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

where the water is for the most part in a state of stagnation.
Often times not more than one room for the whole family, some
times two, one above the other.

Of the Bedford union it is said—

Most of the residences of the labourers are thickly in-
habited, and many of them are damp, low, smoky, and com-
fortless. " A large proportion of the cottages in the Ampthill
union are very miserable places, small and incon-
venient, in which it is impossible to keep up even the common
decencies of life. I will refer to one instance, with which lam
well acquainted. A man, his wife, and family, consisting in
all of eleven individuals, resided in a cottage, containing only
two rooms. The man, wife, and four children, sometimes
five, slept in one of the rooms, and in one bed, some at the
foot, others at the top—one a girl about fourteen, another a boy
above twelve, the rest younger. The other part of the family
slept in one bed in the keeping-room, in which their
cooking, washing, and eating, were performed. How could it
be otherwise with this family, than that it should be sunk into
the most deplorable state of degradation and depravity. There
are many similar cases, and a very great number that make
near approach to it."
In Durham the peasantry (according to Dr. Gilly) were
crowded into small places, 24 feet by 16, in which eight, ten, or
even twelve persons dwelt (scarcely the allowance for
the slaves in a slave ship). How they lie down to
rest, how they sleep, how they can preserve common
decency, how unutterable horrors are avoided, is beyond all
conception. The case is aggravated when there is a young
woman to be lodged in this confined space, who is not a mem-
ber of the family, but who is hired to do the field work, for
which every hind is bound to provide a female. It shocks
every feeling of propriety to think that in a room, and within
such a space, civilized beings should be herding together with-
out a decent separation of age and sex.
These are only specimens of what occurs throughout
the agricultural districts. There is nothing worse in
the cabins of Ireland, and if ever the peasantry of Eng •
land deserved the character formerly given of them, they
are now, in their habits and manners, after twenty-five
years' assiduous attention on the part of our law-makers,
sunk below the level of the peasantry of any part of
Europe, except Ireland. • In France and Italy, the
climate enabling people to live in the open air, renders
the house accommodation of the working classes of less
importance than in England, and makes their condition
comparatively superior to that of the working classes here.
If Lord ASHLEY, and the rest of the landlords who are so
extremely anxious to improve the morals of the colliers,
will look into the cottages on their estates, they will pi o-
ba,bly find amongst the peasantry what 1)r. GILLY calls
" unutterable horrors," to Which all the vices imagined
by prurient-minded Commissioners in the collieries are
like blushing innocence.
Now let us turn, having for the present done with the
peasantry and their herding together like the beasts of
the field, to the manufacturing districts, and quote a
passage from Mr. ADSHEAD'S pamphlet on " the distress
in Manchester." This has every appearance of being a
most authentic account, not merely of the present, but of
the general condition of the working classes in Man-
chester ; and the slaves of the cotton-lords, we regret to
state, are not in a better condition than the slaves of the
landlords. Mr. ADSHEAD states that there are 2,040 fami-
lies, consisting of 9,179 persons, of whom 3,479 are chil-
dren under twelve, and 1,743 above twelve, living in
cellars in Manchester. lie states that this
is relatively a smaller number than live in cellars in
Liverpool, where, we believe, the GLADsToNEs, and other
men of that saintly character, manage to return two
Tories by means of a cellar population, such as Mr.
ADSIIEAD describes in the following passage:—
The cellars are most of them neither drained nor soughed.
They are consequently damp, are always liable to be flooded,
and are almost entirely without the mean; of ventilation having
rarely but the outlets of door and window at the one side, and
these almost hid below the level of the street.

• But the above-ground habitations of the indigent poor are
little better than the cellars, except in the matter of situation.
Nothing in the shape of the meanest comforts of life arc
visible in them. Decent furniture there is none,—bricks,
logs of wood, and other contrivances being frequently used as
substitutes for tables and chairs, while the bag of shavings or
litter of straw is laid in some corner to be occupied nightly by
its miserable tenants, with all its accumulation of impurities
inevitably resulting from the condition and habits of the latter.

And not always are these abodes of squalor and poverty,
whether cellars or ground-floor habitations, occupied by the
members of one family alone. Frequently, different families
occupied opposite corners of the same room, the sexes being no
further se, arated than by the few feet of space which lie be-
tween their respective beds of straw. This state of things has
come under my own observation repeatedly, in visiting the
habitations of the poor. Six or eight persons have I witnessed
inhabiting a damp cellar, males and females congregated to-
gether, with a line hung along the hovel for the use of the ic-
mates, upon which were suspended, indiscriminately, their
torn and dirty apparel ; with other scenes of a nature too dis-
gusting for recital.

