428 THE GRAND TRUNK CANAL. PART V. 



after the period of which we speak, of reminding them 

 of the indigence and obscurity from which they L;i<l 

 risen to opulence and respectability. He said they 

 might be compared to so many sparrows, for that all of 

 them had been hatched under the thatch. When the 

 congregation of this gentleman, growing rich, bought 

 an organ and placed it in the church, he persisted in 

 calling it the hurdy-gurdy, and often took occasion to 

 lament the loss of his old psalm-singers. 



The people further north were no better, nor were 

 those further south. When Wesley preached at Congle- 

 ton, four years later, he said, "even the poor potters 

 [though they had pelted him] are a more civilized 

 people than the better sort (so called) at Congletoii." 

 Arthur Young visited the neighbourhood of Newcastle- 

 under-Lyme in 1 770, and found poor-rates high, wages 

 low, and employment scarce. " Idleness," said he, " is 

 the chief employment of the women and children. All 

 drink tea, and fly to the parishes for relief at the very 

 time that even a woman for washing is not to be had. 

 By many accounts I received of the poor in this neigh- 

 bourhood, I apprehend the rates are burthened for the 

 spreading of laziness, drunkenness, tea-drinking, and 

 debauchery, the general effect of them, indeed, all over 

 the kingdom." l Button's account of the population 

 inhabiting the southern portion of the same county is 

 even more dismal. Between Hales Owen and S tour- 

 bridge was a district usually called the Lie Waste, and 

 sometimes the Mud City. Houses stood about in every 

 direction, composed of clay scooped out into a tenement, 

 hardened by the sun, and often destroyed by the frost. 

 The males were half-naked, the children dirty and hung 

 over with rags. " One might as well look for the 

 moon in a coal-pit," says Button, " as for stays or 

 white linen in the City of Mud. The principal tool in 



1 Young's ' Six Months' Tour.' Ed. 1770. Vol. iii., \\ 317. 



