310 ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. [BOOK III. 



and remembered by all who are elevated above the poor, 

 and that they may act accordingly. 



Those who are uncivilized cannot civilize themselves ; 

 it requires external aid to enable them to improve. 



It is shown in the Report of Mr. Lewis, that the Irish 

 poor in Great Britain derive little or no good from in- 

 creased earnings ; but, on the contrary, are sometimes in- 

 jured by them, unless some superintending care be ex- 

 tended to them, and that if there be, a marked improve- 

 ment takes place in their mode of life. The following ex- 

 tracts from it are particularly deserving of attention. 



" In all the towns of England and Scotland where the 

 Irish have settled, they inhabit the cheapest dwellings 

 which can be procured ; and thus they are collected in the 

 lowest, dampest, dirtiest, most unhealthy, and ruinous parts 

 of the town. In Liverpool and Manchester very many of 

 them inhabit cellars, which are frequently dark, confined, 

 and wet. In the Scotch towns there are not many inha- 

 bited cellars ; but the rooms in the narrow closes of Glas- 

 gow, Edinburgh and Greenock are darker and smaller, 

 and apparently less fitted for the residence of human beings, 

 than even the cellars of the large towns of Lancashire. In 

 these dwellings an Irish family usually occupies a room, or 

 at most two rooms ; and frequently, in addition to their 

 own numbers, they take in a single man or woman, or a 

 widow with children, as lodgers. It rarely happens that 

 they rent an entire house or cottage. They have likewise 

 a practice, to a great extent, of living in lodging-houses, in 

 which single beds are let by the week or the night, and 

 large numbers are crowded together in the same room. 

 The state of these houses is usually wretched in the ex- 

 treme ; and, from the filthy condition of the bedding, the 



