Here the omnibus came up, and I rode back to Manchester. The whole conversation took up very little more time than it will take to read it; but I thought it well worth recording, as characteristic of the people now suffering in Lancashire from no fault of theirs. I know the people well. The greatest number of them would starve themselves to that degree that they would not be of much more physical use in this world, before they would condescend to beg. But starving to death is hard work. What will winter bring them when severe weather begins to tell upon constitutions lowered in tone by a starvation diet—a diet so different to what they have been used to when in work?
What will their eighteen-pence a-head weekly do for them in that hard time? If something more than this is not done for them, when more food, clothing, and fire are necessary to everybody, calamities may arise which will cost England a hundred times more than a sufficient relief—a relief worthy of those who are suffering, and of the nation they belong to—would have cost. In the meantime, the cold wings of winter already begin to overshadow the land; and every day lost involves the lives, or the future usefulness, of thousands of our best population.
Saint Catherine's Chapel;
OR,
The Pretty Island Bay.
O blest retreat, and sacred, too!
Sacred as when the bell of prayer
Tolled duly on the desert air.