A more important meeting wits held at Sheffield, on Tuesday,
for
the same purpose ; Mr. Ebenezer Elliott in the chair. The Self& ins says that 20,000 persons were present. The proceedings com- menced with singing the following hymn, (composed, we presume, by 31f. Elliott,) to the tune of the Old Hundredth Psalm.
" God of the Poor! shall labour eat? Or drones alone find labour sweet? Lo, they who call thy earth their own, Take all we have—and give a stone! Yet bring not Thou on them the doom That scourged time proud of wretched Rome, Who stole, for few, the lands of ell, To make all life a funeral. Lord ! not for vengeance rave the olio ;;'d,
The hopes defered, the wore proloned ; Our cause is just, our Judge divine;
But judgment, God of all, is thine!
Yet nut in vnin thy children call On Thee, if Thou art Lord of all; And by thy work, and by thy word, Hark ! millions cry for justice, Lord !
For leave to toil, and not in vain—
For honest labour's needful gain ; A little rest, a little corn, For weary man, to trouble born !
For labour, food ; for all, their own; Our right to trade from zone to zone, To make all laws for us and ours,
And curb the will of evil powers."
The Chairman then addressed the multitude-
" Fellow townsmen and neighbours! Where are the respectable of Sheffield ? If they love the people, why are they not here ? If they can send missions to the Ilindooe, and agitate for Black slaves, who are better treated than you are, and with their telrecapie eyes see the suffering Caffre in Africa, surely they might perceive your miseries at their very doors. Where is Bailey, your Bentham? where is Luke, your Gospel ? and where is that great patriot, who refused to call a meeting against the Irish Coercion Bill? They are all absent ! Never mind. You are present. And though your old friends have deserted you, good men have come from a distance to help you. Here is Edmonds, grown grey in fightirg the battles of the working men. And here is Salt, whose patrietism is Christian kindness. And here is Willoughby Wood, whose philosophy sees religion in human happiness. But what am I to say now:' I have no newspapers to quote. Oh, that mine enemy would write another book ! for it won't do now, and shan't do, to siog the o.d song of the Corn.laws, which pita have laughed at for more ohm meaty years. ' Oh !' you said, 'it is only the mad poet! ' I would rather he IiL.ul, than see you tose your trade ; I would rather die in a workhouse thau see you without wages ; for there would be sorrow in heaven, if your wives by thou- sands were clamming in the streets, and your children by tens of thousands clau g with them. But after having been mocked for years on the subject of the Coin•laws, and odd by Corn law Russell that the robbery shall be ewt nil, it is too ball, and too late to throw the Cann-laws as dust in our eyes. Then, let me -ay, that the strongest argument in favour of Universal Suffrage, is furniebed by the facts, that the authors of those laws exercise the whole power of trie B. 'fish Government, and the King or Queen for the time being is oily their signing-clerk. It is doubtful whether they ever originated one useful idea; it is certain that they never added a penny to the public stock, but that, on time contrary, they had been enriched by the progress of commerce, without contributing in any way to that progress ; it is on eternal record, that • they have devoured or destroyed during the last fifty years, in wars on liberty, and by their toodmionopoly, more than five thousand millions sterling—nay twice as much as all the cloaca are worth ; end no man in his senses doubts that they are of all men the very lime. whom the community could best spare,— for if they were all missing to.uu,rrow, they would only be missed as a nuisance is. when removed. Yet they talk as if they were the land that God made—as if they were God himself, anal not the men who have converted the land into a curse for all. God showers bleitsings on you, which they coneere into plagues ; and you doff your hats to them, forgetting yourselves—and that is saying you forget God, who wastes nothing, and will not furnish you with importunities if you throw them away. What hope, then, have you, but in yourselves ? Will your enemies help you? From the time of the first mur- derer they have been what they are. They poisoned Stier/et:a—they crucified Jesus—and would they help you ? No, no, you must help youreelves."
Several other speeches were delivered, but it is not necessary to make extract from them ; it is sufficient to say that there was no vio- lence or outrages upon Common sense, such as Stephens and a few others commit, but much resolution displayed, and some excellent advice given, as to peaceful behaviour, cleanliness, temperance, and pertseverance. The usual resolutions declaratory of the right of the "universal people" to the elective franchise were agreed to.
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