VOL. X \. SO. 3. 



AND H R T 1 C^ V L T U K A L R E G 1 >S 1' L R 



37 



liolitiiig any drink for tivo or six lioiirs, at tlio cml 

 of which, slioulil liu not be belter, I rcpcut llio 

 blceiliii^, tnkui); Imirihe qiiaiitily, and t^ivinj; aiiotli- 

 er missjfrns ilrcneli, nfloriiig him hriin cir oatssciild- 

 ed Willi saKsafras ten, his drink bein^ mixed with 

 the leu: his feet should be well cleaned and tilled 

 with cow manure. 



I am, sir, rcBpcclfulIv, 



JOHN M.JOHNSON. 



CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASSES 

 OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



Thn reports to the House of Commons upon the 

 condiii.in of ihe working classes of (Jreot Britain, 

 presoiit II picture appalling and truly horrifyiiig. 

 Those reports arc irrefrsgnhlu evidences of the 

 physical ond moral degradation of the working and 

 humbler classes of Great Britain, and are, no doubt, 

 the silent causes of the late, and indeed present 

 dissnlisfied and disturbed state of the people ; for 

 nothing so quickly evokes from its murky habita- 

 :ions the spirit of rerolt, as poverty. The follow- 

 ing is a condensed statement of the returns con- 

 tained in the reports alluded to. 



Nottingham has a population of ."iOiOOO. Wllh- 

 in the town, which consists of 11,000 houses, there 

 are from 7,000 to 6,000 built back to back. When 

 :hc cholera raged, many rows of houses were found 

 o be placed upon drains, which were shallow, and 

 iiniply covered with the boards of the sitting-room 

 floors. These, when shrunk by heat, allowed nox- 

 ous smells to rise. The health and morals of the 

 -esidents suffered greatly from the slate of their 

 wellings. Liverpool population consists of 230,- 

 JOO. There are in the borough of Liverpool 7,81)2 

 nhabited cellars, dark, damp, confined, ill-ventila- 

 ed, and dirty. 'I'liese cellars contain one fifth of 

 he working classes, being 3i',000 persons, and of 

 he whole population they contain one seventh. 

 There are 2,270 courts, in which there are six or 

 ieven families, and few of these courts have more 

 ;han one outlet. iManchester population, 200,000. 

 t was ascertained that twelve per cent, of the 

 iTorkiug population live in cellars. There are of 

 ihat class 128,232 persons, of whom .31,n7(> live in 

 :ellars. — In Salford there are 4!),9yi of the work- 

 ng classes, 3,335 of whom dwell in cellars. It is 

 «3tated that of 57,000 dwellings of the working 

 lasses, which were examined, 18,400 were ill- 

 furnished, and 10,400 scarcely comfortable. — In 

 Bury the population is 20,000. The following 

 statement of the condition of 3,000 of the families 

 of the working classes in this place is must revolt- 

 In 77.3 houses they slept three to four in a 

 bed ; in 207, they slept four to five in a bed ; and 

 in 78, they slept live to six in a bed ! This awful 

 statement must rouse the honest and religious 

 ndignation of every Englishman. — Bristol, popula- 

 tion, 120,000. Of 1,259 families, consisting of 

 20,000 persons, 2,800 families have but one room ; 

 €.30 houses are without sewers ; and l,3f)4 honscs 

 are without water, or are supplied with bad water. 

 Newcastle-on.Tyne, population 04,600. The ex- 

 aminer of this place reports as follows : In many 

 parts the dwellings are close, dirty and miserable, 

 without order or comfort, whole families inhabiting 

 a single room, and living in an atmosphere totally 

 unendurable. The mind cannot picture a state of 

 greater destitution or misery. — Leeds, population 

 80,000. Of 17,800 houses, 13,fi00 are under £10 

 per annum, and contain G1,000 of the working 

 classes. The streets are very bad, one half of 

 which are hung with linen, and are impassable to 



horses. 'J'iiB nurth-OBSl ward ronlaiiiH l.'i.tOU 

 working people, und hoii !I3 HlrorH, Of iheso, 

 throe have sewers, twelve have iheni partly, thirty- 

 eight are without sewers, and forty aro unknown. 

 In I83!l, the deaths in Lords were one in twenty- 

 eight and a half. — Glasgow: Mr Simonds, (he 



Coinniis.sioner, speaking of this city, says '• Until 



I visiied the wynds of Glasgow, 1 did ni>t believe 

 that so large an amount of filth, crime, misery and 

 disease existed in ony civilized country. In the 

 lower lodging houses, ton, twelve, and sometimes 

 tiveuty persons of both sexes and all ages, sleep 

 promiscuously on the lloor, in diirereiit degrees of 

 nakcdncsji. These places are such as no person of 

 common humanity would stable his horse in. The 

 lower parts of several of those licmses are spirit 

 shops, pawn-shops, or eating-houses. The popu- 

 lalion of these wretched districts is probably 30,000 : 

 it certainly exceeds 20,000 persons, who are pass- 

 ing through the rapid career of prostitution, drunk- 

 enness, and disease. The number of persons who 

 died lust year was 10,270, or one to twentythree 

 and a half of the whole population ; and of that 

 number about 180 died of typhus, a disease which 

 never leaves Glasgow." It appears from another 

 statement, that, in 183.5, the number of persons at- 

 tacked by fever was C,180 ; in 183(), 10,092; and 

 in 18.37, 21,800. 



