a proof of the great social benefit which arises from the management I have described: in everything that tends to promote intellectual acquisition the operatives in a well-managed country mill are fully on an equality with their brethren in Manchester; in the means for preserving health, cleanliness, and morality, they are decidedly superior.

LETTER IX.

The Oaks, Turton, near Bolton,

1842.

A DAY of action has succeeded to a day of contemplation. My excellent host has induced me to visit some of those who may be called the philosophers of the operatives, for it is time that we should cease to limit the title of thinkers and philosophers. Men thought before books were written, and in the course of my present tour I have heard the most important lessons in moral science and political economy from the lips

of

persons who have never been inside the doors of what may be called a study. Nature, scripture, society, and life have been their teachers: there are many, very many, among them who have sought truth with an earnest mind, and all such must be regarded as belonging to the class of intellectual men. To this cause must be attributed, in no small degree, the depth of the sympathy which the present sufferings of the men of Lancashire excite in the breast of a comparative stranger.-MIND IS Another generation may succeed to the place of that which famine and misery are hurrying out of exist

PERISHING.

ence; but who shall secure to it the heritage of intelligence? Nay, who shall answer that the example before them of the unprofitableness of industry and intelligence to their possessors may not lead them to undervalue these qualities, and to sink to the level of the degraded serfs of Poland? Are there not symptoms abroad of such a consummation? Is not mendicancy fearfully on the increase? I can remember a time when a beggar was a rare object in a village of South Lancashire, but that time exists no longer : they have increased and they are increasing, as I saw with pain during my drive this morning.

Our first visit was to a village patriarch, over ninety years of age, in whose house were to be seen individuals of five generations. He resides with his grandchildren, who are grown men and women. But for my companion I should have experienced some difficulty in finding my way, arising from a curious Lancashire custom with which I was previously unacquainted. It appears that the number of surnames among the primitive rural race is limited, and that individuals are distinguished by the Christian names of their fathers and even their grandfathers. The person whom I wished to see, at whose house the old man lodged, was known as Jack o' Ned's o' Bob's ;" that is to say, John, the son of Edward, the son of Robert. To find him out therefore required a far more intimate acquaintance with Lancashire genealogies than I can ever hope to obtain. During this

brief excursion I had reason to admire a fresh instance of the independent civility of the sturdy Lancastrians we had to pass through a gate-a passenger on the road ran and opened it; after which he resumed his road without the ordinary courtesy of salutation, without waiting or apparently wishing for thanks.

We soon found the patriarch of whom we were in search. Time had touched him with lenient hand: his limbs indeed were feeble, his eyes dim, and his ears dull of hearing: it required an effort for memory to bring up the recollections, and when they came many of the images were too faint to be held firmly together by the chain of association. The old man, without actually wandering in his conversation, passed from one subject to another, scarcely conscious of having made a transition. Good feeling and good principle, however, still survived; he spoke of the existing distress with marked sympathy; he said that he had remembered many seasons of depression in Lancashire, but that the present was far the worst, both in extent, duration, and intensity. He had been a weaver, and remembered the condition of the trade before the introduction of machinery. He stated, as a curious circumstance, that some species of woollen goods were manufactured in the neighbourhood of Bolton and Manchester which were called cottons (probably a corruption of coatings) before the cottonwool was introduced into the country. In his youth

ful days the difficulty of procuring a sufficient supply of yarn was a great impediment to the industry of the weavers, especially after the efficiency of their labours had been increased by the invention of the fly-shuttle and the drop-box. At that time large quantities of linen-yarn were imported from Holland and Ireland, but the supply was insufficient to meet the demand. Weavers and their apprentices went from house to house among the cottagers, to purchase the yarn which had been slowly and laboriously spun by the one-thread wheel. The spinners in those days were the masters of the weavers, and they very often took a most unfair advantage of their position. If two or three buyers appeared together in a rural district, the intelligence spread with telegraphic rapidity from house to house, and the price of yarns immediately rose one-third or even one-half. These were, according to his account, really the days of infant slavery; "The creatures were set to work," he said, as soon as they could crawl," and their parents were the hardest of taskmasters. I may remark that on a previous occasion I received a similar account from an old man in the vale of Todmorden, who declared that he would not accept an offer to live his whole life over again, if it were to be accompanied with the condition of passing through the same servitude and misery which he had endured in infancy. Both these old men expressed great indignation at the clamour which had been raised for infant protection: my