The Whigs have lost Cambridge—Mr. Manners Sutton, a sinecurist placeman, born of a family amongst the State-suckers, who have absorbed amongst them a larger share of the loaves and fishes, than almost any of the very numerous family of the ‘Sponges,’ has been returned.

A large public meeting was held on Enfield, on Sunday afternoon, May the 29th. The day was beautifully fine, and there could not be less than twenty thousand persons present[….] Mr. Marsden, from Preston, who came forward amidst loud cheers[,..] entered into a lengthy statement of our prospects; told the working men to take their own affairs into their own hands; that they must rely on their own strength, their own energy, and perseverance for the attainment of their just and inalienable rights, and concluded by reading the following document: To the enfranchised portion of the community, and all those possessed of political power. ‘Gentlemen,—You have hitherto governed us, whilst our part in the state hath been but to toil, to pay, and to obey. We have performed our part. With an immense debt, created by war and heavy taxes, still national credit hath been maintained; the nation’s dignity supported, and its wealth yearly increased. You must admit that it was your duty to have protected our labour in return, but reckless sepaulators have been allowed to indemnify themselves for their loss, the result of their avaricious schemes, by reduction in our wages. Thus year after year, have our wages been sinking, whilst a Corn Law has been supported, keeping provisions at a nearly unvarying price, in order that the class of landowners might continue to receive the same amount of rental. To make matters worse, machinery has been introduced to an extent so as nearly to supersede manual labour; and now, whilst one-half of the working population are deprived of all employment, the other half find it difficult to sustain life with all their toil. For twenty years we have petitioned and implored, but in vain—first, for a removal of the Corn Laws, then for Boards of Trade, and a diminution of the taxes; and the only way in which Government has acted in reference to us, has been by an endeavour to silence our complaints in dungeons and bastile, and getting rid of us by emigration. Our prospects are gloomy in the extreme. Nothing now presents itself but starving to death on our native soil—the land which our sires so nobly defended. We are now become convinced that appeals to you are useless; you have destroyed our confidence; the hopes so long and fondly cherished are forever blasted. Henceforth, on our own strength, and the justice of our cause, shall we rely; and look within ourselves for the elements of another and a better state of things. We long not for anarchy—we pant not for blood; but we cannot behold our wives discontented and unhappy, and our children famishing for bread, without an effort to relieve them. You who profess to be our friends, and would advise us to be patient, ease the pangs of hunger; or if that be not in your power, be silent; otherwise we can no longer view you as friends, but only as enemies in disguise. It is criminal to tell the starving to be patient, and proves your sympathy to be but rank hypocrisy. You profess to admire the forbearance we have hitherto manifested, and cry out peace, peace, whilst a war of famine, created by Mammon, is sending thousands to premature graves. What is your motive? We are not assassins; we wish not for plunder; we wish but for a fair remuneration for our labour, and to have that labour protected. It is all that we [have] to live by. We have no access to the land; that is monopolised by a few[.…] Ought then, we ask, a few wealthy capitalists to be allowed to monopolise our only remaining means of subsistence? Is this justice? Is this protection? Either give us labour for which we are to be properly paid; or if machinery must do the work, let us share the produce. Can any desire be more natural and just? But to whom must we appeal with so reasonable a request? Will landowners permit us to cultivate the land for ourselves, or will millowners allow us to enjoy the wealth derived from these machines? Yet these are our law-makers—to these alone we are necessitated to apply; and, though our request to us appears reasonable and just, to them it appears the most extravagant desire imaginable, and is scouted as such accordingly. On what, then, do you who affect to sympathise with us ground your hopes? Is this feeling and disposition on the part of our rulers about to change? Experience answers never; and that our present destitute condition is but the natural result of class-made law. We, therefore, tell our rulers calmly and deliberately that we can no longer bear the system of slow murder which they seem intent on following up. Better die by the sword than die of hunger; and, if we are to be butchered, why not commence the bloody work at once. (Immense cheering.) Life hath no charms when all prospect of happiness is gone, for happiness cannot exist without contentment; and where is contentment to be found without a sufficiency to satisfy the cravings of hunger, and something like comfortable food and raiment. The majority of our countrymen will never stand by and see injustice done when those who feel the bitterness of oppression nobly defend themselves—(hear, hears, and cheers), but crawling sycophancy and servile submission disgust every rational mind. We claim to be ranked as citizens, not as slaves[….] Can any man put his hand to his heart and say that the present salaries for officers of state should continue to be paid, whilst wrung from so much poverty and wretchedness as that which now fills the land? Against these things we war, and appeal to the understanding of all, and ask whether we are not justified in demanding their instant removal’ (great cheering.)

It is only a few days since a member of the Peerage in his place in the House of Lords, said, ‘he had asked a gentleman connected with a town in which distress existed, how it was that the people had borne their sufferings with such patience: for he thought that if he (Lord Kinnaird) had seen his children perishing around him for want—if he had seen the felon in gaol better treated than the person willing to work—sooner than submit to this he thought he would have gone and helped himself.’ The Lordships who sat on the benches of the House of Lords, with well-filled stomachs, ‘laughed’ at this; on which Lord Kinnaird observed that ‘this might be a laughing matter to their lordships, comfortably seated on these benches, but it was no laughing matter to those who suffered from the distress.’ That it is in truth ‘no laughing matter’ to famish from want, and be driven to desperation in the attempt to appease the demands of hunger, has been sufficiently proved by the recent proceedings at Ennis, in Ireland, where two persons (one of them a woman—perhaps a mother whose children were famishing) have been shot by the police, and a number more severely wounded, in the a...