The Sun.
London, England, 1842-06-27 00:00:00

-vitt Awn.

LONDON :
MONDAY MORNING, JUNE 27, 1842.

• The Deputation from the manufacturing districts,
whose presence in London, and whose visit to Sir R.
FEEL we have already announced, have addressed a
circular to the Members of both Houses of Parlia-
ment, reiterating some of those facts which indicate
the deep distress of the people, and calling on them
for a remedy. For example, they say—
. In Glasgow, 12,000 persons are on the Relief Fund,
and wage 3 are still falling: In Dundee, the number of
unetaployed is increasing every week; wages are falling,
In Accrington (Lancashire), out of a population of 9,000
persons, not more than 100 are fully employed. Families
are known to have subsisted for many days on boiled
nettles, with a little meal sprinkled upon them. -In '
Marsden, near Burnley, out of 5,000 persons, 2,000 have
become paupers, and most of the remaining 3,000 are on
the very verge of pauperism. The poor's-rate is Is. in
the pound per month. The farmers and all other rate-
payers are fast hastening to ruin. The poors'-rate in the
tow nship of Great Bolton, in 1836 .37 was 3,95 IL, in 1841-2,
216,740/., and for the next six months notless thanlo,oool..
will be wanted. Out of the rated rental of 86,0001. a-
year, only 36,000/. is paying to the poor-rates, the re-
nia.inder being either empty property, or the occupiers
are unable to pay the rates. In Wigan many families
remain in bed during the day, because hunger is less in- ,
'tolerable when the sufferer is in a recumbent position.
Great numbers are out of employ, wages are falling, and
• the future appears darker than the past or the present.
3n Prescott, out of 1,100 householders in this town of
6,000 inhabitants, 200 were recently summoned in one
.clay for non-payment of the poors's-rate, arising from
inability to pay, A watch movement, a few years ago
worth 305., may now be bought for 4s. 6d., although the
jura,terial of which it is made has fallen little, if any, in
-value. In Saddleworth, from an accurate survey made
• in December, 1841, there were 55 farms without tenants;
'26 mills were unoccupied; and most of the rest were
-workin; short time, and great numbers of the people
were without employment. Since that period matters
have been gradually growing worse. Details such as
..the foregoing might be increased indefinitely. We have
facts of an equally painfiii character from almost every
part of the country.
- - - -

. Some of these statements, with others in addition,
wets?. made in the House of Commons on Friday
eventlg by Mr. COBDEN in the hope, vain, we believe,
of interesting that assembly in the sufferings of the
people. „Perhaps one or two Members might shudder
for a moment at hearing of families " subsisting in.
England for many days on boiled nettles sprinkled
with meal," ,but they would not think it half so
affecting as the,tale of a young girl dragging a basket
along under gro`lnd, though she thereby fed herself
and saved a family from starving. When we recol-
lect that it has been for some years past a prevalent
fashion to decry the manufacturing population in
- books and from the pulpit as given up to all kinds of
*ices ;—when we recollect that they have been de-
scribed on authority as no better than Pagans-
-when we call to mind the encomiums passed, both in
Parliament and out of Parliament, on an agricultural
population, and on rural employments, contrasting
elieevfdl cottages and ruddy children with the squalor
and dirt of the Manchester cellars ;—when we read,
day after day, furious diatribes in the Tory journals
against both the master manufacturers and their
workmen ;—when we cannot forget that one Tory
journal has said that England 'would be as great as
she is without a single* manufacturer; and that another
,'has expressed an opinion that the community would
benefited by the destruction of half our towns—
are made to -:fear that the, majority of our legis-
lators hear with pleasure, rather than sorrow and
shame, those tales of distress and woe in the manu-
facturing districts, and that the manufacturers take an
. erroneous met_lkod of reaching either their heads or
' their hearts.
Ohr town population, in olden times, shook off. its
tillegiance to the itmdowners. A great squire, before
.-whom every hat is tiPffed and every back bent in his
own village, finds hililself a nobody among the stal-
N'vait artisans of Birm ni ;ham' and Manchester. The
squires have an habit. ual and inherited hatred to
litich independent men. • The workshops of the
'empire are also the focii of strange political opinions.
The new population ivhi, grows up there not only
dissents from a number of doctrines that are time-
`honoured in the rural O istl icts—they also infect even
'
Squire's dependents w,, th a littlo unruliness, and
1 sake, .1lenow• according- tY hated, not only for their
but for the cor. rziFt`Lon they spread amongst
_.ot Lers.

• The old squirearchy a'
•prnud, or too idle to incl.( we .
'so, being too ignorant, too
their own wealth, have
+ken with no little envy— 011,h has not been lessened
13 y the boasting of the ma nu factur.ns—the great and
iiidden opulence of mast 2r spinnerST weavers, and
daiirs. • They, . have Seen t 5o
-,e, whom - they call a
1
nius4room race, dispossess Vie Ix friends and relations
4411dr halls and castles, ui,d. they
bear no go6d will
to:.the 'upstarts whO make u toney by trade. , Even
those ivho have sprung from thi.. -t loins of traders wish
tri'enjcitivithout. encroachment ti ' ..le exclusive privileges
6ritriitocracy, and are more env, louts and jealous of
nevi' sharers in them than the old. er families of land-
evefiers • • :

these accounts, it is our I deliberate opinion,
ons, and depend-
nit' the landed gentry, their connosi