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THE

MORAL AND PHYSICAL CONDITION

 

| WORKING CLASSES

rE EMPLOYED IN THE COTTON MANUFACTURE IN MANCHESTER.

 

 

SECOND EDITION ENLARGED :

AND CONTAINING AN INTRODUCTORY LETTER

TO THE

REV. THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D.

PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, ETC.

BY

JAMES PHILLIPS KAY, M. D.

 

LONDON: :
JAMES RIDGWAY, NO. 169, PICCADILLY.

 

MDCCCXXXII.

 
 

MANCHESTER:
Printed by Harrison and Crosfield,
Market Street.
pee +f L O ND Sf

TO THE

REV. THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D.
My Dear Sir,

Tuar the former edition of this Pamphlet should have
been commended by those, who, deeply conscious of the
moral and physical evils endured by the working classes,
earnestly seek to arouse the power and intelligence of so-
ciety, to vigorous efforts for the improvement of their con-
dition, has strengthened the strong convictions which I then
felt concerning the source and the proper remedies of these
ills. I was especially deeply gratified when the principles
which I had there supported received the warm approbation
which you so cordially expressed, since I knew that the
energies of your exalted mind had long been perseveringly
devoted to an investigation of the actual condition of the
poor, and to a profound consideration of the means of their
relief.

I have for some time delayed publishing a second edition
of this pamphlet, chiefly because new sources of information
have been opened to me whilst engaged with the very intel-
ligent members of the Board of Health, established in Man-
chester, in devising, and urging into operation, plans for the
relief of persons suffering from Cholera.

804600
4

In minutely tracking the steps of this singular malady,
some general considerations have been impressed upon my
mind, which, as to no one can they be so appropriately
offered as to yourself, so am I urged by every impulse of
‘esteem and adiniration to address them to you.

Thus occupied. in tracing the means by which the conta-
gious principle of cholera is disseminated, I have felt sur-
prise at the singular frequency with which I have been led
to the most loathsome haunts of poverty and vice. Predis-
position to the reception of this contagion is strongly pro-
moted by all those agencies which depress the physical
energies: but though I was well aware of this law, I was by
no means prepared to discover, that, in its operation, it
observed so strict a relation to the degree in which these
agencies were combined. Had I been a stranger to the pur-
lieus of pauperism—if it had not been my custom, in the
exercise of public professional duties and for purposes of
local observation and inquiry, to frequent the precincts of
vice and disease, thither I should have been infallibly
led by this unerring guide. I am aware that exceptions to
the rule have occurred elsewhere, which, as I have not wit-
nessed them, I am not prepared to explain; but I felt a
melancholy pleasure in proving the singular constancy with
which this law operated here. Moreover, though I had at-
tributed to these sources that physical depression which
favours the invasion of disease, and particularly the spread
of contagion, and had; ere Cholera appeared in Manchester,
predicated its haunts, yet this practical demonstration of a
theoretical law did not fail to produce in my mind the effect
of a deeper and more entire conviction of the amount and
quality of the evils flowing from these sources, and a more
eager determination to attempt their removal.

You, who minister in the sacred office, must have more
frequent opportunities than I, of observing with regret, that
5

many who recognize the constant presence of a presiding
Providence, fail in practically acknowledging the perpetual
influence of a mighty source of moral causation; and especi-
ally, that they witness great events rather with the ignorant
wonder of the savage, than with that enlightened sagacity,
which seeks, with humility and caution, to discover their great
moral tendencies. You must have perceived that such men
regard great epochs, such as a pestilence or a famine, as
isolated facts of history, as though eras which powerfully
affect the human mind, could possibly be separated from
their inevitable moral consequences, and hence from those
events which necessarily flow from them. Nay, it is as-
tonishing that they do not perceive, that it is utterly im-
possible to separate any event which is witnessed by a human
intelligence, from a certain inevitable moral sequence; or
that they who know that to drop a pebble on the surface of
the world disturbs the planet, should not perceive how, of
an equal necessity, events acting on the human spirit, in pro-
portion to their novelty and power, disturb, for good or for
ill, the constitution of society.

These observations premised, you will pardon me, if]
having been placed constantly in the presence of that malady
which has ravaged our country, and having been engaged in
minutely contemplating its progress, I should presume upon
that acquaintance with its operation which I have reaped by
study, so far, as to indicate certain moral consequences,
which it seems likely to induce in the elass amongst which
it prevails, and amongst the other orders of society.

It is melancholy to perceive, how many of the evils
suffered by the poor flow from their own ignorance or moral
errors. In a much worse state of society, sobriety, pru-
dence, industry, and forethought, would produce more real
comfort, not to speak of domestic happiness and that inward
quiet which flows from a well founded self respect, than would
6

the greatest external prosperity, in which ignorance, dis-
solute habits, imprudence and idle extravagance prevailed.
Some prejudiced men, accustomed to examine only one side
of the shield, are hence eager to attribute all the evils
suffered by the poor, solely to their ignorance or moral de-
viations. On the contrary, not only do they suffer under
the pressure of extraneous grievances, but even those which
immediately flow from their own habits, may often be traced
to the primary influence of the imperfect institutions of so-
ciety on their character—to the combined effects of an un-
tutored ignorance—bad example, uncounteracted by a sys-
tem of moral instruction—and the desperate straits of a per-
verted spirit battling with hunger and toil. Their errors are
not more their fault than their misfortune, and they, who
would rescue them from their condition, must depend not
alone on elevating them physically, but must seek to pro-
duce a strong and permanent moral impression. In these
efforts the disease now prevailing in their habitations, and
likely, I fear, to remain as an endemic malady, is powerfully
calculated to assist, as it conveys the strongest admonition
of the consequences of insobriety, uncleanliness, and that im-
providence and idleness which waste the comforts of life, in-
duce weakness, and invite disease.

Especially in the present state of society, persevering in-
dustry, watchful forethought, scrupulous temperance and
economy are necessary to elevate a working man into a
situation of physical comfort, and abundant means may be
speedily dissipated in the absence of these presiding virtues
of poverty. A well furnished habitation in a salubrious site,
nutritious food, decent comforts, and warm clothing, may
speedily be exchanged, by the tavern spendthrift for a narrow
ill ventilated apartment, rickety furniture scarcely capable of
sustaining his squalid family, whilst he, his character lost,
may roam in ragged beggary, in vain seeking the means of
7

sustenance, and return to the noisome court and thickly
peopled barrack of pauperism in which is his abode, con-
veying in his own bosom from some haunt of vice, the fatal
element of contagion to poison his offspring. On the
other hand, he that would extricate his family from the
loathsome dwelling in the close alley, amongst whose de-
based inhabitants cholera lurks, and would seek some more
salubrious abode, and would even then banish the enemy from
his household, must provide the means of sustaining it in a
state of physical comfort, lest, when he is least aware, it de-
-solate his home.

This isa theme whose practical comment is unfortunately
at every door, and on which we are anxious to invite every
well wisher to the poor to enlarge, From events happening
in the vicinity of their dwellings, which demonstrate that
the fatal visitations of Cholera are made in the houses of
squalid poverty and reckless vice, they will not fail to draw
arguments in favour of industry and virtue, if care be taken
that they substitute none of that vulgar sophistry which
ignorance suggests to delude. One thing is necessary, that
the impressions, which the events are themselves calculated
to make, should be sedulously strengthened by earnest ad-
monitions, from every source of public ministration and of
private counsel.

On the other orders of society, Cholera commits such occa-
sional inroads, that if those sympathies which attach us to all
our kind were inno respect outraged, and man,—individuality
lost in the impersonated generality,—did not stand forth to re-
sist his invisible enemy, still selfishness would prompt those
elevated above poverty anxiously to watch the insidious pro-
gress of a malady whose presence benumbs the energies of
society, and paralyses commerce. He that values the pre-
cious jewel of hislife, and would guard the treasure, endea-
vours the extirpation of a disease which like a thief walking in
8

darkness, might, he fears, pass his threshold secretly, and
rifle the casket as he sleeps.

No event is more calculated painfully to excite the public
mind, than the invasion of pestilence, and since it cannot be
regarded as an isolated calamity, but prevails in consequence
of, and in proportion to the existence of others,—no other
can be so well calculated to unmask the deformity of evils
which have preyed upon the energies of the community. He
whose duty itis to follow the steps of this messenger of death,
must descend to the abodes of poverty, must frequent the
close alleys, the crowded courts, the overpeopled habitations -
of wretchedness, where pauperism and disease congregate
round the source of social discontent and political disorder
in the centre of our large towns, and behold with alarm, in
the hot-bed of pestilence, ills that fester in secret, at the
very heart of society.

That these evils should have been overlooked by the
aristocracy of the country, cannot excite surprise. Very
few of their order reside in, or near our large provincial
towns. Their visits to the country are generally intervals,
snatched from the pleasures or business of the metropolis,
in which their time is spent in an unbroken quiet, gentle
amusements, or the unembarrassed society of a circle of
friends, with some necessary attention to their estates, and
the magisterial duties of a rural district. Their parks are
not often traversed by those who are capable of being the
exponents of the evils endured by the working classes of
large towns, and the hoarse voice of popular discontent dis-
turbs not the Arcadian stillness of the scene. No transient
visit, prompted by curiosity concerning the wonderful com-
binations of mechanical skill, can afford them any correct
knowledge of the moral and physical condition of the poor.
Too often is it the interest of some to deceive them.
What wonder then, that the miseries of the people have
9

been solemnly denied in both houses of parliament—that
popular tumults have been attributed, most unphilosophically
(as to a sole and sufficient cause) to the instigation of unprin-
cipled leaders,—as though a happy people could love discord
—and that they who have asserted the truth have been sup-
posed to garble facts for their own political designs. The
public welfare will be most powerfully promoted by every
event, which exposes the condition of the people to the
gentry of England.

It might be apprehended that the merchants of the country
were sufficiently conversant with the habits and wants of the
operative population. The pure merchant is, however,
seldom in immediate contact with the people. No association
exists between him and them—the scenes of his enterprise
are distant, and the objects of his calculation concern not
the methods of production, but the barter of things produced.
The productive classes of society are engaged in supplying
the elements of commercial exchange, but he only in effect-
ing the exchange itself. The ingenuity, the minute know-
ledge of detail, and the industry expended in the execution
of his plans, suppose so complete an absorption of the whole
intellectual capacity, that we can scarcely wonder that
few engaged in the anxious and harassing pursuits of com-
merce, should find leisure to become personally acquainted
with the state of the population, much less to expose the
evils which they suffer.

Between the manufacturers of the country, staggering
under the burdens of an enormous taxation and a restricted
commerce ; between them and the labouring classes subjects
of controversy have arisen, and consequent animosity too
generally exists. The burdens of trade diminish the profits
of capital, and the wages of labour: but bitter debate arises
between the manufacturers and those in their employ, con-
cerning the proper division of that fund, from which these

B
10

are derived. The bargain for the wages of labour develops
organized associations of the working classes, for the pur-
pose of carrying on the contest with the capitalist: large
funds are subscribed : frequent meetings are held, at which
inflammatory harangues are delivered, and committees and
delegates chosen ;—a gloomy spirit of discontent is engen-
dered, and the public are not unfrequently alarmed, by the
wild out-break of popular violence, when mobs of machine
breakers defy the armed guardians of the peace. In these
contests personal animosity and party rancour have some-
times indulged in the most flagrant excesses ; the characters
of individuals have been most grossly maligned, their pro-
perty destroyed, and such severe personal assaults have been
made on those of the labouring class, who did not unite in
the general league, that they have occasionally produced the
loss of life, and, more than once, a master has been sacri-
ficed by an assassin.

Notwithstanding these demonstrations of insensate rage,
the enlightened manufacturers of the country, acutely sen-
sible of the miseries of large masses of the operative body,
are to be ranked amongst the foremost advocates of every
measure which can remove the pressure of the public bur-
dens from the people, and the most active promoters of every
plan which can conduce to their physical improvement, or
their moral elevation. There are, it is to be lamented,
a few who would hide the condition of the working
classes, lest its exposure should become an apology for the
excesses of the operatives, or an argument in favour of the
nostrums of political speculators. When this results not from
ignorance it is a crime, and I am not willing to screen those
from just contempt, who are so blind to the true interests of
their own order, or so fearful of the propositions of every quack,
that, deaf to the appeals of humanity, they represent
the people to be happy and contented. Surely, if they are
11

stubborn to the threats and furious assaults of the enraged
populace, still the scenes of suffering which they behold, the
embarrassments of their own enterprises, and the expostula-
tions of the wise, might dissuade them from pursuing the
crooked schemes of a narrow and devious policy.

Notwithstanding the general knowledge which the manu-
facturers must have of the condition of the working classes,
yet, before the appearance of the Cholera, they were not so well
convinced as they now are, that the minute personal inter-
ference of the higher ranks is necessary to the physical and
moral elevation of the poor. A new sphere is now opened, to
which their personal safety attracts their attention, and in
which the most active benevolence may expand and exhaust
itself. The pestilence is in their cities—at their very doors—
daily it smites in the crowded manufactories, and snatches its
victims from their very side. All past schemes—all past
exertions have been futile : some new development of mer-
ciful interference, is necessary to raise the people above
the influence of a new disease. In this spirit, in anticipation
of the invasion of Cholera, the inspections of the streets and
houses of the large towns, were performed with a zeal and
energy, which proved how powerfully the sympathies and
anxieties of the inhabitants were awakened.

The dense masses of the habitations of the poor, which
stretch out their arms, as though to grasp and enclose the
dwellings of the noble and wealthy, in the metropolis, and
in our large provincial cities, have heretofore been regarded
as mighty wildernesses of building, in which the incurable
ills of society rankled, beyond the reach of sanative inter-
ference. The good despaired that by their individual efforts
they could relieve the miseries, which, in their errands of
mercy, they beheld; and committees of inquiry sat only to
lengthen the records of crime, mendicity, ignorance and
pauperism. One fact alone became prominent, that the
12

united exertions of the individual members of society were
required, to procure a moral and physical change in the
community ; and it was evident that some circumstance was
wanting, to disturb the apathy which paralysed their energies.

The ingression of a disease, which threatens, with a
stealthy step, to invade the sanctity of the domestic circle ;
which may be unconsciously conveyed from those haunts of
beggary where it is rife, into the most still and secluded re-
treat of refinement—whose entrance, wealth cannot absolutely
bar, and luxury invites, this is an event which, in the secret
pang that it awakens, at the heart of all those who are bound
to any others by sympathies which it may harshly rend,
ensures that the anxious attention of every order of society
shall be directed to that, in which social ills abound. Though
the political safety of the wealthy is truly endangered when
ignorance and immorality prevail amongst the poor, that fact
is not rendered so apparent by daily and hourly illustration,
as is the personal hazard, incurred by permitting municipal
evils and barbarous manners to exist so generally as to invite
the inroads, and encourage the progress of pestilence. This
danger would certainly assume a more threatening aspect,
were the vulgar notion removed that Cholera is a mere epi-
demic visitation of a few months, and were it known that
once introduced, the disease generally continues to lurk long
in the places where it has appeared, still desolating the com-
munity, like the plague, with occasional bursts of epidemic
violence. Cholera can only be eradicated by raising the
physical and moral condition of the community, in such a
degree as to remove the predisposition to its reception and
propagation, which is created by poverty and immorality.
Were this notion, as it ought to be, widely diffused ; did it
become, as it will, the conviction of every intelligent man,
what additional force would be added to the arguments sug-
gested by sympathy and selfishness!
13

You must perceive how the constant presence of this new
danger will eventually affect the public mind. Boards of
Health established in conformity with the Orders in Council,
will become permanent organized centres of medical police,
where municipal powers will be directed by scientific men,
to the removal of those agencies which most powerfully de-
press the physical condition of the inhabitants. But I
chiefly depend on the strong impression made upon the pub-
lic mind, when I confidently expect that the singular energy
of this restless era will be directed to promote, not only by
general enactment, but by individual exertion, every scheme
devised for the moral elevation of the working classes.

This expectation will not be blighted, since every event
combines to prove that we have arrived at a great moral and
political crisis. The object of government is universally
acknowledged to be the happiness of the many ; and every
interest is staked upon its right administration. The lives,
the fortunes, and the liberties of the people will henceforth we
may hope be entrusted to those who know their wants, sympa-
thize with their distresses, and in whose experience, ability,
and integrity, they can repose the trust of devising means
~ for their relief. At this period therefore, an event which
exposes the miseries and privations of the labouring classes,
cannot fail to produce auspicious results.

These are some of those moral consequences which will,
I conceive, flow from the introduction of Cholera.

You will not, I hope, think I am presumptuous, if I add
that I am the more prone to this view of the subject, since
it seems to me to afford a beautiful proof how mercy
abounds even in the midst of apparent judgment. That our
intellectual errors necessarily lead to mischievous conse-
quences, and that our moral deviations are the very gates of
suffering, are facts, which he that examines his inward con-
sciousness, will find proved by daily experience. That
14

these are the fruitful sources of the misery of the world, its
whole history proclaims. Our own hands sow the seeds of
evil, and we reap its harvest. But in the terrific visitations
of these natural ills, whose mighty sum has been accumu-
lated by the repeated intellectual and moral errors of man,
how grateful is it to watch the constant interference of a pre-
servative Power, whose presence pervades the world.

Signal eras of calamity are calculated to produce such
deep and lasting impressions, that it is of the utmost conse-
quence they should be rightly understood. Events attended
with physical misery often create moral happiness ; rouse
the human spirit from apathy, and purge it from vice. Re-
volutions which overthrow every social institution, and dis-
solve every moral tie, tend by a destructive process to eradi-
cate antiquated errors, and to reform and renovate the fabric
of society. As storms dissipate pestilential miasmata, so
war, the scourge of the earth, overthrows the altars of super-
stition, and at its very shrine immolates its priests. War,
that wastes the treasures of despotism, nerves the arms of
the people, and amidst the struggles of feudal pride they as-
sert their rights, and claim their peaceful possessions. Thus
it is, that the noxious elements which threaten man with
physical and moral evil are dissipated, and if we are
tempted to regard the ministers of a beneficent Provi-
dence as clothed in the apparel of wrath, a moment's in-
spection will show, that calamity is the consequence of error,
but that they are messengers of mercy who bring good out
of ill.

I am thus disposed to hope that many events have concurred
to impress the public mind with a sense of the importance of
minutely investigating the state: of the working classes.
Wishing to strengthen this conviction, and to assist in the
benevolent designs in which it must issue, I offer the statis-
15

tical evidence contained in this pamphlet, as a humble con-
tribution to the fund of information concerning the moral and
physical condition of the poor, throughout the kingdom. I
have carefully avoided instituting any comparison between
the state of the labouring classes of Manchester, and that of
those in other large manufacturing towns. Iam not without
the hope that similar inquiries will be undertaken elsewhere;
and if they become general, the first object of this work will
be accomplished. = Were such investigations conducted,
with a zeal corresponding with that evinced by my fellow
townsmen, in the prosecution of this, I fear it would be dis-
covered, that Manchester might be very favourably com-
pared with many large towns. The improvements which are
constantly projected here, are carried on with an energy
which shows that the inhabitants of Manchester, as they are
second to none in the successful application of science to
the arts—in foreign enterprise—and in wealth—so are they
determined, in the future, to yield the palm to none in the
perfection of their municipal regulations—the number of their
institutions for the spread of knowledge and the advancement
of science—in the stability of their civic economy, and the
ornaments of their social state.

The evils here unreservedly exposed, so far from being
the necessary consequences of the manufacturing system, have
a remote and accidental origin, and might, by judicious
management, be entirely removed. Nor do they flow from
any single source: and especially in the present state of trade,
the hours of labour cannot be materially diminished, without
occasioning the most serious commercial embarrassment. This
pamphlet chiefly exhibits a frightful picture of the effects of in-
judicious legislation. The evils of restricted commerce affect
not the capitalist alone: for the working classes are reserved
the bitterest dregs of the poisoned chalice. We have a poor
law operating as a direct bounty on the increase of an indigent
16

population—depriving the virtuous poor of the incentives to
industry, and glutting the market with labour. The state
receives support from taxes so regulated by recent laws, that
they facilitate the increase of the haunts of intemperance, and
the consequent demoralization of the people. There is no
sufficient provision for the education and the religious and
moral instruction of the poor; and their ignorance and
misery often prompt them to desperate deeds.

