5. This is what common sense says would be _your_ language in such a case; and does not common sense say, that the people of Hampshire, and of every other part of England, will thus think, when they are told of the sufferings, and the starvation, in Lancashire and Yorkshire! The report of the Manchester ley-payers, which took place on the 17th of August, reached me in a friend's house in this little village; and when another friend, who was present, read, in the speeches of Mr. BAXTER and Mr. POTTER, that tens of thousands of Lancashire people were _on the point of starvation_, and that many had already _actually died from starvation_; and when he perceived, that even those gentlemen uttered not a word of _complaint_ against either overseer or justices of the peace, he exclaimed: "What! are there _no poor-laws_ in Lancashire? Where, amidst all this starvation, is the overseer? Where is the justice of the peace? Surely that Lancashire can never be _in England_?"
6. The observations of this gentleman are those which occur to every man of sense; when he hears the horrid accounts of the sufferings in the manufacturing districts; for, though we are all well aware, that the burden of the poor-rates presses, at this time, with peculiar weight on the land-owners and occupiers, and on owners and occupiers of other real property, in those districts, we are equally well aware, that those owners and occupiers _have derived great benefits_ from that vast population that now presses upon them. There is _land_ in the parish in which I am now writing, and belonging to the farm in the house of which I am, which land would not let for 20_s._ a statute acre; while land, not so good, would let, in any part of Lancashire, near to the manufactories, at 60_s._ or 80_s._ a statute acre. The same may be said with regard to _houses_. And, pray, are the owners and occupiers, who have gained so largely by the manufacturing works being near their lands and houses; are they, _now_, to complain, if the vicinage of these same works causes a charge of rates _there_, heavier than exists _here_? Are the owners and occupiers of Lancashire to enjoy _an age of advantages_ from the labours of the spinners and the weavers; and are they, when a reverse comes, _to bear none of the disadvantages_? Are they to make no sacrifices, in order to save from perishing those industrious and ever-toiling creatures, by the labours of whom their land and houses have been augmented in value, three, five, or perhaps tenfold? None but the most unjust of mankind can answer these questions in the affirmative.