The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-28 00:00:00

THE PARKS.

In reply to Mr. lIIBBERT,
Lord PALMERSTON said that at the present moment
the Government did not intend to propose any additional
grant, but if corporate bodies taking the initiative required
aid they could do so by loans, and the Government would
extend to them every reasonable facilities to carry out their
intentions.

GRAVEYARD AT CHATHAM.
Mr. DIGBY SEYMOUR asked the noble lord the
Secretary to the Admiralty whether there was any founda-
tion for the rumour referred to in the recently published
pamphlet entitled "The Dockyards and Private Shipyards
of the Kingdom," to the effect that during the war with
France, the French prisoners of war dying in London and
neighbourhood were buried, to the number of several thou.
sands, on St. Mary's Island, Chatham; and that the Ad-
miralty works in progress require the removal of their re-
mains; and that quick lime and other means have been
employed to effect a rapid dissolution of the bodies instead
of providing them with decent sepultura elsewhere.
Lord C. PAGET replied that he had telegraphed to
Chatham for information. One of the authorities had, in
consequence, come up to the Admiralty, and he gathered
from him that there was reason to doubt the truth of the
statement.

On the motion of Lord PALMERSTON, it was agreed
that the orders be postponed till after the motion was
disposed of.

COTTON MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS.
Mr. FE RRAND then rose to move the following reso-
lution :—" That, in the opinion of this house, it is the duty
of the Government to take into consideration without delay
what measures may be necessary to relieve the distress
which prevails in the cotton manufacturing districts, so
that the people may no longer continue unemployed." The
hon. gentleman said, immediately after he had again been
honoured with a seat in that house, he had been
inundated with applications from factory opera-
tives to bring their lamentable condition bebro the
house. They knew that, through good and evil
report, he had stood their firm friend. He charged the
cotton masters with being the cause of the pre-
sent famine, by solely relying upon America for
a supply of cotton and neglecting India and other parts of
the world, and only a year or two ago they shut out the
workpeople from their mills and largely exported
the raw material which was now so much lacked. He
deprecated hon. members attempting to shelve the matter
by referring it to a committee up stairs, or a Royal com-
mission, as absurd and futile. In a letter which had been
published in the Times by the hon. member (Mr. Potter),
ti" e stated, in the first place, that the cotton manufacturers
of Manchester were not accountable for the present state of
cotton things
tirnadtehewmasanthuefacmtucrsitngredgiustlarirc,ttsh;emoh healthy, and
secondly, that the
most moral of all trades; and thirdly, he ventured to predict
that as soon as a supply of cotton was obtained, the cotton
trade, by forcing itself into untra yelled parts of India, would
if India be restored to its former prosperity, that is,ans
wwasr
pretty well governed, Now it was his intention to
each of those assertions on the part of the hon. member. In
the first place, he had no doubt that during the last twenty
er thirty years statesmen had over and over again . warned
the manufacturers that eventually this fearful crisis must
take place in the cotton trade, and that it was worse than
madness for them to depend upon America alone for a sup-
ply of the raw material. The hon member quoted Sir Jas.
Graham's opinion in 1839, that it was an evil to be depend-
ent upon any one country for a supply of cotton. The
cotton manufacturers, however, had turned a deaf ear to the
warning, and had remained dependent upon America for
cotton until 1850, when they appeared to wake from their
dream, and to be startled by the danger which surrounded
them. Three years alter asserting their right to barter
their cotton goods for the food of their workpeople, and
pledging themselves, before the house and the country, that
they could not only drag the world in their wake, but unite
all nations upon earth in amity, unity, peace, and concord
—after pledging themselves to tridge the Atlantic, and to
make America and England one united happy family, ex-
changing for the food of America the productions of the
power-looms of England, pledging themselves, if the house
would place a moderate duty upon corn, that for the next
hundred years the factory operatives connected with the
cotton trade should never know what it was to want plenty
of American corn, beef, and pork—only three years after
all this, the hon. member who then represented Manchester
(Mr. Bright) came down to that house. " whining for pro-
faction to the cotton trade." The right hon. the President
of tie Poor-law Board would remember that expromion etB