In other instances, parents and children were found sleeping
together in the same bed, without regard to age or sea. The
tenoning conversation took place between a member of the
Relief Committee, and a poor widow whe applied to the Com-
mittee for a bed :

Examiner—Have you a bed? Widow—l have one.
Examines—ls not one enough ? Widow—No ; I have a son.
Examiner—What age is he ? Widow—Nineteen )ears.
Examiner—And where has he slept ? Widow—With me ;
or he must have lain on the floor.

Of course a bed was given for the son.
It wou,d be impossible to over-state the moral and social evils
arising from this state of things. The domestic decencies must
be utterly unknown where habits like these prevail ; and every
barrier against profligacy in its coarsest form must be broken
down.

Such is the condition at present of the industrious
classes of England. If the legislator had not mcddlrd
with them, had not pasSed Corti laws, as he says to keep
up wages, and established a Church, crowded with well
paid parsons to teach the working classes all that men
ought to learn, what is necessary in this life, as well as
what will possibly gain for them life hereafter, we should
nut have had a word to say against the legislator on
account of the condition of the working cla,ses ; but
looking at what the legislator has pretended to perform,
and looking at his unceasing guidance and government
of them, we affirm that he is reponsible for all the
wretchedness, misery, and horrors, unutterable or utter-
able, which prevail amongst our working classes, and
which are to him a complete scandal.
No classes, however, can escape the influence of the
contamination we have alluded to. The crowded filth of
multitudes vitiates the air, and spreads infection and
disease through the land. The moral infection, too,
arising from their manners, is equal to the physical in-
fection arising from their filth ; and while the legislator
supposes that he is merely securing his own authority,
by his multiplied regulations he is spreading moral and
physical corruption and degradation throughout the com-
munity. For the condition of the working classes, we
repeat, he is responsible, and we assert that at present it
is a scandal to the clergy, the gentry, and all the
ruling classes of England. •

The House of Commons on Thursday rejected Mr.
ItoEnuctes resolutions by a majority of 136 votes against
47. This is no. disappointment to us. We knew very
well that the Committee was not appointed twenty-four
hours before Sir ROBERT PEEL heartily repented having
supported the motion of the Honourable and Learned
Member for Bath ; and that it had not sat a day
before he had resolved to oppose any measure founded
upon the only Report which he knew it could
make. But, as was well said last night, by
Mr. AGLIONBY, the Premier unwittingly assisted
Mr. ROEBUCK in planting a tree which will yet
bear good fruit. The Report may be got rid of now—
it may be buried with the other lumber of the session,
but Whigs and Tories combined will not be able to pre-
vent its resurrection: The real importance of this inquiry
is not in the least affected by the refusal of the House to
found any immediate measure upon it. All we immediately
expected from it has been accomplished. It was reported,
and believed, but denied, that bribery to an unprecedented
extent was carried on at the last general election. It
was affirmed, and believed, but denied, that in conse-
quence of corrupt compromises the petitions against
the returns were for the most part with-
drawn, and that gentlemen legislated in the House of
Commons, who, if justice was fairly administered, ought
to be expiating their crimes in Newgate. The Report
of the Committee has removed all doubts upon these
matters. It is now proved that a general system of
bribery was carried on at the last election throughout
England and Ireland. It is an established fact, that but
for the Bill of Indemnity, which preceded Mr. ROEBUCK'S
inquiry, several gentlemen who voted with the majority
last night would have been liable to be prosecuted as
public criminals. The House of Commons adopted the
Report, and in doing so admitted that its Members are
not the representatives of the people, but of their own
purses. Mr. ROEBUCK'S first resolution was unnecessary.
Nothing which the House of Commons can do will take
away from it that which it never had. Now the present
House of Commons never had the confidence of the
country, nor did any of its proceedings inspire respect.
It cannot, therefore, suffer in public opinion by hug-
ging in its bosom a system of corruption engendered
by itself. But it is a matter of immense importance
to have its iniquitous composition laid bare by its own
Members, and so recorded as to place the question
for ever beyond the reach ofearil. It is much, in point-
ing to the brand upon its brow, to be able to say the
aro kof infamy was self inflicted. For these reason?,
we are in some sort reconciled to the loss of Mr.
RoEnucK's resolutions. The Hun. and Learned Gen-
tleman distinctly stated that the great object of his Com-
mittee was not so much to e:;pose the infamy of in-
dividual acts, as to lay bare some of the ramifica-
tion,i of a general system, and that he has done most
etf_ctually. We now know who are the great criminals.
Wei know the low standard of morality which exists
even among the staunch champions of the Church in the
House of Commons. Even the " Monk of the Middle
Ages," the Hon. Member for the University of Ox-
ford, who, some nights ago, enunciated the priestly
maxim, that popular ignorance and bad taste is favourable.
to virtue, admits that he looks with a lenient eye upon
gentlemen who approach the confessional of the House
of Comrnonip tinbprd?nthgossAyßs of no greater
guilt
than I;ribery, corruption, and Perjury. -But the day of
judgment for that House will and must come. The end