ty, this slavery could not have
lived. True, the original construction of this quarter was bad, little
good could have been made out of it; but, have the landowners, has the
municipality done anything to improve it when rebuilding? On the
contrary, wherever a nook or corner was free, a house has been run up;
where a superfluous passage remained, it has been built up; the value of
land rose with the blossoming out of manufacture, and the more it rose,
the more madly was the work of building up carried on, without reference
to the health or comfort of the inhabitants, with sole reference to the
highest possible profit on the principle that _no hole is so bad but that
some poor creature must take it who can pay for nothing better_. However,
it is the Old Town, and with this reflection the bourgeoisie is
comforted. Let us see, therefore, how much better it is in the New Town.

The New Town, known also as Irish Town, stretches up a hill of clay,
beyond the Old Town, between the Irk and St. George's Road. Here all the
features of a city are lost. Single rows of houses or groups of streets
stand, here and there, like little villages on the naked, not even grass-
grown clay soil; the houses, or rather cottages, are in bad order, never
repaired, filthy, with damp, unclean, cellar dwellings; the lanes are
neither paved nor supplied with sewers, but harbour numerous colonies of
swine penned in small sties or yards, or wandering unrestrained through
the neighbourhood. The mud in the streets is so deep that there is never
a chance, except in the dryest weather, of walking without sinking into
it ankle deep at every step. In the vicinity of St. George's Road, the
separate groups of buildings approach each other more closely, ending in
a continuation of lanes, blind alleys, back lanes and courts, which grow
more and more crowded and irregular the nearer they approach the heart of
the town. True, they are here oftener paved or supplied with paved
sidewalks and gutters; but the filth, the bad order of the houses, and
especially of the cellars, remains the same.

It may not be out of place to make some general observations just here as
to the customary construction of working-men's quarters in Manchester. We
have seen how in the Old Town pure accident determined the grouping of
the houses in general. Every house is built without reference to any
other, and the scraps of space between them are called courts for want of
another