The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-04 00:00:00

man looked at this list with amazement. He stood reading
them over, and at last, as we came out, he said, " Well, I
believe there is a better and a more extensive selection of
periodicals down on that card, as taken in in this reading
room of your working men in Rochdale than there is belong-
ing to the Athenaeum Club in London." Now, the Athe-
naeum is a club of which a great many literary persons are
members, and it is said to have, I believe, the best library
of any club in London ; it devotes some hundreds a year
from its funds to keep up its library, and to the supply, of
course, of those periodicals for the use of its members. If
you go in, it is so quiet and literary looking that, unless
you have been to college yourselves, you feel almost alarmed
at getting into such a presence ; yet this gentleman, a
member of that club, declared that at the Store in Toad-
lane there was a better and greater selection of periodicals
supplied than there was in that famed and literary club—
so that I may claim that we are not altogether in darkness
here. (Applause.) Mr. Molesworth ventured upon some
topics which some people may think are foreign to an
occasion like this : but they are not foreign. He
referred to the necessity of all men, and all classes of
people, understanding their interests, not only in respect
to their private plans and employments, but also in
respect to their public duties as citizens. At the
present time, what can be more unfortunate than our
position. The position of you who live upon wages
must always be mere precarious than that of
those men who live upon trade, or upon capital employed
in some business ; because, although your income is steady
under ordinary circumstances, and does not vary much so
long as it is continued at all, yet want of health, an accident,
or your employers meeting with some misfortune or rover: e
in trade—any of these things may stop a working man's in-
some, may bring him almost at once to difficulty, and, per-
haps, penury. It seems to me that we are at a time just
now when everybody in this district ought to learn, and will
learn, that which he ought to have learned a long time ago.
No doubt the middle classes, who have more political power
—though they have not much directly; no doubt the cotton
spinners and merchants of this district, if they could have
known ten years ago that this exact state of things which
they now all see would have arisen, no doubt they would have
done very many things which they have not done ; and no
doubt if three years ago every workman in this country had
known the certainty—as certain as any thing in the future
can be—that after three years nearly all the mills of Lanca-
shire would be working two, three, and four days a week,
with the possibility of some of them being stopped altoge-
ther, the probabili'y is that every man, except the most
reckless and profligate—and they are a very small minority
—every man would have endeavoured to have saved some of
his income during the last few years so as to help to bear
him through the storm which was coming and which is now
unhappily upon us. Everybody who knew anything at all of
the matter knew that some time or other there would be a
catastrophe in the United States. They did not know it would
come in this shape, but they knew it would come in some
shape or some way. Everybody knew who knew anything on
this topic that there was a country, a country under the
sway of the British Crown, which was abundantly capable
of supplying any deficiency which might thus arise in the
supply of the raw material for our manufactures from
the United States of America. Yet scarcely any single
thing has been done during the whole of this lime to enable
us to make up from India that which we can now find no
longer, and perhaps may not obtain for years to come from
the United States. Men passed on, saying, "We have always
had cotton, and cotton will always come somehow; it will
only be a question of paying so much more for it." But things
will not always come just as heedless and reckless men like;
but some great calamity comes. We are now threatened
with great suffering to the industrial classes of our popula-
tion, and great suffering to men carrying on their businesses,
owing principally to the neglect of those prXautions which
instruction and thought, and forethougb' would have ena-
bled them to adopt. I never consider question of edu-
cation without looking at the wontl/iful scenes of strife
which the world is almost contine;aly affording us—strife
in our own localities, social strife, strife between those
who work and those who employ, strife on all kinds if
subjects, but on that particularly of our social relations,
causing immense embarrassments and great sufferings.
Then, if we look abroad over the world we find strife of a
more disastrous and of a more sanguinary character. I
know not how all this is to be avoided ; but if it be in the
intention of Heaven that all this shall cease, it can only
cease, in my mind, from the increasing instruction, thought-
fulness, and morality of the people of this country. (Cheers.)