These and other evils demand immediate legislative inter-
ference ; and if the slight sketch contained in this pamphlet of
the monstrous effects of this imperfection of the law, hasten,
by one moment, the period at which that change shall be
commenced, the ultimate design of its author will have been
fulfilled.

I am
With great respect,
Yours,

JAMES PHILLIPS KAY.
MORAL AND PHYSICAL
CONDITION

OF THE WORKING CLASSES,

&ec.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE, inculcated by the maxim of the
ancient philosopher, is a precept not less appropri-
ate to societies than to individuals. The physical
and moral evils by which we are personally sur-
rounded, may he more easily avoided when we are
distinctly conscious of their existence ; and the virtue
and health of society may be preserved, with less
difficulty, when we are acquainted with the sources
of its errors and diseases.

The sensorium of the animal structure, to which
converge the sensibilities of each organ, is endowed
with a consciousness of every change in the sensations
to which each member is liable ; and few diseases are
so subtle as to escape its delicate perceptive power.
Pain thus reveals to us the existence of evils, which,
unless arrested in their progress, might insidiouslyin-
vade the sources of vital action.

Society were well preserved, did a similar faculty
preside, with an equal sensibility, over its constitu-
tion ; making every order immediately conscious of

C
18

the evils affecting any portion of the general mass,
and thus rendering their removal equally necessary
for the immediate ease, as it is for the ultimate wel-
fare of the whole social system. The mutual depend-
ance of the individual members of society and of its
various orders, for the supply of their necessities and
the gratification of their desires, is acknowledged,
and it imperfectly compensates for the want of a
faculty, resembling that pervading consciousness which
presides over the animal economy. But a knowledge
of the moral and physical evils oppressing one order
of the community, is by these means slowly commu-
' nicated to those which are remote; and general
efforts are seldom made for the relief of partial ills,
until they threaten to convulse the whole social
constitution.

Some governments have attempted to obtain, by
specific measures, that knowledge for the acquisition
of which there is no natural faculty. The statistical
investigations of Prussia, of the Netherlands, of
Sweden, and of France, concerning population, la-
bour, and its commercial and agricultural results;
the existing resources of the country, its taxation,
finance, &c. are minute and accurate. The economist
may, however, still regret, that many most interesting
subjects of inquiry are neglected, and that the reports
of these governments fail to give a perfect portraiture
of the features of each individual part of the social
body. Their system, imperfect though it be, is
greatly superior to any yet introduced into this
19

country. Here, statistics are neglected ; and when
any emergency demands a special inquiry, inform-
ation is obtained by means of committees of the
Commons, whose labours are so multifarious, as to afford
them time for little else than the investigation of
general conclusions, derived from the experience of
those supposed to be most conversant with the sub-
ject. An approximation to truth may thus be made,
but the results are never so minutely accurate as those
obtained from statistical investigations; and, as they
are generally deduced from a comparison of opposing
testimonies, and sometimes from partial evidence, they
frequently utterly fail in one most important respect,
namely—in convincing the public of the facts which
they proclaim.

The introduction into this country of a singularly
malignant contagious malady, which, though it se-
lects its victims from every order of society, is chiefly
propagated amongst those whose health is depressed
by disease, mental anxiety, or want of the comforts
and conveniences of life, has directed public atten-
tion to an investigation of the state of the poor. In
Manchester, Boards of Health were established, in
each of the fourteen districts of Police, for the pur-
pose of minutely inspecting the state of the houses
and streets. These districts were divided into mi-
nute sections, to each of which two or more inspec-
tors were appointed from among the most respectable
inhabitants of the vicinity, and they were provided
with tabular queries, applying to each particular
20

house and street. Individual exceptions only exist,
in which minute returns were not furnished to the
Special Board : and as the investigation was prompted
equally by the demands of benevolence, of personal
security, and of the general welfare, the results may
be esteemed as accurate as the nature of the investi-
gation would permit. = The other facts contained in
this pamphlet have been obtained from the public
offices of the town, or are the results of the author’s
personal observation.

The township of Manchester chiefly consists of
dense masses of houses, inhabited by the population
engaged in the great manufactories of the cotton
trade. Some of the central divisions are occupied by
warehouses and shops, and a few streets by the dwell-
ings of some of the more wealthy inhabitants; but
the opulent merchants chiefly reside in the country,
and even the superior servants of their establishments
inhabit the suburban townships. Manchester, pro-
perly so called, is chiefly inhabited by shopkeepers
and the labouring classes.* Those districts where
the poor dwell are of very recent origin. The rapid
growth of the cotton manufacture has attracted hither

 

* To the stranger, it is also necessary to observe, that the investi-
gations on whose results the conclusions of this pamphlet are
founded, were of necessity conducted in the township of Manchester
only ; and that the inhabitants of a great part of the adjacent town-
ships are in a condition superior to that described in these pages. The
most respectable portion of the operative population has, we think, a
tendency to avoid the central districts of Manchester, and to congre-
gate in the suburban townships.
21

operatives from every part of the kingdom, and Ire-
land has poured forth the most destitute of her hordes
to supply the constantly increasing demand for labour.
This immigration has been, in one important respect,
a serious evil. The Irish have taught the labouring
classes of this country a pernicious lesson. The sys-
tem of cottier farming, the demoralization and bar-
barism of the people, and the general use of the
potato as the chief article of food, have encouraged
the population in Ireland more rapidly than the
available means of subsistence have been increased.
Debased alike by ignorance and pauperism, they have
discovered, with the savage, what is the minimum of
the means of life, upon which existence may be pro-
longed. The paucity of the amount of means and com-
forts necessary for the mere support of life, is not known
by a more civilized population, and this secret has
been taught the labourers of this country by the
Irish. As competition and the restrictions and bur-
dens of trade diminished the profits of capital, and
consequently reduced the price of labour, the conta-
gious example of ignorance and a barbarous disre-
gard of forethought and economy, exhibited by the
Irish, spread. The colonization of savage tribes has
ever been attended with effects on civilization as fatal
as those which have marked the progress of the sand
flood over the fertile plains of Egypt. Instructed in
the fatal secret of subsisting on what is barely neces-
sary to life—yielding partly to necessity, and partly to
example,—the labouring classes have ceased to enter-
22

tain a laudable pride in furnishing their houses, and
in multiplying the decent comforts which minister to
happiness. What is superfluous to the mere exigen-
cies of nature, is too often expended at the tavern ;
and for the provision of old age and infirmity, they
too frequently trust either to charity, to the support
of their children, or to the protection of the poor laws.

When this example is considered in connexion
with the unremitted labour of the whole population
engaged in the various branches of the cotton manu-
facture, our wonder will be less excited by their fatal
demoralization. Prolonged and exhausting labour,
continued from day to day, and from year to year,
is not calculated to develop the intellectual or moral
faculties of man. The dull routine of a ceaseless
drudgery, in which the same mechanical process is in-
cessantly repeated, resembles the torment of Sisyphus
—the toil, like the rock, recoils perpetually on the
wearied operative. The mind gathers neither stores
nor strength from the constant extension and re-
traction of the same muscles. The intellect slumbers
in supine inertness; but the grosser parts of our
nature attain a rank development. To condemn man
to such severity of toil is, in some measure, to culti-
vate in him the habits of an animal. He becomes
reckless. He disregards the distinguishing appetites
and habits of his species. He neglects the comforts
and delicacies of life. He lives in squalid wretched-
ness, on meager food, and expends his superfluous
gains in debauchery.
23

The population employed in the cotton factories
rises at five o’clock in the morning, works in the mills
from six till eight o'clock, and returns home for half
an hour or forty minutes to breakfast. This meal
generally consists of tea or coffee, with a little bread.
Oatmeal porridge is sometimes, but of late rarely
used, and chiefly by the men; but the stimulus of
tea is preferred, and especially by the women. The
tea is almost always of a bad, and sometimes of a
deleterious quality; the infusion is weak, and little
or no milk is added. The operatives return to the
mills and workshops until twelve o'clock, when an
hour is allowed for dinner. Amongst those who ob-
tain the lower rates of wages this meal generally con-
sists of boiled potatoes. The mess of potatoes is put
into one large dish; melted lard and butter are
poured upon them, and a few pieces of fried fat bacon
are sometimes mingled with them, and but seldom a
little meat. Those who obtain better wages, or
families whose aggregate income is larger, add a
greater proportion of animal food to this meal, at least
three times in the week ; but the quantity consumed
by the labouring population is not great. The family
sits round the table, and each rapidly appropriates
his portion on a plate, or they all plunge their spoons
into the dish, and with an animal eagerness satisfy
the cravings of their appetite. At the expiration of
the hour, they are all again employed in the work-
shops or mills, where they continue until seven o’clock
or a later hour, when they generally again indulge
in the use of tea, often mingled with spirits accompa-
24

nied by a little bread. Oatmeal or potatoes are how-
ever taken by some a second time in the evening.
The comparatively innutritious qualities of these
articles of diet are most evident. We are, however,
by no means prepared to say that an individual living
in a healthy atmosphere, and engaged in active em-
ployment in the open air, would not be able to con-
tinue protracted and severe labour, without any
suffering, whilst nourished by this food. We should
rather be disposed on the contrary to affirm, that any
ill effects must necessarily be so much diminished,
that, from the influence of habit, and the benefits
derived from the constant inhalation of an uncon-
taminated atmosphere, during healthy exercise in
agricultural pursuits, few if any evil results would
ensue. But the population nourished on this aliment
is crowded into one dense mass, in cottages separated
by narrow, unpaved, and almost pestilential streets,
in an atmosphere loaded with the smoke and exhala-
tions of a large manufacturing city. The operatives are
congregated in rooms and workshops during twelve
hours in the day, in an enervating, heated atmosphere,
which is frequently loaded with dust or filaments of
cotton, or impure from constant respiration, or from
other causes. They are engaged in an employment
which absorbs their attention, and unremittingly em-
ploys their physical energies.* They are drudges

 

* A gentleman, whose opinions on these subjects command univer-
sal respect, suggests to me, that the intensity of this application is
exceedingly increased by the system of paying, not for time, but
according to the result of labour.
25

who watch the movements, and assist the operations,
of a mighty material force, which toils with an energy
ever unconscious of fatigue. The persevering labour
of the operative must rival the mathematical pre-
cision, the incessant motion, and the exhaustless
power of the machine.

Hence, besides the negative results—the ab-
straction of moral and intellectual stimuli—the ab-
sence of variety—banishment from the grateful air
and the cheering influences of light, the physical
energies are impaired by toil, and imperfect nutri-
tion. The artisan too seldom possessess sufficient
moral dignity or intellectual or organic strength to
resist the seductions of appetite. His wife and
children, subjected to the same process, have little
power to cheer his remaining moments of leisure.
Domestic economy is neglected, domestic comforts
are too frequently unknown. A meal of coarse food
is hastily prepared, and devoured with precipitation.
Home has little other relation to him than that of
shelter—few pleasures are there—it chiefly presents
to him a scene of physical exhaustion, from which
he is glad to escape. His house is ill furnished, un-
cleanly, often ill ventilated—perhaps damp ; his food,
from want of forethought and domestic economy,
is meagre and innutritions; he generally becomes
debilitated and hypochondriacal, and unless supported
by principle, falls the victim of dissipation. In all
these respects, it is grateful to add, that those among
the operatives of the mills, who are employed in tke

D
26

process of spinning, and especially of fine spinning,
(who receive a high rate of wages and who are elevated
on account of their skill) are more attentive to their
domestic arrangements, have better furnished houses,
are consequently more regular in their habits, and
more observant of their duties than those engaged in
other branches of the manufacture.

The other classes of artisans of whom we have
spoken, are frequently subject to a disease, in which
the sensibility of the stomach and bowels is mor-
bidly excited ; the alvine secretions are deranged,
and the appetite impaired. Whilst this state con-
tinues, the patient loses flesh, his features are
sharpened, the skin becomes sallow, or of the yellow
hue which is observed in those who have suffered
from the influence of tropical climates. The strength
fails, the capacities of physical enjoyment are des-
troyed, and the paroxysms of corporeal suffering are
aggravated by deep mental depression. We cannot
wonder that the wretched victim of this disease,
invited by those haunts of misery and crime the
gin shop and the tavern, as he passes to his daily
labour, should endeavour to cheat his suffering of a
few moments, by the false excitement procured by
ardent spirits ; or that the exhausted artisan, driven
by ennui and discomfort from his squalid home,
should strive, in the delirious dreams of a continued
debauch, to forget the remembrance of his reckless
improvidence, of the destitution, hunger, and unin-
terrupted toil, which threaten to destroy the re-
maining energies of his enfeebled constitution.
27

The contagious example which the Irish have
exhibited of barbarous habits and savage want of
economy, united with the necessarily debasing con-
sequences of uninterrupted toil, have demoralized
the people.

The inspection conducted by the District Boards of
Health, chiefly referred to the state of the streets and
houses, inhabited by the labouring population—to
local nuisances, and more general evils. The greatest
portion of these districts, especially of those situated
beyond Great Ancoats-street, are of very recent
origin ; and from the want of proper police regula-
tions are untraversed by common sewers. The houses
are ill soughed, often ill ventilated, unprovided with
privies, and, in consequence, the streets which are
narrow, unpaved, and worn into deep ruts, become
the common receptacles of mud, refuse, and disgust-
ing ordure.

The Inspectors’ reports do not comprise all the
houses and streets of the respective districts, and are
in some other respects imperfect. The returns con-
cerning the various defects which they enumerate
must be received, as the reports of evils, too positive
to be overlooked. Frequently, when they existed in
a slighter degree, the questions received no reply.

Predisposition to contagious disease is encouraged
by every thing which depresses the physical energies,
amongst the principal of which agencies may be
enumerated imperfect nutrition; exposure to cold
and moisture, whether from inadequate shelter, or

v
28

from want of clothing and fuel, or from dampness of
the habitation ; uncleanliness of the person, the
street, and the abode ; an atmosphere contaminated,
whether from the want of ventilation, or from im-
pure effluvia; extreme labour, and consequent
physical exhaustion; intemperance; fear; anxiety;
diarrheea, and other diseases. The whole of these
subjects could not be included in the investigation,
though it originated in a desire to remove, as far as
possible, those ills which depressed the health of the
population. The list of inquiries to which the in-
spectors were requested to make tabular replies is
placed in the appendix, for the purpose of enabling
the reader to form his own opinion of the investiga-
tion from which the classified results are deduced.
The state of the streets powerfully affects the
health of their inhabitants. Sporadic cases of typhus
chiefly appear in those which are narrow, ill venti-
lated, unpaved, or which contain heaps of refuse, or
stagnant pools. The confined air and noxious ex-
halations, which abound in such places, depress the
health of the people, and on this account contagious
diseases are also most rapidly propagated there. The
operation of these causes is exceedingly promoted by
their reflex influence on the manners. The houses,
in such situations, are uncleanly, ill provided with
furniture ; an air of discomfort if not of squalid and
loathsome wretchedness pervades them, they are often
dilapidated, badly drained, damp : and the habits of
their tenants are gross—they are ill-fed, ill-clothed,
29

and uneconomical—at once spendthrifts and destitute
—denying themselves the comforts of life, in order that
they may wallow in the unrestrained licence of animal
appetite. An intimate connexion subsists, among
the poor, between the cleanliness of the street and
that of the house and person. Uneconomical habits,
and dissipation are almost inseparably allied ; and they
are so frequently connected with uncleanliness, that
we cannot consider their concomitance as altogether
accidental. The first step to recklessness may often
be traced in a neglect of that self-respect, and of the
love of domestic enjoyments, which are indicated by
personal slovenliness, and discomfort of the habita-
tion Hence, the importance of providing by police
regulations or general enactment, against those fertile
sources alike of disease and demoralization, presented
by the gross neglect of the streets and habitations of
the poor. When the health is depressed by the con-
currence of these causes, contagious diseases spread
with a fatal malignancy among the population sub-
jected to their influence. The records* of the Fever
Hospital of Manchester, prove that typhus prevails
almost exclusively in such situations.

The following table, arranged by the Committee
of classification appointed by the Special Board of
Health, from the reports of Inspectors of the various
District Boards of Manchester, shows the extent to
which thie imperfect state of the streets of Manches-

 

* Abundant evidence of this fact was collected by Mr. Wallis,
lately House Surgeon to the House of Recovery.
30

ter may tend to promote demoralization and disease
among the poor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

No. of streets
No. of No. of streets No. of streets! No. of streets|No. of streets/containing heaps
District inspected. unpaved, [partially pvd.|ill ventilated. of refuse,stagnant
pools, ordure, &e.
1 114 63 13 7 64
2 180 93 7 23 92
3 49 AD 2 12 28
4 66 37 10 12 52
5 30 2 5 5 12
6 2 1 0 1 2
5 53 13 5 12 17
8 16 2 1 2 v
9 48 0 0 9 20
10 29 19 0 10 23
11 0 0 0 0 0
12 12 0 1 1 4
13 55 3 9 10 23
14 33 13 0 8 8
Total...” 687 248 | 53. 112 352

 

 

 

A minute inspection of this table will render the
extent of the evil affecting the poor more apparent.
Those districts which are almost exclusively inhabited
by the labouring population are Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, and
10. Nos. 13 and 14, and 7, also contain, besides
the dwellings of the operatives, those of shopkeepers
and tradesmen, and are traversed by many of the
principal thoroughfares. No. 11 was not inspected,
and Nos. 5, 6, 8, and 9, are the central districts
containing the chief streets, the most respectable
shops, the dwellings of the more wealthy inhabitants,
and the warehouses of merchants and manufacturers.
Subtracting, therefore, from the various totals, those
items in the reports which concern these divisions
only, we discover in those districts which contain a
large portion of poor, namely, in Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 7,
 

31

10, 13, and 14, that among 579 streets inspected,
243 were altogether unpaved—46 partially paved—
93 ill ventilated—and 307 contained heaps of refuse,
deep ruts, stagnant pools, ordure, &c.; and in the
districts which are almost exclusively inhabited by the
poor, namely, Nos. 1,2,3, 4, and 10, among 438 streets
inspected, 214 were altogether unpaved—a32 partially
paved—63 ill ventilated—and 259 contained heaps
of refuse, deep ruts, stagnant pools, ordure, &c.

The replies to the questions proposed in the second
table relating to houses, contain equally remarkable
results, which have been carefully arranged by the
Classification Committee of the Special Board of
Health, as follows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Z ZT PZ *F 752% 2 zre |
1 850 399 128 112 17 70 326
2 2489 898 282 145 497 109 755
3 213 145 104 41 61 52 96
4 650 279 106 105 134 69 250
5 413 176 82 70 101 11 66
6 12 3 5 5 5
7 343 76 59 57 86 21 79
8 132 35 30 39 48 22 20
9 128 34 32 24 39 19 25
10 370 195 53 123 54 2 232
11 .
12 113 33 23 27 24 16 52
13 757 218 44 108 146 54 177
14 481 74 13 83 68 7 138
Total... | 6951 | 2565 960 930 | 14355] 45% «.|.2221

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is however to be lamented, that even these nu-
merical results fail to exhibit a perfect picture of
the ills which are suffered by the poor. The replies
32

to the questions contained in the inspectors’ table
refer only to cases of the most positive kind, and the
numerical results would therefore have been exceed-
ingly increased, had they embraced those in which the
evils existed in a scarcely inferior degree. Some
idea of the want of cleanliness prevalent in their
habitations, may be obtained from the report of the
number of houses requiring whitewashing; but this
column fails to indicate their gross neglect of order,
and absolute filth. Much less can we obtain satis-
factory statistical results concerning the want of fur-
niture, especially of bedding, and of food, clothing,
and fuel. In these respects the habitations of the
Irish are most destitute. They can scarcely be said
to be furnished. They contain one or two chairs, a
mean table, the most scanty culinary apparatus, and
one or two beds, loathsome with filth. A whole
family is often accomodated on a single bed, and some-
times a heap of filthy straw and a covering of old
sacking hide them in one undistinguished heap, de-
based alike by penury, want of economy, and dissolute
habits. Frequently, the inspectors found two or more
families crowded into one small house, containing only
two apartments, one in which they slept, and another
in which they eat; and often more than one family
lived in a damp cellar, containing only one room, in
whose pestilential atmosphere from twelve to sixteen
persons were crowded. To these fertile sources of
disease were sometimes added the keeping of pigs
and other animals in the house, with other nuisances
of the most revolting character.
33

As the visits of the inspectors were made in the
day, when the population is engaged in the mills,
and the vagrants and paupers are wandering through
the town, they could not form any just idea of the
state of the pauper lodging houses. The establish-
ments thus designated are fertile sources of disease
and demoralization. They are frequently able to
accommodate from twenty to thirty or more lodgers,
among whom are the most abandoned characters,
who, reckless of the morrow, resort thither for the
shelter of the night—men who find safety in a con-
stant change of abode, or are too uncertain in their
pursuits to remain beneath the same roof for a longer
period. Here, without distinction of age or sex,
careless of all decency, they are crowded in small and
wretched apartments ; the same bed receiving a suc-
cession of tenants until too offensive even for their
unfastidious senses. The Special Board being desi-
rous that these lodging houses should be inspected
by the Overseers, the Churchwardens obtained a re-
port of the number in each district, which cannot fail
to be a source of surprise and apprehension.

