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“THIS IS TRUE LIBERTY WHEN FREE-BORN MEN—HAVING TO ADVISE THE PUBLIC—MAY SPE;

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

‘ax following memior of the life of the late Ebenezer Elliott, written by himself, .n the middle of the year 1941, has been obdligingly furnished to us (The .2then- eum) for publication. Hereandthere we have omitted certain passages, to be found in the manuseript, which omission may appear occasionally to disturb the continuity of the narrative. But various reasons lmve suggested these several suppressions, which, after all, sacrifice rothing that is material or essentially characteristic of the autograph :—

Soon after my Corn Law Rhymes had made me somewhat notorious, I was strongly urged by eundry persons to write a history of my life; which I then refused to do, because I had nothing re- markable to relate ofjmyself, and because i knew not thatI had done aught that could reasonably induce any person to ask, six months after my death, ‘ What soit of man was Ebenezer Elliott?” I placed, however, in the hands of my friend G. C. Holland, M. D., a series of letters, in which I narrated some incidents of my early life, that had probably influenced the formation of my mind and character, and which might form the basis of a gosthumous narrative, if wanted. I em- body in the succeeding narrative the sub- stance of those letters new, following the advice which [ rejected several years ago reluctantly, for the same reasons—not that this ia “a world to hide virtues in,” but that 3 have none to hide.

Ofmy birth, no public registry exists. My father being a Dissenter, baptised me himself, or employed his friend, and brother Berean, Tommy Wright, the Sarnsley tinker, to baptise me. But I was born at the New Foundry, Masbro’, in the Parish of Rotherham, on the 17th of March, in the year of our Lord, 1781; and I narrate the fact thus particularly, that about an event of such imporiance, thera may be no contentious ink shed by historians in times to come. Robert El-

ott, my father’s father, was a whitesmith, of Neweastle-upon-Tyne ; a man in good circumstances, or he could not have given to his son Ebenezer, my father, what was then considered a first class commercial education, and put him apprentice to Landell & Chambers, of that great city, wholesale irenmongers, who received with hima premium of £50. His wife, who rejoiced in the pastoral name of - Sheepshanks,” was a Scotswoman, and, speaking metaphorically, wore breeches, a circumstance which does not seein to have lessened the love her husband bore her: for he lamented her with tears long after she had been Jaid in the grave, even until the day of his death—especially when he was drunk. The ancestors of my grandfather, Elliott, l have been told

and have the honour to believe-—were thieves, neither Scotch nor English, who ‘ived on the cattle they stole from both. That my grandmother, Sheepshanks, had ancestors is probable; but of what they were neither record nor tradition had reached me—which is the more pity, be- cause my great difficulty in writing this narrative is want of materials, J*amous men are fated to have wants; but ask yourselves, ye famous! who could write your histories, if all the children of want vere famoua? After my father left landell & Chambers, ke became one of the clerks of the Walkers of Masbro’, where he lodged with a surceon, called

‘obinson ; under whose roof he first saw

ny tmother—one of the daughters of a yeoman, at Ozzins, near Pennistone,

" where his ancestors had lived on their

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ly ov eixty acres of freehold time out ot mind! | think, then, lL have made out my descent, if not from very fine folks, certainly from respectablea, as (getting *very day comparatively scarcer) they are caved in these days of “ten dogs to one

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HARLOTTETOWN,

If famous men are fated to have wants, so are they to have misfortunes, truly such —and some of mine were born before me ; for the whole life of my mother was a dis- ease—a tale of pain, terminated by death —one long sight. Yet she suckled eleven children, and reared eight of them to adult age. From herl have derived my ner- vous irritability, my bashful awkwardness, my miserable proneness to anticipate evil, that makes existence all catastrophe. I well remember her sending me to a dame’s school kept by Nanny Sikes—the beautiful and brave wife ofa drunken husband+where [ learned my ABC. I was next sent to the Hollis School ; then presided over by Joseph Ramsbotham, who tanght me to write—and little more. In those days, the science of monitership was undiscovered ; and, as he had seldom fewer, perhaps, than 150 scholars, ofepurse none but the naturally clever made much progress. About this time, my poor mo- ther, who was a first-rate dreamer, and a true believer in dreams, related to tne one of her visions. “I had placed under my pillow,” she said, “a shank-bone of mut- ton to dream upon; and [ dreamed that i saw a little, broad set, dark, ill-favoured man, with black hair, black eyes, thick stob nose and tup-shins: it was thy fa- ther.”

