d a half years, most of them
emerge from it with their lives after dire privations. But indirectly by
disease, etc., every crisis finds a multitude of victims, as we shall
see. First, however, let us turn to another cause of abasement to which
the English worker is exposed, a cause permanently active in forcing the
whole class downwards.

IRISH IMMIGRATION.

We have already referred several times in passing to the Irish who have
immigrated into England; and we shall now have to investigate more
closely the causes and results of this immigration. The rapid extension
of English industry could not have taken place if England had not
possessed in the numerous and impoverished population of Ireland a
reserve at command. The Irish had nothing to lose at home, and much to
gain in England; and from the time when it became known in Ireland that
the east side of St. George's Channel offered steady work and good pay
for strong arms, every year has brought armies of the Irish hither. It
has been calculated that more than a million have already immigrated, and
not far from fifty thousand still come every year, nearly all of whom
enter the industrial districts, especially the great cities, and there
form the lowest class of the population. Thus there are in London,
120,000; in Manchester, 40,000; in Liverpool, 34,000; Bristol, 24,000;
Glasgow, 40,000; Edinburgh, 29,000, poor Irish people. {90a} These
people having grown up almost without civilisation, accustomed from youth
to every sort of privation, rough, intemperate, and improvident, bring
all their brutal habits with them among a class of the English population
which has, in truth, little inducement to cultivate education and
morality. Let us hear Thomas Carlyle upon this subject: {90b}

"The wild Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness,
unreason, misery, and mockery, salute you on all highways and byways.
The English coachman, as he whirls past, lashes the Milesian with his
whip, curses him with his tongue; the Milesian is holding out his hat
to beg. He is the sorest evil this country has to strive with. In
his rags and laughing savagery, he is there to undertake all work that
can be done by mere strength of hand and back--for wages that will
purchase him potatoes. He needs only salt for condiment, he lodges to
his mind in any pig-hutch or dog-hutch, roosts in outhouses, and wears
a suit of tatters, the getting