ono which he had often used in that house. The hon,
member for Birmingham, three years after the repeal of the
corn laws, appealed to the House of Commons to be so kind
as to send out a commission to India to grow cotton for
Lancashire at the public expense. (Hear.) After that the
hon. member, then representing Birmingham, recommended
inland communication and railways in India, for the sole
benefit of the cotton manufacturers of this country. (Oh,
and laughter.) He thought he had shown that the cotton
manufacturers had had ample warning; but because the
House of Commons would not put the country to the ex-
pense of sending out a commission to grow cotton for the
manufacturers of this country, they had from that time
nearly up to the present hour refused to spend a single six-
pence to place at their disposal a regular supply of cotton
without being derendent upon America for it. Having had
this ample warning, he held that they were responsible for
the present position of affairs, and answerable to their work-
people for the suffering which they are now enduring. To
prove that the manufacturers were responsible, the hon.
gentleman quoted the hon, member for Rmchdale, who, in a
speech delivered in Parliament, Sept. 24, 1841, said that all
the manufacturers required in the distress then existing was
the inalienable right to feu d themselves. They had now
enjoyed that inalienable right for more than 15 years; but
they had ceased to exercise it so far as the cotton operatives
were concerned, They had broken faith with their work-
people, and the hon. gentleman himself had attended et
Manchester and made an appeal to the people of England for
a million of money to save those workpeople from starvation.
Par.iament had given full leave and licence to the cotton
manufacturers to redeem the whole of their pledges, but
they had failed to do so ; and he (Mr. Ferrand) now held
them responsible for the suffering which the operatives were
enduring. The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Milner
Gibson) was another authority to show that the manufac-
turers were alone responsible. In July, 1842, the right hon.
gentleman attributed the distress then existing solely to the
refusal of free trade with America, and said, if that were
given, there would be no more complaints, as there was
nothing that the working classes would not endure rather
than become paupers. Now, there was half a million of
people verging on pauperism in Lancashire, To save them-
selves from becoming paupers, they sent petitions to the
House of Commons, imploring It, In LueLuy o.ua pity, to
rescue them from their degraded position; but the amend-
ment of the hon. member for Carlisle was to keep them one,
two, or three years as paupers—not even as national paupers
for they were world-wide paupers, being relieved even at
the antipodes, Did the hon. member think that 503,000
people would submit to this state of degradation ? rid he
think the people would t elieve that a Royal Commission
was to remove their grievances or relieve their distress?
The hon. member would find himself grievously mistaken,
and the Government would also find that they were labour-
ing under a grievous mistake if they assented to the amend-
ment of the hon. member for Carlisle, fur if they issued a
Royal commission they would henceforth make themselves
respell,: ible for everything which happened. Coming to the
second proposition of the hon. member for Carlisle—that
no trade was so regular in this country as the cotton trade
—the hon. member read an extract from a letter of the
late John Fielding, in which he had raised a warning voice
against the reckless trading and over production of his
brother manufacturers, by which they had made their
" productions stink in the nostrils of those to whom they
were offered." Sketching the history of the cotton trade,
the hon. gentleman said that it had existed for ninety
years. During the first half of that period it had enjoyed
the monopoly of the world. It had thus existed
through three generations of the English race ; but
he believed he might safely say that during that re riod it
had destroyed nine generations of the factory operatives.
(Laughter.) In support of this statement the hon. member
said that he had not seen a single old face a few days since
at Manchester, where a deputation of 27 delegates had
waited on him from the various cotton districts of Lanca-
shire, nor out of the many that had conferred with him from
1842 to 1846 on the Ten Hours' Bill. He believed also that
evidence given before committees of that house would also
bear out the statement. From 1815 to 1830 the cotton trade
of this country had to contend against the cotton trade of
Europe and America. In 1833 the China and Indian trade
was opened, and he had no hesitation in saying that for the
last 20 years, since 1833, it had extended itself in the East
by the destruction of the human race. In 1790 the first
census of the United States showed that there were 697,000
slaves. In 1861 the probable number was 3,500,000. He
mode no charge against the Southern States of America,
for both England and the Northern States were equally
involved in the cotton trade, and no manufacturer of Lan-
cashire could hold up his hands and say they were clean.
(Laughter.) The hon, member for Birmingham, who had
attended a meeting of the trades unions of London the other
evening, inveighed against the cotton manufacturers for
upholding slavery ; but, remembering that the hon. mem-
ber himself had been for many years identified with that
very trade, he should have been the last man to protest
against slavery in the Southern States of America. From
1815 to 1821 he found the cotton trade was depressed ; but
during 1822 and 1823 there was a prosperous trade. In
1824 the repeal of the combination laws took place, and
there were strikes, and the mills were shut for five months.
In 1825 there was a great stagnation of trade ; in 1826