And a special original my father was— a man of great virtue—not without faults. One of the Jatter had its origin. probably, in some superstitions reverence for the cubalistic) nufber “three.” I allude to this bad habit of ducking his children thrice, and keeping them the third time some seconds under water, when he bathed us in the canal, which produced in me a horror of suffocation that seems to inerease with my yeare. To avoid this cruel kindness, { was obliged to shew him that f could do without his assistance, by bathing voluntarily; a consequence of which was, that, on one oceasior, [ nar- rowly escaped drowning—* the more the pity !” { have often said since. I never knew aman who possessed the tithe of my father’s satiric anc humorous powers : he would have made a great comic actor. He alzo possessed uncommon political sxcacity, which afterwards earned for him the title of “ Devil Elliott,”—a title which is still applied to him, I am told, by the descendants of persons who then hated the poor and honoured the King. He left the Measrs. Walker to serve Clay & Co., of the New Foundry, Masbro,’ for a salary of sixty or seventy pounds a-year, with house, candle and coal! Well dol remember some of those days of affluence and pit-coal fres—for glorious fires we had; no fear of coal bills in those days. There, at the New Foundry, undar the room where [ was born, in a little parlour like the cabin of aship, yearly painted green, and blessed with a beautiful tho- roughfare of light—for there was no win- dow-tax in those days—he used to preach, every fourth Sunday, to persons who came frem distances of twelve and four- teen miles, to hear his tremendous doc- trines of ultra-Calvanism (he called him- self a Berean) and hell hung round with span-long children! On other days, pointing to the acqua-tint pictures on the walls, he delighted to declaim on the virtues ofslandered Cromwell and cf Wash- ington, the rebel; or, shaking his sides with lauehter, explained the glories of “The glorious victory of his Majesty’s forces over the rebels at Bunker’s Hill!” Here the reader hes a key which will un- lock all my future politics. If ever there was aman who knew not fear, that man was the father of the Corn Law Rhymer. From his birth to his last gasp, | doubt whether he knew what it was to be afraid, except of poverty; about which he had sad forebodings—ultimately real- ised, after he had become nominal pro- prietor of the Foundry of Clay & Co— the partners having sold him their shares on credit.

“Oh, blessed are the beautiful!” says Haynes Baily, uttering for ever a senti- ment to which I can feelingly and mnourn- fully respond ; for, in my sixth year, [ had

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FEBRUARY 23, 1850. ai haan the small-pox, which left me frightfully disfigured, and six weeks blind : from the consequences J never entirely recovered. To them quite 6s much as to my poor mother’s infirm constitution, I impute my nerve-shaken weakness. How great was that weakness | will endeavour to shew the reader. When I was very young-—l might be twelve years old—I fell in love with a young woman, called Ridgeway— ney Mrs. Woodcock, of Munster, near Greasbro’—to whom I never spoke a word in my life, and the sound of whose yoice, to this day, I have never heard ; yet, if I thought she saw me as [ passed her father’s house, I felt as if weights were fastened to my feet. Is genius diseased? —{ cannot remember the time when ] was not fond of ruralities. Was TI born, then, with a taste for the beautiful ? When quite a child—I might be seven or eight years old—I remember filling a waster frying-pan with water, placing it in the centre of a little grove of mugwort or wormwood that grew on a stone heap in the foundry yard, and delighting to see the reflection of the sun, the clouds, and the planeta themselves, as from the sur- face of a natural fountain ; for I 80 placed the pan that the water in it only was visible, and I seldom failed to visit it at noon, when the sun was overit. But I had also a taste for the horrible—a passion--a rage—for seeing the faces of the hanged or the drowned. [| waa cured of it by a memorable spectacle. A poor friendless man, who, having no home, slept in colliery hovels and similar places, having been sent, ong dark night, from the glass-heuse, for a pitcher of ale, fel! into the canal, and was drowned. In about six weeks his body rose to the sur- face of the water, and J, of course, ran to see it. The spectacle, which by that time it presented, was daily and nightly, whether I was alone or in the street, in bed or by the fireside, for months, my constant companion. Had this morbid propensity any relation to my solitary tendencies? Healthy man is social; but in my childhood { had no associates ;— although the neighbourhood swarmed with children, I was always alone. And this is perhaps one reuson why I was deemed rather wanting in intellect, and why I might really have had fewer ideas than other children of my age, for I cut myself off from all communication with theirs, But though I was alone, I had no recollection that my solitude was painful: on the contrary, | employed my time delightfully in swimming my little fleets of ships, and repairing my fortress- es on the banks of the canal between the Greasbro’ and Rawmarch bridges. My early fondness for carpentering is no proof that if | had been bred an engineer I should have made any improvements in machinery--for al] children are nore or less fond of knicknackeries ; but I certain- ly excelled in handicrafts. I was the best kitemaker and ship-builder. Most Captains of sloops and other vessels poss- ess a model of a ship of some sort. By borrowing such models, | completed, when I was thirteen years old, a model of an eighteen-gun ship. I gave it, many years afterwards, to a boat-builder of Greasbro’, called Woffendin, who beg- ged it of me, that it might obtain for him the office of boat-builder to Farl Fitz- william. He gave, or sold it to Lord Milton, the pregent Earl Fitzwilliam, then a youth; and it wae, | believe,a few years ago still at Wentworth House. When [ look back on the days of rabid Toryiam through which I have passed and consider the then almost universal tendeney to worship the powers that were, and their worst mistakes, I feel astonish- ed that a werve-shaken man, whose? affrighted imagination in boyhood and youth slept with dead men’s faces, a man, wkose first sensation on standing up to address apublic meeting, ig that of his knees giving way under him, should have been able to retain his political integrity, without adjuring one article of his fear- less father’s creed. Brt, evewin those days, [ find, 1 was a Pree Trader, though

