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cial distress which now prevails, I am obliged to keep my hands upon half work; and their wages are not sufficient to provide them with enough of the coarsest kind of food to prevent their suffering most severely from hunger; and multitudes are dying by direct starvation, or diseases immediately induced by privation. During the last seven weeks I have contributed one hundred guineas a week to the fund for supplying the poor with bread, and it seems but a drop in the bucket."

I inquired what was to be done; who was to blame for this immense amount of misery. Why, sir," he said in reply, "you have asked me two questions which involve the whole subject of political economy; and to answer them intelligently, one must be familiar with the whole fabric of English society. He must understand the history and government of Great Britain in all their branches; and he must be thoroughly acquainted with the character and condition of the manufacturing districts.

"I am persuaded that we have the most expensive and oppressive government in the world; that there is no nation which taxes its labouring classes so heavily; no government which does so much to provoke a revolution; and none where a revolution seems so likely to occur, or where it would be so violent and bloody when once commenced. It requires more to arouse the English mind than the French, but it also takes it longer to grow calm after excitement.

"But you inquire particularly about the manufacturing interests: with these I am familiar, as I have been a manufacturer myself for 25 years. The sufferings of the operatives are very great. English manufacturers, as a body, are not an inhumane or ungenerous class of men; but the nature of their business is such, that they are obliged to conduct it with the utmost economy, in order successfully to compete with the manufactures of other parts of the world; and they become so accustomed to the sufferings and privations of their operatives, that, as a matter of course, they are less affected by them than strangers. We are obliged to hire our work done as cheaply as possible; and such are the fluctuations of our foreign trade, that our hands are often unemployed, and at such times must necessarily suffer.

"Parliament have passed laws to regulate the factory system, but it is all a dead letter. It is impossible that any should be so constructed that their provisions shall meet the exigencies of the case. A law that shall benefit the operative must injure our business, unless government remove some of the iniquitous burdens which they, and not the manufacturers, have imposed upon the poor. For I can convince any candid man that the operatives receive from us enough to make them comfortable; enough to clothe and instruct them and their children well and elevate them a thousand fold above their present condition, if they were not robbed of the greater part of their wages to support the aristocracy.

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"I will make this appear. The iniquitous CORNLAWS take one third of all the wages of the operatives from them, and put it into the pockets of the landholders. The commonest necessaries of life, in consequence of the bread-tax, cost as much again in England as they do on the Continent or in the United States. And the government receives no advantage from this enormous revenue; it goes to the landed aristocracy.

"Besides, the operative has other heavy burdens to bear he is compelled to support the Religious Establishment; and although I am a Churchman (from education, I suppose, like nine tenths of all its members), yet I feel deeply the impolicy and the injustice of taxing men to support a Church which they are opposed to in principle; and, indeed, it has long appeared to me clear, that when Christ's kingdom on earth cannot be maintained but by the legislation of man, then it is time to let it fall. If the Rock of Ages be not a firm and everlasting foundation for TRUTH, I am persuaded it will have no security in any foundation of man's forming. This, then, is another item.

"Then there are a multitude of regular or occasional taxes the poor are obliged to pay, which keeps them in a state of the deepest depression. Lord Brougham once wrote the following words on this subject: The Englishman is taxed for everything that enters the mouth, covers the back, or is placed under the feet: taxes are imposed upon everything

that is pleasant to see, hear, feel, taste, or smell; taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion; taxes upon everything on the earth, in the waters, and under the earth; upon everything that comes from abroad, or is grown at home; taxes upon the raw material, and upon every value that is added to it by the ingenuity and industry of man; taxes upon the sauce that pampers man's appetite, and on the drugs that restore him to health; on the ermine that decorates the judge, and on the rope that hangs the criminal; on the brass nails of the coffin, and on the ribands of the bride; at bed or at board-couchant ou levant we must pay. The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse by a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon which has paid 30 per cent., throws himself back upon his chints bed, which has paid 22 per cent.; and having made his will, the seals of which are also taxed, expires in the arms of his apothecary, who has paid £100 for the privilege of hastening his death. His whole property is then taxed from two to ten per cent.; and, besides the expenses of probate, he pays large fees for being buried in the chancel, and his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; after all which, he may be gathered to his fathers to be taxed-no more.'

"This is all strictly true. The Englishman is taxed for everything; and this enormous system of taxation impoverishes the labouring classes; takes away

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from them all the high motives of an honourable ambition, and keeps them continually in a state of discouragement and dejection.

"At different times Committees of Inquiry have been appointed by Parliament, and they have presented shocking reports of the miseries of the labouring classes, particularly of the operatives in the factories, which have roused the public indignation; and laws have been passed to do away the abuses of the system. The attention of the committees was principally called to the condition of the factory children, in regard to whom, without doubt, the greatest abominations existed.

"No statutory restrictions respecting the employment of children in the mills and factories of the United Kingdom existed until the year 1802, when an act of Parliament was passed for the preservation of their health and morals, directing the magistrates to report whether the factories were conducted according to law, and to adopt such sanatory regulations as they might deem fit. This act was followed in 1816 by one generally known as Sir Robert Peel's Act; imposing various regulations on the employment of children in cotton-mills. Both of these acts proved inefficient, and under them the abuses they were designed to remedy were found to have enormously increased.

"In 1831 they were both repealed by what is called Sir John Hobhouse's Act, which provided that in cotton factories, to which it alone related, no