PAUPER LODGING HOUSES.

No. of houses. No. of houses.

District Novi 1. seneirrinsiros Of District NO. 0 ..coisteir sisininis 0
ie trast sen, 108 16>... .... 12

Biv yeni iiss 51 divi vei. dudes 26

d coisas 0 12 v.icr vie vis —

Budi oid, 6 13d. vit Ata 60

Biss cinrnvens 0 1d ooo vesroie 1
Giri. 3 rs
Brie a nal since 0 267

The temporary tenants of these disgusting abodes,
34

too frequently debased by vice, haunted by want,
and every other consequence of crime, are peculiarly
disposed to the reception of contagion. Their asy-
lums are frequently recesses where it lurks, and they
are active agents in its diffusion. They ought to be
as much the objects of a careful vigilance from those
who are the guardians of the health, as from those
who protect the property of the public.

In some districts of the town exist evils so remark-
able as to require more minute description. = A por-
tion of low, swampy ground, liable to be frequently
inundated, and to constant exhalation, is included
between a high bank over which the Oxford Road
passes, and a bend of the river Medlock, where its
course is impeded by a weir. This unhealthy spot
lies so low that the chimneys of its houses, some of
them three stories high, are little above the level of
the road. About two hundred of these habitations are
crowded together in an extremely narrow space, and
they are chiefly inhabited by the lowest Irish. Many
of these houses have also cellars, whose floor is
scarcely elevated above the level of the water flowing
in the Medlock. The soughs are destroyed, or out
of repair: and these narrow abodes are in con-
sequence always damp, and are frequently flooded to
the depth of several inches, because the surface water
can find no exit. This district has sometimes been
the haunt of hordes of thieves and desperadoes who
defied the law, and is always inhabited by a class re-
sembling savages in their appetites and habits. Itis

% fin,
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

35

surrounded on every side by some of the largest fac-
tories of the town, whose chimneys vomit forth dense
clouds of smoke, which hang heavily over this insalu-
brious region.

The subjoined document resulted from an inspec-
tion made by a Special Sub-committee of Members
of the Board of Health, and the signatures of. the
gentlemen forming that Sub-committee were ap-
pended to it.*

 

* TO THE MAGISTRATES OF THE DISTRICT.
GENTLEMEN,

The undersigned having been deputed by the Special Board of
Health to inquire into the state of Little Ireland, beg to report
that in the main street and courts abutting, the sewers are all in
a most wretched state, and quite inadequate to carry off the sur-
face water, not to mention the slops thrown down by the inhabit-
ants in about two hundred houses.

The privies are in a most disgraceful state, inaccessible from
filth, and too few for the accommodation of the number of people.
—the average number being two to two hundred and fifty people,
The upper rooms are, with few exceptions, very dirty, and the
cellars much worse ; all damp, and some occasionally overflowed.
The cellars consist of two rooms on a floor, each nine to ten feet
square, some inhabited by ten persons, others by more: in many,
the people have no beds, and keep each other warm by close
stowage on shavings, straw, &c.; a change of linen or clothes is
an exception to the common practice. Many of the back rooms
where they sleep have no other means of ventilation than from
the front rooms.

Some of the cellars on the lower ground were once filled up as
uninhabitable ; but one is now occupied by a weaver, and he has
stopped up the drain with clay, to prevent the water flowing
36

Near the centre of the town, a mass of buildings
inhabited by prostitutes and thieves, is intersected
by narrow and loathsome streets, and close courts de-
filed with refuse. These nuisances exist in No. 13
District, on the western side of Deansgate, and
chiefly abound in Wood-street, Spinning Field,
Cumberland-street, Parliament Passage, Parliament-
street, and Thomson-street. In Parliament-street
there is only one privy for three hundred and eighty
inhabitants, which is placed in a narrow passage,
whence its effluvia infest the adjacent houses, and
must prove a most fertile source of disease. In this
street also, cess pools with open grids have been
made close to the doors of the houses, in which dis-

 

from it into his cellar, and mops up the water every morning.

We conceive it will be impossible effectually to remove the evils
enumerated ; and offer the following suggestions with a view to
their partial amelioration.

First, to open up the main sewer from the bottom, and to
relay it.

Secondly, to open and unchoke the lateral drains, and secure a
regular discharge of the water, &c., into the main sewer.

Thirdly, to enforce the weekly cleansing and purification of the
privies.

Fourthly, if practicable, to fill up the cellars.

Fifthly, to provide the inhabitants with quicklime, and induce
them to whitewash their rooms, where it can be done with safety.

Sixthly, if possible, to induce the inhabitants to observe
greater cleanliness in their houses and persons.

In conclusion, we are decidedly of opinion that should Cholera
visit this neighbourhood, a more suitable soil and situation for its
malignant development cannot be found than that described and
commonly known by the name of Little Ireland.
37

gusting refuse accumulates, and whence its noxious
effluvia constantly exhale. In Parliament Passage
about thirty houses have been erected, merely sepa-
rated by an extremely narrow passage (a yard and a
half wide) from the wall and back door of other
houses. These thirty houses have one privy.

The state of the streets and houses in that part of
No. 4, included between Store-street and Travis-
street, and London Road, is exceedingly wretched—
especially those built on some irregular and broken
mounds of clay, on a steep declivity descending into
“Store-street. These narrow avenues are rough,
irregular gullies, down which filthy streams perco-
late ; and the inhabitants are crowded in dilapidated
abodes, or obscure and damp cellars, in which it is
impossible for the health to be preserved.

Unwilling to weary the patience of the reader by
extending such disgusting details, it may suffice to
refer generally to the wretched state of the habita-
tions of the poor in Clay-street, and the lower por-
tion of Pot-street ; in Providence-street, and its ad-
joining courts; in Back Portugal-street; in Back
Hart-street, and many of the courts in the neigh-
bourhood of Portland-street, some of which are not
more than a yard and a quarter wide, and contain
houses, frequently three stories high, the lowest of
which stories is occasionally used as a receptacle of
excrementitious matter :—to many streets in the
neighbourhood of Garden-street, Shudehill:—to Back
Irk-street, and to the state of almost the whole of
38

that mass of cottages filling the insalubrious valley
through which the Irk flows, and which is deno-
minated Irish town.

The Irk, black with the refuse of Dye-works
erected on its banks, receives excrementitious matters
from some sewers in this portion of the town—the
drainage from the gas-works, and filth of the most
pernicious character from bone-works, tanneries, size
manufactories, &e. Immediately beneath Ducie-
Bridge, in a deep hollow between two high banks, it
sweeps round a large cluster of some of the most
wretched and dilapidated buildings of the town. The
course of the river is here impeded by a weir, and a
large tannery eight stories high (three of which stories
are filled with skins exposed to the atmosphere, in
some stage of the processes to which they are sub-
jected) towers close to this crazy labyrinth of pauper
dwellings. This group of habitations is called “ Gib-
raltar,” and no site can well be more insalubrious
than that on which it is built. Pursuing the course
of the river on the other side of Ducie-bridge, other
tanneries, size manufactories, and tripe-houses occur.
The parish burial ground occupies one side of the
stream, and a series of courts of the most singular
and unhealthy character, the other. Access is ob-
tained to these courts through narrow covered entries
from Long Millgate, whence the explorer descends
by stone stairs, and in one instance by three succes-
sive flights of steps to a level with the bed of the river.
In this last mentioned (Allen's) court he discovers
39

himself to be surrounded, on one side by a wall of
rock, on two others by houses three stories high, and
on the fourth by the abrupt and high bank down
which he descended, and by walls and houses erected
on the summit. These houses were, a short time ago,
chiefly inhabited by fringe, silk, and cotton weavers,
and winders, and each house contained in general
three or four families. An adjoining court (Barrett’s,)
on the summit of the bank, separated from Allen’s
court only by alow wall, contained, besides a pig-stye
—a tripe manufactory in a low cottage, which was in
a state of loathsome filth. Portions of animal matter
were decaying in it, and one of the inner rooms was
converted into a kennel, and contained a litter of
puppies. In the court, on the opposite side, is a tan
yard where skins are prepared without bark in open
pits, and here is also a catgut manufactory. Many
of the windows of the houses in Allen’s court, open
over the river Irk, whose stream (again impeded, at
the distance of one hundred yards by a weir) separates
it from another tannery, four stories high and filled
with skins, exposed to the currents of air which pass
through the building. On the other side of this tan-
nery is the parish burial ground, chiefly used as a
place of interment for paupers. A more unhealthy
spot than this (Allen’s) court it would be difficult to
discover, and the physical depression consequent on
living in such a situation, may be inferred from what
ensued on the introduction of cholera here. A match-
seller, living in the first story of one of these houses,
40

was seized with cholera, on Sunday, July 22nd : he
died on Wednesday, July 25th; and owing to the
wilful negligence of his friends, and because the Board
of Health had no intimation of the occurrence, he
was not buried until Friday afternoon, July 27th.
On that day, five other cases of cholera occurred
amongst the inhabitants of the court. On the 28th,
seven, and on the 29th two. The cases were nearly
all fatal. Those affected with cholera were on the
28th and 29th removed to the Hospital, the dead
were buried, and on the 29th the majority of the in-
habitants were taken to a house of reception, and the
rest with one exception dispersed into the town, until
their houses had been thoroughly fumigated, ventila-
ted, whitewashed, and cleansed; notwithstanding
which dispersion, other cases occurred amongst those
who had left the court.

These facts are thus minutely related, because we
are anxious to direct public attention to the advan-
tage which would accrue, from widening this portion
of Long Millgate, by taking down the whole of the
houses on the Irk side of the street, from a factory
which projects into it, on that side, as far as Ducie
Bridge, and thus improving this important entrance
to the town, from Bury, and from the North East of
Lancashire.

The houses of the poor, especially throughout the
whole of the Districts Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, are too gene-
rally built back to back, having therefore only one
outlet, no yard, no privy, and no receptacle of refuse.
41

Consequently the narrow, unpaved streets, in which
mud and water stagnate, become the common recep-
tacles of offal and ordure. Often low, damp, ill ven-
tilated cellars exist beneath the houses ; an improve-
ment on which system consists in the erection of a
stage over the first story, by which access is obtained
to the second, and the house is inhabited by two
separate families. More than one disgraceful example
of this might be enumerated. The streets, in the dis-
tricts where the poor reside, are generally unsewered,
and the drainage is consequently superficial. The
houses are often built with a total neglect of order,
on the summit of natural irregularities of the surface,
or on mounds left at the side of artificial excavations
on the brick grounds, with which these parts of the

town abound.
One nuisance frequently occurs in these districts

of so noxious a character, that it ought, at the earliest
period, to be suppressed by legal interference. The
houses of the poor sometimes surround a common
area, into which the doors and windows open at the
back of the dwelling. Porkers, who feed pigs in the
town, often contract with the inhabitants to pay
some small sum for the rent of their area, which is
immediately covered with pigstyes, and converted
into a dung-heap and receptacle of the putrescent
garbage, upon which the animals are fed, as also of
the refuse which is now heedlessly flung into it from
all the surrounding dwellings. The offensive odour
42

which sometimes arises from these areas cannot be
conceived.

There is no Common Slaughter-house in Man-
chester, and those which exist are chiefly situated in
the narrowest and ‘most filthy streets in the town.
The drainage from these houses, deeply tinged with
blood, and impregnated with other animal matters,
frequently flows down the common surface drain of
the street, and stagnates in the ruts and pools. More-
over, sometimes in the yards of these houses—from
the want of avigilant circumspection—offal is allowed
to accumulate with the grossest neglect of decency
and disregard to the health of the surrounding in-
habitants. The attention of the commissioners of
police cannot be too soon directed to the propriety of
obtaining powers to erect a Common Slaughter-house
on some vacant space, and to compel the butchers of
the town to slaughter all animals killed in the town-

ship in the building thus provided.
The districts, Nos. 1,2, 3, and 4, are inhabited by a

turbulent population, which, rendered reckless by dis-
sipation and want,—misled by the secret intrigues, and
excited by the inflammatory harangues of demagogues,
has frequently committed daring assaults on the liberty
of the more peaceful portions of the working classes,
and the most frightful devastations on the property of
their masters. Machines have been broken, and
factories gutted and burned at mid-day, and the
riotous crowd has dispersed ere the insufficient body
of police arrived at the scene of disturbance. The
43

civic force of the town is totally inadequate to main-
tain the peace, and to defend property from the at-
tacks of lawless depredators; and a more efficient,
and more numerous corps ought to be immediately or-
ganized, to give power to the law, so often mocked
by the daring front of sedition, and outraged by the
frantic violence of an ignorant and deluded rabble.
The police form, in fact, so weak a screen against the
power of the mob, that popular violence is now, in
almost every instance, controlled by the presence of a
military force.

The wages*® obtained by operatives in the various
branches of the cotton manufacture are, in general,
such, as with the exercise of that economy without
which wealth itself is wasted, would be sufficient to
provide them with all the decent comforts of life—
the average wages of all persons employed in the
mills (young and old) being from nine to twelve
shillings per week. Their means are too often con-
sumed by vice and improvidence. But the wages of
certain classes are exceedingly meagre. The intro-
duction of the power-loom, though ultimately des-
tined to be productive of the greatest general bene-

 

® «The wages are paid weekly, not once a fortnight, or once a
month, as is the case in collieries and many other places. The youngest
child in the mill earns three shillings per week, and the best female
spinner twenty one shillings. The total paid is £356.—averaging nine
shillings and three pence per week to each person employed.” Letter
to Lord Althorp in Defence of the Cotton Factories of Lancashire.
By Horranp Hoo, Esq.
44

fits, has, in the present restricted state of commerce,
occasioned some temporary embarrassment, by di-
minishing the demand for certain kinds of labour,
and, consequently, their price. The hand-loom
weavers, existing in this state of transition, still con-
tinue a very extensive class, and though they labour
fourteen hours and upwards daily, earn only from five
to seven or eight shillings per week.* They consist
chiefly of Irish, and are affected by all the causes of
moral and physical depression which we have enumer-
ated. Ill-fed—ill-clothed—half-sheltered and igno-
rant ;—weaving in close damp cellars, or crowded
workshops, it only remains that they should become,
as is too frequently the case, demoralized and reck-
less, to render perfect the portraiture of savage life.
Amongst men so situated, the moral check has no in-
fluence in preventing the rapid increase of the popu-
lation. The existence of cheap and redundant labour
in the market has, also, a constant tendency to lessen
its general price, and hence the wages of the English
operatives have been exceedingly reduced by this im-
migration of Irish—their comforts consequently di-
minished—their manners debased—and the natural
influence of manufactures on the people thwarted.
We are well convinced that without the numerical
and moral influence of this class, on the means and on
the character of the people who have had to enter
into competition with them in the market of labour,

 

* Evidence of Joseph Foster before the Emigration Committee,
1827.
45

we should have had less occasion to regret the phy-
sical and moral degradation of the operative popu-
lation.

The poor-laws, as at present administered, retain
all the evils of the gross and indiscriminate bounty of
ancient monasteries. They also fail in exciting the
gratitude of the people, and they extinguish the
charity of the rich. The custom is not now demanded
as the prop of any superstition ; nor is it fit that in-
stitutions, well calculated to assuage the miseries
which feudalism inflicted on its unemployed and un-
happy serfs, should be allowed to perpetuate indi-
gence, improvidence, idleness and vice, in a commer-
cial community. The artificial structure of society,
in providing security against existing evils, has too
frequently neglected the remote moral influence of its
arrangements on the community. Humanity rejoices
in the consciousness that the poorest may obtain the
advantages of skilful care in disease, and that there
are asylums for infirmity, age, and decrepitude ; but
the unlimited extension of benefits, devised by a wise
intelligence for the relief of evils which no human
prescience could elude, has a direct tendency to en-
courage amongst the poor apathy concerning present
exigencies, and the neglect of a provision for the con-
tingencies of the future.

A rate levied on property for the support of indi-
gence is, in a great degree, a tax on the capital,
from whose employment are derived the incentives of
46

industry and the rewards of the frugal, ingenious,
and virtuous poor. If the only test of the application
of this fund be indigence, without reference to desert
—be want, irrespective of character—motives to fru-
gality, self controul and industry are at once removed,
and the strong barrier which nature had itself erected
to prevent the moral lapse of the entire population is
wantonly destroyed. The tax acts as a new burden
on the industrious poor, already suffering from an
enormous pressure, and not only drags within the
limits of pauperism unwilling victims, but paralyses
with despair the efforts of those whose exertions might
otherwise have prolonged their struggle with adver-
sity. The wages of the worthy are often given to
encourage the sluggard, the drunkard, and the man
whose imprudence entails on the community the pre-
cocious burden of his meagre and neglected offspring.

The feeble obstacle raised in the country to the pro-
pagation of a pauper population, by making the indi-
gent chargeable on the estates of the land-owners, is
even there rendered almost entirely inefficacious by
the too frequent non-residence of the gentry, or the
indifference with which this apparently inevitable evil
is regarded. In the South of England the fatal error
has been committed of paying a certain portion of the
wages of able bodied labourers out of the fund ob-
tained by the poor-rates; and a population is thus
created, bound like slaves to toil, and having also
like them a right to be maintained. But, in the
large towns, the feeble check to the increase of pauper-
47

ism, which thus exists in some rural districts, is entirely
removed. The land is let to speculators who build
cottages, the rents of which are collected weekly, a
commutation for the rates being often paid by the
landlord when they are demanded, which seldom
occurs in the lowest description of houses. A married
man having thus by law an unquestioned right to a
maintenance proportioned to the number of his family,
direct encouragement is afforded to improvident
marriages. The most destitute and immoral marry
to increase their claim on the stipend appointed for
them by law, which thus acts as a bounty on the
increase of a squalid and debilitated race, who in-
herit from their parents disease, sometimes deformity,
often vice, and always beggary.

The number of labourers thus created diminishes
the already scanty wages of that portion of the popu-
lation still content to endeavour by precarious toil to
maintain their honest independence. Desperate is
the struggle by which, under such a system, the up-
right labourer procures for his family the comforts of
existence. Many are dragged by the accidents of
life to an unwilling acceptance of this legalized pen-
sion of the profligate, and some, over informed by mis-
fortune in the treachery of their own hearts, are se-
duced to palter with temptation, and at length to
capitulate with their apparent fate.

Fearful demoralization attends an impost whose
distribution diminishes the incentives to prudence
and virtue. When reckless of the future, the intelli-
48

gence of man is confined to the narrow limits of the
present. He thus debases himself beneath the
animals whose instincts teach them to lay up stores
for the season of need. The gains* of the pauper
are, in prosperity, frequently squandered in taverns,
whilst his family exists in hungered and ragged
misery, and few sympathies with the sufferings of his
aged relatives or neighbours enter his cold heart,
since he knows they have an equal claim with him-
self, on that pittance which the law awards. The
superfluities which nature would prompt him in a
season of abundance to hoard for the accidents of the
future, are wasted with reckless profusion; because
the law takes care of the future. Selfish profligacy
usurps the seat of the household virtues of the
English labourer.

