390 MEMOIR OF DANIEL TREADWELL. 



think so much ! The sum of happiness or misery, for example, that comforts or afflicts the 

 mass of common people, how much more is it in amount than that which belongs to the high 

 and refined ! Not that any individual of them can feel so much, but that their number so far 

 exceeds the number of the higher order. 



Since I was in England in 1820, a wonderful change has taken place in the political opin- 

 ions of the men in trade and the master manufacturers, and indeed of those of a somewhat 

 liigher order. They now entertain all sorts of radical notions. They seem to have forgotten 

 their ancient love and reverence for most of the old institutions, and although you will 

 hardly find a man who docs not hold the King in honor, nothing is more common than to 

 hear them rail at the Lords and the Church, and hope the time is coming when they shall 

 be rid of both. This giving up of old opinions, which were of a definite character, and held 

 men to one mind, has had the effect of producing all sorts of strange doctrines in poli- 

 tics, as every man now invents his own opinions ; consequently they are as various as the 

 faces they go with, and agree only in one point, namely, opposition to the Tories, and reform- 

 ing the state. 



In religion, the people are sincere, and are, I think, as much attached to it as they are 

 in New p]ngland. I have hardly seen a Sabbath more strictly kept in Boston than it is kept in 

 Birmingham. The Methodists are of immense importance to social order, in taking up and 

 reliciionizing the lower classes. My opinion is that the Methodists do more good tlian all the 

 other sects together in England, as they take the class that could not be managed by the law 

 •without the aid of religion, whereas the higher orders could perliaps be governed and get along 

 •without it. There is considerable infidelity amongst the radicals, but not amongst the lowest of 

 them, so far as I have seen. 



We have in the United States a very wrong opinion of the condition of the operatives 

 in the manufacturing towns. I have had this constantly in mind when amongst the coal and 

 iron workers in Wales, the doers of all work in Birmingham, and now among the spinners 

 and weavers of Manchester, and I have seen everywhere the people well fed and well clothed, 

 and if their habits were improved, if they would learn to save their money, absolute poverty 

 would be unknown or rare. I do not, by any means, intend to say that the people are as well 

 conditioned in England as they are in the United States, but that their condition is better than 

 •we in the United States have supposed it to be, and that with the operatives it has generally 

 improved within the last fifteen years. 



I ought to have mentioned that the slavery in the United States is very offensive to the 

 radical politicians ; that they insist on its abolition, and that I have often given great offence 

 in stating the difficulties which lay in the way of giving freedom to the slaves. They are as 

 savage for freeing the blacks as our Southerners are for non-intervention, and will not hear a 

 •woi'd of its being no concern of the Eastern people. They suppose that there is no limit to tlie 

 powers of the general government, and that Congress has full right to bind the States to all 

 purposes. Probably not one half of the members of Parliament even have ever read the 

 United States Constitution, and the common people know nothing about it. 



I begin to tire of this chasing from place to place, and nothing but the excitement of 



learning something new, or fixing as certain what before was conjecture, would make it 



tolerable. 



Yours truly, 



Daniel Treadwell. 



