An address to the Irish People, signed by the authorized
represen- tatives—Chairmen or Secretaries—of one hundred and nine Working Men's Associations in England, Scotland, and IVale, has been sent to us. It exhibits, in the following passages, attention to facts, and the knowledge of applying them to the purpose in hand.
" In the first pla.:e, exclusive legislators, having their own interest to secure rather than the general happiness of society, have by their corrupt enactments, ruinous wars, extravagant expenditure, taxation, and monopoly, generated great poverty amongst the people. "Secondly, where poverty exists, there will ignorance and violence exist also; and hence those funds which ought to be employed in produetion have been di- verted to the supporting of soldiers, police, prisons, anti all those instruments for punishing, what ought in wisdom to have been prevented. " Thirdly, when violence and insecurity exist in a country. coupled with the exaction of fraud, monopoly, and injustice, capital will not be secure and will pot be employed there: the man of wealth will not be safe, and consequently will not reside there.
" Fourthly, for want of those employments capital and wealth would create, nearly the whole population are compelled to have recourse to agriculture: the consequent competition fer land has forced up nominal rents beyond the power of payment; joined to which, the rapacity of tithe.proctors, collectors, and bailiffs, have further paralyzed the hand of industry, and prevented those inn p-ovements the owner and cultivator might otherwise enjoy. " Fifthly, the people thus reduced to live on the lowest description of food, their standard of comforts being almost confined to a sufficiency if it—being the worst housed, fed, and clothed of any people in Europe—there is no demand for those trades and manufactures which generate and support a respectable middle class population; excepting, perhaps, some few exporting towns. " Sixthly, the long serieeot injustice, insults, and neglect to which your pea- santry in particular have been exposed, have generated that state of poverty and wretchedness among them which is gradually undermining the conif.rts of the class above them, and bids fair to involve all in the sante common ruin; for as their numbers increase, they force theneailves upon the towns, RI141 by their low standard of comforts are the main instruments for bringing down all others to their own miserable standard.
" Seventbly, faction has been arrayed against faction, creed against creed, and man against his brother man, not so much from their own conscientious opinions, as frum the pernicious councils and malignant influences of corrupt legislate,' s, who find their own selfish supremacy strengthened by the divisions and dissen- sions of the multitude."
For all these evils, LTniversill Suffi age is the remedy recommended ; and the Irish people are reminded, that " Alr. O'Connell has sworn and pledged himself to support Universal Suffrage ; as well as all the other essentials to the free exercise of that right."
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