OUR SOCIAL CONDITION. 



21 



It is stated that five or six millions of money are annually 

 sent out of this country to purchase Flax. Now, provided 

 one -third only of this sum is paid for actual labour, it would 

 be sufficient to obviate our present difficulties if circulated in 

 promoting the growth and preparation of that important 

 article at home. But there is another advantage to the 

 British Farmer over that of the Foreign in the value of the 

 seed for fattening cattle ; which without any other considera- 

 tion, will amply remunerate ; so that the work occasioned by 

 this double crop will require all our spare hands, and at once 

 put a stop to the cry for employment and the rage for free 

 trade. 



If Flax were grown upon an extensive scale in England, 

 the number of hands required would be incalculable ; not for 

 a season only, depending upon the fluctuations of fashion, but 

 for a permanency, because, as linen ever has been one of the 

 most useful and favourite articles of wearing apparel, so will 

 it continue to the end of time. 



'^'^ Amongst the many, the multitude of questions that de- 

 mand the attention of the British statesman and the British 

 nation, the loud, the pressing, the paramount cry of the 

 people for employment and for bread, still predominates. To 

 this grand consideration all the rest — foreign war, domestic 

 taxation, political discontent, are as dust in the balance."* 

 " It is generally difficult to gain the public ear for inquiries 

 into social suffering and disorder ; the sympathy of the higher 

 classes is at all times dull to tales of misery in which they do 

 not share, and of peril from which they conceive that their 

 station will exempt them. Yet the subject is one of which, to 

 all orders of men, it is impossible to exaggerate the import- 

 ance or the urgency. The social condition of the poorer 

 classes — their physical sufferings and their moral deficiencies 

 — their wants and their wishes — form topics of inquiry in the 

 sight of which all party questions, all constitutional changes, 

 all international policy, all colonial disputes, as such, sink into 

 comparative insignificance."! 



* Norwich Mercury. 



t Westminster Review. 



