"In those taverns where prostitutes are not actually kept for the purpose of enticing customers, they are always to be found in the evenings, at the time the workmen go there to drink. In London and in Lancashire the gin-palaces are the regular rendezvous for the abandoned of both sexes, and the places where the lowest grade of women-of-the-town resort to find customers. It is quite clear that young men, who once begin to meet their, friends at these places, cannot long escape the moral degradation of these hot-houses of vice.
"The singular and remarkable difference between the respective condition of the peasants and operatives of Germany and Switzerland, and those of England and Ireland, in this respect, is alone sufficient to prove the singular difference between their respective social condition.
"The village inn in Germany is quite a different kind of place to the village inn in England. It is intended and used less for mere drinking, than, as a place for meeting and conversation; it is, so to speak, the villagers' club."—Vol. i. 232.
Under such circumstances, we cannot be surprised when told by Mr. Alison that over the whole kingdom crime increases four times as fast as the population, and that "in Lancashire population doubles in thirty years, crime in five years and a half." How, indeed, could it be otherwise under a system based upon the idea of "keeping labour down"—one that tends to the consolidation of the land and the exclusion of men from the work of cultivation, and then excludes them from the factory, while forcing hundreds of thousands of indigent and almost starving Irish into England in search of employment? The process of "eviction" in Ireland has been already described. How the same work has been, and is being, performed in England is thus stated by the Times:—
"Our village peasantry are jostled about from cottage to cottage, or from cottage to no cottage at all, as freely and with as little regard to their personal tastes, and conveniences as if we were removing our pigs, cows, and horses from one sty or shed to another. If they cannot get a house over their heads they go to the Union, and are distributed—the man in one part, the wife in another, and the children again somewhere else. That is a settled thing. Our peasantry bear it, or, if they can't bear it, they die, and there is an end of it on this side of the grave; though how it will stand at the great audit, we leave an 'English Catholic' to imagine. We only mean to say that in England the work has been done; cotters have been exterminated; small holdings abolished; the process of eviction rendered superfluous; the landlord's word made law; the refuge of the discontented reduced to a workhouse, and all without a shot, or a bludgeon, or a missile being heard of."
Thus driven from the land, they are forced to take refuge in London and Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, and accordingly there it is that we find nearly the whole increase of population in the last ten years. Out of less than two millions, more than 400,000 were added to the number of London alone, and those who are familiar with Mr. Mayhew's work, London Labour and London Poor, do not need to be told of the extraordinary wretchedness, nor of the immorality that there abound. Inquiries get on foot by Lord Ashley have shown that "in the midst of that city there are," says Mr. Kay—
"Persons, forming a separate class, having pursuits, interests, manners; and customs of their own, and that the filthy, deserted, roaming, and lawless children, who may be called the source of 19-20ths of the crime which desolates the metropolis, are not fewer in number than THIRTY THOUSAND!
"These 30,000 are quite independent of the number of mere pauper children, who crowd the streets of Londen, and who never enter a school: but of these latter nothing will be said here.
"Now, what are the pursuits, the dwelling-houses, and the habits of these poor wretches? Of 1600, who were examined, 162 confessed that they had been in prison, not merely once, or even twice, but some of them several times; 116 had run away from their homes; 170 slept in the "lodging-houses;" 253 had lived altogether by beggary; 216 had neither shoes nor stockings; 280 had no hat or cap, or covering for the head; 101 had no linen; 249 had never slept in a bed; many had no recollection of ever having been in a bed; 68 were the children of convicts,"—Vol. i. 394.
In the towns of the manufacturing districts there are, says the same author—