The Sun.
London, England, 1841-12-08 00:00:00

EVENING SUN

GENERAL DISTRESS. n Tir tt4
•
(From the _Morning
.Advertiser.) /';. -71-,,- ,_ -,7
If the inhabitants of some other planet were to visit,.';:.(' gxl__' 1, '
ours, and to vouch that the laws were there framed and . -..,-; _ Aer
administered upon a principle which made the id1e:;304.:1-_, " UP
wealthy and the industrious poor—which made the mass :-;.:.:-..,:;,4p,„14
Dct,
of the inhabitants dependent upon their 00:n skill 9.11 d !.:;)'• ~
industry for the means of existence, and at the Sat time.,,,..,,, :. - "
.•
so narrowed the field for' 'the exercise of that skill. and '
industry, as to leave thousands in want and destitutti*---V&SMAg
which dealt with poverty as a crime, and best lac
honours and distinction xipon wealth„howsoever acquired
and' howsoever expended—which drove the virtuous to ~ ~ ; :
acts of desperation and madness, and then stigmatized
the lifeless bodies of the victims of the law's injustice
with -the brand of shame and disgrace—if all this
were avouched to, be the state of things in another ,
planet, what would the "humane and intelligent" inha-
bitants of our own " favoured" land think of the cora-
miinication ? One of two things, undoubtedly ; either
that the narrator dealt in fiction, or that the race of beings
to whom his communication had reference, were not one
remove from those fallen beings, whose malign hostility
to the beneficent intentions of their justlY-offended Maker, .
induced, the blasphemous resolve—
" To do aught good never will be our task ;
. But ever to do ill our sole delight."
What would startle and confound us, as a revelation
from another sphere of existence, passes before our ayes,
however, as a matter of course, awakening no astonoh-
ment, and exciting no apprehension of those fearful judg-
ments which the religion by law established assures us
must follow upon national injustice and the oppression
of the poor.
Have our readers read the particulars of a late
" dreadful case of murder and suicide," which occur-
red at Leigh, in Lancashire, where a poor woman, of
whom one of the witpesses on the inquest said, " iere
was not a more hardworking woman in Leigh, or one
who strove harder for a living "—where this poor crea-
ture, having three young children dependent upon her
for subsistence, and being "unable," as she had declared
to a companion, "to get a meal for them," although,
sometimes by washing and sometimes by weaving, she
managed to obtain from two and sixpence to two and
ninepence a week—a penny a day for each in the family,
even supposing it to be all expended in food !—where
this poor creature, in a fit of desperation, destroyed Tier
infant and herself, " being unwilling," as the Coroner's
Jury put it in their verdict, "to leave her infant child
behind ; " and for this double crime of " murder and
suicide, was ignominiously consigned to a felon's grave,
without the usual rites of the Church ? " •
Betsy Thompson was one of the hundreds of poor
creatures whose lives have been rendered wretched, and
whose deaths have been accelerated by the insk_amen-
tality of the Corn-laws, and the barbarous ba74.: ardy
clause of the new Poor-law. She was, as we have soon,
an honest and industrious woman, but she had three ille-
gitimate children, whom our thoughtful and sensitively
moral Legislature, in its deep anxiety to elevate the
moral feelings and condition of the people, threw upon
their mother for support, while it set the father free from
all obligation ; or, what amounts to the same thing, en-
forced the obligation by means so inadequate to the
purpose, as to render them, according to the evidence
of the relieving officer, an object of defiance and deri-
sion with those whom it is pretended they are framed

to affect. .
The whole of the evidence, in point of fact, concurred
in two points : that though " remarkably industrious,"
she ,could not obtain food for her children ; and that a
sense of their sufferings, acting upon a susceptible and
impaired mind, induced her to precipitate herself and her
infant into eternity.
The mental and bodily suffering of Betsy Thompson,
and her three helpless children, is no solitary case.
At the Conference of Ministers just held in North
Wales, G. Evans, Esq., of Mueyspandi, Merionethshire,
stated that the small farmers in his neighbourhood were
totally unable to give employment to the labouring popu-
lation, being scarcely able to provide food for their own
families ; that meat seldom appeared at their tables
from one end of the year to the other ; and that distress
grew worse and worse among the population. The.aev.
0. Thomas, of Talsarn, stated that the distress of the
working people in his neighbourhood was very great, and
that the people in the parish where he resided were actually
starving. He stated, amongst other things, that he knew
an honest working man who had nothing for his break-
fast but the tea-leaves given him by his neighbours, and
vegetibles collected from the .fields ; and a woman who
had lived for one whole week upon potatoe-peel. Dr.
0. 0. Roberts, of Bangor, stated that " his avocation as
a medical practitioner gave him abundant opportunities
of knowing the real condition of the poor, and that their
distress was of the most heart-rending character. In
the Bangor Union a poor woman, who had lain ill for
five weeks, had scarcely any clothes during the time he
had attended her. She had only one shirt, which, having
washed, and having no fire wherewith to dry it, she was
obliged to put on whilst wet. She had no bed. She
was in a 6,andition not fit to keep a pig in. Her misery
was horrible t& look upon."
Everybody hart suposed that the life of a hand-loom
weaver exhibited the gri:nd climacteric of human wretch-
edness ; but we Jiave lived to see that notion refuted ;
for the Illichburn Gazette state.:, that the condition of
even the hand-loom weavers of that town has been affec-
ted for the worse ; and, of course, that " their sufferings
appear to have reached the last stage of human en-
durance."
In the town of Paisley, the number of those living upon
ltd. per day, doled out by the hand of charity, had In-
creased from 6,500 to 11,100 ten days ago ; and there is
good reason for thinking that by this time the number of
such persons reach 12,000—much more than a fourth of
the entire population.
At Leeds, where, as we last week stated,. 5,576 per-
sons, oat of 19,936, who had been visited, have no vi-
sible means of
,existence, while the average totai weekly
income of the whole is less than led. per day, the pres-
s r.! of distress, and the extent of suffering, are stated by
the Leeds Mercury to be much on the increase.
At Bolt )n, as we !earn from a resolution passed st a
public meeting held there, "the distress is as unparalleled
in its severity as in its duration."
At Nottingham " hundreds," says a Correspondent of
the Gi be, "are starving on straw beds, without food,
fire, or covering • and these are the people who would
• work if they could get it. Each day parties of men,
with starvation in their looks, and dressed in absolute
rigs, have been parading the town in processions of two,
thre-, and- four hundred, carrying a board, and which is
printed in large letters, ' Distressed and out of work.'
Other parties, to the number of thirty or- forty, drag
carts, loaded with sand, through the streets, and beg
from door to door. The relief list at the Union work-
house contains 3,600 recipients. The house itself has
900 inmates crammed within its walls. * * * Be-
sides those receiving parish relief, upwards of 2,000 are
starving. Distress and gaunt misery haunt the whole

