ettors, were they to see this, would
perhaps laugh at the petty details, but their doing so would not in the
least detract from their truth, or render questionable for a moment the
deductions I make from them,--that poverty is so wide spread and bitter
that the poor are compelled to make a stern sacrifice of innocent
amusements; that the parent cannot exercise the holiest affections of
his nature, by adding to the pleasures of his lisping little ones; that
the landowners' corn law, by its paralyzing influence, is rapidly
withering the great mass of the industry of the country into idle,
dispiriting pauperism.

From inquiries I have made I learn that through the country generally
the wakes, and fairs, and races, have presented similar features to
those I have described above, so far as money goes. And in face of the
distress, of which these things bear glaring witness, the Prime Minister
says "that the distress has been produced by over-production." Can Sir
Robert be serious when he talks of "over-production?" If he be, and will
condescend to honour me with a visit during his stay at Drayton Manor,
which is only a short drive of sixteen miles from here, I will show him
that the opinion is fallacious. He shall dispense with his carriage for
a short time, and I will walk him through all the streets of Darlaston,
Wednesbury, Willenhall, Bilstow, &c., and, forsaking the thoroughfares
frequented by the gay and well-to-do, he shall visit the back
streets--in which carriage passengers never deign to go--of Birmingham,
Wolverhampton, and Walsall, and what he will witness in the course of
the short ramble will "change the spirit of his dream." In Darlaston, as
a sample of what he would see, there are hundreds of men and women whose
clothes, made of the coarsest materials, are patched, and threadbare,
and valueless; hundreds of houses without anything in them deserving the
name of furniture; hundreds of beds without clothing, and hundreds of
children whose excuses for clothes are barely sufficient, with every
contrivance decent poverty can suggest, to cover the body as civilized
society demands. In the towns I have enumerated, in fact, if the least
reliance may be placed in newspaper reports, in every town and village
in the country the same want prevails to a much greater extent than can
be conceived by such as Sir Robert, "who fare sumptuously every
day,"--aye, even to a much greater extent than is generally supposed by
the abov