent, that is to say, doing nothing relative to the Franchise; or, it may be explained, in the course of the Session, to mean the abolition of the Ratepaying Clauses in the Reform Bill of 1832, or almost any other peddling "improvement." In short, the last sentence of the Queen's Speech, is a very pretty stroke of Whiggery, and may be made to mean anything that Ministers may be compelled to propose, in order to keep their seats-or, if the Protection threat should turn out bluster, and the Financial Reformers prove as "decorous as in the last Session, it can be shewn to mean the "preservation of our venerable Constitution," by simply letting it alone. If this be not undervaluing the worth of the speech Ministers have written for the Queen, there is the greater need that you, on whom the progress of healthful democracy so greatly depends, should, for the ensuing three months especially, exert yourselves in organising the getting up of Individual Petitions for the Franchise-according to the plan I presumed to recommend to you, in the Letter which is now classed as the eighth, in the pamphlet composed of a selection from the 'Plain Speaker.' I cannot forbear to express confidence that pouring into the House of Commons of a commanding number of individual petitions, each bearing the name, age, trade, and residence, of the petitioners, would have an effect, never yet produced upon that House. It would be such a powerful and unquestionable way of backing up the demand made for the Franchise, in the House, that no Minister could have the effrontery again to repeat that there was no desire for the Franchise out of it. And with how little trouble can you young men arrange the machinery for forming companies of 100 Petitioners, or fewer, as the state of population in your localities may demand,—or for collecting 100 Petitions in a comparatively silent way, should circumstances pretermit a more public procedure. The holding of public meetings is, however, the more adviseable plan, if you mean your petitioning to have its full effect on all around you, as well as on Parliament. If large meetings cannot be held to propose this plan, a number of smaller meetings might be held, in one town, to advocate it. At such meetings, every young man who is a good penman, possessed of some intelligence, and is willing to perform the little labour which I have before pointed out as necessary to be discharged by the secretary of 100 Petitioners, should offer himself for such service. All who are willing to assist should, then and there, declare themselves; and this, with the speeches which would be delivered in maintenance of the right of every upgrown man to the Franchise, and the open declaration that you meant to persevere in this, and every other legal method of struggling for it, until it was won— -would infuse spirit into your undertaking, and con vince the listless, or the opposers, that their coldness or aversion would speedily become disgraceful to them. Again: if you think that there is something substantial in the Speech,if you think that by the recommendation of "amending what is defective," and the sugared phrase "free and happy people," there really is ground for concluding that something is intended by the Whig Adminstration,why, then, you have the stronger motive for exertion. Only by such decided demands being made for the Franchise that they cannot, without more than their proverbial impudence, trifle with them and pretend ignorance of them,―can these Whigs be driven to make their ambiguous something, a palpable reality. This their child-if it be actually conceived-is yet unborn, at any rate; and you, by energetic endeavour, may help to give a bolder outline to its features, ere it quits the equivocal matrix of Whig contrivance; and may even influence its parents to give it a name that shall have some meaning in it. I will not dwell, now, on other motives for your exertion in carrying out this plan of organizing the presentation of individual petitions. What new changes in continental affairs may take place this year, we cannot tell,or what influence they may have on England. Be in the field of patriotic exertion, and you will be prepared to take advantage of every opportunity that may present itself for advancing our beloved country's liberties. I had intended to address you, this week, in continuance of the hints already given on intellectual culture; but it seemed to me that I could not neglect to remind you of this political duty, at the present juncture, without blame. THOMAS COOPER. A POLITICAL LESSON FROM THE VASTY DEEP.' THE Rev. W. Kirby, in the Seventh Bridgewater Treatise, which treats of the habits and instincts of animals, gives an account of a curious little creature of the shell-fish tribe, called the stoneborer. Having spoken of several of the stone species, he thus continues :- "While each of these creatures has a particular and individual end in view, in its several pròceedings, its own accommodation, and appropriate nutriment and defence; the Creator, who has gifted them accordingly, makes use of them as instruments, which by their combined agency, though each, as it were, by a different process, accomplish, usually by slow degrees, His general purposes. This object, in the present instance, as well as in numerous others, seems to be to remove obstacles that stand in the way, and prevent certain changes willed by Providence, in the sea-line of any country, from taking place. Rocks may be regarded as so many