demoralising circumstances.

But we do not dwell or enter further into this important part of the
condition of Manchester, because, unlike Birmingham, the Corn Law discussions
have, to the enormous advantage of the city, drawn hundreds of jealous eyes
upon the domestic life of the poor; and because men of all parties, Church
and Dissent, Radicals and Conservatives, are trying hard and as cordially as
their mutual prejudices will allow them, to work out a plan of education for
raising the moral condition of a class, who, if neglected in their dirt and
ignorance, will become, in the strongest sense of the French term,
Dangereuse!

But to return to the Manchester of to-day; it has become rather the
mercantile than the manufacturing centre of the cotton manufacture. There
are firms in Manchester which hold an interest in woollen, silk, and linen
manufactures in all parts of the kingdom and even of the continent.

From a pamphlet published last year by the Rev. Mr. Baker, it appears that
there are five hundred and fifty cotton manufactories of one kind or other in
the cotton district of Lancashire and Cheshire. Of these, in Ashton-under-
Lyne, Dukinfield, and Mosley, there are fifty-three mills, Blackburn fifty-
seven, Bolton forty-two, Burnley twenty-five spinning manufactories, at
Heywood twenty-eight mills, Oldham one hundred and fifty-eight, Preston
thirty-eight, Staley Bridge twenty, Stockport forty-seven mills, Warrington
only four, Manchester seventy-eight.

The following is a brief outline of the stages of cotton manufacture which
may be useful to those who consider the question for the first time.

When cotton has reached Manchester from the United States, which supplies 75
per cent. of the raw material; from Egypt, which supplies a good article in
limited quantity; from India, which sends us an inferior, uncertain, but
increasing, quantity, but which with railroads will send us an improved
increasing quantity; or from any of the other miscellaneous countries which
contribute a trifling quota--it is stowed in warehouses, arranged according to
the countries from which it has come. It is then "passed through the willow,
the scuthing machine, and the spreading machine, in order to be opened,
cleaned, and evenly spread. By the carding engine the fibres are combed out,
and laid parallel to each other, and the fleece is compressed into sliver.
The sliver is repeatedly drawn and doubled in the drawing frame, more
p