The Sun. — 1841-12-09 (London, England)

GENERA". DISTRESS. (From the Morning Advertiser.) If the inhabitants of some other planet were to visit ours, and to vouch that the laws were there framed and administered upon a principle which made the idle wealthy and the industrious poor—which made the mass of the inhabitants dependent upon their own skill and industry for the means of existence, and at the-same time so narrowed the field for the exercise of that skill and industry, as to leave thousands in want and destitution— which dealt with poverty as a crime, and bestowed honours and distinction upon wealth, howsoever acquired and howsoever expended—which drove the virtuous to acts of desperation and madness, and then stigmatized the lifeless bodies of the victims of the law's injustice with the brand of shame and disgrace—if all this were avouched to be the state of tings in another planet, what would the "humane and intelligent" inhabitants of our own " favoured" land think of the communication ? One of two things, undoubtedly ; either that the narrator dealt in fiction, or that the race of beings to whom his communication had reference, were not one remove from those fallen beings, whose malign hostility to the beneficent intentions of their justly-offended Maker, induced the blasphemous resolve— " To do aught good never will be our task ; But ever to do ill our sole delight." What would startle and confound us, as a revelation from another sphere of existence, passes before our eyes, however, as a matter of course, awakening no astonishment, and exciting no apprehension of those fearful judgments which the religion by law established assures us must follow upon national injustice and the oppression of the poor.  Have our readers read the particulars of a late " dreadful case of murder and suicide," which occurred at Leigh, in Lancashire, where a poor woman, of whom one of the witnesses on the inquest said, " there was not a more hardworking woman in Leigh, or one who strove harder for a living "—where this poor creature, having three young children dependent upon her for subsistence, and being " unable," as she had declared to a companion, "to get a meal for them," although, sometimes by washing and sometimes by weaving, she managed to obtain from two and sixpence to two and ninepence a week—a penny a day for each in the family, even supposing it to be all expended in food !—where this poor creature, in a fit of desperation, destroyed her infant and herself, " being unwilling," as the Coroner's Jury put it in their verdict, "to leave her infant child behind ; " and for this double crime of " murder and suicide, was ignominiously consigned to a felon's grave, without the usual rites of the Church 7 " Betsy Thompson was one of the hundreds of poor creatures whose lives have been rendered wretched, and whose deaths have been accelerated by the instrumentality of the Corn-laws, and the barbarous bastardy clause of the new Poor-law. She was, as we have seen, an honest and industrious woman, but she had three illegitimate children, whom our thoughtful and sensitively moral Legislature, in its deep anxiety to elevate the moral feelings and condition of the people, threw upon their mother for support, while it set the father free from all obligation ; or, what amounts to the same thing, enforced the obligation by means so inadequate to the _purpose, as to render them, according to the evidence of the relieving officer, an object of defiance and derision with those whom it is pretended they are framed to e of the evidence, in point of fact, concurred " remarkably industrious," Tahffeec whole that though food for her children ;and that a sensesi in et could 0o of ld points their not obtainsufferings,: upon a susceptible and impaired mind, acting induced her to precipitate herself and her infant nity.bodily suffering of Betsy Thompson, T h e into mental e t end and her three helpless children, is no solitary case. At the Conference of Ministers just held in North Wales, G. Evans, Esq , of Mueyspandi, Merionethshire; stated that the small farmers in his neighbourhood were 'totally unable to give employment to the labouring population, being scarcely able to provide food for their own families ; that meat seldom appeared at their tables from one end of the year to the other ; and that distress grew worse and worse among the population. The Rev. 0. Thomas, of Talsarn, stated that the distress of the working people in his neighbourhood was very great, and that the people in the parish where he resided were actually starving. Ile stated, amongst other things, that he knew an honest working man who had nothing for his breakfast but the tea-leaves given him by his neighbours, and vegetables collected from the fields ; and a woman who had lived for one whole week upon potatoe-peel. Dr. 0. 0. Roberts, of Bangor, stated that " his avocation as a medical practitioner gave him abundant opportunities of knowing the real condition of the poor, and that their distress was of the most heart-rending character. •In the Bangor Union a poor woman, who had lain ill for five weeks, had scarcely any clothes during the time he had attended her. She had only one shirt, which, having washed, and having no fire wherewith to dry it, she was obliged to put on whilst wet. She had no bed. She was in a condition not fit to keep a pig in. Her misery was horrible to look upon." Everybody had supposed that the life of a hand-loom weaver exhibited the grand climacteric of human wretchedness ; but we have lived to see that notion refuted for the Blackburn Gazette states that the condition of even the hand-loom weavers of that town has been affected for the worse ; and, of course, that " their sufferings appear to have reached the last stage of human endurance."  In the town of Paisley, the number of those living upon Id. per day, doled out by the hand of charity, had increased from 6,500 to 11,100 ten days ago ; and there is  / .