No. CLXV,

VOL. XXVII.

THE necessity of providing employment for the multitudes of manufacturing, as well as of agricultural labourers, whom political and social changes have thrown out of work, is become at length so urgent and pressing, that it can no longer be overlooked without seriously affecting the prosperity, or even endangering the peace, of the community. The intensity of the distress which prevails among the industrious classes in this country can be properly estimated by those alone who have personally witnessed its overwhelming pressure. Nor is it of a partial character: it is not confined to those who are employed in any particular species of industry for which the demand has ceased in consequence of a change in their public trade. To this partial degree of suffering every manufacturing community is always liable. When metal buttons or buckles, for instance, went out of fashion, the artisans employed in fabricating these commodities were unavoidably plunged into temporary distress. But while manufacturers of buttons and buckles laboured under difficulties, every other branch of public industry continued to yield its usual returns; some branches of manufacture were even benefitted by the change; the demand for ribband and twist necessarily increased in the proportion in which the use of buckles and metal buttons had been discontinued by the public. There was thus no diminution in the aggregate demand for labour, although it varied in parti

VOL. XXVII. NO. CLXV.

cular branches; the total amount was the same, although the items which formed it differed. It must likewise be added, that the distress occasioned by a relaxation in the demand for particular commodities, was not only partial in its extent, but also temporary in its duration. The labour and the capital disengaged from the fabrication of metal buttons and buckles, were transferred into the manufacture of ribband and twist; and by this means the rate of wages and profit, momentarily deranged by a change of fashion, was soon restored to its accustomed level. Neither the capitalist nor the labourer was in the end much inconvenienced by this change; the falling off in one branch of manufacture being counterbalanced by an increased activity in some other department of public industry.

But far different appears the character of the depression which has recently fallen upon the industry of this country. It seems to be universal; it extends throughout every district of the country; it affects every interest; it pervades the whole mass of our industrious population; involving in one common ruin the agricultural, the manufacturing, and the trading classes. The records of Parliament will testify that there is scarcely a county-scarcely a parish from Penzance to the Orkneys, which has not petitioned, or at least which is not about to petition, the legislature for relief. The cry in every district is the same-general, overwhelming, intolerable distress. The farming classes 20

are all in a state of absolute insolvency; all incapable of fulfilling the contracts into which they had entered. The landowners have therefore been compelled to compound for their rents, and content themselves with what they can get in lieu of the amount which their tenants had bargained to pay. The farmer, ruined by the fall which has taken place in the price of agricultural produce, is not only unable to pay his rent, but he is like wise deprived of the means necessary to defray the wages of labour; hence the labourers of the country, however able and willing to work, can get no employment. In some parishes they are seen working on the roads, or in gravel pits, at a rate of wages not exceeding two shillings per week; in others, where no labour of any kind is provided for them, they form desperate bands, and rove about in a state of idleness to the great terror of the inhabitants of the district. Some parishes, justly afraid of the consequences which cannot fail to result from this lawless vagrancy, collect their able-bodied labourers once a-week and let them in vestry to the highest bidder. On the fifteenth day of the month of January last, a vestry was held in the parish of Henninghall, in the county of Norfolk, for the purpose of taking into consideration the better employment of the surplus poor; where it was resolved, "That all unemployed labourers shall inform the overseer of their want of work, that their names may be presented by him at the next vestry meeting, to be held on Monday morning in every week, at ten o'clock, that they may be then let at the best price that can be obtained for them for the next week." The same practice has been adopted in the adjoining parish of Winfarthing; and if not speedily arrested, the odious system of putting the labour of human beings up to public auction threatens to spread throughout that part of the kingdom. The gross and pernicious absurdities of the Malthusian school, have inspired the landowners of the country with so much horror of cottages, that the want of that species of accommodation for the labouring poor begins to operate as an intolerable evil in many parts of the country. "I cannot," says the Bishop of Winchester,