there were great distress and rioting. In 1827 there was a
slight improvement. In 1828 there was a great increase
of power looms and exports. In 1829 the exports ex-
ceeded any former year, especially to India. In 1830,
1831, 1832, and 1833, there was continued distress. In the
last year the trade was thrown cpen to the East, and in
1834 there was a great increase of mills and machinery in
Lancashire, and everyone was rushing into the cotton trade,
from the conviction that, as the trade was thrown open to
the East, they would be able to na,:ke great fortunes. But
after the mills and machinery had been erected it was found
there was no population in the manufacturing districts to
work the machinery. A proposition was then made by the
cotton manufacturers of Lancashire to the Poor Law Com-
missioners to the effect that if they sent down what they
called the "surplus population" of the agricultural dis-
tricts they would absorb and use them up. (Laugh-
ter.) These were the very words that had been
used by the cotton manufacturers. Agents were appointed
in Lancashire, with the consent of the Poor-law
Commissioners ; the people were sent down from the agri-
cultural districts, their names were registered in a book,
and the manufacturers attended at the office and selected
such as their wants required—to use the phrase of the ma-
nufacturers. After they made the selections they sent in-
structions to the south of England to have the families of
the men conveyed to Lancashire, and they were forwarded,
ticketed like bales of goods, by canal, by carriers, and
tramping on the road, and many of them were found to be
half eterved on reaching the manufacturing districts. The
cotton trade grew up a regular trade, and, the house would
hardly believe it, but the cotton trade was a regular traffic
in human flesh. (A laugh.) Ihe hon. gentleman opposite
laughed, but he could assure him it was no laughing mat-
ter. These people were sold by the agents in
Manchester, as the slaves were to the cotton
growers in the Southern States of America. The hon.
member then reviewed the fluctuations of the cotton trade
from 1835 to 1839, when a resolution was introduced for the
repeal of the corn laws, In this year the chairman of the
Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Mr. G. W. Wood, had
made a statement in that house that the commercial distress
which;had for some time prevailed had passed away, and
that he had never recollected any former embarrassment
so rapidly followed by a healthy state of commerce. The
hon. member referred to the depression of trade which
took place in 1840, '4l, and '42. In the last year the fac-
tory operatives were thrown out of the mills, and in conse-
quence of the disturbances which took place some of the
poor people were tried at tho Lancaster Assizes. The
hardships of their condition were so great, that Sir
Frederick Pollock, who was then Attorney- General,
appealed to the judge to be merciful to them. In 1846 the
corn laws were repealed, and Ireland's trade was ruined
for the benefit of Lancashire. (A laugh.) In 1849 the
cotton trade was greatly revived, and Dr. Bowring, the
poet laureate of the Anti-Corn-law League, was despatched
to Hong Kong as Governor-General. (Laughter.) In
1856 Dr, Bowring, a member of the Peace Society, and Go-
vernor-General of Hong Kong, bombarded Canton—(a
laugh)—without any authority from his Government, but
entirely upon his own, because he had gone to Chins to open
the ports and break down international barriers (Laughter.)
Dr. Bowring not only bombarded the suburbs of Canton,
but ejected the Chinese royal commissioner out of his resi-
dence. The hon. member went on to notice other fluctua-
tions of the trade, and contended that the state of the cotton
trade was not so much owing to the civil war in America
as to over-production and the glut in the markets. It was
notorious that many of the manufacturers who had locked
their mills and turned their hands adrift were making large
profits of the raw material. He now came to the par 1861,
in which the census had been taken, and what was the re-
sult? The astounding one that the surplus population of
the agricultural districts was on the decline; and ho would
ask what nation on earth could exist long in prosperity when
the rural population had begun to decline. He wished now
to turn for an instant to the President of the Poor law
Board. A deputation having waited on him to request that
the pauper children in union workhouses might be sent to
the manufacturing districts, what was the answer of the
right hon. gentleman ? The right hon. gentleman did not
make the deputation take their exit very rapidly—(a
laugh)—but expressed a belief that the proposal made
would prove beneficial to the children. The hon. memter
for Manchester, at a meeting at Willis's Rooms last Wed-
nesday, had contradicted the assertion of Lord Shaftesbury
that the depression in the cotton districts was the result
mainly of over production, and at the same time had ex-
pressed his opinion that the evil was something like retribu-
tion for the wrongs inflicted on the sons of Ham. But would
the hon. member stand up and say that no injuries were in-
flicted on the sons of Shem and Japhet by the manufac-
turers of Lancashire ? But now the hon. member came for-
ward as the representative of the manufacturers, and prayed
were
for a Royal commission, so as to throw the responsibility
from their shoulders and place it on the Government. At
the present time when ruin was over the operatives, mills 1
being erected in various parts of Lancashire. The
the cotton trade showed that from 1770 to five 1815 there were years of e
present time stagnation and fort ears of
815 to t
prosperity; and from 1
,h
twenty-eight years of there acere
stagnation,
of revival or prosperity. sin,
Laws in 1846, the cotton, trade wase dreP
ta the rest were years
hnd
eal of the Corn
epressed for nine