wn."

In the west of Scotland the state of the labouring-
classes is equally appalling. " The city missionaries,
secretaries of the different charity societies, and clergy-
men of populous districts in the suburbs," says the Glas-
gow Chronicle, " are all soliciting aid of every descrip-
tion, to relieve the distress they daily come in contact
with. The calico-printing business is in the most hope-
less state ; and we are certain we do not exaggerate
when we say that in the west of Scotland one-half of the
workers are idle, and that the same number of masters
would be bankrupt had they not capital to fall back
upon. As to the weaving population, they have for so
long been reduced to a state of misery, and we have so
t a
frequently had occasion to show the helpless state they
do
inots n
o flev e i inclinedkintaking
a
d imorere
e
aboutar are co nt come
them.
, that e
The
distress
don, and it is to this fact that we wish particularly to
direct attention." now much this distress will be ag-
gravated by the resolution to which the ironmasters of
Scotland have come, under the pressure of " wire neces-
sity," to blow out for six months one-fourth of their fur-
naces, we leave our readers to conceive.
The
nrel
eafsnascdt:news•
et
ll tiaatv
We might proceed to multiply these ovidences of
sbuaynmn
class
sssoalfre3gtma'.!
human suffering to an almost unlimited extent, but it is
commercialem might be
monopolies.
ireansd.isdhu
etto
dfaiinr
illustration of the frightful state of society, brought about
Oh, the wealthy
moralization and vice 'of • '
of the "lower orders!" These good
folks—we mean the sleek and simple creatures of this
wicked world, who, from the sanctity of their drawiug
rooms, preach the Christian necessity of a life of unremit-
ting toil, and somehow see their cash account flourish with
their principles—these excellent people are ever prone,
when the text can be wrested so their purpose, to unclasp
their family Bible, and read therefrom the apt denuncia-
tion of the prevailing wickedness. If a poor creature,
plunged into the very depths of human misery, and,
like Betsy Thompson, "feeling what wretches feel," per-
petrates in the phrcnzy of the moment what, under other
circumstances, would be RS high a crime against her own
feelings as against Heaven, these Christian expounders',
armed with the law of God, come forth, brand the me-
mory of the unfortunate with the crime of murder, and
throw him or her into the earth like a dog.
This cannot last long. The bonds of society must
snap asunder first. It is the result of no necessity, na-
tural or social, but of unrighteous legislation, under
which neither industry, steadiness, nor frugality, nor all
combined, can keep Poverty and Wretchedness from the
homes of the poor. The language it breathes to the poor
is this :
" I'll manacle thy neck and feet together ;
Sea water shalt thou drink— thy food shall be
The fresh brook muscles, withered roots, and husks,''
and even worse than that !
The Tories may strengthen the hands of their parti-
san magistrates—they may multiply their inland for-
tresses—they may increase their soldiery and their po-
lice, but all will be in vain to maintain the existing state
of things.' There is " a sure word of prophecy" which
points out the end of all such attempts. Let those who
present Bibles and bayonets to the poor, instead of food,
ponder well upon it :—" Woe unto them that join house
to house, and field to field, till there be no place [for the
people], that they [the monopolists] may be placed
alone in the midst of the earth. Therefore hell hath
enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without mea-
sure ; and their glory, and their multitude, and their
pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it. As
the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth
the chaff, so their root shall he as rottenness, and their
'
blossom shall go up as dust • because , '
tney have cast
away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the
word of the Holy One of Israel !"

ANTI-MONOPOLY AT LIVERPOOL.—We have
great pleasure in stating that a numerous and influential
meeting of the friends of free trade was held in this
town, yesterday, Thomas Thornely, Esq.,
M.P., in the
chair, at which it was unanimously resolved to form a
Society for the purpose of exposing the injustice, and
aiding in the overthrow, of the Corn-laws, the Sugar
Coffee, and Timber Duties, and of all other commercial,
and agricultural monopolies, and
_protections of every
kind, now in existence,—Liverpool Times,