and there is little doubt that persons so circumstanced must consume, in a degree which far exceeds the proportion of their numbers, the natural produce of this and of foreign countries, thereby contributing largely to the prosperity of other classes of their countrymen, as well as to those sources of revenue by which the national liabilities are in great part sustained.

"We find, in connexion with the large earnings of this class, industrious habits of no common stamp, regulated and secured in great measure by the peculiar nature of their employment; and a degree of intelligence already much in advance of other classes. of the working people, and still growing with the general growth of popular education. It appears also that, when in the enjoyment of prosperity, they avail themselves to a great extent of the advantages of provident institutions, and that partly through this, and partly through other circumstances, equally creditable to their character as a working people, they avoid almost altogether dependence upon poor-rates. On the occurrence of general distress, we find them neither a pauperised mass nor readily admitting pauperism among them; but struggling against adversity, beating far and wide for employment, and in many cases leaving their country for foreign climates rather than depend upon any other resources for subsistence than those of their own industry and skill. Those among them who have not been able or willing

to leave a place where at present their labour is of little or no value have been found enduring distress with patience, and abstaining, sometimes to the injury of health, from making any application for relief; while others, who have been driven reluctantly to that extremity, we have seen receiving a degree of relief sufficient only to support life, often with thankfulness and gratitude, and generally without murmur or complaint.

"We feel assured that the sufferings of a population whose general character and condition are such as we have described them will meet with sympathy and consideration from all classes of their fellow-subjects; and that the interests of that branch of trade which has furnished such a population with employment will be held entitled to peculiar attention from the legislature of the country.

"We have, &c.

(Signed)

"A. POWER.

"E. TWISLETON.

"To the Poor Law Commissioners."

I will not weaken the effect of this testimony by adding one word of comment, beyond stating tha it is not less applicable to Bolton, Wigan, &c., than to Stockport.

ALTHOUGH Stockport is locally situated in the county of Cheshire, it belongs, commercially, to Lancashire, and it is still further identified with the palatinate by the feelings, the interests, and the spirit of its inhabitants. When first I became acquainted with the town, about five years ago, I believed that there was no place in the world better assured of a long and continuous career of commercial prosperity. The incomes of operative families varied from one to three pounds per week; they lived in comfortable tenements and exhibited much pride of station, rarely mixing with the mere hand-labourers and the navigators and excavators employed on the railways and other public works. Their children were more carefully tended than I found to be the case in Manchester and Liverpool: it was rare to hear of lost children being taken up by the police in Stockport; and this attention to the young was combined with a system of providing for the aged, which is thus clearly explained by the Commissioners of Inquiry:

"Even the aged members of a manufacturing community have a different social position from that of the same class of persons in many other parts of England, so small a number of them, in proportion to the population, being found dependent on the poor-rates.

"The disposition and ability of the operatives to support their aged relatives is one explanation of this circumstance, and it may be added that many of this class, especially aged females, afford a service very appropriate to their condition, and of not inconsiderable value, by keeping house and taking care of the youngest children while the working part of the family are absent at their work, and while the elder of the children, though not of age to work, are absent at school. With such assistance in the care of her household, during her absence at the factory, many an industrious married woman is enabled to add 8s., 10s., or 12s. weekly to the income brought in by her husband and the elder of the children. It is not uncommon for aged females to become domesticated for the purpose of affording service of this nature in the families of those who have no elderly relations to support, and some of them are said to earn a livelihood by preparing and carrying to the factories the refreshments which the hands sometimes prefer taking on the premises to going home and returning during the period allowed for their meals.

"The relief lists for the township of Hyde (popula

tion in 1841, 10,151) present, for the quarter ended in September 1838, only seven aged males and nine aged females as the whole number of that class receiving out-door or in-door relief from the poor-rates; and in the quarter ended December 1841 the total number of this class was not increased."

The township of Hyde, adjacent to Stockport, was the most interesting locality to every lover of his kind that I had at that period ever visited. Mr. Felkin, of Nottingham, was so struck with its economy, that he drew up a statistical account of its condition, which he read to the British Association; the document excited much attention at the time; it was copied into nearly all the newspapers of Great Britain and America; I have inserted it in my Natural History of Society,' but I cannot bring myself to turn to it now, for a sad check has been given to the social happiness which I then saw growing, extending, and increasing; abundance of food has been changed into superabundance of famine; the land of plenty has become the land of destitution.

I was justified in the anticipations of continued and increasing prosperity which I formed at that period: the immense amount of the capital invested in buildings, works, and machinery pledged the proprietor to continue employment when profits were low or wholly gone, because to stop the steam-engines or the water-wheels would necessarily deteriorate his investment to greater degree than any of the moderate