in a charge to his clergy, delivered at his primary visitation in the course of last year, "refrain from adverting to an inconvenience unfelt till recently in agricultural parishes, but now beginning to affect them in a manner very prejudicial to the proper ha bits of the people. I allude to the deficiency of cottages for the accommodation of the poor; arising partly from the excess of population, partly from the natural objection on the part of the landlords, to keep up tenements which are likely to increase the pressure of the poor's rate, but too intolerable already. One parish thus situated, consists of twenty-nine cottages, the inmates of which amount to two hundred and ten persons. By an actual admeasurement of the dimensions of each cottage, it appears that their aggregate contents include an area of three hundred and forty-seven feet in length, by two hundred and eighty-two in breadth; giving an average space of about twelve feet by ten for each cottage. In many of those tenements no fewer than eight, and in some instances, as many as ten persons, occasionally of different families, are crowded together day and night, the children literally sleeping under the beds of their parents, without distinction of age or sex. consequence of such a state of things to the health and morals of the parishioners, are too obvious to need pointing out; and though in this particular case, local circumstances make it difficult to provide a remedy, I know that a strong desire exists to diminish the evil, and have reason to hope that measures will be taken for this purpose." When Mr Malthus was examined before the Emigration Committee, he suggested, that to render the possession of tenements more difficult to the poor, would prove a salutary measure, by checking population, and preventing too early marriages; he added, that on general principles he saw no objection to the imposition of a tax on a landlord who builds a cottage on his land. The fact stated by the Bishop of Winchester, furnishes an useful commentary on the practical operation of such principles; it seems to operate admirably in destroying the comforts, degrading the character, and deteriorating the morals of the poor: appears somewhat doubt

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ful whether it have any effect in preventing improvident marriages, and checking the increase of population. Somehow or other, it would seem that the peasantry of Hampshire contrive to multiply in spite of the pains which have been taken to withhold from them the wicked encouragement of comfortable cottages: it appears that those who cannot command the accommodation of a whole cottage, bring themselves to put up with only a part of a cottage. This conduct on the part of the peasantry, is no doubt very much to be reprehended, as highly inconsistent with the valuable doctrines, dogmas, and suggestions of the Political Economists: these poor and ignorant creatures appear to pay more regard to the law of nature, than to the maxims and warnings of their friends the Political Economists. But whatever may be the motives of their conduct, the effect presents itself in almost every district in England; from the comfortless character of the cottages into which they are crowded, and low rate of wages which they receive, more especially in the winter season, penitentiaries and houses of correction have become objects of desire rather than of terror to the British peasantry; they enter them too often with alacrity, and quit them with regret to be committed for an infringement of the Game Laws, or some other misdemeanour, instead of shunning as a punishment, too many of them court as a reward; by this means they secure a more comfortable lodging, as well as a more abundant supply of food, than would be furnished them by their parishes or employers.

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If we turn from the class engaged in the labours of agriculture, to those employed in manufactures, the scenes which present themselves are equally discouraging: and what renders the distress prevalent in the manufacturing districts of the North of England still more lamentable and alarming, is the fact that it has already subsisted for some years, and yet presents no symptoms of abatement. It commenced, we believe, in the year 1826. In the following year it had, as our readers, no doubt, recollect, become so intense and extensive in its character, that a munificent subscription was raised for the

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relief of the manufacturers. prove the intensity of the suffering of our manufacturing population in 1829, we shall quote a passage from the evidence of a witness examined by the Emigration Committee in the spring of that year. Mr Halton, a gentleman of large landed property in Lancashire, and residing twelve miles from Manchester, four south of Bolton, and about ten from Chorley, in the very heart of the manufacturing districts, made then the following statement before the committee. "I have lived at Halton ever since I came of age, and during that time I have never witnessed any thing at all equal to the present distress. I have been regularly visiting, not leaving it to committees, but I have myself visited all the cottages within a large district around my own house. I believe there is scarcely one loom in my own immediate neighbourhood unemployed now, but the state of the families of the poor is certainly much more destitute than it was when a very great number were actually unemployed. The present distress arises from several causes: the bedding and clothes of the poor are totally exhausted. The misery is beginning to work now by the poverty of the small lay payers; for, as has been mentioned by another witness, our farms are generally very small; they may keep two or three cows; there are exceptions; but they are generally very small; and those lay-payers, whose families were employed in the hand-loom weaving, have left their land in a very bad state; they have generally attended to their loom, now they cannot obtain sufficient to pay their taxes; the consequence is, that the persons to whom their land belongs must suffer. I have ventured to report to the London Committee one or two instances of distress, such as I had not conceived to exist in a civilized country: there is one I have not reported, which was anterior to the last donation we received. Mrs Halton and myself, in visiting the poor, were asked by a person almost starving, to go into a house; we there found on one side of the fire a very old man, apparently dying, on the other side a young man about eighteen, with a child on his knee, whose mother had just died and been buried;

