3. Dublin police in 1852, £38,324. Total £1,732,480, falling upon real property. This, like the similar charge for Scotland, must be considered as a close approximetion only.

4. Dublin Ballast Board in 1860, £46,658. This charge falls upon personal property.

The grand total for Ireland is £1,779,138.

Gathering the totals together for the three kingdoms, we are presented with the following summary :—

Amount of local taxes

(a.) Incident upon real property.

England and Wales

Scotland

Ireland

(b.) Incident upon personal property.

England and Wales

Scotland

2,616,176
292,084
46,658

2,954,918

£18,011,103

Hence it appears that the real property of the United Kingdom pays the large sum of £15,056,000 for local taxation, before it comes under the hand of the collector of imperial taxes. The amount of imperial taxation which this description of property has to bear can only be given roughly, because some of the items clearly chargeable thereto cannot be eliminated from the general mass. These imposts are, however, so far as known or capable of estimate, as follows:

Therefore the amount of taxation, local and imperial, paid out of real property is £24,508,000. The annual value of real property, assessable under head Schedule A, was in 1861, in

From the foregoing statistics it appears that the rate in the pound on real property in this country is, in respect of

Real property pays 28. 34d. in the pound for local rates, before it comes on to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Budget for further taxation.

Advocates for the reform of the Income and Property Tax Acts propose to relieve the holders of precarious incomes of some part of the present impost by

throwing a larger charge upon the possessors of permanent incomes; but a considerable portion of the latter derive their income, or portions of it, from real property it is therefore a proposal, so far as they are concerned, to increase the load upon their property, already unduly burdened by the local taxation of the country.j

On the Pauperism and Mortality of Lancashire. By FREDERICK PURDY, F.S.S., Principal of the Statistical Department, Poor Law Board.

1. To bring under the notice of the Section some of the statistical data which represent the pauperism and mortality during the six months ended at Midsummer last, in the cotton districts of Lancashire and Cheshire, is the object of the present communication. No attempt has been made in it to explicate those involved and complex causes which find their most significant numerical exponents in the mortality tables of the Registrar-General. The distress which has fallen upon the operatives of the cotton districts has not ceased, but is apparently deepening as the winter approaches. It would be futile to attempt anything like a satisfactory analysis of the phenomena before they cease, and while we are, therefore, necessarily ignorant of the extent and character of their ultimate development. Beyond this, it is essential to a scientific elucidation of the connexion which exists between distress and mortality in any place that the investigator possess both hygienic and local knowledge of the district under review-qualifications usually looked for in active and intelligent local officers of health. Though the writer can throw no light, by the aid of those qualifications, upon the facts hereafter noticed, he hopes that at the present time the important social questions which are involved in these statistics will constitute a sufficient claim upon the attention of the Section..

2. It is too well known that when the labouring classes suffer from a collapse in trade or manufactures, the immediate effects upon very considerable numbers are a deprivation of the comforts and a diminution of the necessaries of life, with increased sickness and mortality following in the wake. Then pauperism emerges among families where, in prosperous times, it was never known, and becomes, under ordinary circumstances, not only the index, but the measure of distress. Pauperism, though it may indicate, ceases to measure distress when thousands are thrown out of their usual employment by the paralysis of a vast industry like the cotton trade of Lancashire. The lower and less thrifty class of operatives soon come upon the rates; the more provident and respectable families, after exhausting their means, keep off the rates till the last moment, or eke out their means by the aid of private charity, and so contrive for a time to avoid the pauper-roll. The distress, or rather the destitution, would be accurately measured if we knew the numbers aided by private charity, in addition to those who are relieved from the poor-rates. This, however, does not contemplate the deprivations which those labourers, who have honourably striven to live independently of charity, undergo in every form, before they reach that point where all their own resources are exhausted.

