The Sun.
London, England, 1842-07-30 00:00:00

LONDON :
SATURDAY MORNING, JULY 30, 1842.

It is perhaps indicative of improvement—we hope it
is—to find persons in various stations of life at present
directing their attention to describing the condition of
the working classes. Never before, we believe, did
their condition require and receive more atteution than
at present ; never, perhaps, judging from, the concur-
rent testimony of different parties, waa it worse than at
present. For several years it h-. 45 engaged the serious
consideration of the Legislature. Corn-laws and Poor-
laws, Police Acts and sc,',ool grants, votes of money to
build churches and titablish new systems of prison
discipline, have 1111 been framed with a view,
according hi the Legislature, to improve the
condition, tt the working classes. The palpa-
ble a.trd:leertain result is extreme degradation of the
Nyofking-Chasses. They seem to have continually gone
from bad fo worse, as our Legislature has established
tine Frenchified schemes of centralization of police, and
of rtipilating all their amusements, till the once inde-
Pel 'peasant of England, under whose tread the earth
ed, has become a mean, starved, and shrivelled
slave ; and the stalwart artizan, who was some check on
both the bartadal landlords and on the burgher capitalists,
has become a poor shivering wretch, dwelling in caves
or cellars, like some of the earliest known races of men
lie is so dependent fur subsistence, that, like a dog, he
licks the hand that corrects him, while it holds firth a
miserable crust. Let us quote a specimen or two, which,
taken from different sources, may serve to show both the
condition of the working-classes and the attention which
is now, prompted by necessity. devoted to them.
We have of late heard one party assert that agricul-
tural lalmurers get only 7s. a week, and others that they
gain 145., but here are some specimens of their condition,
extracted from the Report of the Pror-law Commis-
sioners on the sanatory condition of the labouring popu-
lation of Great Britain, a perfectly impartial authority,
which must set at rest all disputes as to their wages. It
may with safety be asserted. when we find the bulk of
the p,,pa!rili.a, sunk in wt2tch,alticss, that it is because
they cannot 'trip themselves. Wages are good or bad,
not iu proportion to the number of shillings they amount
to. hut ill proportion to the amount of comfort they com-
mand; and consequently an accurate description of cum-
in,'" ,'UnifortS of labourers' cottages, is a far better clue
to the value of his wages than the number of shillings of
which they are composed. The Report of the Poor-law
Commissioners says
state of the dwellings of many of the agricultural
labourers in Dorset ( Lord Ashley's Dorset) is described in the
return of 11Ir. John Fox, the medical ofli..er of the Cerne Union.
lie says, " three eases of disease occurred in a house occupied
by nearly fifty persons on the ground-floor ; the rooms e
neither boarded nor paved, and are generally damp. Eleven
persons slept in one room." In many of the cottages the beds
stood on the ground-floor, which was clamp, three parts of the
year. Scarcely one had a fire-place in the bedroom, and one
had a single pane of glass stuck in the mud wall as its only
window, with a large heap of wet and dirty potatoes (happy
people to have potatoes) in one corner. Persons living in such
cottages are generally very poor, very dirty, and usually in rags,
living almost wholly ,on bread and potatoes.

The medical officer of the Uxbridge union.stat.es,.,
The cottages of the poor arc mostly of a bad description,
frequen.ly mud walls, and often situated (info to the dykes