ere are many cotton lords, and the number is increasing, who take the
warmest interest in the condition of the people in their employ, and who do
all they can to promote their health, their education, and their amusements.
A visit to one of these establishments, will convince those who have taken
their ideas of a manufacturing population from the rabid novelettes and yet
more rabid railings of the Ferrand school, that there is nothing in the
factory system itself, properly conducted, opposed to the permanent welfare
of the working classes. On the contrary, in average times, the wages are
sufficient to enable the operatives to live in great comfort, and to lay by
more than in other trades; while between the comfort of their position and
that of the agricultural labourer there is no comparison, so infinitely are
the advantages on the side of the factory hand. There have also been a
series of legislative and other changes during the last twenty years, all
tending to raise the condition of this class. At the same time, it is
impossible not to observe that, quite irrespective of political opinions,
there is a wide gulf between the great mass of the employers and the
employed. There is dislike--there is undefined distrust. Those who doubt
this will do well to investigate working-class opinions for themselves, not
at election time, and in such a familiar manner as to get at the truth
without compliments. Probably in times of prosperity this feeling is not
increasing--we are strongly inclined to think it is diminishing; but it is a
question not to be neglected. Manchester men, of the class who run at the
aristocracy, the army, and the navy just as a bull runs at a red rag, will
perhaps be very angry at our saying this; but we speak as we have found mobs
at fires, and chatty fustian jackets in third class trains on the Lancashire
and Yorkshire line; and, although a friend protests against the opinion, we
still think that the ordinary Manchester millhand looks on his employer with
about the same feelings that Mr. John Bright regards a colonel in the guards.
We hope we may live to see them all more amiable, and better friends.

Manchester during the last seventy years, has been peopled more rapidly than
the "Black Country" which we have described, with a crowd of immigrants of
the most ignorant class, from the agricultural counties of England, from
Ireland, and from Scotland. These people have been crowded together under
very