munitions of a coast, which prevent the encroachment of the ocean, but nothing can more effectually prepare the way for the removal of this safeguard, than its being, as it were, honeycombed by numberless stoneborers, that make it their habitation, thus it must be gradually rendered weaker, till it is no longer able to resist the impetus of the waves; the process is very slow, but it is sure; and it is worthy of remark by what a seemingly weak organ most of these animals are enabled to effect this purpose: a fleshy foot, strengthened by no internal bone or gristle, but upon which they can turn as upon a pivot, and so in due time effect their destined purpose." There is a moral to be drawn from this quotation. There is a moral involved in it which addresses itself to every section and party of political reformers. From it may be learned how great a work may be accomplished by the persevering efforts of united powers, although each individual power may be insignificant, and to all appearance unworthy of notice. It preaches to us in the words of Faith and Hope-in the sublimest of eloquence, the outpourings of Nature's heart. It proclaims to man that the humblest atom in the sphere of creation has still some influence, direct or indirect, on the destiny of the universe. Motion and mutability are eternal laws of the world. There is no such thing as rest. Change is at work on all sides on the earth, in the earth, and "in the waters under the earth.” We can predicate of no existing being that it is a cipher. Nobody, nothing, is absolutely and necessarily a cipher. Everybody, everything, is in its nature a unit. Every unit is a power, slight perhaps, and scarcely discernable, but nevertheless a power. The multiplication of these units multiplies the power, increases its force, renders it more and more an important agent for good or evil. The Atlantic ocean is merely a conglomeration of drops, every drop of water is an ocean in miniature. Despair not, then, O man, of thy weak brother! Weak as he is whilst he draws the breath of life, he stands the centre of an active social circle. Weak as he is indivi : dually, let him join hand in hand with others no stronger than himself, and he shall generate a strength which shall remove mountains. Let the forces unite and concentrate their efforts upon the fortress, however well garrisoned it be, and at last the beseigers shall carry it. The various factions of radical reformers in the country, more or less numerous as the case may be, are powers, which to produce a grand result, requires consolidation and an unswerving determination to fulfil their designs. They want combination and judicious direction. They are the stone-borers of society-the political pioneers "to remove obstacles that stand in the way" of popular progress. And there are many "rocks" to be thoroughly "honey-combed" and ultimately demolished, before the channel is clear for the ocean-tide of democratic liberty and constitutional regeneration to break through and find its level. The process is very slow, but it is sure." Aristocratic obstinacy is a "rock" that must yield eventually to the influence of the "numberless stone-borers." The tyranny of wealth is another "rock" which the political "stone-borer" must utterly destroy, ere social peace and happiness can be attained. Religious bigotry and narrow-minded prejudice against the people are monstrous "rocks" that education and general advancement will finally dissipate. But the "stone-borers" must work together hand and heart, nor be diverted from their task by the jesuitry of governments, ministers, and monarchs; and then in due time they will "effect their destined purpose." FRANK GRANT. MARRIAGE SKETCHES. "The hearts of old gave hands; But our new heraldry is-hands, not hearts."-SHAKSPERE. UPON few subjects are there more erroneous opinions afloat amongst mankind, than on that of marriage. The vitiating notions of rank and wealth intrude themselves into this and every other subject. A couple, each possessing a competency of wealth, are united together in wedlock, and, though their dispositions are totally different, the whole parish declares, “It is a capital good match!" A young woman, possessing no property, nor likely to inherit any, but rich in feeling and intellect, is led to the hymeneal altar by a man of wealth,-one well to do in worldly substance, “dressed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day;" but whose mind is as uncultivated as his own barren heaths, and whose heart at best is but a bog, whence nought valuable was ever known to spring and all the relatives and acquaintances of this poor prostituted young woman declare, that "Maria has done well!” A young heiress is caught by a lover of her fortune; the priest declares that "they twain are one flesh;" and their neighbours exclaim to each other, in presence of their children--"What a happy man Mr. Reckless is!" thus poisoning the ductile minds of the rising generation with false notions of human happi ness. we An old baronet's only daughter marries with an honest tradesman, and is disowned by her parents, who invariably look upon her as guilty of some heinous offence. "She has disgraced her family!" say they, will never look at her again." As though she had ceased to be their daughter; or God had not “made of one blood all the nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth," and the courageous eloquence of St. Paul, on Mar's Hill, before the Areopagites, was a mere democratic lie! |