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To hedge, or dig the ditch,
To lop or fell the tree,

To lay the swarth on the sultry field,
Or plough the stubborn lea;
The harvest stack to bind,

The wheaten rick to thatch,
And never fear in my pouch to find
The tinder or the match.

To a flaming barn or farm
My fancies never roam;

The fire I yearn to kindle and burn
Is on the hearth of home;
Where children huddle and crouch
Through dark long winter days,
Where starving children huddle and crouch,
To see the cheerful rays,
A-glowing on the haggard cheek,.
And not in the haggard's blaze!

To Him who sends a drought
To parch the fields forlorn,

The rain to flood the meadows with mud,
The blight to blast the corn,-

To Him I leave to guide

The bolt in its crooked path,

To strike the miser's rick, and show
The skies blood-red with wrath.

A spade! a rake! a hoe!

A pickaxe, or a bill!

A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will!

The corn to thrash, or the hedge to plash,
The market-team to drive,

Or mend the fence by the cover side.
And leave the game alive.

Aye, only give me work,

And then you need not fear
That I shall snare his worship's hare,
Or kill his grace's deer;-

Break into his lordship's house,
To steal the plate so rich;

Or leave the yeoman that had a purse
To welter in a ditch.

Wherever nature needs,
Wherever labour calls,

No job I'll shirk of the hardest work,
To shun the workhouse walls;

Where savage laws begrudge

The pauper babe its breath,

And doom a wife to a widow's life,
Before her partner's death.

My only claim is this,

With labour stiff and stark, By lawful turn, my living to earn, Between the light and dark; My daily bread, and nightly bed, My bacon, and drop of beerBut all from the hand that holds the land; And none from the overseer.

No parish money or loaf,

No pauper badges for me,

A son of the soil, by right of toil
Entitled to my fee.

No alms I ask-give me my task;
Here are the arm, the leg,

The strength, the sinews of a Man,
To work, and not to beg.

Still one of Adam's heirs,

Though doom'd, by chance of birth,
To dress so mean, and to eat the lean,
Instead of the fat of the earth-

To make such humble meals

As honest labour can,

A bone and a crust, with a grace to God,
And little thanks to man!

A spade a rake! a hoe!

A pickaxe, or a bill!

A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what ye will!
Whatever the tool to ply,

Here is a willing drudge,

With muscle and limb, and woe to him

Who does their pay begrudge!

Who every weekly score

Docks labour's little mite,

Bestows on the poor at the temple door,
But robb'd them over-night.

The very shilling he hoped to save,
As health and morals fail,
Shall visit me in the New Bastile,
The 'Spital, or the Gaol!

London: FRED. PITMAN, 20, Paternoster Row, E.C.

Printed by J. WARD, Dewsbury.

Popular Lecturer and
Lecturer and Reader.

Edited by HENRY PITMAN, Manchester.

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(Delivered in the Free-Trade Hall, Manchester, on Sunday, June 21st, 1863; the Rev. Dr. PARKER presiding.]

ST. JOHN, the Divine Seer, saw two lambs: the one was a lamb which had the outward appearance of a lamb, but had horns, and the voice of a dragon-the symbol of a false peace. You have heard much of that peace which has this outward appearance of mildness, but means permanent war. There was another lamb which St. John saw when he cried-"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!" That is the sign of a true peace a peace which takes away the evil which is the root of all war.

War is horrible, dreadful! No man who ever spoke to you, men and women of England, ever had a heavier feeling of its desolations than he who, in the order of GOD, now speaks to you. At this moment, with a father and two brothers in the Confederate army, with all my blood relations there, every blow for the principles which I hold dear, must crush my own heart and my own affections. War is terrible! but there are degrees of evil in war; and of all kinds of war that is the basest and worst which is a perpetual, deliberate, chronic war of the strong against the rights of the weak. That systematic war against men, women, and children, which slavery essentially is, is far worse than that acute form of war which may leave its

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horrid imprint upon one generation : whereas slavery commits a constant and deliberate wrong to those against whom it wars, and to their posterity.

The coincidence of the writing of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln-declaring that on the 1st day of January he would pronounce all slaves free in insurrectionary states-with the sun's passing the line of the equinox, was generally observed. It reminded me of Lord Bacon's saying, that shepherds and pastoral people had reason to watch the calendar of tempests of state, which were commonly greatest when things in the state grew to an equality, as natural tempests were greatest about the equinoctial. The conflict in America is pre-eminently an equinoctial storm.

Side by side throughout history, two forces have been coming down,-forces whose conflicts have made history, the man interest and the class interest. In every government of history, up to the election of our present President, the class interest prevailed over the man interest; in every government of history up to that time the segment had prevailed over the whole sphere, the part, the class, had prevailed against humanity in general. With that election slavery's night was matched by freedom's day; the equinox came in America, and with it the storm.

Perhaps all human progress has been summed up by the French in their watchword-Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. These are the order of the development of a single idea which the Creator planted at the heart of this universe, and of every atom of the universe. First comes liberty, which is another name for life itself. For liberty all things strive. This the very mole seeks as it burrows in the earth; and this Garibaldi seeks, clearing the path for new empires. The very strata of the earth, the history of animal forms, are the mighty means by which the animal world has marched on from imprisoning swamps and fettering shells to greater freedom of life and motion-the revolution of ages, of which the form of man is the crowning victory. History is the record of a higher force by which humanity has marched on from feudal shells and monarchical swamps to self-government, which is the human form of society. In all this progress it is liberty that is sought. Equality grows out of the passion for liberty, by reason of each man finding that he and his in

terests are so interwoven with other men and other interests, that he cannot be free unless other men are free also, "It is so arranged," says St. Pierre, "that when man puts a chain around his brother's neck, GOD is sure to fasten the other end of it around his own." We have discovered in America, by our terrible trial, that our own freedom is the freedom of other people also, and we say in our sorrow with St. Paul-"Who is weak, and I am not weak?"

When we have gained equality, which is higher than liberty, then we shall find that fraternity is as essential to true freedom as is equality. We need the fellowship of all to secure the development of each. Sympathy and fra ternity must crown the progress of liberty.

Now, in the war in America, we have these two social conditions closing in death grip. They have lately unfurled their flag with the greatest honesty. The chief organ of Virginia says "We have deliberately placed for liberty, equality, and fraternity,-slavery, subordination, and government." These two systems, then, are there represented, and one or the other is to prevail and be the owner of that great hemisphere, which is the newly-unfolded page in the history of the world, for the future record of you and your children.

We have then these two states of society, and they have their symbols. As civilisation has gone on, it has unfolded new and higher institutions in one half of that country; it has closed up old wrongs. Under its light in the North, we have seen ignorance pass away-under that glorious free-school priesthood and free-university system, by which the child of the poorest man in the northern states may get the highest classical and mathematical education without paying one penny for it. We have seen steam, the telegraph, the sewing machine, the rights of the labourer to his wages; simple, untaxed government, and no heavy expenditure for war; for until this unhappy conflict you might pass from Maine to Missouri and never see the gleam of steel, or hear of a soldier.

There are two dials in Paris near each other, one arranged by Linnæus the great botanist from the unfolding of some flowers, and the closing of others; some flowers close at various hours in the morning, and others unfold, and thus the advancing light traces its place in the heavens. The other dial is so arranged that when the sun mounts up to

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