into different classes; and wages vary from 6s. to 12s. a week for 15 hours' labour a day. They are nearly destitute of fuel and clothes; their bedding consists only of sacks filled with straw and chips; and their food is at once deficient in quantity, and of the coarsest and least nutritive kind.-But the condition of the children is chiefly calculated to excite sympathy and compassion. The necessities of their parents has occasioned their being employed in factories from the tenderest years; and at this moment a very large proportion of the half starved children of the manufacturing districts, are shut up for 12 or 16 hours a day, to the irreparable injury of their health and morals, for a recompense of not more than 2s. or 3s. a week. The distresses of the cloth weavers of Yorkshire, are, if possible, still more severe than those of the cotton weavers of Lancashire: And the combined operation of taxation and the poor's rates, has reduced the smaller proprietors and farmers nearly to the same hopeless condition as the manufacturers. ‡

Perhaps, however, the silk weavers of Coventry and other places, and the frame-work knitters of Nottingham, have sunk the lowest in the scale of degradation. Last May, a petition was presented to the House of Commons by Mr Moore, from the Mayor and Corporation of Coventry, stating that the poor's rates on the landed property in the district contiguous to the town, amounted to 45s. per acre, and to 19s. per pound on the rents of the houses within the town. But, notwithstanding this enormous assessment, the weavers were in a state of the greatest distress. Many thousands were absolute paupers, and depended entirely for support on the rates. Of those in employment, such as had frames of their own, and who worked 16 hours a day, were only in the receipt of 10s. a week; the second class, whose frames were furnished by the master manufacturers, earned in all about 5s. 6d.; and the third, or inferior class of workmen, only from 2s. 9d. to 1s. 6d. a week, or from 5 d. to 3d. a day! The petition prayed, that the House would interfere to regulate the rate of wages; but this they wisely declined, though it is difficult to perceive, unless some considerable assistance be administered, how these unfortunate persons can possibly escape falling a sacrifice to famine.

The quantity of broad and narrow cloths milled in Yorkshire in the year 1819-20, was 2,672,102 yards less than the quantity milled in the previous year; which was itself nearly one million of yards short of the quantity milled in 1817. The total decline in the two last years has amounted to nearly ONE FOURTH part of the entire manufacture,

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We have been at some pains to make the proper inquiries, and we have learned, that the statements in an address published last August, by the frame-work knitters of Nottingham, and of which the following is an extract, are not in the slightest degree exaggerated. After working from 14 to 16 hours a day, we only earn from 4s. to 7s. a week, to maintain cur ⚫ wives and families upon; and we farther state, that although we have substituted bread and water, or potatoes and salt, for that more wholesome food an Englishman's table used to ⚫ abound with, we have repeatedly retired, after a heavy day's labour, and been under the necessity of putting our children supperless to bed, to stifle the cries of hunger. We can most solemnly declare, that for the last eighteen months we have scarcely known what it was to be free from the pains of hunger.' The population of the manufacturing districts cannot be estimated at less than two and a half, or three millions; and certainly it could not previously have been supposed, that so very numerous a body should have been cast down from their former comfortable condition, to that pitch of misery and wretchedness we have just described, without occasioning much more violent commotions than have actually taken place. The folly and the guilt of those who have had recourse to violence and depredation, cannot indeed be palliated; and must be repressed by suitable punishment. But the root of the distemper is not in the depraved character of the people, but in the miseries of their condition. The severe pressure of positive want and famine, and not the circulation of a few miserable pamphlets, has been the cause of all the discontent and disaffection of which we have heard so much. Give the weavers bread, or the means of acquiring it, and the traitorous schemes of the Radicals will vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision.' The distresses, and not the evil inclinations of the people, induced them, like drowning men, to catch at a straw, and to believe that the venerable Major's radical pill would purge away all their misery. * Had the lower classes been always familiar with workhouses, rags, and wretchedness, such privations might be submitted to in silent despair. But the greater number of them have seen better days; and the change is consequently most hard to be borne.

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This is the opinion of the Manchester Magistrates themselves. In a communication to Lord Sidmouth, dated 1st July 1819, they state, that the manufacturing classes are involved in deep distress; and when the people,' they observe, are oppressed with hunger, we do not wonder at their giving ear to any doctrines which they are told will redress their grievances.

If, therefore, Government be really desirous of restoring prosperity and tranquillity to the country, and of saving the great bulk of the people of Britain from all risk of being permanently. reduced to the same hopeless and desperate condition as their brethren in Ireland, they must lose no time in adopting a different system from that on which they have hitherto acted. It is not by laws of additional severity, nor by adding to the already enormous amount of the standing army, that the peace of society can be effectually restored. Harsh and coercive measures, by alienating the affections, and degrading the character of the people, may annihilate even the possibility of future improvement; but it is not in the nature of things, that they should mitigate or remove the real evils of which the people have at this moment so very great reason to complain.