and evidently both that young man and the child were suffering from want; of course our object was to relieve them, and we were going away from that house, when the woman said, Sir, you have not seen all: we went up stairs, and under some rags we found another young man, the widower, and on turning down the rags, which he was unable to remove himself, we found another man who was dying, and who did die in the course of the day. I have no doubt that family were actually starving at the time. We have made a very accurate calculation of the families in that neighbourhood who are on the verge of famine, if not suffering actual famine. In the last township we visited, West Houghton, consisting of rather more than five thousand inhabitants, we found two thousand five hundred totally destitute of bedding, and nearly so of clothes. I am positive I am correct, when I say that six per cent are in a state such as that described, a state of famine, or that approaching to it; it is from the papers I have prepared for the committee I deduce that to be an accurate statement. In another case of extreme distress, there was a widow and three children, who had not tasted the meal and water, which is the only thing almost they eat there, for eight and forty hours. I found a young man of sixteen in such a state of exhaustion, that I was obliged to send a cart with a litter to bring him home, and he is now under my own care, and we have hardly been able to sustain him in life; we found many families who have not made one meal in twenty-four hours."

It must, perhaps, be admitted, that at the present moment the condition of the manufacturing classes in the Northern districts, is not quite so wretched as it was at the period above mentioned. Their situation appears to be so far improved, that few of them are altogether destitute of some species of employment; but, from the excessive competition which prevails among them, the wages of labour have sustained so great a reduction, that the earnings of the most industrious workman are scarcely adequate to command a full supply of the meanest and coarsest fare. Various enquiries have been recent ly made into the circumstances and

condition of the working classes in the two great manufacturing counties of York and Lancaster; it is no doubt somewhat difficult to arrive at exactness in an investigation which embraces so wide a field; abundant evidence has, however, been laid before the public, to prove that the wages of manufacturing labour continue ruinously low, and the condition of the workmen incredibly depressed. A keen dispute has recently been carried on between two rival newspapers at Manchester, respecting the amount of wages actually earned by manufacturing labourers in that town and neighbourhood; one of these publications being friendly, and the other hostile, to the present Ministry. The anti-ministerial print asserted, that on a careful enquiry into the circumstances of upwards of two hundred individuals engaged in manufacturing labour, and indiscriminately selected, it was found that, including in the calculation both wages and parochial allowances, the incomings of each individual member of these families did not exceed two shillings per week; while the ministerial print, on the contrary, contended that earnings and parish-pay being included, each of these individuals received for his subsistence three shillings weekly. As we are desirous not to exaggerate the sufferings of the manufacturing classes, we will admit the ministerial statement to be well-founded; but what a dreadful state of things does even this estimate disclose to us—a countless host of industrious workmen, who, after toiling for the space of sixteen hours every day, are unable to earn enough, without parish assistance, to expend fivepence per day upon the lodging, food, and clothing of each member of their families! Surely the prosperity partisans of the Cabinet will not have the effrontery to assert, that the distress prevailing in those districts is only partial? They will not, we should suppose, venture to contend, that as far at least as regards the manufacturing districts of the counties of York and Lancaster, the pressure upon the industrious classes is not overwhelming and universal?

Bad, however, as is the condition of the manufacturers in the North, the state of the clothing districts in