diate sympathy was felt for him on account of the
fearful state of the people. The distress had now so deepened in the
manufacturing districts as to render it clearly inevitable that many
must die, and a multitude be lowered to a state of sickness and
irritability from want of food; while there seemed no chance of any
member of the manufacturing classes coming out of the struggle at
last with a vestige of property wherewith to begin the world again.
The pressure had long extended beyond the interests first affected,
and when the new Ministry came into power, there seemed to be no
class that was not threatened with ruin. In Carlisle, the Committee
of Inquiry reported that a fourth of the population was in a state
bordering on starvation--actually certain to die of famine, unless
relieved by extraordinary exertions. In the woollen districts of
Wiltshire, the allowance to the independent laborer was not
two-thirds of the minimum in the workhouse, and the large existing
population consumed only a fourth of the bread and meat required by
the much smaller population of 1820. In Stockport, more than half the
master spinners had failed before the close of 1842; dwelling houses
to the number of 3,000, were shut up; and the occupiers of many
hundreds more were unable to pay rates at all. Five thousand persons
were walking the streets in compulsory idleness, and the Burnley
guardians wrote to the Secretary of State that the distress was far
beyond their management; so that a government commissioner and
government funds were sent down without delay. At a meeting in
Manchester, where humble shopkeepers were the speakers, anecdotes
were related which told more than declamation. Rent collectors were
afraid to meet their principals, as no money could be collected.
Provision dealers were subject to incursions from a wolfish man
prowling for food for his children, or from a half frantic woman,
with her dying baby at her breast; or from parties of ten or a dozen
desperate wretches who were levying contributions along the street.
The linen draper told how new clothes had become out of the question
with his customers, and they bought only remnants and patches, to
mend the old ones. The baker was more and more surprised at the
number of people who bought half-pennyworths of bread. A provision
dealer used to throw away outside scraps; but no