"The average weekly wages of those partially employed, 4s. 74d. each.

"The committee appointed for the purposes of the relief now to be afforded, being fully convinced that all the efforts that can possibly be made in the town and neighbourhood will be utterly inadequate to meet the pressing necessities of the case, have resolved, under the direction of the meeting by which they were appointed, to make an appeal to their countrymen generally, and especially to those individuals and classes of society who feel little of the pressure of the times, or who are removed from all fear of personal suffering and privation."

My Lord, the documents from which I have quoted in this letter have been before the Government and the country for several months in the authentic shape of a report presented by the Poor Law Commissioners, and printed by order of the House of Commons. During all this time no efficient means have been taken to relieve this fearful mass of unmerited suffering it has been permitted to become darker, deeper, and more destructive. During all this time too the means of immediate and efficient relief have constantly existed within a few miles of the town, in the bonding warehouses of Liverpool. Ample granaries have been kept locked in the sight of a starving people, and that people has made no effort to burst the doors. Which are we most to admire, the cruel obstinacy on one

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side, or the patient endurance on the other? One sometimes finds it hard to believe that this is the nineteenth century, and that the world has not retrograded to the dark ages of barbarism. However distant it may be in time, the remedy for the destitution of Stockport is not far removed in space-it lies at the mouth of their own river, in the docks of Liverpool.

To prevent any interruption to the statements I have to make respecting Manchester, I shall anticipate a little, and give an account of a brief visit to the important and interesting district which includes Duckinfield, Ashton, and Staley Bridge. My companions in this excursion were members of the British Association from various parts of the empire: our conversation turned on the topic which is now the only subject to be heard discussed in every company, the great and increasing distress of the times. One of the party expressed his fear that a repeal of the corn-laws would only superadd agricultural to manufacturing distress. That a free importation of corn and sugar would at once relieve manufacturing distress was easily demonstrated, for that measure, and that measure only, would open our ports to the only payment which our customers in North and South America have to offer. The rest of his argument was rather more difficult to comprehend, because one of the most perplexing things in the world is to discover what people mean by agricultural distress. On a very close

inquiry from him and from others, I find that the phrase can have no reference to the condition of the agricultural labourers, for they are physically in a worse state than the operatives; and their condition is every day becoming more intolerable, as is sufficiently proved by the increasing numbers who have recourse to mendicity. Assuredly agricultural distress can have no reference to such farmers as are tenants at will so long as I can remember, this class of men has invariably been complaining of being over rented, over-taxed, and over-tithed ;—with more justice, they have complained that they had no inducement to make the land capable of raising a greater amount of produce, which by a prudent outlay it might easily be made to do, because they had no security for a fair return from the investment of their capitals, and no beneficial interest in their improvements. Annual tenures and short leases are, in fact, a penalty on the exertion of skill and industry; the tenants at the same instant work themselves into better harvests and higher rents. My Irish experience supplied me with too many instances of this penalty on labour, intelligence, and outlay having been very rigidly exacted, for me to have any doubts about this matter. It is clear, therefore, that Agricultural Distress is a cry which has no connection whatever with the labourers, and which has a very slight relation, if any, to the farmers. The only remaining class is that of the landlords, and that they are frightened for themselves is of course

undeniable. But it is far, very far, from being clear that their terror is reasonable: our compassion is due to those who are hurt, not to those who are frightened; and I entertain considerable doubts whether landlords would be at all hurt by the opening of the ports; assuredly, not so much as they are likely to be by the ruin which the continued closing of the ports is certain to bring upon the manufacturers. The mere throwing back upon the land the number of agricultural immigrants who have found employment in South Lancashire and North Cheshire would take a far larger sum from the pockets of the landlords than they can possibly lose by the importation of foreign corn: to which must also be added the sum necessary to maintain the increasing surplus population of agricultural labourers, against whom manufacturing distress of necessity closes the channel by which they were drained off into manufacturing employment. Without referring again to Mr. Ashworth's paper -which at the time of this conversation had not been read-showing that the value of mere land in Lancashire, without any exertion or expenditure on the part of the landlords themselves, has been increased from 1500 to 3000 per cent., solely by the establishment of manufactures, the very place which we were visiting was perhaps as signal an example of the benefits which landed proprietors, without any trouble or outlay on their part, derive from the skill and industry of manufacturers, as could be found in the