[‘It was a monstrous thing to make poverty a crime’: Jesse Collings, Liberal politician.] Autograph Letter Signed, attacking the government over a bill which was meant to be ‘of no use to the people whom it affected’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. On first leaf of bifolium. Lightly aged and worn. Folded four times. Signed ‘Jesse Collings’. Addressed to ‘Messrs Smith & Kitching / Hon. Secs. Political Committee / Chelsea / London’. Minuted in pencil on reverse of second leaf: ‘Acknowledgment of Copy of our Resolution’. He has been ‘so much over-pressed with correspondence and other work’, hence the delay in replying. He asks them to ‘convey my best thanks to your Committee for the Resolution they have passed, and copy of which you enclosed’. They will have seen that ‘the Bill has now become law in spite of the action of the Govt. who evidently wanted a Bill that should be of no use to the people whom it affected’. He continues: ‘The labouring poor have already enough to contend with, and it was a monstrous thing to make poverty a crime to be punished by the loss of the rights of citizenship’.