Charity once extended an invisible chain of sym-
pathy between the higher and lower ranks of society,
which has been destroyed by the luckless pseudo-
philanthropy of the law. Few aged or decrepid
pensioners now gratefully receive the visits of the
higher classes—few of the poor seek the counsel, the
admonitions, and assistance of the rich in the period
of the inevitable accidents of life. The bar of the
overseer is however crowded with the sturdy appli-
cants for a legalized relief, who regard the distribu-
tor of this bounty as their stern and merciless
oppressor, instructed by the compassionless rich to

 

* See evidence of Mr. Allen concerning pauperism in Spitalfields.
49

reduce to the lowest possible amount the alms which
the law wrings from their reluctant hands. This
disruption of the natural ties has created a wide
gulph between the higher and lower orders of the
community, across which, the scowl of hatred
banishes the smile of charity and love.

That government have appointed a Commission of
inquiry into the evils arising from the administration of
the Poor-laws, must be a source of satisfaction to every
well wisher to the poor. Since it would be unjust to
annul the existing provision for a rapidly increasing
indigence which the law has itself fostered, the im-
provement of its present administration is all that the
most sanguine can expect as an immediate result of
this inquiry. Every change which assimilates the
method of distributing this legal charity to that by
which a well regulated private bounty is admin-
istered, must be hailed. The present official organi-
zation in the large towns is incapable of producing
these results. The parish officers and sidesmen are not
sufficiently numerous to enable them (if they were per-
mitted by law) to make a discrimination—concerning
the characters of individuals, their actual condition,
and the accidents or faults that may have occasioned
it—equal to that which is observed in the most judi-
cious distribution of private bounty. Since desert
does not enhance the claim which indigence can
enforce, the only relation which the parish officer
now has with the applicant for relief is that of the

investigation and proof of his indigence ; and, to this
G
50

end, those now employed may be sufficiently proper
agents. But if we would substitute any portion of
that sympathy with the distresses of the poor, and
that gratitude for relief afforded—that acknowledged
right to administer good counsel, and that willing-
ness to receive advice— that privilege of inquiring into
the arrangements of domestic economy, instructing
the ignorant, and checking the perverse—all which at-
tend the beneficent path of private charity, much
superior men must be employed in the office of visit-
ing the houses of the poor, and being the almoners of
the public. Such an office can only be properly filled
by men of some education, but especially of high
moral character, and possessing great natural gen-
tleness. An attempt should be constantly made to
relieve the mind of the independent poor from the
necessity of receiving an eleemosynary dole, by re-
commending the worthy to employment. It is not
sufficient that the sidesman or churchwarden should
give a few hours daily to an examination of all ap-
plicants in our enormous townships, but the towns
should be minutely subdivided, each district having
its local board, which (besides an executive parish
overseer resident in the district, and thus possessing
every means of becoming minutely acquainted with
the character of the inhabitants,) should also be fur-
nished with its board of superior officers. By such
means : by adopting the test of desert, at least to
determine the amount of relief bestowed: by dis
couraging or even rejecting those whose indigence is
A

51

the consequence of dissipation, of idleness, and of
wilful imprudence; and by making the overseers
themselves the means of instructing the poor, that
every labourer is the surest architect of his own fortune
—by constituting them the patrons of virtue and the
censors of vice, and besides being the almoners of the
public charity, the sources of a powerful moral
agency—much good might be effected. The enor-
mous expenditure, incurred by the present system,
might be exceedingly reduced, and the alms might at
length (by a process whose success would depend on
the gradual moral improvement of society,) be con-
fined to such of the aged, the decrepid, and the un-
fortunate, as being without the hope of assistance
from the charity of relations or friends, were
thus reluctantly driven, by a hard necessity, to
have recourse to the fund of the poor. Societies
for mutual relief should be everywhere encouraged,
and a constant effort should be vigorously maintained
to disburden the public of this enormous tax, by
every other means which would contribute to the
virtuous independence of the working classes.
At present this alarming impost increases so
rapidly, that it threatens ultimately to absorb the
fund which ought to be employed solely in rewarding
the labour of the industrious poor, and hence, to re-
duce the whole population to the condition of helots.
The fund derived from the poor’s-rate for the re-
lief of the indigent, is, in Manchester, as judiciously
52

administered as the state of the law will permit. Too
much praise can scarcely be given to the zealous
exertions of those gentlemen who fill the offices of
churchwardens and sidesmen. Yet, the effect of the
present state of the law is but too apparent here.

Pauperism is every where accompanied with moral
and physical degradation. Impressed with this
opinion, we endeavoured to discover, from such facts
as might be ascertained at the town’s offices, how this
calamitous law affected Manchester.

Unfortunately, the distribution of the poor rates is
not registered separately for each of the police divi-
sions. We are therefore only able to compare the
four sections of the town visited by the overseers.
The first and second of these four sections, which we
shall denominate the Newtown and the Ancoats dis-
tricts, comprise Nos. 1, 2, and 4, and therefore con-
tain almost exclusively poor inhabitants. On the
other hand, the third, or central division, besides
Nos. 5, 6, 9, and a small part of No. 8, which are
inhabited by a great number of shopkeepers and
tradesmen, contains also Nos. 10, 11, and 14, which
have a very large proportion of poor. The fourth,
or Portland-street District, besides Nos. 3, 7, and 13,
containing many poor, likewise comprises No. 12,
and the greater part of No. 8, in which the poor
inhabitants are relatively much less numerous.

We have subjoined a table exhibiting the popula-
tion of each of the police divisions, according to the
53

last census, and arranged in the four sections visited
by the overseers of the poor, so as to exhibit their
relative population.

 

 

 

 

Newtown. Ancoats. Central. Portland Street.
No. 2.. 25581 No. '1..31573 |No. 5 ..: 7275|No.'3°.. 11431
5 of 4.. 93372|2 of 4.. 62251 6..x12740 7... 0784

0 + 3318 30f 8 .e 72085
10....3886 . 12... 1859
11 ..13635 “a3 .. %260
14 .. 6834
1of8.. 686
3490182 377981 36908 32401

 

 

 

The cases relieved at the Churchwardens’ offices
are classed as Irish and English cases: the first con-
sist exclusively of Irish cases without seltlements, but
under the denomination of English cases, are included
all who have obtained settlements, whether English or
Irish ; and this class comprises a very great propor-
tion of Irish. We have been enabled, by the liber-
ality of the Churchwardens, and Mr. Gardiner’
politeness, to obtain returns of the relative proportion
of these cases during the four winter months of the
four years from 1827 to 1831 inclusive. The general
table is inserted in the appendix,® but from this we
have deduced some more minutely classified results,
which we conceive strongly to corroborate the
opinions which we have hazarded, concerning the
origin and growth of pauperism.

The table contained in the Appendix exhibits, in
the first place, an alarming increase of pauperism in

 

* See Appendix No. 1.
54

the whole township. The total number of cases
(each representing, on the average, two and a half
individuals) relieved in the township, in the months
of November, December, January, and February of
1827 and 28, was 30,717, or included 76,792 indi-
vidual acts of relief, each continued for an indefinite
period. This number had, in the same months of
1830-31, increased to 45,842, or, at a period when
the population amounted to 142,026, it included
114,605 individual acts of relief, each of which com-
prised indefinite portions of the four months, or had
almost doubled in four years. Supposing these acts
to have been administered at all times to different
persons, then, more than four-fifths of the whole po-
pulation were relieved for an indefinite portion of the
four winter months.

The relative proportion of Irish cases without
settlements, and of English and Irish cases with
settlements, and their relative increase during these
four years, are perhaps still more remarkable.

 

~ DISTRICTS. Nov. Dec. Jan. & Feb. of 1827-8, 1828-9, 1829-30, 1830-31.

Irish. English. Irish English.Irish English. |Irish English.
NEWTOWN. [1559 6059 [1490 5434 (3911 8023 4051 9129
No. 2 & 3 No. 4

ANCOATS. 1482 6701 [2155 7158 [2690 8022 [3818 9027
No.1 & % No. 4

CENTRAL.
Nos. 5, 6, 9, 10,
11,14, & 1 No.8| 366 7422 | 532 7161 | 742 0668 | 909 10214

PORTLAND ST.
Nos. 3,7,12,13,
and 4 of No 8] 264 6864 | 577 6974 1186 8591 1114 7580

 

 

 

 
55

The proportion of Irish cases without settlements,
in the Ancoats and Newtown Divisions, containing
Nos. 1, 2, and 4, and its relative increase, are ex-
ceedingly greater than in the Central and Portland
Street Districts ; notwithstanding that the number
of Trish in these latter sections is much augmented
by the inclusion of Nos. 3, 7, 10, and 13.

By the following table, this increase may be more
easily compared.

 

DISTRICTS. | Nov. Dec. Jan. and Feb. of 1827-8, 1828.9, 1829-30, 1830-31.

NEWTOWN ANDI Irish. English.\Irish, English.|Irish. English.|Irish. English:
ANCOATS. 3041 1276013645 125926601 16045|7869 18156

CENTRAL AND
PORTLAND ST. | 630 14286!1109 14136{1928 18259(2023 17794

The Newtown and Ancoats Districts have always
contained a greater proportion of Irish than any
other portion of the town; but the increase of pau-
perism in the Central and Portland Districts, must
evidently be ascribed to the recent rapid coloniza-
tion of Irish in Divisions 3, 7, and 10 ; since, whilst
the Irish cases, having no settlements, have increased
from 600 to 2,000, or are more than trebled,—the
cases having settlements, which have been relieved,
have only increased from 14,000 to 17,000, or
about two-ninths. In the same period, the rapid
relative increase of the Irish cases having no settle-
ments, in the Newtown and Ancoats Districts, ren-
ders it extremely probable, that the increase of
56

those cases which have obtained settlements, is in a
great measure to be imputed to the Irish; and that
pauperism, therefore, spreads most rapidly, in an
ignorant and demoralized population. These tables
also abundantly testify, that pauperism chiefly pre-
vails in those portions of the town, where the sources
and evidences of moral and physical depression, to
which we have alluded, are the most numerous.

The relative proportion of the population to the
cases and individuals relieved, in the four Sections
visited by the Overseers, is displayed in the follow-
ing table.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pages Sieve) fav lagmgnd acts
i it Ti lief for in-
DISTRICTS | ithe four winter POPULATION. Gednite periods
months, 1830-31. of time.
NEWTOWN. . 13180 349182 of which 2=139671| 32950
ANCOATS.... 12890 37798L . +=12599% 32225
Total... 26070 [72717 .. $=271430 65175
CENTRAL .. 11123 36008 .. +%=11072 T% 27807%
PORTLAND. . 8694 32401 .. 2 — 8100 21735
Total... .. 19817 69309 49542

 

 

 

The following table® shows the relative propor-
tion of cases relieved in the four Overseers’ Sections
during three portions of the year 1830-31, each con-
taining four months.

 

 

 

DISTRICTS. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. |March, April, May, June. July, Aug. Sept. Oct.

Irish. English, Irish. English. Irish. English.
NEWTOWN..| 4051 9129, 3896 7958, 3409 7996
ANCOATS. . .| 3818 9027] 3333 7801, 3280 8107
CENTRAL..| 909 10214) 815 9474] 695 0287
PORTLAND..| 1114 7580, 897 7050, 863 7766

08902 35950| 8941 32283] 8247 33156

 

 

* See Appendix No. 2.
57

The population of the township is 142,026 ; and
the acts of parochial relief in one year, each con-
tinued through indefinite periods of time, were
321,172, of which acts 67,700 concernedlrish who had
obtained no settlements.

The sources of vice and physical degradation are
allied with the causes of pauperism. Amongst the
poor, the most destitute are too frequently the most
demoralized—virtue is the surest economy—vice is
haunted by profligacy and want. Where there are
most paupers, the gin shops, taverns, and beer houses
are most numerous. The following table enumerates
the taverns of the town. Gin shops are held under
the same licence, and are attached to three fourths
of these establishments.

NO. OF LICENSED TAVERN AND INNKEEPERS IN THE TOWNSHIP
OF MANCHESTER.

No.d....::.02 NO. B...e vs 39 No. 11........37
Dr drink 44 iin 0010 12...7....16
Shes stirs 48 Sate eieious 10 13... 0.02.03.25
deine 31 9... 30 14... 5... 13
Biviy.ii «40 YO. 4 I

Total... .. 430

To this number may perhaps be added 322 gin
shops. These last establishments especially abound
in the poorest and most destitute districts, where their
proportion to the taverns is at least four fifths. We
were unable to procure, from the officers of excise in
Manchester, information concerning the relative pro-
portion of the beer houses in the several divisions of

the town ; but we are informed by Mr. Shawcross,
H
58

of the Police department, that their number is at
least three hundred. If we subtract fifty respectable
inns, which, however, have generally tap rooms at-
tached to them, one thousand haunts of intemperance
exist in Manchester.

The districts 1, 2, 8, and 4, may be conceived to
represent most correctly the exclusively labouring
population ; but in estimating the relative number of
all these sources of vice frequented by the population
of these districts, it is necessary to include those of
the adjoining divisions 5 and 6, where a much smaller
proportion of poor resides. The result is, that in
Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, there are 270 taverns, 216
gin shops, (estimated as four fifths of taverns,) 188
beer houses, (estimated as being distributed through
the divisions of the town in the same ratio as the
taverns,) total, 674, or more than two thirds of
the whole number of taverns, gin shops, and beer
houses of the town, may therefore be considered as
chiefly ministering to the vicious propensities of the
inhabitants of Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4. Some idea may
be formed of the influence of these establishments on
the health and morals of the people, from the follow-
ing statement; for which we are indebted to Mr.
Braidley, the Boroughreeve. He observed the num-
ber of persons entering a gin shop in five minutes,
during eight successive Saturday evenings, and at
various periods from seven o'clock until ten. The
average result was, 112 men and 163 women, or
275 in forty minutes, which is equal to 412 per hour.

-
59

The report of the Committee on gaols reveals the
gross migmanagement of the licence systemin London,
and shews that taverns are the rendezvous of criminals
and profligates of the lowest order. The scenes of
depravity which occur in them, without the shadow
of concealment—the constant temptations to moral
errors which they unblushingly offer to those orders of
society, which have the least power of repelling them
—the seductions to grosser sins by which they enthral
the idle and unwary—the maxims of iniquity, and the
arts of dishonesty, which are undisguisedly taught in
them, by the miscreants who find a daily shelter
there—all these glaring abuses demand the prompt
and energetic interference of authority with the regu-
lations of establishments, which, without the pretence
of necessity, or the veil of one virtuous amusement,
are public schools of vice.

The decency of our towns is violated, even in this
~ respect, that every street blazons forth the invitations
of these haunts of crime. Gin shops and beer houses
encouraged by the law (which seems to value rather
the amount of the public revenue, than the preva-
lence of private virtue) and taverns, over which the
police can at present exercise but an imperfect con-
troul, have multiplied with such rapidity that they
will excite the strong remonstrances which every
lover of good order is prepared to make with govern-
ment, against the permission, much less the sanction,
of such public enormities. Two physicians of great
experience who practise in two of our largest manu-
60

facturing towns, inform us, that delirium tremens
(a disease occasioned by continued intemperance) has
increased, within the sphere of their observation, in
an alarming ratio since the passing of the Beer-act;
and another, who superintends one of the largest
public Lunatic Asylums in the provinces, discovers
that one great cause of the prevalence of insanity of
late years is an addiction to the use of ardent spirits.

The amount of crime is one chief means of ascer-
taining the moral condition of a community. To
the perfection of this estimate it is, however, essential
that crimes committed against the person should
be distinguished from those against property. *« The
moral guilt of the latter depending considerably upon
the equality of the distribution of wealth throughout
the country, the degree of ease in which the people
live ought also to be brought into view; and when
we compare the criminal calendars of different na-
tions, we ought not to omit to refer to their respec-
tive modes of administering justice, and to the at-
tention paid in each country to that branch of it
which we call preventive. That prevention is by far
the more important care, in point both of duty and
expediency, is a truth which governments are be-
ginning to perceive ; though in most countries re-
pression, and in not a few vindictiveness, still form
the spirit of the penal code.” So long as the will

 

* Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. v. p. 404.
+ Works of Charles Lucas—also “ De la Justice de la Prévoyance™
and “ De la Mission de la Justice Humaine.” Par M. Depéctiaua.
61

of man is free, and it is in his power either to con-
form to the law, or to violate it, the care of the
legislature should be to turn that will into the right
channel.” ;
The state of the registers, required for an accurate
investigation of the amount of crime committed in
Manchester, was such as to demand more time in
their classification, than, under the circumstances in
which this pamphlet was prepared, we were able to
give the subject. We have obtained, however, an
account of the number of persons committed at the
New Bailey Court House, Salford, for the different
offences under which their commitment is recorded.
The amount of crime exhibited in this table results
therefore from a much greater population than that
contained in the township ; the out-townships being
also included, or a population of at least 240,000.

 

1829(1830 1831 (70tal

 

Number of Felons... i.e uueeerrneanneenn. 580| 559] 6381777
Persons committed for want of sureties to keep
the peace—non-payment of fines—neglect of

 

 

 

Family; 80Cucissiv + visn oon bitiniige vin win Witine ui 819! 960| 9962775
For want of sureties to appear at the Sessions. .| 192| 153 182) 527
For disobeying orders in Bastardy ........... 174| 151 181] 506
Rogues.and. Vagabonds., . ..... ss vsmnisne sins 620] 743| 8352198

7713

 

We subjoin, in a note, a table extracted from avery
valuable pamphlet published by Mr. Ridgway, en-
titled “ An Enquiry into the State of the Manufac-
turing Population, and the Causes and Cures of the
62

Evils therein existing,”* by which the reader may be
enabled to form a more accurate opinion concerning
the relative extent to which crime prevails in Man-
chester.

There is, however, a licentiousness capable of cor-
rupting the whole body of society, like an insidious
disease, which eludes observation, yet is equally fatal
in its effects. Criminal acts may be statistically
classed—the victims of the law may be enumerated
—but the number of those affected with the moral
leprosy of vice cannot be exhibited with mathemati-
cal precision. Sensuality has no record,{ and the
relaxation of social obligations may coexist with a
half dormant, half restless impulse to rebel against
all the preservative principles of society; yet these
chaotic elements may long smoulder, accompanied
only by partial eruptions of turbulence or crime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*1827. 1827
eae 8a8

Mannteiming Population [Crime 8 8% ig Population.|Crime 253
Sad Sag

Cheshire .... 304,130) 497| 612| Berkshire. ...| 143,400| 208| 690
Lancashire .. |1,226,6002459| 495|/ Essex ......| 319,400 451| 708
Middlesex ... (1,295,100(3381| 353||Hertford .. ..| 144,300| 205 704
Northumberla| 220,500 96/2300| Kent ....... 468,900| 632| 742
Nottingham. .| 206,300 298| 695||Hampshire ..| 314,000| 341] 920
Stafford .....| 378,600, 569| 665|Westmoreland| 55,800{ 20/2790
Warwick....| 310,500 602| 515||Wiltshire.. ..| 245,000 365| 671
York oi... 1,321,600(1223|1080|| Devonshire ..| 484,200| 432(1121
Average... ui ivan. SAO. LL An Le LAL T,043

 

+ Norecord exists by which the number of illegitimate births can
be ascertained. Even this evidence would form a very imperfect
rule by which to judge of the comparative prevalence of sensuality.
63

In the absence of direct evidence, we are unwilling
that any statements should rest on our personal tes-
timony ; but we again refer with confidence to that
of an intelligent and impartial observer.*

One other characteristic of the social body, in its
present constitution, appears to us too remarkable
and important to be entirely overlooked.

Religion is the most distinguished and ennobling
feature of civil communities. Natural attributes of
the human mind appear to ensure the culture of some
form of worship ; and as society rises through its suc-
cessive stages, these forms are progressively deve-
loped, from the grossest observances of superstition,
until the truths and dictates of revelation assert their
rightful supremacy.