te ailaite ast ns sant :

AK FREE.”—Muitton’s Evripiwxs.

VOS. LO. 7.

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[ knew it not. So barbarous were some of the deeds done in that time, in the name of the law, and so painful was the impression which they had made on me when I was about sixteen years old, that I should certainly have emigrated to the United States, had I possessed sufficient funds for that purpose; nor should I, 1 fear, have been very scrupulous as to the means of obtaining them—so fully had the idea of emigration obtained possess- ion of me, 80 passionately had my mind embraced it, and so poetically had T asso- ciated with it Crusoe notions of self- dependence and insolation. It is not im- proper to blush for uncommitted offences.

My ninth year wasan era in my life. My father had cast a great pan, weighing some tons, for my uncle, at Thurlestone, and I determined to go thither in it, with- out acquainting my parents with my intention. A truck, with assistants, having been sent for it, I got into it, about sunset, unperceived, hiding myself beneath some hay, which it contained— and we proceeded on our journey. ! have not forgotten how much I was excited by the solemnity of the night, and its shooting stars, until [ arrived at Thurlestone, about four o’clock in the inorning. It is remarkable thatI never in after life, succeeded in any plan which I did not execute ina similar way. If [ ask advice, either the plan is never exe- cuted, or itis unsuccessful. {1 had not been many days at Thurlestgne before | wished myself at home again, for my heart was with my mother. If I ceuld have found my way back | should certain- ly have returned ; and my inability to do so (though my having come in the night may in some degree account for it) shews, I think, that [ really must have been a dull child. My uncle sent me to Penis- tone school, where I de some Ixtle progress. At this school, one ofthe boys, who had a bad breath, took a liking to me. He would sit close ‘to me, and al- most poisoned me; yet at any time he happened to be absent, I felt as if I could not live: so necessary has it ever been to me to have some kind bosom to Jean upon. When I got home from school | spent my evenings in looking from the back of my uncle’s house to Hoyland Swaine, for t had discovered that Masbro’ lay beyond that village; and ever, when the sun went down, I felt as if some great wrong had been done me. At length, in about « year and a-half my father came for me: and so ended my first irruption into the great world.

(To be.concluded in our next.)

WH ¥;,

Tarts little word, as little almost as word msy be, and pronouncable in a breath, may be termed the grand motto of the present age. People formerly used it very rarely, and never uniess they happened to be unusually astonished or indignant about something. ‘Phey now gay why to everything; and, in fact, this monosyllable makes all the difference that is, between former ages and the pre- sent. There may still be found, in re- mote corners of the country, a few quiet innocent people, who never say why; but that is a very different thing from what was the case fifty or a hundred years ago. All people, of whatsoever denomination, then lived in a state of perfect unconsci- ousness as to the use or meaning of the phrase ; everything was taken for granted ; and it was Jooked upon as the most pes- tilent and ridiculous thing in the world to inquire any farther than one’s neighbours. In those good old times, whatever teas was right. Authority of aj] kings, if it only had existed longer than any one could recollect, was implicitly obeyed, and the most of men lived—we really inust OWN ihe truth—in a state of shame- ful contentedness, as if they had not been aware that they had a will of their own. Taxes were then paid and spent, and no one thought more about it: it being spent,

the great end ef taxes seemed to be at

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