Human Physiology. 39 



most frightful discrepancies exist between the richer and the 

 poorer classes; where the poor fancy they have nothing to lose 

 and everything to gain from a revolution ; here, too, where we 

 are stimulating the rapid increase of our population by extend- 

 ing and steadying the base of our commercial greatness ; where 

 the majority of our operatives have no religion ; where the 

 national religion is one utterly unfitted to attract an uneducated 

 people ; where our very freedom is in danger, unless the people 

 are taught to use and not to abuse it ; and here, too, where the 

 aristocracy is richer and more powerful than that of any other 

 country in the world, the poor are more oppressed, more pau- 

 perised, more numerous in comparison to the other classes, 

 more irreligious, and very much worse educated, than the poor 

 of any other European nation." 



Mr. Kay excepts a portion of Eastern and Southern Europe ; 

 but I doubt if there can be made any such exception. 

 Assuredly, the peasantry of Spain, Portugal, and Southern 

 Italy are less pauperised, arid not worse educated than the 

 corresponding class in this country. 



Lord Howard of Glossop, in a letter on the poverty and 

 crime of Liverpool, says that of 4227 prisoners there, only 12- 

 could read and write well; 1244 could read and write im- 

 perfectly; 864 could read only; and 2107 could neither read 

 nor write. Every prison in England tells nearly the same 

 story. 



In 1854, Lord John Russell stated that "thirty-five persons 

 in every hundred could neither read nor write ; and that igno- 

 rance was incredible, and crime incalculable amongst the masses 

 of the labouring people." 



Mr. Bruce, M.P., at the Social Science Congress at Man- 

 chester, said: "Every where a majority of the children between 

 the ages of three and twelve are found to be neither at school 

 nor at work, owing to the poverty of their parents. In the 

 lowest districts of the manufacturing towns, only a small 