3. Lancashire, during the last fifteen years, has been thrice visited with distress. In the year 1846-7 the expenditure for the relief to the poor throughout the country rose over the average of the three preceding years by £261,363, or by 83 per cent. At the same time the deaths in the year increased over the average of the three previous years by 18,181, or 36 per cent. In the autumn of 1857 the district was suffering from the effects of what was frequently termed the "American crisis;" and the distress continued to the midsummer following. The distress, as measured by the increase of pauperism, can, in respect of this period, be exhibited for the twenty-one unions of Lancashire and Cheshire, which contain the principal cotton manufacturing population of the kingdom. During the nine months ended at Midsummer 1858, the deaths in those unions rose 119 per cent. The numbers for each quarter are stated below, viz. :— Quarters ended 1856-7.

Quarters ended 1857-8.

Taking the amount of pauperism at the end of each quarter in the same unions w sufficiently exhibiting the pressure, it will be found that the increase in 1858 was 35.4 per cent.

The number of paupers at the end of each quarter was as follows:

4. The third visitation is that under which the cotton manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Cheshire are now suffering, with every symptom of further aggrava tion. In the twenty-one unions, inclusive of Liverpool, which comprise, as already stated, the cotton manufacturing district of Lancashire and Cheshire, the number of deaths in the four March quarters last past stood thus:

The number of deaths in the four June quarters last past stood thus:

It will be seen hereafter that the pauperism greatly increased in the June quarter of the present year, though the augmentation in the ratio of deaths, as here shown, considerably diminished. But the milder weather of the Midsummer quarter may be credited with some, if not the whole, of the difference in the mortality. The aggregate population of these unions in 1861 was 2,067,267. No attempt has here been made to adjust the census returns in respect of prior or posterior dates. Whenever any ratio in this paper is given in relation to the population, it has been computed upon the actual census of 1861. The number of paupers in receipt of relief, excluding from the account lunatics in asylums and vagrants, stood in the four March quarters as hereafter stated:-1859, 66,704; 1860, 57,933; 1861, 58,261; average, 60,966; 1862, 100,813; being an increase of 39,847, or 65.3 per cent. The number of paupers in the four June quarters was, in 1859, 61,002; 1860, 54,149; 1861, 54,731; average, 56,627; 1862, 107,420, being an increase of 50,793, or 89-7 per cent. The rate at which the pauperism rose to its present amount has varied considerably in the different unions of the district.

5. The unions have been divided into three sections, for the purpose of ascertaining what immediate relation the pauperism bears to the mortality. The first, or section A, comprises seven unions, with a population of 773,662 persons. In no ution of this section had the number of paupers at Midsummer 1862 been more than 100 per cent. in excess, when compared with the numbers relieved at Midsummer 1861. Measuring the ratio of pauperism on the population, we find that at Christmas 1861, when the pressure first became marked, it was 2.7 per cent., or 0.5 per cent. higher than at Christmas 1860. From Christmas to Midsummer last it rose 0.8 per cent.; at the latter date it was 3.5 per cent. In the following table the unions are placed according to their pauperism at the end of 1861. The absolute increase per cent. in the number of paupers at Midsummer 1862, as compared with Midsummer 1861, is shown in the last column:

Section A.-Ratio per cent. of Paupers to the Population.

June 1862. Absolute increase, Midsummer 1862, compared with Midsummer 1861.

Macclesfield.... 4·7

0.1

Salford....

Bolton

3.4

41

Section B. comprises five unions with a population of 442,644 persons. In this section the absolute increase in the number of paupers at Midsummer last was over 100, and under 150 per cent. The proportionate pauperism at Christmas 1861 was 3-6 per cent., or 12 more than at the previous Christmas. During the half-year ended with Midsummer last, it rose 20 per cent. ; therefore at the latter date it was 5.6 per cent.

Section B.-Rate per cent. of Paupers to the Population.

Absolute increase, Midsummer 1862, compared with 1861.

127 per cent.

