Eastern times. [volume] (Bath, Me.) 1846-1857, 1852-12-30
Working Classes of England.

| The following pertinent remarks, called forth
by the recent announcement that the women
of England contemplated doing something in
aid of the abolition cause in this country, are
from a correspondent of the Tribune. We
copy entire;
"Inasmuch as the fashionable women of
England, Ito use the epithet of the London
| Ilmes,) are bestirring themselves in behalf OF
their poor benighted sisters in America, in re-
gard to the slavery of the South, it cannot GER
tainly be improper for one of the sisters ad-
dressed, to ask some questions as to the condi-
ton of the lower classes of England. Surely,
all the philanthropy Of that country must be IN
| the market, and without demand. For, if it
has suffering, poverty, crime and slavery at
home, it cannot afford such a surplus, as ap-
pears, for foreign consumption. Unless, as is
possibly the case, the fashionable women of
London, have neglected, or never heard of
Paul's injunction, learn TO show piety at
home.' Let US see how the matter really
stands.
Have ALTON Locke and London Labor,
and London Poor, and 'Oliyer Twist, all be-
come obsolete! Do they reveal only what
has been the haggard misery ard desolate destl-
there not 40, 900 creatures, in that great Baby
Ion, who know not in the morning where or
how they shall get their first food, or at night
where they shall lay their heads1 Are there
not thousands of poor, starving girls, who do
needle work, and are tempted day by day TO
sell their souls, for the sake of barely living!
thousands who tread with hungry and hag-
gard step on the very edge of the horrid preci-
pce, where one misstep seals their fate for
life! Are there not terrible stories, whose
echoes reach us from the manufacturing dis
trlc's, of want, of starvation, of unnatural
crime, and loathsome vice and stolid igno-
rance! Have the fashionable women of
England no ears to hear one stifled sigh of sor-
row, sin and suffering, which comes from their
own borders! Or must some fiction of distant
distress awaken fictitious sympathy, as miser-
able as it is mawkish! But if all these things
are not true, we have some evidence worthy of
their proioundest attention.
In looking over a report, made TO Parlia-
ment, by order thereof, which unfolds the con-
dition of the miners of Cornwall, we find
state of things unparalleled in this countrys
history, or in any, save Russia. The commit
tee base their report upon actual testimony,
taken at the mines, in the very words of the
miners. We dare not defile our paper with
the transcript. But we have the evidence, and
the mildest form we can state it, is to say, that
those mines worked by poor naked women,
and children as young as six years. That
they all are ignorant as the inland tribes of At
RIGA. That they hardly know their own
Names and many do not, but go by some nick
name that they do no know of God or Jesus
Christ. The word of one isl cannot tell
who they are Il was told yesterday. if was
a good GIRL l should 60 to heaven, but l did
not know it before
These women work with trousers on, and
nothing else. A strap around the waist is at
tached to a 'corue, and so they drag the coal,
or hurry it, Of the moral indecencies, of
the mental darkness, of the stupid and horrid
life these poor women lead and are subject to,
we dare not speak; but the report to which
we alluded, was published few years since,
in London, by order of the Queen. And if
these ladies of London will take the trouble to
look at home, they will find it, and work too
for their hands, and full demand for any sur
plus feeling of philanthropy they can spare.
We submit this as the answer of one Amer
lean woman to her fashionable sisters of Eng
land. GRACE.