The absence of religious feeling, the neglect of all
religious ordinances, affords substantive evidence of
so great a moral degradation of the community, as
to ensure a concomitant civic debasement. -The
social body cannot be constructed like a machine, on
abstract principles which merely include physical
motions, and their numerical results in the pro-
duction of wealth. The mutual relation of men is
not merely dynamical, nor can the composition of
their forces be subjected to a purely mathematical
calculation. Political economy, though its object be
to ascertain the means of increasing the wealth of
nations, cannot accomplish its design, without at the

 

* «Inquiry into the State of the Manufacturing Population.” p.
24. Ridgway.
64

same time regarding their happiness, and as its lar-
gest ingredient the cultivation of religion and
morality.

With unfeigned regret, we are therefore constrained
to add, that the standard of morality is exceedingly
debased, and that religious observances are neglected
amongst the operative population of Manchester.
The bonds of domestic sympathy are too generally
relaxed ; and as a consequence, the filial and paternal
duties are uncultivated. The artisan has not time to
cherish these feelings, by the familiar and grateful
arts which are their constant food, and without which
nourishment they perish. An apathy benumbs his
spirit. Too frequently the father, enjoying perfect
health and with ample opportunities of employment,
is supported in idleness on the earnings of his op-
pressed children ; and on the other hand, when age
and decrepitude cripple the energies of the parents,
their adult children abandon them to the scanty
maintenance derived from parochial relief.

That religious observances are exceedingly neg-
lected, we have had constant opportunities of ascer-
taining, in the performance of our duty as Physician
to the Ardwick and Ancoats Dispensary, which fre-
quently conducted us to the houses of the poor on
Sunday. With rare exceptions, the adults of the vast
population of 84,147 contained in Districts Nos. 1,
2, 8, 4, spend Sunday either in supine sloth, in sen-
suality, or in listless inactivity. A certain portion
only of the labouring classes enjoys even healthful
65

recreation on that day, and a very small number fre-
quent the places of worship.

The fruits of external prosperity may speedily be
blighted by the absence of internal virtue. With
pure religion and undefiled, flourish frugality, fore-
thought, and industry—the social charities which are
the links of kindred, neighbours, and societies—and
the amenities of life, which banish the jealous sus-
picion with which one order regards another. In
vain may the intellect of man be tortured to devise
expedients by which the supply of the necessaries of
life may undergo an increase, equivalent to that of
population, if the moral check be overthrown. Crime,
diseases, pestilence, intestine discord, famine, or
foreign war—those agencies which repress the rank
overgrowth of a meagre and reckless race—will, by a
natural law, desolate a people devoid of prudence and
principle, whose numbers constantly press on the
limits of the means of subsistence. "We therefore re-
gard with alarm the state of those vast masses of our
operative population which are acted upon by all
other incentives, rather than those of virtue; and are
visited by the emissaries of every faction, rather than
- by the ministers of an ennobling faith.

The present means or methods of religious in-
struction are, in the circumstances in which our large
towns are placed, most evidently inadequate to their
end. The labours of some few devoted men—of
whom the world is not worthy—in the houses of the
poor, are utterly insufficient to produce a deep and

I
66

permanent moral impression on the people. Some
of our laws, as now administered, encourage indigence
and vice, and hence arises an increased necessity for
the daily exertions of the teachers of religion, to stem
that flood of prevailing immorality which threatens
to overthrow the best means that political sagacity
can devise for the elevation of the people.

The exertions of Dr. Tuckerman, of Boston, in
establishing “a ministry for the poor” had been,
until very recently, rather the theme of general and
deserved praise, than productive of laudable imitation.
This ministration is to be effected, chiefly by a visita-
tion of the houses of the poor, and he proposes as its
objects, religious instruction, uninfluenced .by sec-
tarian spirit or opinions:—the relief of the most
pressing necessities of the poor—first by a well re-
gulated charity, and secondarily, by instruction in
domestic economy—exhortations to industry—ad-
monition concerning the consequences of vice, and
by obtaining work for the deserving and unemployed.
The minister should also encourage the education of
the children, should prove the friend of the poor in
periods of perplexity, and, when the labourer is sub-
dued by sickness, should breathe into his ear the
maxims of virtue, and the truths of religion. He
might also act as a medium of communication and a
link of sympathy, between the higher and lower
classes of society. He might become the almoner of
the rich, and thus daily sow the seeds of a kindlier
relationship than that which now subsists between the
 

67

wealthy and the destitute. He might also serve asa
faithful reporter of the secret miseries which are
suffered in the abodes of poverty, unobserved by those
to whom he may come to advocate the cause of the
abandoned. The prevalence of the principles and
the energetic practice of the precepts of christianity,
we may hope, will thus ultimately be made to bind
together the now hostile elements of society.

The success of Dr. Tuckerman’s labours in Boston
had, before the commencement of a similar plan in
Manchester, given rise to several societies for the
Christian instruction of the people in the Metropolis,
and in other parts of the kingdom. Six such societies
are now in operation in Manchester and its out-town-
ships—five amongst the Independent, and one amongst
the Unitarian Dissenters. The objects proposed by
these associations and the means by which these ob-
jects are prosecuted, may be estimated by the perusal
of an extract from the report of that connected with
the Mosley-street Independent Chapel, placed in the
appendix. But we regret to add that their number is
utterly insufficient to affect the habits, of more than a
small portion of the population. The vast portions
of the town included in the Ancoats, Newtown, and
Portland districts, are utterly unoccupied by this
beneficent system ; and, when it is further observed,
that in those districts reside the most indigent and
immoral of our poor, it will be at once apparent, what
need there is of the immediate extension of the same
powerful agency to them.
68

Having enumerated so many causes of physical
depression, perhaps the most direct proof of the ex-
tent to which the effect coexists in natural alliance
with poverty, may be derived from the records of
the medical charities of the town. During the year
preceding July, 1831---21,196 patients were treated
at the Royal Infirmary---472 at the House of Re-
covery—-3163 at the Ardwick and Ancoats Dispen-
sary, of which (subtracting one sixth as belonging to
the township of Ardwick) 2636 were inhabitants of
Manchester---perhaps 2000 at the Workhouse Dis-
pensary, and 1,500 at the Children’s---making a total
of 27,804, without including the Lock Hospital and
the Eye Institution. “If to this sum,”* says Mr.
Roberton, engaged in making a similar calculation,
“« we were further to add the incomparably greater
amount of all ranks visited or advised as private pa-
tients by the whole body (not a small one) of profes-
sional men; those prescribed for by chemists and
druggists, scarcely of inferior pretension; and by
herb doctors and quacks ; those who swallow patent
medicines; and lastly the subjects of that ever
flourishing branch---domestic medicine; we should
be compelled to admit that not fewer, perhaps, than
three fourths of the inhabitants of Manchester an-
nually are, or fancy they are, under the necessity
of submitting to medical treatment.”

 

# «Remarks on the Health of English Manufacturers, and on the
need which exists for the Establishment of Convalescents’ Retreats.”
By J. ROBERTON.
69

Ingenious deductions, by Mr. Roberton, from
facts contained in the records of the Lying-in Hos-
pital of Manchester, prove, in a different manner, the
extreme dependence of the poor, on the charitable
institutions of the town. The average annual num-
ber of births, (deduced from a comparison of the last
four years,) attended by the officers of the Lying-in
Charity, is four thousand three hundred; and the
number of births to the population may be assumed
as one in twenty-eight inhabitants. This annual
average of births, therefore, represents a population
of 124,400, and assuming that of Manchester and the
environs to be 230,000, more than one-half of its in-
habitants are therefore either so destitute or so de-
graded, as to require the assistance of public charity,
in bringing their offspring into the world. :

The children thus adopted by the public are often
neglected by their parents. The early age at which
girls are admitted into the factories, prevents their
acquiring much knowledge of domestic economy;
and even supposing them to have had accidental op-
portunities of making this acquisition, the extent to
which women are employed in the mills, does not,
even after marriage, permit the general application
of its principles. The infant is the victim of the sys-
tem ; it has not lived long, ere it is abandoned to
the care of a hireling or a neighbour, while its mother
pursues her accustomed toil. Sometimes a little girl
has the charge of the child, or even of two or three
collected from neighbouring houses. Thus abandoned
70

to one whose sympathies are not interested in its wel-
fare, or whose time is too often also occupied in
household drudgery, the child is ill-fed, dirty, ill-
clothed, exposed to cold and neglect ; and in conse-
quence, more than one-half of the offspring of the
poor (as may be proved by the bills of mortality of
the town) die before they have completed their fifth
year. The strongest survive; but the same causes
which destroy the weakest, impair the vigour of the
more robust ; and hence the children of our manu-
facturing population are proverbially pale and sallow,
though not generally emaciated, nor the subjects of
disease. We cannot subscribe to those exaggerated
and unscientific accounts of the physical ailments to
which they are liable, which have been lately revived
with an eagerness and haste equally unfriendly to
taste and truth ; but we are convinced that the ope-
ration of these causes, continuing unchecked through
successive generations, would tend to depress the
health of the people; and that consequent physical
ills would accumulate in an unhappy progression.
Before the age when, according to law, children
can be admitted into the factories, they are permitted
to run wild in the streets and courts of the town, their
parents often being engaged in labour and unable to
instruct them. Five infant schools have been esta-
blished in Manchester and the suburban townships, in
which six hundred children (a miserable portion of
those who are of age to learn) receive instruction. “In
Britain and Ireland, all sects and all parties approve
71

of infant schools ; in France, those who are best qua-
lified to form a judgment, fully appreciate their
value, and public tranquillity is alone wanted to se-
cure the universal adoption of them in that country :
in Geneva, they are received so zealously as to have
become improved by the systematic addition of gar-
dens, in which the children pass more hours than in
the school-room ; in North America they are gaining
ground with the rapidity and steadiness with which
everything prospers in the United States: and the
republicans of the West, abandoning a deeply rooted
and barbarous prejudice, are in some places even pro-
viding infant schools for their young slaves. At the
Cape of Good Hope the just union of the white and
coloured races is begun, not more by the newly im-
parted equality of rights, than by these establish-
ments being opened in common to the offspring of
both; they are in like manner begun to be offered to
all classes without invidious distinction in India ; and
in the Ultima Thule of civilization New South Wales,
the innocent children of both the convict and the
free are, in some measure, rescued by infant schools,
from abominations which affect the young, in a man-
ner to which our distance from the scene renders us
careless.” The importance of this system, to our
large manufacturing towns, is such that we hope
funds will be speedily granted by government, so that
it may be extended, until all the children of the poor

 

* Westminster Review, No. xxxiv.
72

are rescued from ignorance, and from the effects of
that bad example, to which they are now subjected
in the crowded lanes of our cities.

With a general system of education, we hope will
also be introduced institutions, in which the young
females of the poor may be instructed in Domestic
Economy, and where those pernicious traditional pre-
judices, which, combined with neglect, occasion the
great mortality of their children, may be removed, and
they may receive wholesome advice concerning their
duties as wives and mothers.

We have avoided alluding to evidence which is
founded on general opinion, or depends merely on
matters of perception; and have chiefly availed our-
selves of such as admitted of a statistical classifica-
tion. We may, however, be permitted to add, that
our own experience, confirmed by that of those mem-
bers of our profession, on whose judgment we can
rely with the greatest confidence, induces us to con-
clude, that diseases assume a lower and more chronic
type in Manchester, than in smaller towns and in
agricultural districts; and a residence in the Hospi-
tals of Edinburgh, and practice in its Dispensaries
amongst the most debased part of its inhabitants,
enables us to affirm, with confidence, that the diseases
occurring here admit of less active antiphlogistic or
depletory treatment, than those incident to the de-
graded population of the old town of that city.

Frequent allusion has been made to the supposed
rate of mortality in Manchester, as a standard by
73

which the health of the manufacturing population
may be ascertained. From the mortality of towns,
however, their comparative health cannot be invari-
ably deduced. There is a state of physical depres-
sion which does not terminate in fatal organic changes,
which, however, converts existence into a prolonged
disease, and is not only compatible with life, but 18
proverbially protracted to an advanced senility.

The difficulty of obtaining returns of burials, from
all the places of interment, in the town and suburbs
of Manchester, prevented the estimation of the rate
of mortality, when the former edition of this Pamph-
let was published. Since that period a parliamentary
paper has been published (No. 729,) containing a re-
turn of the number of burials, occurring annually in
Manchester, from 1821 to 1830; and the Board of
Health have obtained returns for the last four years,
which are confirmatory of this Parliamentary docu-
ment. We have, from these returns and the census,
constructed a table, showing the mortality of every

“year from 1821 to 1831, inclusive.

The population, by the census of the townships of
Ardwick, Broughton, Cheetham Hill, Chorlton-upon-
Medlock, Hulme, Manchester, and Salford, in 1811
was 108,993 :—in 1821, it was 152,683 :—and in
1831, 224,143 ; or the increase in the first of these
periods was to that of the latter, nearly as 44 parts
of 115 are to 71 parts of the same number. Hence,
supposing the sources of increase from births and im-
migration, to remain nearly the same, in the interme-

K
74

diate periods, we obtain a rule to distribute the in-
crease of population between 1821 and 1831. Divi-
ding this period into two equal parts, the rate of in-
crease during the first five years would be 44 of 115
equal parts of the whole increase, or in 1826 the po-
pulation would be 152683427369 (+ of the whole
increase) =180052 which+44091 (sz, which ratio
is assumed to occur during the second five years,)
= 224143, the population of the town in 1831. These
sums being again distributed by the same rule to half
of the first and second cycles of five years, and the pro-
ducts thus obtained, divided by five, a tolerably accu-
rate approximation to the half-yearly increase of the
population is obtained. By this rule, the following
Table of the annual rate of mortality was constructed.

 

 

 

 

Interments|Interments|

Year Char pent Dos iss. Teal of} Population. [Rate of Mortality.
1821} 1561 1726 3287 152683 46.45
1822) 1285 1044 2329 156663 67.223
1823] 1585 3230 4815 160664 33.36
1824| 1428 3219 4647 166117 35.74
1825] 1398 3530 4928 173083 35.12
1826) 1548 3804 5352 180052 33.64
1827| 1604 3235 4839 186462 38.53
1828, 1615 4106 5721 102874 33.73
1829) 1479 3719 5108 201691 38.80
1830] 1590 4383 5073 212913 35.64
1331 6736 224143 33.27

 

 

 

 

Some error appears to have occurred in the returns
of interments for the first two years, therefore omit-
ting them, the mean annual rate of interments acting
as a divisor on the mean numbers of the population

from 1828 to 1831 inclusive, will give an approxima-
®
75

tion to the mean rate of mortality or 188666 —5356
— 85.22, the mean rate of the annual mortality of
Manchester.

Diseases, we have said, assume in this town a com-
paratively chronic type ; and a general prevalence of
such maladies is compatible even with a low rate of
mortality. Acute diseases (which are eminently fatal)
prevail, on the contrary, in a population where the
standard of health is high, and attack the most ro-
bust and plethoric. Thus, a high rate of mortality
may often be observed in a community, where the
number of persons affected with disease is small ; and
on the other hand, general physical depression may
concur with the prevalence of chronic maladies, and
yet be unattended with a great proportion of deaths.
We have elsewhere discussed the origin and shown
the great prevalence of dyspepsia, gastralgia,® enter-
algia, and chronic bronchitis and phthisis,{ in Man-
chester ; and this reference to the subject may there-
fore be sufficient here.

The preceding statements must, we fear, be re-
ceived as valid evidence that many sources of physi-
cal depression exist in Manchester. The Special
Board of Health, in the course of their inquiries,
discovered that they possessed very limited means of
removing the evils whose existence was ascertained

 

* Second Number of the North of England Medical and Surgical
Journal: On Gastralgia and Enteralgia.

+ Third Number of the North of England Medical and Surgical
Journal.
76

by the reports of the District Inspectors. Some thou-
sands of houses were whitewashed. Several addi-
tional gangs of scavengers were employed; and the
result of their operations was evident in the im-
proved condition of the public thoroughfares of the
town : but to repair and sewer the unpaved streets,
courts, &c., and to remove the gross accumulations of
filth which they contain, would have entailed upon
the town an expenditure for which the fiscal authori-
ties were unwilling to become responsible. Letters
were also addressed to the landlords of all houses re-
ported to be out of repair, and of those in which the
soughs required repair—which were damp—ill ven-
tilated—or which had no privies, informing them of
the defects reported, and requesting them to assist the
Special Board in their efforts to ameliorate the phy-
sical condition of the poor, by remedying these evils.
The disease of the body politic is not superficial, and
cannot be cured, or even temporarily relieved, by any
specific : its sources are unfortunately remote, and
the measures necessary to the removal of its disor-
ders include serious questions on which great differ-
ence of opinion prevails.

| Visiting Manchester, the metropolis of the com-
/ mercial system, a stranger regards with wonder the
| ingenuity and comprehensive capacity, which, in the
\ short space of half a century, have here established
the staple manufacture of this kingdom. He beholds
with astonishment the establishments of its merchants
77

— monuments of fertile genius and successful design :
—the masses of capital which have been accumula-
ted by those who crowd upon its mart, and the rest-
less but sagacious spirit which has made every part of
the known world the scene of their enterprise. The
sudden creation of the mighty system of commercial
organization which covers this county, and stretches
its arms to the most distant seas, attests the power
and the dignity of man. Commerce, it appears to
such a spectator, here gathers in her storehouses the
productions of every clime, that she may minister to
the happiness of a favoured race.

When he turns from the great capitalists, he con-
templates the fearful strength only of that multitude
of the labouring population, which lies like a slum-
bering giant at their feet. He has heard of the
turbulent riots of the people—of machine breaking
—of the secret and sullen organization which has
suddenly lit the torch of incendiarism, or well nigh
uplifted the arm of rebellion in the land. He re-
members that political desperadoes have ever loved
to tempt this population to the hazards of the
swindling game of revolution, and have scarcely
failed. In the midst of so much opulence, however,
he has disbelieved the cry of need.
~ Believing that the natural tendency of unrestricted
commerce, (unchecked by the prevailing want of edu-
cation, and the incentives afforded by imperfect laws
to improvidence and vice,) is to develop the energies
of society, to increase the comforts and luxuries of
78

life, and to elevate the physical condition of every
member of the social body, we have exposed, with a
faithful, though a friendly hand, the condition of the
lower orders connected with the manufactures of this
town, because we conceive that the evils affecting
them result from foreign and accidental causes. A
system, which promotes the advance of civilization,
and diffuses it over the world—which promises to
maintain the peace of nations, by establishing a per-
manent international law, founded on the benefits of
commercial association, cannot be inconsistent with
the happiness of the great mass of the people. There
are men who believe that the labouring classes are
condemned for ever, by an inexorable fate, to the
unmitigated curse of toil, scarcely rewarded by the
bare necessaries of existence, and often visited by the
horrors of hunger and disease—that the heritage of
ignorance, labour, and misery, is entailed upon them
as an eternal doom. Such an opinion might appear
to receive a gloomy confirmation, were we content
with the evidence of fact, derived only from the his-
tory of uncivilized races, and of feudal institutions. No
modern Rousseau now rhapsodises on the happiness
of the state of nature. Moral and physical degrada-
tion are inseparable from barbarism. The unsheltered,
naked savage, starving on food common to the deni-
zens of the wilderness, never knew the comforts con-
tained in the most wretched cabin of our poor.
Civilization, to which feudality is inimical, but
which is most powerfully promoted by commerce,
79

surrounds man with innumerable inventions. It has
thus a constant tendency to multiply, without limit,
the comforts of existence, and that by an amount of
labour, at all times undergoing an indefinite diminu-
tion. It continually expands the sphere of his rela-
tions, from a dependance on his own limited re-
sources, until it has combined into one mighty league,
alike the members of communities, and the powers
of the most distant regions. The cultivation of the
faculties, the extension of knowledge, the improve-
ment of the arts, enable man to extend his dominion
over matter, and to minister, not merely to all the
exigencies, but to the capricious tastes and the ima-
ginary appetites of his nature. When, therefore, every
zone has contributed its most precious stores—science
has revealed her secret laws—genius has applied the
mightiest powers of nature to familiar use, making
matter the patient and silent slave of the will of man
—if want prey upon the heart of the people, we may
strongly presume that, besides the effects of existing
manners, some accidental barrier exists, arresting
their natural and rightful supply.

The evils affecting the working classes, so far
from being the necessary results of the commercial
“system, furnish evidence of a disease which impairs
its energies, if it does not threaten its vitality.