Section C. contains four unions, with an aggregate population of 459,547 persons. In this group the absolute pauperism at Midsummer last was in excess of that of Midsummer 1861 by 150 per cent. and upwards. The proportionate pauperism at Christmas 1861 was 3.7 per cent. on the population, or 17 per cent. more than at the corresponding season of 1860. During the Midsummer half-year of 1862 the pauperism rose 49 per cent.; consequently at the end of June last it was 8.6 per cent. This is by far the most pauperized section of the three.

Unions.

Preston

Section C.-Rate per cent. of Paupers to the Population.

6. The pauperism of a union is correctly expressed by the ratio which the number receiving relief from the poor-rates bears to the population of the place. The rate of absolute increase in the number of paupers measures more directly the pressure upon the relief-lists, due to the suspension or diminution of the ordinary industrial occupations of a district. For example, the increase in the Ashton-underLyne union at Midsummer was 458 per cent., and in the Preston union 283 per cent. But the pauperism of the Preston union was much greater than that of Ashton, being in the former place 110 per cent. on the population, and in the latter 7.1 per cent. only. Preston started from a point considerably higher than Ashton, but proceeded with less rapid strides. In Ashton-under-Lyne the converse process took place: similar remarks are respectively applicable to other unions of the cotton manufacturing districts.

7. Three tables have been framed to exhibit the rise of pauperism in the selected unions during the two first quarters of the present year. The first column of ratios in each table shows the percentage of paupers in the last week of December 1860, taken upon the population of 1861, that census being employed as nearer to the truth than any mere estimate. The next column gives the ratios for December 1861. By a comparison of the two, the proportion of pressure in each

union at the close of the last year is shown. The other columns exhibit the ratio at the end of each of the six months ended with June 1860 and 1861. By these means the amount and the velocity of the increase are both traceable. In the seven unions of Table I.*, the ratio per cent. of paupers to population in the last week of 1860 was 2.2; in the last week of 1861 it was 27. By the last week of March in the current year it had risen to 3·3, or 0-6 in the three months. By June it was 3-5, or 0.2 per cent. more.

ABSTRACT OF TABLE I. (Section A.)

8. This section exhibits the least increase in the pauperism of the district, and that increase took place gradually. Consulting the Registrar-General's quarterly reporta of mortality, we find, on comparing the March quarter 1862 with the average of the corresponding quarters of the three previous years, that there was an increase of 604 deaths, or 11.8 per cent., and in the June quarter 354 deaths, or 7-9 per cent. It will be noted from the account which follows that the rate of mortality has not any apparent relation to the increase of pauperism in these unions. In Bury, one of the least pauperized of the group, the increase of mortality was very great. In Macclesfield, the most pauperized of this section, there was a positive decrease.

The unions of Salford, Bury, and Oldham experienced the highest mortality. Comparing the deaths in the Salford union in the March and June quarters of 1862 with the numbers returned for the corresponding quarters of 1861, it will be found that the increase was 186 and 157 respectively, or 29-4 and 28.3 per cent. The rate at which the pauperism of any locality has been recruited, rather than the height to which it has attained, gives a more correct notion of the distress and consequent suffering. To this end the unions in the next statement are classed according to the rate of increase of pauperism as measured on every 100 of the population. The union marked by the highest rate of increase between December 1861 and Midsummer 1862 is placed first. Against each union the percentage increase or decrease of mortality is placed, in respect of the half-year ended with June last, and compared with the average of the three previous Midsummer half-years.

9. In the five unions of Table II. the ratio of paupers at the end of 1860 was 2:4 per cent.; at the end of 1861 it was 36 By the last week of March 1862 it had risen to 50, or 1.4 per cent. in the three months. In June it was 5-6, or 0-6 per cent. increase in that quarter. Here similar diversities in the rate of mortality are observable. In the Burnley union, where the pauperism is moderate, and in Manchester, where it is high, the increase in the rate of mortality is very great, and nearly equal.

*The Tables referred to by Roman figures were in the Appendix to Mr. Purdy's paper abstracts therefrom are printed above.