ry extensive in all great towns and industrial districts in the
kingdom.

The result of all these influences is a general enfeeblement of the frame
in the working-class. There are few vigorous, well-built, healthy
persons among the workers, _i.e_., among the factory operatives, who are
employed in confined rooms, and we are here discussing these only. They
are almost all weakly, of angular but not powerful build, lean, pale, and
of relaxed fibre, with the exception of the muscles especially exercised
in their work. Nearly all suffer from indigestion, and consequently from
a more or less hypochondriac, melancholy, irritable, nervous condition.
Their enfeebled constitutions are unable to resist disease, and are
therefore seized by it on every occasion. Hence they age prematurely,
and die early. On this point the mortality statistics supply
unquestionable testimony.

According to the Report of Registrar-General Graham, the annual death-
rate of all England and Wales is something less than 2.25 per cent. That
is to say, out of forty-five persons, one dies every year. {105b} This
was the average for the year 1839-40. In 1840-41 the mortality
diminished somewhat, and the death-rate was but one in forty-six. But in
the great cities the proportion is wholly different. I have before me
official tables of mortality (_Manchester Guardian_, July 31st, 1844),
according to which the death-rate of several large towns is as
follows:--In Manchester, including Chorlton and Salford, one in 32.72;
and excluding Chorlton and Salford, one in 30.75. In Liverpool,
including West Derby (suburb), 31.90, and excluding West Derby, 29.90;
while the average of all the districts of Cheshire, Lancashire, and
Yorkshire cited, including a number of wholly or partially rural
districts and many small towns, with a total population of 2,172,506 for
the whole, is one death in 39.80 persons. How unfavourably the workers
are placed in the great cities, the mortality for Prescott in Lancashire
shows: a district inhabited by miners, and showing a lower sanitary
condition than that of the agricultural districts, mining being by no
means a healthful occupation. But these miners live in the country, and
the death-rate among them is but one in 47.54, or nearly two-and-a-half
per cent. better than that for all England. All these statements are
based upon the mortality tables for 1843. Still higher is the death-rate
in the Scotch cities; in Edinburgh,