The increase of the manufacturing establishments,
and the consequent colonization of the district, have
been exceedingly more rapid than the growth of
its civic institutions. The eager antagonization of
80

commercial enterprise, has absorbed the attention,
and concentrated the energies of every member of
the community. In this strife, the remote influence
of arrangements has sometimes been neglected, not
from the want of humanity, but from the pressure
of occupation, and the deficiency of time. Thus,
some years ago, the internal arrangements of mills
(now so much improved) as regarded temperature,
ventilation, cleanliness, and the proper separation of
the sexes, &c., were such as to be extremely objec-
tionable. The same cause has, we think, chiefly
occasioned the want of police regulations, to prevent
the gross neglect of the streets and houses of the
poor.

The great and sudden fluctuations to which trade
is liable, are often the sources of severe embarrass-
ment. Sometimes the demand for labour diminishes,
and its price consequently falls in a corresponding
ratio. On the other hand, the existing population
has often been totally inadequate to the required
production ; and capitalists have eagerly invited a
supply of labour from distant counties, and the sister
kingdom. The colonization of the Irish was thus
first encouraged ; and has proved one chief source of
the demoralization, and consequent physical depres-
sion of the people.

The effects of this immigration, even when re-
garded as a simple economical question, do not merely
include an equation of the comparative cheapness of
labour ; its influence on civilization and morals, as
 

81

they tend to affect the production of wealth, cannot
be neglected.

In proof of this, it may suffice to present a picture
of the natural progress of barbarous habits. Want
of cleanliness, of forethought, and economy, are found
in almost invariable alliance with dissipation, reckless
habits, and disease. The population gradually be-
comes physically less efficient as the producers of
wealth—morally so from idleness—politically wort/-
less as having few desires to satisfy, and noxious as
dissipators of capital accumulated. Were such man-
ners to prevail, the horrors of pauperism would accu-
mulate. A debilitated race would be rapidly multi-
plied. Morality would afford no check to the increase
of the population: crime and disease would be its
only obstacles—the licentiousness which indulges its
capricious appetite, till it exhausts its power—and
the disease which, at the same moment, punishes
crime, and sweeps away a hecatomb of its victims.
A dense mass, impotent alike of great moral or phy-
sical efforts, would accumulate; children would be
born to parents incapable of obtaining the necessaries
of life, who would thus acquire, through the mis-
taken humanity of the law, a new claim for support
from the property of the public. They would drag
on an unhappy existence, vibrating between the pangs
of hunger and the delirium of dissipation—alter-
nately exhausted by severe and oppressive toil, or
enervated by supine sloth. Destitution would now

prey on their strength, and then the short madness
L
82

of debauchery would consummate its ruin. Crime
which banishes or destroys its victims, and disease
and death, are severe but brief natural remedies,
which prevent the unlimited accumulation of the
horrors of pauperism. Even war and pestilence,
when regarded as affecting a population thus demo-
ralized, and politically and physically debased, seem
like storms which sweep from the atmosphere the
noxious vapours whose stagnation threatens man with
death. :

Morality is therefore worthy of the attention of
the economist, even when considered as simply minis-
tering to the production of wealth. Civilization
creates artificial wants, introduces economy, and cul-
tivates the moral and physical capabilities of society.
Hence the introduction of an uncivilized race does
not tend even primarily to increase the power of pro-
ducing wealth, in a ratio by any means commensu-
rate with the cheapness of its labour, and may ulti-
mately retard the increase of the fund for the main-
tenance of that labour. Such a race is useful only as
a mass of animal organization, which consumes the
smallest amount of wages. The low price of the
labour of such people depends, however, on the pau-
city of their wants, and their savage habits. When
they assist the production of wealth, therefore, their ;
barbarous habits and consequent moral depression
must form a part of the equation. They are only
necessary to a state of commerce inconsistent with
such a reward for labour as is calculated to maintain
 

83

the standard of civilization. A few years pass, and
they become burdens to a community whose morals
and physical power they have depressed ; and dissi-
pate wealth which they did not accumulate.
Conscious of the evils resulting from the immigra-
tion of Irish, we nevertheless tremble at the thought
of applying unmodified poor-laws to Ireland. In
England the system of parochial relief has a most
prejudicial influence, in chaining redundant labour
to a narrow locality, and thus aggravating the pres-
sure of partial ills, and in relaxing those bonds of
the social constitution, industry, forethought, and
charity.* Much less could the habits of the Irish be
corrected by a parliamentary enactment : and to at-
tempt the removal of their misery, by a constant sup-
ply of their wants, would be to offer direct encourage-
ment to idleness, improvidence, and dissipation. It
would ultimately render every individual dependent
on the State, and change Ireland into a vast infir-
mary, divided into as many wards as there are
parishes, whose endowment would swallow up the en-
tire rental of the country. Such a measure, says Mr.
Senior, would $< divide Ireland into as many distinct
countries as there are parishes, each peopled by a
population ascripta glebe ; multiplying without fore-

 

* Chalmers’s “ Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns.”’—
« Speech before the General Assembly.”’—< Political Economy.” Page
398, &ec. &c.

+ Letter to Lord Howick on a Legal Provision for the Irish poor,
&e., &ec., p. 33.
84

thought ; impelled to labour principally by the fear
of punishment ; drawing allowance for their children,
and throwing their parents on the parish; consider-
ing wages not a matter of contract but of right; at-
tributing every evil to the injustice of their superiors;
and, when their own idleness or improvidence has oc-
casioned a fall of wages, avenging it by firing the
dwellings, maiming the cattle, or murdering the
persons of the landlords and overseers; combining,
in short, the insubordination of the freeman with the
sloth and recklessness of the slave.”

We believe, however, that an impost on the rental
of Ireland, might be applied with advantage in
employing its redundant labour in great public
works—such as draining bogs, making public roads,
canals, harbours, &c., by which the entire available
capital of the country would be increased, and the
people would be trained in industrious habits, and
more civilized manners. England would then cease
to be, to the same extent as at present, the recepta-
cle of the most demoralized and worthless hordes of
the sister country.

The Irish, who were invited to eolonize the coun-
try, at a period when the demand for labour was
greater than the native population could supply,
have suffered more than any other class from the
introduction of the power-loom. The state of tran-
sition in employment consequent on a new invention,
(by which the powers of production are increased,
its cost diminished, and the demand for a peculiar
85

kind of labour almost extinguished,) will always be
followed by an embarrassment, whose pressure and
duration will be determined ceteris paribus, by the
extent of the market for manufactures. If by the
want of commercial treaties—by the imposition of
injudicious duties on foreign produce, which provoke
jealous retaliation—the existence of arbitrary re-
strictions and monopolies, the extent of the market
for manufactures be diminished, the demand for la-
bour will be confined within the same limits. A
new invention will thus be robbed of half its re-
wards, since we deprive other nations of the power
of buying our manufactures, by refusing to accept
what they offer in exchange. We depress the spirit
of their enterprise; and we discourage our own. The
relations of commerce are those of unlimited recipro-
city—not of narrow and bigoted exclusion. We
encourage genius and industry in proportion as we
permit them to receive their reward in the riches of
every clime. We dam up not only the well-spring
of our own wealth and happiness, but of that of other
nations, when we refuse to barter the results of the
ingenuity and perseverance of our artisans, for the
products of the bounty of other climates, or the arts
and genius of other people. Unrestricted commerce,
on the other hand, would rapidly promote the advance
of civilization, by cultivating the physical and mental
power of individuals and nations to multiply the
amount of natural products, and to create those
artificial staple commodities, by the barter of which
86

they acquire the riches of other regions. Every new
invention in agriculture or manufactures—every im-
provement in the powers of transmission, would
enable its possessors, by the same amount of labour,
to obtain a greater quantity of foreign products in
exchange. The labour of man would be constantly,
to an indefinite extent, diminished,* whilst its reward
would be, at the same time, perpetually increased.
Human power would be employed “in its noblest
occupation, that of giving a direction to the mere
physical power which it had conquered.”

But under a restrictive system, the demand for
the results of labour is limited, not by the wants of
the whole world, but of the market from which com-
modities are received in exchange. Even then, as
civilization multiplies the desires, and stimulates the
industry and ingenuity of man, the quantity of pro-
ducts permitted to be bartered for our manufactures
has a constant tendency to increase. Unfortunately,
however, the restrictions which fetter commerce are
so numerous, and the monopolies which exclude free
trade from the fairest portions of the earth are so ex-
tensive, as to render the progressive increase in the
demand for the results-of our labour and capital slow.

 

* Observations on the Influence of Machinery upon the Working
Classes of the Community, By John Kennedy, Esq.: Memoirs of
the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, vol. v. second
series.—Also The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, By
Charles Babbage, Esq.

+ Results of Machinery, p. 193.
 

 

 

87

Population, nevertheless, increases the supply of
labour in at least as great a ratio as the demand ex-
isting under a restrictive system. Every invention,
therefore, which diminishes the quantity of labour
necessary to produce the objects of barter, lessens its
price, and excludes, for an indefinite period, a great
part of the population from employment. By this
system the profits of capital are increased, though
not in the same ratio as the wages of labour are for
a time diminished. But, were the restrictions abo-
lished, each new invention would not only enable man
to purchase, by a smaller amount of labour, a larger
portion of foreign products, but would, by these
means, powerfully stimulate the genius and industry
of other nations, whose demand for our manufactures
would increase in a ratio at least. equal to: their ac-
cumulation. In other words, improvements in ma-
chinery diminish the cost of production ; but if the
demand for manufactures be limited by arbitrary
enactments, tke increased employment which would
also be their natural and inevitable result, is prevented,
until commerce is able, in some other way, to com-
pensate for the evils of injudicious legislation. We
have capital and labour—but to obtain the greatest
amount of commercial advantages, we must also have
an unlimited power of exchange.

We believe, therefore, that chiefly to this cause
‘must be attributed the combined misery of severe
labour and want entailed on that wretched but exten-
sive class, the hand-loom weavers of the cotton trade.
88

Were an unlimited exchange permitted to com-
merce, the hours of labour might be reduced, and time
afforded for the education and religious and moral in-
struction of the people. With a virtuous population,
engaged in free trade, the existence of redundant
labour would be an evil of brief duration, rarely ex-
perienced. The unpopular, but alas, too necessary
proposals of emigration would no longer be agitated.
Ingenuity and industry would draw from the whole
world a tribute more than adequate to supply the ever
increasing demands of a civilized nation.

The duties imposed on the introduction of foreign
corn were originally intended, by raising the price of
grain, to act as a compensation to the landowner for
the supposed unequal pressure of taxation upon him.
This inequality of the public burdens has, however,
been exceedingly exaggerated, and those taxes,
which are said to be derived from land on which corn
is grown, are also procured from many other des-
criptions of property which are not protected. The
faults of our present financial system* are so numer-
ous, that if the principle of relieving the inequality of
the pressure of taxation be admitted, we must pay
back in bounties one third of what is obtained by taxes.
The scarcity and dearness of food certainly bring to
the agricultural population no benefit, after the brief
demand for labour necessary to bring fresh soils into
cultivation is past. The landowner alone receives

 

* Sir H. Parnell, on Financial Reform.
89

any advantage from the high price of food, and that
much less than has generally been supposed. The
fluctuating scale by which the duties on corn are at
present regulated, has produced the most disastrous
effects among the agricultural tenantry : rents have
been paid out of capital, and estates have been in-
jured, in consequence of the embarrassments of the
cultivators. A tax on the staple commodity of life
enhances the price of all other food, by increasing
the wages of labour, and the rent of land; and, as it
enters as an element into the cost of every article
produced, (and that in a ratio constantly accumulating
with the amount of labour employed,) it presses
heavily, though indirectly, on the superior classes,
and upon all other consumers. Not the least inju-
- rious effects of the present Corn-law, are the burden of
supporting an unemployed population, which it en-
tails on society at large, and the insecurity of pro-
perty which results from the near approach to desti-
tution of a large portion of its members. But since
this system simultaneously contracts the market of
the capitalist, (by excluding one most important ob-
ject of barter,) and increases the cost of production,
its direst effects are felt in the manufacturing dis-
tricts, which have long been maintaining an unequal
struggle with foreign competitors. In the cotton
trade, to the expense of importing the raw material,
and that chiefly from one of those countries where
bounties on manufactures exist, is added the pressure

of one tax, on the raw material, and of another, which,
M
90

by raising the price of labour, increases that of the
manufactured result. Industry, invention, the most
subtle sagacity, and the most daring enterprise ap-
pear at length almost baffled by the difficulties they
encounter. The profits of capital are reduced to the
most meagre attenuation—the rapidity of pro-
duction, of transmission and return, appear to have
reached their utmost limit. Injudicious duties on
foreign produce have provoked retaliation, and the
manufactures of other countries are supported by ar-
tificial expedients in rivalry with our own. The
difficulty of changing the system is every day in-
creased, until, ere long, it may become a serious
question with other countries, whether the advanta-
ges to be derived from free trade can compensate for
the sacrifice of the capital embarked in their com-
mercial establishments. The cotton manufacture is
rapidly spreading all over the continent, and parti-
cularly in Switzerland and France; and America
threatens us with a more formidable competition.
Under these circumstances, every part of the sys-
tem appears necessary to the preservation of the
whole. The profits of trade will not allow a greater
remuneration for labour, and competition even threat-
ens to reduce its price. ~~ Whatever time is sub-
tracted from the hours of labour® must be accompanied
with an equivalent deduction from its rewards ; the

 

* The effect of such a measure is thus correctly described in an
able and perspicuous pamphlet lately published, entitled “ A Letter
TR Ly TT re

 

 

91

restrictions of trade prevent other improvements, and
we fear that the condition of the working classes can-
not be much improved, until the burdens and restric-
tions of the commercial system are abolished.

We will yield to none in an earnest and unquali-
fied opposition to the present restrictions and burdens
of commerce, and chiefly because they lessen the
wages of the lower classes, increase the price of food,
and prevent the reduction of the hours of labour :—
because they will retard the application of a general
and efficient system of education, and thus not merely
depress the health, but debase the morals of the poor.
Those politicians who propose a serious reduction of
the hours of labour, unpreceded by the relief of com-
mercial burdens, seem not to believe that this measure
would inevitably depress the wages of the poor,
whilst the price of the necessaries of life would con-

 

to Lord Althorp, in Defence of the Cotton Factories of Lancashire,
By Holland Hoole.”

«If Mr. Sadler’s bill becomes a law, the masters will have the
choice of two evils. Either they must reduce the hours of labour
to the limit proposed to be fixed for children, (fifty eight hours
per week) or they must place their establishments without the pale
of this enactment, by discharging all persons under eighteen years
from their factories.”

“In the former case a reduction of the wages of all persons em-
ployed, whether children or adults, corresponding with the reduc-
tion of the time of labour must inevitably take place.” “Not a
few of the master cotton spinners have determined to adopt the
other course above mentioned, namely, to discharge from their employ-
ment all the hands under eighteen years of age, as soon as the proposed
law comes into operation.”
92

tinue the same. They appear, also, not to have suffi
ciently reflected, that, if this measure were unaccom-
panied by a general system of education, the time thus
bestowed, would be wasted or misused. If this de-
pression of wages, coincident with an increase of the
time generally spent by an uneducated people, in
sloth or dissipation, be carefully reflected upon, the
advocates of this measure will, perhaps, be less dis-
posed to regard it as one calculated to confer unqua-
lified benefits on the labouring classes. To retrace
the upward path from evil and misery, is difficult.
Health is only acquired, after disease, by passing
through slow and painful stages. Neither can the
evils which affect the operative population be in-
stantly relieved, by the exhibition of any single nota-
ble remedy.

Men are, it must be confessed, too apt to regard
with suspicion, those who differ from them in opinion,
and rancorous animosity is thus engendered between
those whose motives are pure, and between whose
opinions only shades of difference exist. We believe
that no objection to a reduction of the hours of labour
would exist, amongst the enlightened capitalists of
the cotton trade, if the difficulty of maintaining,
under the present restrictions, the commercial posi-
tion of the country did not forbid it. Were these
restrictions abolished, they would cease to fear the
competition of their foreign rivals, and the working
classes of the community would find them to be the
warmest advocates of every measure which could
93

conduce to the physical comfort, or moral elevation
of the poor.

A general and efficient system of education would
be devised—a more intimate and cordial association
would be cultivated between the capitalist and those
in his employ—the poor would be instructed in habits
of forethought and economy ; and, in combination

‘with these great and general efforts to ameliorate

their condition, when the restrictions of commerce
had been abolished, a reduction in the hours of
labour, would tend to elevate the moral and physical
condition of the people.

We are desirous of adding a few observations on
each of these measures. Ere the moral and physical
condition of the operative population can be much
elevated, a system of national education so extensive
and liberal as to supply the wants of the whole
labouring population must be introduced. Ignorance
is twice a curse—first from its necessarily debasing
effects, and then because rendering its victim insen-
sible to his own fate, he endures it with supine apathy.
The ignorant are, therefore, properly, the care of the
state. Our present means of instruction are confined
to Sunday Schools, and a few Lancasterian and
National Schools, quite inadequate to the wants of
the population. The absence of education is like
that of cultivation, the mind untutored becomes a
waste, in which prejudices and traditional errors grow
as rankly as weeds. In this sphere of labour, as in
every other, prudent and diligent culture is necessary
94

to obtain genial products from the soil ; noxious
agencies are abroad, and, while we refuse to sow the
germs of truth and virtue, the winds of heaven bring
the winged seeds of error and vice. Moreover, as
education is delayed, a stubborn barrenness affects
the faculties—want of exercise renders them inapt—
he that has never been judiciously instructed, has not
only to master the first elements of truth, and to un-
learn error, but in proportion as the period has been
delayed, will be the difficulty of these processes.
What wonder then that the teachers of truth should
make little impression on an unlettered population,
and that the working classes should become the prey
of those who flatter their passions, adopt their preju-
dices, or even descend to imitate their manners.

If a period ever existed, when public peace was
secured, by refusing knowledge to the population,
that epoch has lapsed. The policy of governments
may have been little able to beat the scrutiny of the
people. This may be the reason why the fountains
of English literature have been sealed—and the works
of our reformers, our patriots, and our confessors—
the exhaustless sources of all that is pure and holy,
and of good report, amongst us—have not been made
accessible and familiar to the poor. Yet, literature of
this order is destined to determine the structure of
our social constitution, and to become the mould of
our national character ; and they who would dam
up the flood of truth from the lower ground, cannot
prevent its silent transudation. A little knowledge
95

is thus inevitable, and it is proverbially a dangerous
thing. Alarming disturbances of social order gene-
rally commence with a people only partially instructed.
The preservation of internal peace, not less than the
improvement of our national institutions, depends on
the education of the working classes.

Government unsupported by popular opinion, is
deprived of its true strength, and can only retain its
power by the hateful expedients of despotism. Laws
which obtain not general consent are dead letters, or
obedience to them must be purchased by blood. But
ignorance perpetuates the prejudices and errors which
contend with the just exercise of a legitimate author-
ity, and makes the people the victims of those ill-
founded panics which convulse society, or seduces
them to those tumults which disgrace the movements
of a deluded populace. Unacquainted with the real
sources of their own distress, misled by the" artful
misrepresentations of men whose element is disorder,
and whose food faction can alone supply, the people
have too frequently neglected the constitutional ex-
pedients by which redress ought only to have been
sought, and have brought obloquy on their just cause,
by the blind ferocity of those insurrectionary move-
ments, in which they have assaulted the institutions
of society. That good government may be stable,
the people must be so instructed, that they may love
that which they know to be right.

The present age is peculiarly calculated to illus-
trate the truth of these observations. When we have
96

equally to struggle against the besotted idolatry of
ancient modes, which would retain error, and the
headlong spirit of innovation, which, under the pre-
tence of reforming, would destroy—mnow, hurried
wildly onwards to the rocks on which we may be
crushed; and then, sucked back into the sullen deep,
where we fear to be whelmed—between this Scylla
and that Charybdis, shall we hesitate to guide the
vessel of the state, by the power of an enlightened
popular opinion! The increase of intelligence and
virtue amongst the mass of the people, will prove our
surest safeguard, in the absence of which, the posses-
sions of the higher orders might be, to an ignorant
and brutal populace, like the fair plains of Italy, to
the destroying Vandal. The wealth and splendor,
the refinement and luxury of the superior classes,
might provoke the wild inroads of a marauding
force, before whose desolating invasion, every insti-
tution which science has erected, or humanity devised,
might fall, and beneath whose feet all the arts and
ornaments of civilized life might be trampled with
ruthless violence.

