Now, there is one point to which I would wish to bring the attention of the committee in reference to this subject—it is a most important one, in my appreciation. In ordinary times, when you give relief to the poor, that relief being given when the great mass of workpeople are in full employment, the measure of your relief to an isolated family or two that may be in distress is by no means the measure of the amount of their subsistence, because we all know that in prosperous times, when the bulk of the working people are employed, they are always kind to each other. The poor, in fact, do more to relieve the poor than any other class. A working man and his family out of employment in prosperous times could get a meal at a neighbour's house, just as we, in our class, could get a meal at a neighbour's house if it was a convenience to us in making a journey. But recollect, now the whole mass of the labouring and working population is brought down to one sad level of destitution, and what you allow them from the poor-rates, and what you allow them from these voluntary subscriptions, are actually the measure of all that they will obtain for their subsistence. And that being so general, producing a great depression of spirits, as well as physical prostration, you are in great danger of the health and strength of this community suffering, unless something more be done to meet the case than I fear is yet provided for it. All this brings me to this conclusion—that something more must be done by this general committee than has been done, to awaken the attention of the public generally to the condition of this part of the country. It is totally exceptional. The state of things has no parallel in all history. It is impossible you could point out to me another case, in which, in a limited sphere, such as we have in Lancashire, and in the course of a few months, there has been a cessation of employment at the rate of £7,000,000 sterling per annum in wages. There has been nothing like it in the history of the world for its suddenness, for the impossibility of dealing with it, or managing it in the way of an effective remedy.
Well, the country at large must be made acquainted with these facts. How is that to be done? It can only be by the diffusion of information from this central committee. An appeal must be made to the whole country, if this great destitution is to be met in any part by voluntary aid. The nation at large must be made fully acquainted with the exigency of the case, and we must be reminded that a national responsibility rests upon us. I will, therefore, suggest that this general committee should be made a national committee, and we shall then get rid of this little difficulty with the Lord Mayor. We shall want all the co-operation of the Lord Mayor and the city of London; and I say that this committee, instead of being a Manchester or Lancashire central committee, should be made a national committee; that from this should go forth invitations to all parts of the country, beginning with the lords-lieutenant, inviting them to be vice-presidents of this committee. Let the noble Lord continue to be at the head of the general committee—the national committee—and invite every mayor to take part. We are going to have new mayors in the course of the week, and, though I am sorry to lose our present one, yet when new mayors come in, they may be probably more ready to take up a new undertaking than if they had just been exhausted with a years labour. Let every mayor in the kingdom be invited to become a member of this committee. Let subscription-circulars be despatched to them asking them to organise a committee in every borough; and let there be a secretary and honorary secretary employed. Through these bodies you might communicate information, and counteract those misrepresentations that have been made with regard to the condition of this district.
You might, if necessary, send an ambassador to some of those more important places; but better still, if you could induce them to send some one here to look into the state of things for themselves; because I am sure if they did, so far from finding the calumnies that have been uttered against the propertied classes in this county being well founded, they would find instances—and not a few—of great liberality and generosity, such as I think would surprise any one who visited this district from the southern part of the kingdom.
This would only be done by an active effort from the centre here, and I submit that we shall not be doing justice to this effort unless we give to the whole country an opportunity of co-operating in that way, and throw upon every part of the kingdom a share of the responsibility of this great crisis and emergency. I submit that there is every motive why this community, as well as the whole kingdom, should wish to preserve this industrious population in health and in the possession of their energies. There is every motive why we should endeavour to keep this working population here rather than drive them away from here, as you will do if they are not sufficiently fed and clothed during the next winter. They will be wanted again if this district is to revive, as we all hope and believe it will revive. Your fixed capital here is of no use without the population. It is of no use without your raw material. Lancashire is the richest county in the kingdom when its machinery is employed; it is the poorest county in the kingdom when its machinery and fixed capital are paralysed, as at present. Therefore, I say it is the interest, not only of this community, but of the kingdom, that this population should be preserved for the time—I hope not a distant time—when the raw material of their industry will be supplied to this region.
