1827.] Third Report of the Enngndioti Committee. 



and four children can earn ten shillings a week, he has no claim upon the parish for 

 relief: whereas, in the manufacturing districts, cases have been brought before the 

 Relief Committee as cases of urgent distress, where the same number of persons 

 have been receiving twelve shillings a week. 



" 2299. As a general position, you would think that the rate of wages in the 

 manufacturing districts is much better than the rate of wages through the agricul- 

 tural districts ?- That it was much better." 



In another part of his evidence, however, his lordship sets this right. 

 lie says (Q. 23 1 8) that the house-rent which the manufacturer has to 

 pay is much greater: "A cottage which, in the agricultural districts, would 

 not fetch more than 31. a year, in the manufacturing districts fetches Si." 

 This increased rent exactly makes up the difference of 2s. a week the 

 difference between I Os. and 12s. to which his lordship before alluded. 

 It is farther admitted, that the labour and habits of the manufacturer render 

 a more expensive kind of sustenance necessary to him than will suffice for 

 the agricultural labourer: but the witnesses who speak to the condition of 

 this last class, make statements which admit of no equivocation, although 

 our limits enable us only to quote a few of them, and of the evidence of 

 these to give the substance generally, rather than the full examinations. 



Mr. Walter Burrell says, that he is a proprietor at West Grinstead, in Sussex, 

 where the poor-rates, for the last four years, have been 12s. in the pound upon the 

 rent of the land. This is in defiance of an expenditure of 10,000/. upon one 

 work a canal; undertaken, with other speculations, only to keep the people em- 

 ployed. From thirty to fifty able men are always, five months in the year, without 

 work ; and from seventy to seventy-five, three months. Boys and girls, from 

 twelve to sixteen years of age, are let out by the parish, at from 3d. to 9d. a week 

 each, and 40s. a year for clothing, given to those who will take them. In the 

 parish of Pulborough, at the present moment, the poor rates are more than Seven 

 shillings an acre upon the land ; and witness believes the distress through the 

 weald of Sussex to be pretty nearly the same. (Pp. 156, 137.) 



Mr. Bradbury, overseer of the parish of Great Norwood, in Buckinghamshire, 

 fays, that in his parish the number of labourers is one-third more than can get em- 

 ployed. (Q. 1216). The diet of the working-people is secondary bread, and tea 

 without sugar or milk. (Q. 1243). It appears from this witness's account, that 

 Wages, properly so called, have as a system of remuneration altogether ceased. 

 Men work, in the mass, for any allowance that they can get ; and the parish gives 

 to each as much more as will make up the smallest amount that he can possibly 

 exist upon. A man with a wife and two children, has his wages made up to 6s. or 

 7s. a week.- (Q. 1246, 1247). 



Mr. Thomas Lacoste says, that, in the parish of Chertsey, for the last seven or 

 eight years, about HO/, monthly has been paid to people who have no employ, 

 excepting in harvest. The labourers in general live very badly ; many get nothing 

 to eat but bread and potatoes, with tea.- (Q, 1603). 



Mr. Samuel Maine, overseer of Hanworth, in Middlesex; Mr. James Taylor, 

 mercer, of Feltham; and a variety of other witnesses from agricultural districts, 

 state their parishes and neighbourhoods to be similarly situated. 



We have marked the points from which these statements are taken, in 

 order that a reference to the Report itself may at once shew that they are 

 fairly extracted. But, if this appears to be a state of affairs sufficiently 

 distressing, the condition of the population of Ireland is incomparably 

 worse ; and, unfortunately, the time seems to be rapidly approaching, 

 when the condition of the labouring classes in the two countries by the 

 rise of the one or the fall of the other must be placed upon a level. The 

 steam-navigation to use the expression of one of the witnesses " has 

 become a flying bridge," established between Great Britain and Ireland. 

 The cost of passage seldom exceeds, from any point, half-a-crown or three 



