SOLON ROBINSON, 1849 285 



Leeds may stand for a sample of nearly every town in 

 the manufacturing districts. Winter is rapidly advanc- 

 ing on a population without employment, and without 

 property, what they had having been parted with in 

 order to supply their most pressing wants. It was 

 stated, too, by Dr. Smiles, that "the small grocers were 

 failing and becoming bankrupts in large numbers. Many 

 were not able to pay their debts. This, again, acted on 

 middle class men in a higher condition of life; and he 

 could state, what most of them, perhaps, knew, that a 

 large number of the first class tradesmen have recently 

 become bankrupts." ' 



"Another paper, the Liverpool Mercury of the 30th 

 ult., says : 



" The winter is not yet commenced, yet the general 

 distress throughout the country has arrived at such a 

 point, that nothing but a wholesale famine can carry it 

 further. From Paisley, the accounts are frightful — so 

 frightful that even Sir Robert Peel, although he still ad- 

 heres to his non-intervention as a Minister, declares his 

 readiness to forward a private subscription for its ame- 

 lioration as an individual. In the Potteries, famine stalks 

 abroad ; thousands are starving ; and those who would 

 cruelly attempt to delude the sufferers into the belief 

 that machinery is the cause of their distress, may read, 

 in the general destitution there, the refutation of their 

 foolish falsehood. In the Potteries there is no other ma- 

 chine worked but the potter's wheel mentioned in Scrip- 

 ture. In the metropolis, we have a specimen of the gen- 

 eral destitution, in the fact, that even printers, usually 

 the most prosperous of the classes who live by labor, are 

 appealing to private benevolence, with the appalling fact, 

 that twelve hundred compositors and pressmen are un- 

 employed, and many of them, with large families, are 

 actually in a starving state.' 



"The following is an extract from a letter giving an 

 account of the distress among the working classes, pre- 

 vailing at Stockport: 



