chartists were a powerful body in that district, and such was the state of the public mind, that if there was a movement for the destruction of property and dissolution of social order to-morrow, there were thousands who would not hold up a little finger against them.
The Rev. Mr. Lowe, of Forfar, said he was persuaded (Sir R. Peel) had felt at the details of suffering and misery which had been presented to him. He would not unnecessarily add to that feeling by a renewed reference to those details; he could scarcely trust his own feelings as to what he might say in his presence on a subject so awfully important, and at a crisis so momentous as this. If he (Sir Robert Peel) had the heart of a man, it could not but be touched at the contemplation of the wretchedness, suffering, and want that existed in this country, and which had passed before his mind's eye. If it could have been possible for him to have been ignorant of the real condition of the country, he had now had submitted to him, solemnly, and in the plainest and most faithful manner, the undeniable fact that poverty, starvation, want of employment, and all their consequent and concomitant miseries are at this moment prevailing, increasing, and extending, to a degree unparalleled in the history of our country for centuries past. Without entering into details, he might be permitted to say, in respect to Forfar, from which he came, and its neighbouring towns, that although they had not yet experienced the intensity of suffering which other manufacturing districts were enduring, yet the amount of poverty, want, and wretchedness which prevailed with them were more than sufficient to enlist the energies and call forth the exertions of every man who had a heart to feel and an influence to use, for the amelioration of the condition of his fellow men. Conversant he was with the poor and working classes of Forfar, by mingling with them, visiting them in their houses, endeavouring to comfort them under their deep privations by the solaces of our holy religion, to
