The Miles within the House is truly but the representative
and shadow of the sturdy beggars without it—the Talbot of that clamorous =ay; and in Booth, "beggars are coming to town "—by petition. A general move- ment "amongst the English counties" has been began by Mr. High-Sheriff Hopkinson in Gloucester; and under his auspices a public meeting haste adopted a Hopkinson, petition to the Commons. It begins by showing, "that your petitioners as a body are in a state of dee.p distress ' ; deplores dimi-
g " protection "; reminds the House of its kind consideration " [how one recognizes the "do, kind gentlemen 11 in 1835, when it relieved the counties of half the expense of criminal prosecutions and the whole cost of convict transportation; pleads distress "much greater than when the above reliefwas afforded"; and prays that petitioners may be relieved of all charges paid for county and police rates. There is throughout, the regular " whhie" of importunate encroachment. The trade of the mendicant, however, ig thriving one : we remember the perpetual stories of ragged men traced from their well-swept crossings home to a cheerful family-fireside and luffli- rims dinner- and this case is no exception. The petitioners, indeed, lima their complaint of distress—they are deeply distressed "as a body "; plying a good deal of spiritual affluence. Yet their mere bodily estate is not so bad. Subjoined to the petition in the report of the Times, beginnilig with the complaint of "deep distress," are just these words—" After the meeting, upwards of sixty gentlemen dined together at the Spread Eagle." This suggests a curious problem: either we have here a copy in chorus of
the impostor of the crossing, or sixty Diveses may make an associate Lit- earns. However, it is clear that the "agricultural distress" of Parlia-
mentary speech does not mean want of dinner: it is not the eagerly-denied squalid .distress of Dorsetshire labourers, or of carrion-eating Bolton weavers. What " workhouse-test " have we to apply to the demand for relief from these honourable beggars?
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