But the mischief will not stop here.-Should the present system be persevered in, it will do more than perpetuate the discontents, and degrade the condition of the labourer. Neither the country gentlemen nor the fundholders must flatter themselves with the vain and delusive idea, that they shall be able to perpetuate their existence, and to continue quietly to enjoy their fortunes, in a country in which the greater portion of the inhabitants are poor and miserable, and where a compulsory provision for the support of the poor has been long organized. If the wealthier classes would save their fortunes from destruction, they must lend all the assistance in their power to those who are urging the necessity of abandoning that factitious and unnatural system which has caused so much misery. Nor is there a moment's time to be lost. The evils under which we now suffer will soon become incurable; and, ere long, the utmost efforts of the Government and the people will be unable to stop the torrent of pauperism, and the efflux of capital. During the last fifteen years, the assessments for the support of the Poor have increased from FOUR to TEN or TWELVE millions: But the cry for relief is notwithstanding louder and more pressing, at this, than at any former period. Far, indeed, from there being any ground whatever for considering this frightful progression as having approached its termination, it cannot fail to have been prodigiously accelerated. Paupers and Poor-laws act and react, produce and reproduce each other, in a geometrical progression. If this system be not effectually counteracted, or, which is the same thing, if the Poor be not enabled to provide for themselves, it will in a very few years infect all classes with the plague of universal poverty, and sink both high and low below the level of what was

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originally lowest. Ministers, the other day, took it into their heads to suspend the Habeas Corpus act, because a cobler of the name of Spence had the temerity to affirm, that the land was the people's farm.' But the measures which they have supported and proposed will, much more than the eloquence of the renowned son of St Crispin, contribute to carry this levelling doctrine into effect. The paupers and tenants of workhouses, already share with the landlords of England, to the extent of nearly a half of the net rental of that kingdom: And, if matters are permitted to go on for the next seven years, as they have done for the last seven, none will be found hardy enough to deny the perfect accuracy of Spence's position; and Ministers will then be able to boast, that they have established a perfect agrarian system,-destroyed the inequality of fortunes, -and converted this once flourishing kingdom into one mighty workhouse!

This statement is not liable to the charge of exaggeration; though, if it were, the long continued and general distress to which the labouring classes in every part of the kingdom have been, and still are exposed, ought to be a sufficient reason to induce the Government and the other classes, instantly to come forward to assist them. The only difference of opinion that can possibly exist on the subject, must be confined to the question, of the manner in which this relief should be afforded. But we do not think that, even on this head, there is much room for controversy. Except as a temporary resourse, and we think it might be very advisable to afford some assistance in this way, no scheme for the relief of the Poor deserves one moment's consideration, if it has not for its object to render them independent of relief. Although ten or twenty millions were gratuitously distributed among the distressed workmen, it is clear, that if they are forced to spend it as revenue, and are not enabled to invest it in any department of industry in which it will reproduce itself, their necessities must very soon be as great or greater than ever. Neither can the real wages of labour be increased, by any effort on the part of the State, to provide employment for the whole, or a part, of the unem ployed workmen. On the contrary, such an attempt, however advantageous it might at first sight appear, could not fail to be most pernicious, and ultimately to increase the very evil it was designed to remedy. We may depend upon it, whatever capital is employed by the State, would have been employed insome other manner, had it been left in the possession of the individuals from whose funds it must of necessity have been des

rived. The only effect of the interference of Government in the employment of labour, is to give a factitious distribution to capital; and, consequently, to invest it in a less profitable manner, than if it had been left to be disposed of by its natural

owners.

But although Government cannot possibly increase the demand for labour, by interfering with the natural distribution of capital, we must not, therefore, give ourselves up to despair. There are other methods by which Ministers may accomplish this great object. It is universally admitted, that a falling off in the foreign demand for British manufactured produce, is the immediate cause of the present want of employment, and, consequently, of the low wages of the manufacturers. If the foreign market could not be extended, it is not easy to divine how we could escape from the abyss of poverty and misery into which we are fallen :-But, fortunately, we have this completely in our power. Whatever obstructions the illiberal jealousy of foreign States may have thrown in the way of our intercourse with them, and certainly we have no wish to underrate their importance, there can be no manner of doubt that we have suffered infinitely more from the officious and improper interference of our own Government. In regulating our intercourse with foreign countries, our rulers appear to have entirely forgotten, that there can be no selling without an equal buying; and by endeavouring to prevent the importation of comparatively cheap foreign commodities, for it is such only that either can or will be imported, they have effectually prevented the exportation of those which would have been exchanged for them. The time is now come when we must either abandon this exclusive and unnatural system, or submit to be deprived of that widely extended commerce which has hitherto afforded the means of subsistence to so large a proportion of our population, and been the main source of all our wealth and prosperity. The artificial protection which had at first been granted to a few branches of industry, has been urged as a valid reason by those engaged in other branches, why they should be placed in the same favoured situation. In this way, the restrictive and prohibitive system has at length interfered with the freedom of commerce in almost every department. We could fill half a dozen of pages with the mere names of commodities whose importation is entirely prohibited; and as many more with the names of those, on which duties amounting in effect to a prohibition, and intended to act as such, have been imposed. Whenever,' said one of our most accomplished and intelligent mer