TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 169 
investments open to the working classes, but which was too little known to be acted 
upon, was the purchase of deferred and other annuities of the Commissioners for the 
Reduction of the National Debt, who were empowered to grant such annuities (not 
exceeding £30 per annum to one person) on very advantageous terms to the pur- 
chaser. The number and value of these annuities purchased up to 5th January, 1857, 
were—immediate, deferred, and life annuities, number 10,864; purchase-money 
£2,071,831 18s. 1]d.; for terms of years, number 373; purchase-money £53,081 
17s. 6d. Referring to the antiquity of friendly societies, it was remarked that Mr. 
Kenrick, the learned author of ‘The Roman Sepulchral Inscriptions,’ had shown 
that burial clubs were in existence among the Romans, and he had actually discovered 
a copy of the rules of such a society inscribed in marble. At the present moment 
there were more friendly societies of one kind or another in England and Wales than 
were to be found in the whole of the rest of Europe, or perhaps elsewhere. No less 
than 26,000 had been established according to law in England and Wales between 
1793 and 1857, besides immense numbers of trade societies and “ orders,”’ some of 
them numbering their members by hundreds of thousands, and many of which no 
account was returned to the Registrar. Of the friendly societies properly so called, 
and which had come to the knowledge of the Registrar, there were, as has been said, 
20,000, by which, in the aggregate, no less a sum than £1,000,000 per annum was 
expended for affording relief insicknessalone. In the year 1857, the friendly societies 
in Leeds raised, in round numbers, £25,000, and distributed £20,000, The author 
proceeded to notice the various other classes of friendly societies and modes of invest- 
ment for the industrial portion of the population; the recent improvement of the law 
relating to those institutions ; and, as another pleasing fact, the increasing confidence 
in savings banks, notwithstanding the failure at Rochdale and a few other places; 
and he expressed a hope that such failures would be prevented in future by the 
Government taking upon itself the responsibility of the funds. If the savings laid 
out by the working classes in the various other modes besides benefit societies and 
sayings banks could be usccrtained and added to the sums disclosed by the official 
accounts, they would swell the total to a sum that would astonish some persons by its 
vastness; and, though he did-not think it would prove that the industrious classes were 
all as thoughtful and prudent as they ought to be, it would show that they were not 
so thoroughly dissipated and careless as some persons had represented; and they were 
entitled to every encouragement and assistance in carrying out their habits of prudence 
and economy. 
Trade and Commerce the Auxiliaries of Civilization and Comfort. 
By T. Baziry, M.P., Manchester. 
Mr. Bazley sketched the rise and progress of the cotton trade, as confirming and 
supporting the views enunciated in the title of this paper. In 1758 the imports of 
cotton and its consumption by domestic labour might be three millions of pounds 
weight for the entire year, but in the present year, a century afterwards, the quantity 
consumed would be one thousand millions of pounds, of which the United States sup- 
plied three-fifths, the other two-fifths being obtained from the East Indies, South 
America, Egypt, and the West Indies. For the last year, by the return made by the 
Board of Trade, the exports of cotton manufactures sent to every part of the world 
amounted to upwards of thirty-nine million pounds sterling. Hence this large sum 
became the agent of payment to a corresponding extent of imports; but in thus largely 
aiding in procuring increased supplies of foreign products, whether in gold, silver, 
yaw materials, food, wines, sugar, fruits, or luxuries of distant growth which are re- 
ceived into the United Kingdom, there was the satisfaction that our cotton industry 
had contributed clothing comforts to the benefit alike of the savage and civilized in 
every region of the earth. In this current year the exports of cotton manufactures 
would perhaps amount to forty millions value, and the portion left for home consump- 
tion might be twenty millions, or equal to 17s. per head for the population of this 
country; but, as the cotton trade of Great Britain is not half its magnitude in the 
entire world, including the domestic and semi-domestic manufacture still extensively 
carried on in the East, the manufacture of the world at large could not be less than 
the annual value of one hundred and forty millions, and therefore this industry afforded 