I submit; then, to the whole kingdom—this district as well as the rest—that it will be advisable, until Parliament meets, that such an effort should be made as will make a national subscription amount probably to £1,000,000. Short of that, it would be utterly insufficient for the case; and I believe that, with an energetic appeal made to the whole country, and an effort organised such as I have indicated, such an amount might be raised."
SPEECH OF THE EARL OF DERBY
AT THE COUNTY MEETING, ON THE 2D DECEMBER 1863.
THE EARL OF SEFTON IN THE CHAIR.
The thirteen hundred circulars issued by the Earl of Sefton, Lord-Lieutenant of Lancashire, "brought together such a gathering of rank, and wealth, and influence, as is not often to be witnessed; and the eloquent advocate of class distinctions and aristocratic privileges (the Earl of Derby) became on that day the powerful and successful representative of the poor and helpless." Called upon by the chairman, the Earl of Derby said:-
"My Lord Sefton, my Lords and Gentlemen,—We are met together upon an occasion which must call forth the most painful, and at the same time ought to excite, and I am sure will excite, the most kindly feelings of our human nature. We are met to consider the best means of palliating—would to God that I could say removing!—a great national calamity, the like whereof in modern times has never been witnessed in this favoured land—a calamity which it was impossible for those who are the chief sufferers by it to foresee, or, if they had foreseen, to have taken any steps to avoid—a calamity which, though shared by the nation at large, falls more peculiarly and with the heaviest weight upon this hitherto prosperous and wealthy district—a calamity which has converted this teeming hive of industry into a stagnant desert of compulsory inaction and idleness—a calamity which has converted that which was the source of our greatest wealth into the deepest abyss of impoverishment—a calamity which has impoverished the wealthy, which has reduced men of easy fortunes to the greatest straits, which has brought distress upon those who have hitherto been somewhat above the world by the exercise of frugal industry, and which has reduced honest and struggling poverty to a state of absolute and humiliating destitution. Gentlemen, it is to meet this calamity that we are met together this day, to add our means and our assistance to those efforts which have been so nobly made throughout the country generally, and, I am bound to say, in this county also, as I shall prove to you before I conclude my remarks. Gentlemen, I know how impossible it is by any figures to convey an idea of the extent of the destitution which now prevails, and I know also how impatient large assemblies are of any extensive use of figures, or even of figures at all; but at the same time, it is impossible for me to lay before you the whole state of the case, in opening this resolution, and asking you to resolve with regard to the extent of the distress which now prevails, without trespassing on your attention by a few, and they shall be a very few, figures, which shall show the extent, if not the pressure, throughout this district, of the present distress. And, gentlemen, I think I shall best give you an idea of the amount of distress and destitution which prevails, by very shortly comparing the state of things which existed in the districts to which I refer in the month of September 1861, as compared with the month of September 1862, and with that again only about two weeks ago, which is the latest information we have—up to the 22d of last month.
I find then, gentlemen, that in a district comprising, in round numbers, two million inhabitants—for that is about the number in that district—in the fourth week of September 1861, there were forty-three thousand five hundred persons receiving parochial relief; in the fourth week of September 1862, there were one hundred and sixty-three thousand four hundred and ninety-eight persons receiving parochial relief; and in the short space which elapsed between the last week of September and the third week of November the number of one hundred and sixty-three thousand four hundred and ninety-eight had increased to two hundred and fifty-nine thousand three hundred and eighty-five persons. Now, gentlemen, let us in the same periods compare the amount which was applied from the parochial funds to the relief of pauperism. In September 1861, the amount so applied was £2259; in September 1862, it was £9674. That is by the week. What is now the amount? In November 1862 it was £17,681 for the week. The proportion of those receiving parochial relief to the total population was two and three-tenths per cent in September 1861, and eight and five-tenths per cent in September 1862, and that had become thirteen and five-tenths percent in the population in November 1862. Here, therefore, is thirteen per cent of the whole population at the present moment depending for their subsistence upon parochial relief alone. Of these two hundred and fifty-nine thousand—I give only round numbers—there were thirty-six thousand eight hundred old or infirm; there were nearly ninety-eight thousand able-bodied adults receiving parochial relief, and there were under sixteen years of age nearly twenty-four thousand persons. But it would be very far from giving you an estimate of the extent of the distress if we were to confine our observations to those who are dependent upon parochial relief alone.