Surely such an amount of human misery connot 

 but be contemplated with horror, and cannot fail of 

 arousing the tender sympathies of the huinnno and 

 benevolent, upon whom heaven showers its bless- 

 ings of wealth, to some effort to rescue their fel- 

 low creatures from such an abyss of physical and 

 moral debasement! — Mark Lane (Eng.) Express. 



TAXATION IN ENGLAND. 



la the course of a recent debate in Tarlianient, 

 upon the subject of a rejieal of the "Corn Laws," 

 Mr Hume entered into a series of details to show 

 the extent to which the landed interest (the aris- 

 tocracy,) are favored in England He stated that 

 the landed interest were in tlie same position now, 



as the French aristocracy before the revolution. 



The whole of the taxes were paid by the people 

 at large, while all taxes weighing upon land had 

 successively been repealed. '1 he landed interest 

 was, therefore, not entitled to any -protection what- 

 ever, and even the 8s. a quarter, which Lord J. 

 Russell proposed to lay on foreign wheat, would 

 be an onerous and grievous tax. 



Mr Scholefield moved a resolution to the effect, 

 that the distress of the- industrious classes, arising 

 from want of employment and tlie high price of 

 provisions, maUea it incumbent on Parliament to 

 devise means of alleviation. 



Mr Williams seconded the motion, and dwelt 

 with earnestness on the rapid advance of manufac- 

 tures in Germany, owing to the advantage of cheap- 

 er provisions enjoyed by the laboring classes of 

 that country. In England, all the public burdens 

 were thrown on the lower and middle classes, 

 who, in the single article of corn, poid more to the 

 aristocracy than the aristocracy contributed to the 

 state. 



Mr Iliodleysaid he had examined into the Afork- 

 iiig of different departments of taxation, and had 

 found them [iress with great severity on the poor. 

 Of every shilling which the poor man expended in 

 a grocer's shop, sixpence-halfpenny wont to the 

 state as a tax, wh'ile of every shilling expended by 

 the rich man, less than three pence were levied as 

 a duty. Mr H. concluded by moving an addition 



to Mr Schidondd'ii motion, to tho effect that the 

 present system of taxation and the corn laws arc 

 peculiarly unjust to tho middle and lower claanos. 



THISTLE HARVEST. 

 This uH/rjiVi»i;Ercrop is now vrry abundant. Thoie 

 who wish to diminish Ihe pest, should ply thn scythe 



to them, and then put them into the muck -yard. 



The Major snys, that where they conic up abun- 

 dantly among wheal, it Is an excellent plan to put 

 on a glove or a lenther mitten and pull them up. 

 The wheat will start forword and soon shade ihoso 

 which are broken off or come up afterwards, so 

 that they cannot come to maturity. The great sup- 

 ply of thistle seed comes from those that spring up 

 by the roadside und about walls and wood-piloa 

 and other neglected spots. Hero tho seeds ripen 

 and are soon abroad on the wings of tho wind, and 

 are thereby planted in tho fields ond cultivated 

 grounds ready to spring up during the next sea- 

 son, and annoy the farmer by their unwelcome 

 presence. — Maine Farmer. 



BIG POTATO BUSINESS. 



New England with a territory scarcely as large 

 as our county of Apling, produces, according to the 

 late census, 34,435,821 bushels of Irish potatoes 

 annually! Good gracious 1 where do they find 

 room in that little country to pile them on ? THIR- 

 TVFOUR MILLIONS ! only think I At 20 cents 

 a bushel, (they are worth here a dollar and a half,) 

 the potato crop of little New England amounts to 

 more than seven millions of dollars '. — probably 

 more than the entire cotton crop of Georgia for 

 the last year at 10 cents a pound I Besides this, 

 the same New Englandjjiakes, one year with anoth- 

 er, it sceius, 2,182,902 bushels of wheat, and 18,- 

 195,9:9 bushels of otheii-grains — which at 50 cents 

 a bushels, amounts lo upwards of ten millions of 

 dollars ! How many bushels of wooden nutmegs, 

 horn gun-flints, poplar hams, &c., these same enter- 

 prising chaps have made, the census does not in- 

 form us. — Macon (Geo ) Telegraph. 



OJ^Tlio "county of Apling," mentioned in tiie 

 above, must be something of a piece of ground, we 

 infer, i/ it be as large as our whole New England 

 territory; but if book authority is to be depended 

 upon and " figures do not lie," tho irAo/e Slate of 

 Georgia covers but r)2,000 square miles — whereas 

 tho State of Maine alone contains more than half 

 of this number, and the whole of New England 

 territory exceeds that of Georgia by 4180 square 

 miles. This Georgia editor must have been some 

 time from school. — We are unwilling that our good 

 old New England should be "curtoiled" an inch 

 of her "foir proportions" — even upon paper; neith- 

 er would we do any injustice to Georgia or her 

 "county of Apling" in this respect — and we cer- 

 tainly mean none, when in regard to the magnitude 

 of the latter we express the opinion, that tho crop 

 oi' pumpkins now or formerly raised in the town of 

 " Old Rowley" in any one year, would cover a 

 " pretty considerHbie" portion of tho surface of 

 said county ! The Georgia gentleman's concep- 

 tion of New England's greatness must now, we 

 think, be just! And, aside from the Connecticut 

 " notions" we are proud of the stupendous results 

 of our industry and skill, which he has exhibited, 

 but our chiefest boast is, that our soil is the 

 nursery of great minds and good citizens : — 



" Man is ihe nobler crowlh our realms supply. 

 And souls are ripened in our northern sky." 



" P. D." 