Even our national power rests on this basis, which
power is sustained *¢ not so much by the number of
the people, as by the ability and character of that peo-
ple;” and we should tremble to behold the excellent
brightness and terrible form of a great nation, rest-
ing, like the ‘image’ of the prophet, on a population,

 

¥ Cobbett’s Cottage Economy. Introduction.
 

97

in which the elements of strength and weakness
are so commingled, as to ensure the dissolution of
every cohesive principle, in that portion of society,
which is thus not inaptly portrayed by the feet
which were part of iron and part of clay.

The education afforded to the poor must be sub-
stantial. The mere elementary rudiments of know-
ledge are chiefly useful, as a means to an end. The
poor man will not be made a much better member of
society, by being only taught to read and write. His
education should comprise such branches of general
knowledge, as would prove sources of rational amuse-
ment, and would thus elevate his tastes above a com-
panionship in licentious pleasures. Those portions
of the exact sciences which are connected with his
occupation, should be familiarly explained to him, by
popular lectures, and cheap treatises. To this end,
Mechanics’ Institutions (partly conducted by the
artisans themselves, in order that the interest they
feel in them may be constantly excited and main-
tained) should be multiplied by the patrons of edu-
cation, among the poor. The ascertained truths of
political science should be early taught to the labour-
ing classes, and correct political information should
be constantly and industriously disseminated amongst
them. Were the taxes on periodical publications re-
moved, men of great intelligence and virtue might be
induced to conduct journals, established for the ex-
press purpose of directing to legitimate objects that
restless activity by which the people are of late

N
98

agitated. Such works, sanctioned by the names of
men distinguished for their sagacity, spirit, and in-
tegrity, would command the attention and respect of
the working classes. The poor might thus be also
made to understand their political position in so-
ciety, and the duties that belong to it— that* they
are in a great measure the architects of their own for-
tune ; that what others can do for them is trifling in-
deed, compared with what they can do for them-
selves ; that they are infinitely more interested in the
preservation of public tranquillity than any other class
of society ; that mechanical inventions and disco-
veries are always supremely advantageous to them;
and that their real interests can only be effectually
promoted, by displaying greater prudence and fore-
thought.” They should be instructed in the nature of
their domestic and social relations. The evils which
imprudent marriages entail on those who contract
them, on their unhappy offspring, and on society at
large, should be exhibited in the strongest light. The
consequences of idleness, improvidence, and moral
deviations, should be made the subjects of daily ad-
monition ; so that a young man might enter the
world, not, as at present, without chart or compass,
blown hither and thither by every gust of passion,
but, with a perfect knowledge of the dangers to
which he is exposed, and of the way to escape them.

 

* McCulloch, on the rise, progress, and present state of the British
Cotton Manufacture. Edinburgh Review, No. 91.
 

99

The relation between the capitalist and those in
his employ, might prove a fruitful source of the most
beneficial comments. The misery which the working
classes have brought upon themselves, by their mis-.
taken notions on this subject, is incalculable, not to
mention the injury which has accrued to capitalists,
and to the trade of this country.

Much good *would result from a more general
and cordial association of the higher and lower orders.
In Liverpool a charitable society exists denominated
the “Provident,” whose members include a great
number of the most influential inhabitants. The
town is subdivided into numerous districts, the in-
spection and care of each of which is committed
to one or two members of the association. They
visit the people in their houses—sympathize with
their distresses, and minister to the wants of the
necessitous ; but above all, they acquire by their
charity, the right of inquiring into their arrangements
—of instructing them in domestic economy—of re-
commending sobriety, cleanliness, forethought, and
method.

Every capitalist might contribute much to the hap-
piness of those in his employ, by a similar exercise
of enlightened charity. He might establish provi-
dent associations and libraries amongst his people.
Cleanliness, and a proper attention to clothing and

 

* An Address to the Higher Classes on the present State of Feel-
ing among the Working Classes.
100

diet* might be enforced. He has frequent op-
portunities of discouraging the vicious, and of admo-
nishing the improvident. By visiting the houses of
the operatives, he might advise the multiplication
of household comforts and the culture of the do-
mestic sympathies. Principle and interest admonish
him to receive none into his employ, unless they can
produce the most satisfactory attestations to their
character.

Above all he should provide instruction for the
children of his workpeople : he should stimulate the
appetite for useful knowledge, and supply it with
appropriate food.

Happily, the effect of such a system is not left to
conjecture. In large towns serious obstacles oppose
its introduction ; but in Manchester more than one
enlightened capitalist confesses its importance, and
has made preparations for its adoption. In the
country, the facilities are greater; and many estab-
lishments might be indicated, which exhibit the re-
sults of combined benevolence and intelligence. One
example may suffice.

Twelve hundred persons are employed in the fac-
tories of Mr. Thomas Ashton, of Hyde. This gen-
tleman has erected commodious dwellings for his
workpeople, with each of which he has connected
every convenience that can minister to comfort. He
resides in their immediate vicinity, nd has frequent

 

* True Theory of Rent, By T. Perronnet Thomson, Esq.
101

opportunities of maintaining a cordial association
with his operatives. Their houses are wel! {ornished,
clean, and their tenants exhibit every indication of
health and happiness. Mr. Ashton has also built a
school, where 640 children, chiefly belonging to his
establishment, are instructed on Sunday, in reading,
writing, arithmetic, &c. A library, connected with
this school, is eagerly resorted to, and the people fre-
quently read after the hours of labour have expired.
An infant school is, during the week, attended by
280 children, and in the evenings others are in-
structed by masters selected for the purpose. The
factories themselves are certainly excellent examples
of the cleanliness and order which may be attained,
by a systematic and persevering attention to the
habits of the artisans. ~

The effects of such enlightened benevolence may
be, to a certain extent, exhibited by statistical state-
ments. The population, before the introduction of
machinery, chiefly consisted of colliers, hatters, and
weavers. Machinery was introduced in 1801, and
the following table exhibits its consequences in the
augmentation of the value of property, the dimi-
nution of poor rates, and the rapid increase of the
amount assessed for the repairs of the highway, du-
ring a period, in which the population of the town-
ship increased from 830 to 7138.—

a
102

; Township of Hyde, in the Parish of Stockport, in the County of Chester.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~~ Estimated
: value of pro-| Sums assessed |Sums assessed for Popu-
Year. [perty asses-(for the Relief of |the Repairs of the Intion REMARKS,
sable to the the Poor. Highway.
Poor’s Rate.
£, grok ood £5 od,
1801} 693 10, 53312 © 2 11 6 | 830|Machineryintroduced.
2| 697 Of 394 19 4 51:19 5
3/:607 0] 336 8 0 52° 3 03
41697 10° 325 10° 0 52 5 03
5724 0.385 17 4.1100: .6 11%
6] 786 of 830 06. 0 {| 110. 12 41%
vhe00 woriov6. 6 8.172: 7 9%
81/808 10-223 1 4 | 177 610
Ot. 915 ‘of 286 16 84 152 17 9
18107935 Of 34510 0 | 146 18 32
11 045° 10 417 6° 4 {199 10 311806
2.975 15) 471...8,..4.1.168 1). 1 Riots, Machinery bro-
3/086 of 687 7 8] 148 18 11} ken in various places.
4) 007 «0 1630 6 8 | 144 18 81 Power Looms intro-
5{1020° 15] 50318 0 | 00 9 3% duced.
61070 5; 800 2 O. | 156 0 52
“(y100 15 502 ‘3 6 | 150 2 ‘8%
Spl4g cof 42k 2.0 [171..15..90
9{1242.. 0] 431 6 O.| 201 8 73
18201272 "Of 355 4 81220 '11''7
{1371 15). 274 7.0. 265 1 1 [3355] New County Rate
2/1429 5| 435 10 6 | 440 12 03 made: from this time
31570 of 479 8 0 | 454 8 8% the County Rate, to-
41792 ol 348 17 0 | 506 2 ai gether with the salary
51957 of 39811 0 | 524 19 3% of the oe officer,
62003 10} 438 7 6 | 573 10 72 Eoge goad pra
7l9354 15 (470 6 3 1508 10 5 ?
812533. 0} / 502 7.4 .1.732 .4¢ 3%
o|2623 0; 79011 "0 | 681 10 63%
18302727 0] 1 549 16 0 | 578 10 1
ila783 0] %334:18 0 1-350 5. 51/7138
Total in 31yrs.13994 13 ¥ 18405 19 7
Average,..... 451 10-0 [271 7 2

 

* A considerable balance in the Overseer’s hands.
103

This table exhibits a cheering proof of the advan-
tages which may be derived from the commercial
system, under judicious management. We feel much
confidence in inferring that where so little pauperism
exists, the taint of vice has not deeply infected the
population; and concerning their health we can speak
from personal observation. The rate of mortality,
from statements® with which Mr. Ashton has politely

 

* Minute of Deaths among the Spinners, Piecers and Dressers,
employed at the works of Mr, Thomas Ashton, in Hyde, from
1819 to 1832, 13 years, viz :—SpiNNERs. Rd. Robinson, James
Seville, David Cordingly, Eli Taylor. Precers. Jas. Rowbotham,
Wm. Green. Dressers. John Cocker, Samuel Broadhurst.

There are employed at these works 61 rovers and spinners,
120 piecers, and 38 dressers: total 219; among whom there are
at this time 10 spinners whose ages are respectively from forty up
to fifty six years; and among the dressers there are 12 whose
ages are equal to that of the above spinners. We have no orphans
at this place, neither have we any family receiving parochial re-
lief; nor can we recollect the time when there was any such.
The different clubs or sick lists among the spinners, dressers,
overlookers and mechanics employed here, allow ten or twelve
shillings per week to the members during sickness, and from six
to eight pounds to a funeral; which #pplies also to the member’s
wife, and, in some cases, one half or one fourth to the funeral of
achild. The greatest amount of contributions to these funds has in
no one year exceeded five shillings and sixpence from each member.

The weavers (chiefly young women) have also a funeral club,
the contributions to which are fourpence per member to each
funeral. In the above period of thirteen years there have hap-
pened among them only forty funerals.

Total number of persons employed, twelve hundred, who main-

tain about two thousand. Josep TiNnkEr, Book-keeper.
Hyde, 27th March, 1832.
104

furnished us, appears to be exceedingly low. In
thirteen years (during the first six of which, the num-
ber of rovers, spinners, piecers and dressers was
one hundred, and during the last seven, above two
hundred) only eight deaths occurred, though the
same persons were, with rare exceptions, employed
during the whole period. Supposing, for the sake of
convenience, that the deaths were nine ; then by as-
cribing three to the first six years, and six to the
last seven, the mortality during the former period
was one in 200, and during the latter, one in 233.
The number of weavers during the first six years
was 200, and during the last seven 400; and in this
body of workmen 40 deaths occurred in thirteen
years. By ascribing thirteen of these deaths to the
first six years, and twenty seven to the last seven,
the mortality, during the former period, was one in
92, and during the latter, 1 in 103.

These facts indicate that the present hours of
labour do not injure the health of a population,
otherwise favourably situated, but that, when evil re-
sults ensue, they must chiefly be ascribed to the
combination of this with other causes of moral and
physical depression.

Capitalists, whose establishments are situated in
the country, enjoy many opportunities of controling
the habits and ministering to the comforts of those
in their employ, which cannot exist in a large manu-
facturing town. In the former, the land in the
vicinity is generally the property of the manufacturer,
 

ALT TE Ry Rr UA Jp ty Ty WANUOANL (0 STO REPLY TL

105

and upon this he may build commodious houses, and
surround the operative with all the conveniences and
attractions of a home. In the town, the land is often
in the possession of non-resident proprietors, anxious
only to obtain the largest amount of chief rent. It
is therefore let in separate lots to avaricious specu-
lators, who (unrestrained by any general enactment,
or special police regulation) build without plan,
wretched abodes in confused groups, intersected by
narrow, unpaved or undrained streets and courts.
By this disgraceful system the moral and physical con-
dition of the poor undergoes an inevitable depression.

In Manchester *¢it is much to be regretted that
the surveyors of highways, or some other body of
gentlemen specially appointed, were not, forty years
ago, invested with authority to regulate the laying
out of building-land within the precincts of the town,
and to enforce the observance of certain conditions,
on the part of the owners and lessees of such pro-
perty.” Private rights ought not to be exercised
so as to produce a public injury. The law, which
describes and punishes offences against the person
and property of the subject, should extend its author-
ity by establishing a social code, in which the rights
of communities should be protected from the assaults
of partial interests. By exercising its functions in
the former case, it does not wantonly interfere with

 

* Dr. Lyon on the Medical Topography and Statistics of Man-
chester.— North of England Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. i.
page 17.

0
106

the liberty of the subject, nor in the latter, would it
violate the reverence due to the sacred security of
property.

The powers obtained by the recent changes in
the police act of Manchester are retrospective, and
exclusively refer to the removal of existing evils : their
application must also necessarily be slow. We con-
ceive that special police regulations should be framed
for the purpose of preventing the recurrence of that
gross neglect of decency and violation of order, whose
effects we have described.

Streets should be built according to plans deter-
mined (after a conference with the owners) by a body
of commissioners, specially elected for the purpose—
their width should bear a certain relation to the size
and elevation of the houses erected. Landlords should
be compelled, on the erection of any house, to pro-
vide sufficient means of drainage, and each to pave his
respective area of the street. Each habitation should
be provided with a due receptacle for every kind of
refuse, and the owner should be obliged to white-
wash the house, at least once every year. Inspectors
of the state of houses should be appointed: and the
repair of all those, reported to be in a state incon-
sistent with the health of the inhabitants, should be
J enforced at the expense of the landlords. If the
rents of houses are not sufficient to remunerate the
owners for this repair, their situation must in general
be such, or their dilapidation so extreme, as to ren-
der them so undesirable to the comfort, or so preju-
107

dicial to the health of the tenants, that they ought
no longer to be inhabited.

Sources of physical depression, arising from the
neglect of these arrangements, abound to such an
extent in Manchester, that it has been sagaciously
suggested that some powerful counteracting causes
must also be in operation, or we should otherwise
frequently be subjected to the visitation of fatal
epidemic diseases. What all those causes may be it
would perhaps be vain to speculate, but it might be
demonstrated that the establishment of the House of
Recovery has had a most salutary influence in check-
ing the spread of typhus fever.

The associations of workmen, for protecting the
price of labour, have too frequently been so directed,
as to occasion increased distress to the operatives,
embarrassment to the capitalist, and injury to the
trade of the country, whereas, were they properly
conducted, they might exercise a generally beneficial
influence. No combination can permanently raise
the wages of labour, above the limit defined by the
relation existing between population and capital; but
partial monopolies, and individual examples of op-
pression might, by this means, be removed, and occa-
sions exist, when, on the occurrence of a fresh demand,
the natural advance of the price of labour might be
hastened. So long, however, as these associations
needlessly provoke animosity, by the slander of private
character, by vexatious and useless interference, and
by exciting turbulence and alarm, many of their most
108

legitimate purposes cannot be pursued. Distrust will
then prevent masters and workmen from framing re-
gulations for their mutual benefit, such as modes of
determining the quantity or quality of work produced,
and the collection of correct statistical information—
or from combining in applications to government for
improvements of the laws which affect commerce.
Capitalists, fearing combination amongst their work-
men, will conceal the true state of the demand, and
thus at one period, the operative will be deprived of
that reward of his labour, which he would otherwise
obtain, and, at another, will receive, no warning of
the necessary reduction of manufacturing establish-
ments ; which change may thus occur at a period,
when, having made no provision for it, he may be
least able to encounter the privation of his ordinary
means of support. The risks attending the outlay of
capital, the extension of the sphere of enterprise, and
even the execution of contracts are, by the uncer-
tainty thus introduced into circumstances affecting
the supply of labour, exceedingly augmented. Larger
stocks must be maintained, less confidence will attend
commercial transactions, and an increase of price is
necessary to cover these expenses and risks. «¥ If
an establishment consist of several branches which
can be only carried on jointly, as, for instance, of iron
mines, blast furnaces, and a colliery, in which there
are distinct classes of workmen, it becomes necessary

 

* The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. By Chas. Bab-
bage, Esq. Page 250.
109

to keep on hand a larger stock of materials than
would otherwise be required, if it were certain that
no combinations would arise. The proprietors of
one establishment in the trade which has been men-
tioned, think it expedient always to keep above
ground, a supply of coal, for six months, which is in
that instance equal in value to about £10,000.”
The efforts of these associations have not unfre-
quently occasioned the introduction of machinery
into branches of labour, whence skill has been driven,
to undertake the severer and ill rewarded occupation
of ordinary toil. When machinery thus suddenly
excludes skilled labour, much greater temporary dis-
tress is occasioned to the operative, than by the natu-
ral and gradual progress of mechanicalimprovements.
By employing the power of these associations, at
periods when an advance of wages has been impos-
sible, or to resist a fall which the influence of natural
causes rendered inevitable, the workmen have not
only prevented the accumulation of the fund for the
maintenance of labour, ata period when the advance
of population was unchecked, hut they have dissi-
pated their own savings, as well as the monies of
the union, in useless efforts, and, when pride and pas-
sion have combined to prolong the struggle, their
furniture and clothes have been sold, and their fami-
lies reduced to the extremes of misery. The effects
of these ¢strikes’ are frequently shared by unwilling
sufferers, first, among those whose labour cannot be
conducted independently of the body, which has re-
110

fused to work, and secondly, by those whose personal
will is controled, by the threats or the actual violence
of the rest. During the ‘strike,’ habits of idleness
or dissipation are not nnfrequently contracted—sus-
picion degenerates into hatred—and a wide gulph is
created between the masters and the workmen. The
kindlier feelings are extinguished, secret leagues are
formed, property is destroyed, such of the operatives
as donot join the combination, are daily assaulted,
and at length, licence mocks the law with the excesses
of popular tumult.

It is impossible that the distrust, thus created,
should not sometimes occasion the exclusion from the
trade, of the entire body of workmen concerned, and
the introduction of a new colony of operatives into
the district. The labourers thus immigrating, are
not seldom an uncivilized and foreign race, so that,
if ever the slightest tendency to cordial co-operation
existed between the capitalist and the operative, that
is now dissolved. The obstinacy with which this
struggle with the manufacturer has sometimes been
conducted, has occasioned the removal of establish-
ments to another district, or even to a foreign coun-
try, and these contests are always unfavorable to the
introduction of fresh capital, into the neighbourhood
where they occur.

The more deserving and intelligent portions of the
labouring class, are often controled by the greater
boldness and activity of that portion which has least
knowledge and virtue. Thus, we fear, that the
111

power of the Co-operative Unions has been directed
to mischievous objects, and the funds, the time, and
energies of the operatives, have been wasted on un-
feasible projects. Moreover, they who, as they are
the weakest, ought to be, and generally are, the firm-
est advocates of liberty, have been misled into gross
violations of the liberty of their fellow workmen.
The power of these unions, to create disorder, or to
attain improper objects, would be destroyed, if every
assault were prosecuted; or the violation of the liberty
of the subject prevented by the assiduous interference
of an efficient police. The radical remedy for these
evils is such an education as shall teach the people in
what consists their true happiness, and how their in-
terests may be best promoted.

The tendency to these excesses would be much
diminished, did a cordial sympathy unite the higher
with the lower classes of society. The intelligence
of the former should be the fountain whence this
should flow. If the results of labour be solely re-
garded, in the connexion of the capitalist with those
in his employ, the first step is taken towards treating
them as a mere animal power necessary to the
mechanical processes of manufacture. This is a heart-
less, if not a degrading association. The contract
for the rewards of labour conducted on these princi-
ples issues in suspicion, if not in rancorous animosity.

