London at the head of the Indian Army. In the mean time the Channel
Fleet has declared for its own commander, has seized upon Plymouth
and Portsmouth, and intends to starve the metropolis by stopping the
imports of "bread-stuffs" at the mouth of the Thames. And this has
become quite possible; for half the population of London, under the
present state of things, subsist upon free distributions of corn
dispensed by the occupant of the throne for the time being. But a
more fatal change than even this has come over the population of the
capital and of the whole country. The free citizens and 'prentices
of London; the sturdy labourers of Dorsetshire and the eastern
counties; and the skilful artizans of Manchester, Sheffield and
Birmingham; the mariners and shipwrights of Liverpool, have been long
ago drafted into marching regiments, and have left their bones to
bleach beneath Indian suns and Polar snows. Their place has been
supplied by countless herds of negro slaves, who till the fields and
crowd the workshops of our towns, to the entire exclusion of free
labour; for the free population, or rather the miserable relics of
them, disdain all manual employment: they divide their time between
starvation and a degrading debauchery, the means for which are
sedulously provided by the government. The time-honoured
institutions of the bull-bait, the cockpit, and the ring, are in
daily operation, under the most distinguished patronage. Hyde Park
has been converted into a gigantic arena, where criminals from
Newgate "set-to" with the animals from the Zoological Gardens. Every
fortnight there is a Derby Day, and the whole population pour into
the Downs with frantic excitement, leaving the city to the slaves.
And then the moral condition of this immense mass! Of the doings
about the palace we should be sorry to speak. But the lady
patronesses of Almack's still more assiduously patronize the prize-
fights, and one of them has been seen within the ropes, in battle