BOOK THE SIXTH.

(The same subject continued.)

EMBRACING GLANCES AT THE SUFFERING AND CRIME-THE IGNORANCE AND DEGRADATION, CAUSED BY THE OPPRESSIVE BURDENS LAID UPON THE BRITISH PEOPLE.

When I meet some wretched wreck of humanity, drizzling with wet, shivering with cold, half drunk, half starved, half idiot, screaming with shrill tremulous voice some woeful ballad; can I help asking why it is so? the image of the Almighty—a thing of shreds and patches—was this of his own seeking ?—An Operative's Letter to Sir Robert Peel.

There is no doubt more misery and acute suffering among the mass of the people of England than there is in any kingdom of the world; but then, they are the great unwashed, dirty, disagreeable, importunate persons. There are thousands houseless, breadless, friendless, without shelter, raiment, or hope in the world; millions uneducated, only half fed, driven to crime, and every species of vice which ignorance and destitution bring in their train, to an extent utterly unknown to the less enlightened, the less free, the less favoured, and the less powerful kingdoms of Europe.-Sidney Smith.

EMBRACING GLANCES AT THE SUFFERING AND CRIME, THE IGNORANCE AND DEGRADATION, CAUSED BY THE OPPRESSIVE BURDENS LAID UPON THE BRITISH PEOPLE.

For several

THE COMMERCIAL OPERATIVES. years the destitution and distress of the lower classes have been steadily and rapidly increasing. The cry of helpless poverty is now going up from every hamlet in Great Britain. The appalling accounts borne to our shores on every wave, reveal an amount of human woe unfelt by any nation God has not stricken with pestilence or the sword.

Six months ago, the materials for this work seemed complete. Since then, a large number of British publications and reports have come to my

hands, which no candid man can read without being convinced that the state of things in Great Britain is growing worse and worse every day; and that so far from having in any respect exaggerated in my former work, the descriptions fall far below the truth. The misery that now exists is more awful than has ever been represented in this country, or the people of England have en-. tered into a combination to deceive the world. The state of society is so deplorable, there are political economists who have proposed as the only measure of relief, if the present state of things is to continue, that every third child born in the three kingdoms should be instantly put to death. And yet such propositions are made by men who feel most deeply the sufferings of the poor; and made too with the humane belief, that by this wholesale slaughter, the grand aggregate of woe would be made less. This fact is stated at length in the lectures reported in the London Journals, delivered last winter in the "city of London Institution," on "the actual condition of the working classes."

In addition to the facts I have already published on the condition of operatives in large factoies,* I need only say, that I have received assurances from no small number of persons in England, since my work was first republished in London, that I had in no instance exceeded the truth;

* See " Channing.

Glory and Shame of England," vol. ii. Letter to Dr.

and that the evils I described are vastly augmented. But there are whole classes of labourers of whom I scarcely spoke, or at whose condition I glanced so briefly, that it will be necessary to devote some attention to them here. I will first add a word to what I said of the juvenile workers in the cotton, woollen, worsted, and flax mills.

It will be remembered that in 1833, when the Report of the Factory Commissioners was laid before Parliament, an act was passed regulating their labour, designed to annihilate the abuses of the system. But although some good has resulted from that act, yet the evidence is conclusive from all quarters, that the evils it was designed to remedy, still exist to a very great extent. The penalties of the law are evaded, and the slavery of infant operatives is still maintained. A recent number of the Non-Conformist Journal says: "Our factories are daily scenes, even now, of hecatombs of youthful victims, sacrificed not only without remorse, but with a stoical indifference to which it is difficult, we should imagine, for human nature, in its most depraved state, to attain."

In February last, the London Morning Post contained the following paragraph: "Why should not the labourer be protected? Horses are not worked sixteen hours a day: yet sixteen hours of toil in an atmosphere, such as horses are never doomed to inhale, are the portion daily of whole masses of labourers. The poorer classes of our fellow-beings have surely as strong a right to pro