The operative population constitutes one of the
most important elements of society, and when nu-
merically considered, the magnitude of its interests
112

and the extent of its power assume such vast propor-
tions, that the folly which neglects them is allied to
madness. If the higher classes are unwilling to dif-
fuse intelligence among the lower, those exist who
are ever ready to take advantage of their ignorance ;
if they will not seek their confidence, others will ex-
cite their distrust ; if they will not endeavour to pro-
mote domestic comfort, virtue, and knowledge among
them, their misery, vice, and prejudice will prove
volcanic elements, by whose explosive violence the
structure of society may be destroyed. The princi-
ples developed in this Pamphlet, as they are con-
nected with facts occurring within a limited sphere
of observation, may be unwittingly supposed to have
relation to that locality alone. The object of the
author will, however, be grossly misunderstood, if it
be conceived, that he is desirous of placing in invidi-
ous prominence defects which he may have observed
in the social constitution of his own town. He be-
lieves the evils here depicted to be incident, in a much
larger degree, to many other .great cities, and the
means of cure here indicated to be equally capable of
application there. His object is simply to offer to the
public an example of what he conceives to be too
generally the state of the working classes, throughout
the kingdom, and to illustrate by specific instances,
evils everywhere requiring the immediate interference
of legislative authority.
113

APPENDIX.

 

TABLE No. 1. p. 28.

 

INQUIRIES CONCERNING THE STATE OF HOUSES.

 

District. No.

 

Name of Street, Court, &c.

Name of Street, Court, §e.

Nu No,

 

1. Is the House in good

12. Is a private privy at-

 

 

 

 

4, Are the rooms well ven-
tilated, or can they be
without change in win-
dows, Sc... x

 

5. Is the house damp, or

 

6. Are the cellars inha-
bited ? i... ad Sei

14. Will they allow the

Town’s Authorities to
whitewash them, if they
cannot conveniently do
it themselves ?........

Repair? vee vo suns tached to the house ?..

2. Isiteleanl.,......- 13. Will the tenants assist

3. Does it require White- in cleansing the streets
washing 2.. Jubb uh and houses ? ........ 0

 

15. Are the tenants gene-
rally healthy or not ?..

 

 

7. Are theseinhabited cel-
lars damp or ever flooded?

 

 

 

8. Are the soughsin a bad
state? ..... .... uv: .>

 

9.2Who is the proprietor?

 

10. What number of fami-
lies or lodgers does the
house contain? ......

 

11. What is the state of
the beds, closets, and
furniture? LL... dein

 

16. What is their pepe
tion? .. iv. with wiwiae .

 

117. Remarks concerning

food, clothing, and fuel.

 

18. Habits of life.

 

 

 

 

 

19. General Observations.

 

 

 

 
114

 

TABLE No. 2. p. 28.
INQUIRIES CONCERNING THE STATE OF STREETS, COURTS, ALLEYS, &c.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

District. No. Inspectors.
Name | Name | Name
Names of Streets, Courts, Alleys, &e.
Is the street, court, or alley narrow, and is it ill
wentilafed? ...... nr. chad) 00.8
Isitpavedornot?........................
If not, is it under the Police Act?............
Does it contain heaps of refuse, pools of stag-
nant fluid, or deepruts &......cvis vv vinninn
Are the public and private privies well situated,
and properly attended to? ...... .... So
Is the street, court, or alley, near a canal, river, 3 | F
brook, or marshy land 2"... 0%. L000...
GlenBrAl ODSBISALIONS vv iv. circ vesannvr | I

 

 

 

 

EXTRACTS FROM REPORTS OF CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION
SOCIETIES. (Note, page 67.)

 

Mosley-street Christian Instruction Society,

“ITs members agreed to consider a certain section of the Town, adjacent to
the Chapel, as the field of their labour, and to visit periodically all the abodes
of the poor within the limits so marked out, for the purpose of conversing
with the inmates on the great truths of the gospel, lending them tracts and
books on those momentous subjects, and inducing them to attend public worship,
and to live themselves, and train up their children, as immortal beings. From
that time to the present about forty individuals have followed out this under-
taking within a district of which Market-street, Mosley-street, and Deansgate,
on the South side, as far as Bootle-street, have constituted the boundaries, At
the commencement of the present year, returns were made, from which the
following facts were ascertained. The dwellings visited by the Society were
about 350, containing nearly 600 families, which consisted of about 1800 resi-
dent members. In those families there were, children under ten years of age,
453; children sent to Day Schools, 149 ; children sent to Sunday Schools only,
240: children old enough for school but not sent, 93. © There were, of families
possessing bibles, 327; of families in which the adults did not regularly neg-
115

lect public worship, only 150; of Catholic families, 60 ; of families the heads of
which were avowed infidels, 5. To make the description of the Society’s dis-
trict answerable to the impressions of it on the minds of the visitors, there would
have to be added, to these facts, details of drunkenness and sabbath-breaking, of
vice and misery, of the complete negation of moral and religious sentiment, of
flagrant vice, and shameless profligacy, of squalid poverty, of wasting sickness,
and of hopeless death. When the visitors attained some extensive knowledge
of the domestic circumstances and spiritual wants of the people whom they had
taken under their charge, they became desirous to join, to their own agency;
that of one who might give his whole time to such cases as were perpetually de-
manding more attention than they could possibly pay ; cases of protracted ill-
ness, of approaching death, and of awakened inquiry, &c. For this office they
selected a member of the church, Mr. Robinson, who has since devoted himself
with the utmost diligence to the labours of his honourable, but arduous and
extremely self-denying, vocation. Two preaching stations have been established ;
one in Queen-street, Deansgate, and one in Gee’s Buildings, near Lloyd-street.
Both are occupied on Sunday Evening; Mr: Robinson being engaged at one
place, while private members of the church most kindly and acceptably supply
the other.”

London Christian Instruction Society.

“Its design is, irrespective of the particular denominations of Christians,
to advance evangelical Religion amongst the inhabitants of the Metropolis and
its Vicinity, by promoting the observance of the Sunday—the preaching of
the Gospel—the establishment of Prayer Meetings and Sunday Schools—the cir-
culation of Religious Tracts, accompanied with systematic visitation—and by
the establishment of gratuitous Circulating Libraries—with every other legiti-
mate method which the Committee may from time to time approve, for the ac-
complishment of the great object contemplated by the Society. To facilitate
the operations of the Society, the Metropolis is divided, by the establishment
of Associations, into districts, to each of which is appointed a Superintendent,
with the approbation of the Committee, who presides over the proceedings of
the Society in the District to which he belongs, and reports to the Committee, at
their conference with the whole body of the Superintendents, the state of the
District committed to his care. At the present time there are sixty-five Associ-
ations, which engage the benevolent attention of 1173 gratuitous visitors, who
have, during the past year, visited 31,591 families, being an increase of 4677
families since the last Report. So that, by this agency alone, religious tracts and
116

books are now placed within the reach of at least 150,000 individuals, Through
the benevolent efforts of the Visitors during 1830, 1260 cases of extreme dis-
tress were relieved, 617 copies of the Sacred Scriptures were brought into cir-
culation, and 2303 children were sent to the various Sabbath Schools, and
more than 1200 individuals were induced to attend public worship. Many
zealous Visitors have included within their spheres of benevolence, the hospi-
tals, workhouses, police stations, and manufactories, that are found in their res-
pective neighbourhoods. Connected with the numerous Associations are ninety-
three stations for reading the Scriptures, exhortation, and prayer. These meet-
ings are usually held in the apartments of the poor, who appear gratified with
the opportunity of showing their respect for the Visitors by lending their abodes
for such a purpose. At various stations not less than 200 sermons were preached
to congregations, varying from 100 to 1000 persons.”

Greenock City Mission.—* This society is engaged, 1st, In visiting the lower
classes in their own houses; 2d, In collecting into one house individuals living
in the same neighbourhood, for the purpose of reading and expounding the
Scriptures ; and 3d, In an investigation into the state of the community gene-
rally. From this investigation, it appears that Greenock contains 6,200 fami-
lies, and 26,500 inhabitants, of whom 8,360 are below 12 years of age: 4,370
are betwixt 12 and 20: 13,970 are above 20 years. About 3000 children at-
tend day schools, therefore there must be nearly 2000 betwixt 6 and 14 years
of age, who do not attend school. It is not the business of the Directors to pro-
pose a remedy for this apparent neglect of education, but it certainly suggests
the propriety of exertions being made, to have parish schools established in
Greenock, being the legal means of affording cheap education to all classes. The
number attending Sabbath evening schools is nearly 2,000, and there being
about 5,000 youths in Greenock, betwixt 7 and 16 years of age, it follows that
3,000 receive no Sabbath school instruction. And allowing liberally for those
whose parents instruct them at home, a number will still remain, sufficiently
great, to show the necessity of more vigorous efforts to afford the means of re-
ligious instruction to the young. As far as could be ascertained, there are 500
individuals, chiefly grown up, who cannot read. The Directors particularly call
attention to the subject of church accommodation and church attendance, in-
formation in regard to which is next in order, . The number of sittings said to
be taken in churches is 8,850, being only at the rate of two-thirds of a sitting
to each person above 20 years of age—of course, one-third or 4,621 persons
above 20 years, have no sittings in any church, and there is no provision at all
for those below 20. It must be allowed that in a Christian community, every
individual above 12 or 14 years of age ought to have a sitting in church, so that
nine thousand in Greenock, above 14 years of age, are without sittings in any
church. But, in fact, there is little more than church accommodation in town,
117

for the number of sittings said to be taken, and several of the churches are not
full ; it follows therefore, that not nearly one half of the population above 12
years, attend church on any one Sabbath!!” About 3,100 families state they
belong to the Established Churches, 1,500 families are Dissenters, and 360
families are Catholics; nearly 1,200 families could not distinctly tell to what
church they belonged !! Seven thousand two hundred persons are communi-
cants, being only one half of the population above 20 years of age! Surely
such a statement as this needs no comment, and the Directors merely draw from
it a pressing argument for increased exertions to support this Society, whose ob-
ject is to attend to those at home, who either cannot or will not come to the
house of God. It is remarkable that there are no fewer than 1,450 widows who
keep house, being betwixt a fourth and fifth of the whole number of house-
holders. The number of paupers, or those who enjoy regular assistance from
the parish funds, is about one thousand. It is unnecessary to state the number
of families in want of Bibles, the Greenock Bible Society and Association,
having kindly offered to supply any deficiency of this kind.”

Glasgow City Mission.— The object of the Mission is ‘To promote the
Religious Interests of the Poor of Glasgow and its vicinity.” It enacts that the
Agents of the Society be chosen from all denominations of professing Christians:
that they be men of approved piety, prudence, and zeal; and who, by their
acquirements, especially in Divinity, may appear fitted for the duties of the
agency : that the Agents occupy themselves, at least four hours daily, in the
service of the society, excepting Saturday, which js allowed them for study ;
that they select such hours of call as will best suit the convenience of the peo-
ple ; and that no calls be made at the hour of dinner: that preaching-stations
be appointed in the districts visited by the Agents, to which the poor shall be
invited : and that the co-operation of ordained ministers and preachers of the
Gospel be solicited to maintain worship at the said stations, &c. Lastly, that no
Agent be required to act contrary to the laws prescribed to him, by that body
of Christians with which he is connected. Of the twenty Agents employed in
1828, six were members of the Church of Scotland ; ten, seceders, of the various
sects; two Independents ; one, a Reformed Presbyterian; and one, a Baptist.

“ The printed ¢ Instructions to the Agents’ are liberal and judicious ; but
they are too long to admit of being inserted. Every Agent has his own allotted
district. He is required to keep a schedule, in which he enters the number of
hours employed in the service of the society, and the number of families visited
each day. He is also required to keep a regular journal or diary for the in-
spection of the Directors, An idea of the work done by the Agents, may be
formed from the statement, that in the month of October, 1828, when only
16 Agents were in employment, four thousand and seventy families were visited
in the ordinary course of visitation, Z'wo Lundred and eighty-eight sick and dying
118

had special visits paid to them; 239 meetings were held, attended by as many as
2514 poor; chiefly of such a class as otherwise might not have heard the Gospel.
The number of families, the subjects of regular visitation, in 1828, was about
twelve thousand. These devoted Agents read and expound the Holy Scriptures
to the poor, and converse with them on every topic connected with their own
religious instruction, and that of their children. They supply them with books
and tracts. They enlist their children as scholars in the various Sunday Schools,
which happily are to be found in every neighbourhood. In cases of extreme
want and destitution, they are also often the means of obtaining pecuniary help,
through the benevolence of opulent individuals, to whom they consider it a part
of their duty to make such cases known.”
eRe rele

TABLE of the SEL Gd Trish cases without Settlements, and of all v cases os that have Tt Settlements, “and hence denominated
English, (whether English or Irish,) which received Parochial Relief in the Township of Manchester, in the four winter months
of the years 1827-8, 1828-9, 1829-30, 1830-31, and of the sums thus ewpended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*No. 1. NEWTOWN. © ANCOATS. CENTRAL. PORTLAND STREET,
No. of Cases. Amount pd. No. of Cases, Amount pd. No, of Cases. Amount pd. No. of Cases. Amount pd.
1827 and 1828. Lo sd: Le 8 de Loins ithe Lavi viol
November. [English 1456) 208 18 3 |English 1694| 207 17 0 [English 1818| 245 13 0 [English 1670{ 226 3 6
Irish 369] 54 10 6 |Irish 348] 38 0 6 (Irish Irish
December, [English 15634] 204 12 0 [English 1708{ 209 11 6 {English 1874 246 , 10 6 [English 1782{ 229 9 0
Irish 396] 52 17 6 |Irish 379] 41 10 6 (Irish Irish
January. [English 1561| 213 1 2 [English 1674) 206 8 0 |English 1911] 262 2 6 |English 1738) 237 9 ©
Irish 400 54 14 6 [Irish 386] 42 3 6 [Irish 195] 19 19 0 [trish 183112 2170
February. (English 1508) 210 2 6 (English 1625 193 9 0 [English 1819 232 8 6 |English 17241 223 19 0
Irish 394 51 14 0 [Irish 369 39 10 0 [Irish 171 16 19 6 |Irish 13113 1° 6
1828 and 1829. 7618/1050 10 5 8183| 977 10 0 7788{1023 13 0 71281 932 .19 0
November. (English 1291( 1563 9 6 |English 1620] 191 1 6 (English 1684| 208 7 93[English 1689 2g 18 0
Irish 309] 34 0 6 [Irish 488) 56 12 0 [Irish 122 12 5 0 [Irish 144 10 ¢
December. Baglish 1339] 159 7 6 [English 1701| 207 18 6 |English 1784| 216 17 0 |English 1 211 5.0
Irish 342] 37 2 0 [Irish 507| 57 4 6 [Irish 134 16 7 0 |Irish 130 5 6 Jt
January. (English 13471 161 8 0 |English 1836| 221 8 0 |English 1847| 231 0 3 |English 1748 al 19 6 od
Irish 365] 39 7 0 [Irish 547] 62 9 0 [Irish 133] 16 6 3 [Irish 147) 16 8 0 ©
February. |English 14571 179 1 0 |English 2001f 244 4 0 [English 1847| 236 4 0 |English 1800( 227 6 0
Irish 474 55 7 6 (Irish 613] 72 4 6 [Irish 143) 15 9 6 [Irish 156] 16 4 6
1829 and 1830. 6924) 819 3 0 93131113 2 © 7694| 950 16 93 75511 925 19 6
November. (English 2053] 292 2 1 English 2069 245 9 6 [English 2278 329 5 6 [English 20301 269 0 0
Irish 930| 114 19 6 [Irish 639 68 5 6 [Irish 166] 19 19 0 [Irish 228° 22 6 0
December, [English 1997| 285 14 6 |English 1960 228 5 0 [English 2346] 320 13 3 |English 21211 282 5 0
Irish 985| 122 3 4 [Irish 640 65 5 0 [Irish 168] 19 14 6 [Irish 250] 24 2 6
January. |English 1931 267 15 2 |English 1934 231 14 13(English 2481| 363 6 b [English 21501 278 19 6
Irish 961| 127 18 10 |Irish 694] 74 5 73|Irish 198 23 8 6 [Irish 3201 28 16 0
February. |English 2042 290 11 11 |English 2069 245 9 11|English 2663 305 9 3 |English 22001307 2 9
Irish 1035) 137 8 9 |Irish 717}~.80: 6. 0 lirish 210] 25 18 0 [Irish 379 34 9 6
1830 and 1831. 11934|1638 14 1 10712{1239 0 8 104101467 14 5 9777|1247 1 38
November. [English 2065 322 1 6 (English 2210 278 1 63|English 2395) 321 156 1 |English 1765] 202 5 6
Irish 925 125 8 6 [Irish 925| 126 8 6 [Irish 204 24 9 6 |Irish 2301 23° 1 6
December. |English 2374 360 9 5 [English 2333 314 5 10 |English 2697) 851 3 93|English 1864] 225 12 8
Irish 1128} 157 17 6 [Irish 978| 107 5 0 [Irish 233) 30 10 2 |Irish 289, 20-1. 6
January. [English 2477| 428 14 4 |English 2328) 336 3 8j|English 2673| 377 8 10 [English 1984 242 12 103
Irish 1022| 146 4 6 [Irish 994 107 9 0 (Irish 243) 32 10 0 [Irish 304] 80 17 0
February. |English 2213| 335 2 6 [English 2201 278 7 8 |English 25649 348 1 6 [English 1967] 231 8 ©
Irish 976| 133 3 3 |Irish 921) 96 8 0 |Irish 2291 29 0 6 [Irish 291 30 19 6
131802009 1 6 12890(1643 9 3 111231514 19 43 8694(1015 18 63

 
*SI}ULIJ ‘PIAYS0I) PIB TISIUR

PAROCHIAL RELIEF administered in eight months of the year 1831, in the TOWNSHIP of MANCHESTER.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘I*No. 2. NEWTOWN. ANCOATS. CENTRAL. PORTLAND STREET.
1831. No. of Cases. | Amount paid. | No. of Cases. | Amount paid. | No. of Cases. | Amount paid. | No. of Cases. | Amount paid.
£5 dl LD. od £0. d Land
March. [English ~~ 2037| 285 12 8 [English 1943] 250 19 6 |English 2430} 334 19 4 [English 1764 199 3 10
Irish 1099 138 2 4 [Irish 804 86 6 6 [Irish 226] 28 8 6 |Irish 236¢ 25° 0 6
April. |English 2022] 317 3 4;|English 1917 264 8 6 |English 2879] 332 4 O0}|English 1769,.213.-.5.0
Irish 984| 127 16 9 |Irish 806 85 15 0 [Irish 202) 23 18 2 |Irish 230-25: 3 0
May. English 1931] 293 16 6 [English 1961) 2564 7 6 [English 2285) 314 6 9%|English 1735) 204 14 2%
Irish 902| 116 11 6 [Irish 841) 88 14 0 |Irish 180] 21 12 2 (Irish 2141 21 9 0
June, |English = 1968 286 6 8 [English 1980] 249 4 6 |[English 2380] 327 15 10 (English 1782 207 2 6
Irish 911|:117 7 6 |Irish 882 94 1 0 [Irish 207] 24 3 0 [Irish 217,221: 13 6
11854(1682 17 33 11134(1373 16 6 10289{1403 7 10 7947) 917 11 6%
July. |English 1986] 306 14 103|English 1969| 275 18 6 |English  2378| 323 15 0 |English +1730{ 218 5 8
Irish 888) 117 7 ‘2 [Irish 856) 92 12 6 |Irish 199 25 1 0 [Irish 220 24 10 7%
August. |English ~~ 1987| 291 8 111/English ~~ 2024] 271 1 9 |English 2324) 305 15 8 |English 1687] 205 8 6
“|Irish 856| 115 19 10 |Irish 813] 83 10 6 |Irish 175) «2k 6: 6 [Irish 227, 24 12 0
Septemb.|English 2086| 294 | 3 11 |English 2023 274 18 4%|English 2284 307 18 6 [English 1754) 201 12 6
Irish 856| 110 0 6 [Irish 823] 85 1 0 (Irish 152| 16 19 0 [Irish 205 20 3 6
October. | English 1937) 289 10 10 [English = 2091 258 19 2 |English 2301} 312 10 2 |English 17327179. 7 6
Irish 809) 106 1 9 (Irish 788 80 12 0 |Irish 169) 19 4 2 |Irish 211. 20. 17 ©
114051631 7 10 11387|1422 19 92 9982(1332 10 0 7766{ 894 7 33%

 

 

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