“Every article of value has disappeared, either to satisfy the cravings of hunger, or to appease the clamour of relentless creditors.
“Thousands who were once possessed of an honest independence gained by laborious industry, are now sunk in the lowest depths of poverty.
“Were the humane man to visit the dwellings of four-fifths of the weavers, and see the miserable pittance which sixteen hours’ hard labour can procure, even of those who are fully employed, divided between the wretched parents and their starving little ones, he would sicken at the sight.
“When we look upon our starving wives and children, and have no bread to give them, we should consider ourselves still more degraded than we are, as undeserving the name of Englishmen, were we to withhold our complaint from his majesty’s government, or to abstain from speaking in proper terms of what we consider the present unparalleled distress which exists among the weavers; and we implore you, sir, by all the ties which bind the patriot to his country, by that anxiety for the welfare of England which you have frequently evinced, to use that influence which you possess with his majesty’s government towards procuring an amelioration of the condition of the most injured and oppressed class of his majesty’s subjects.”
The rev. Joseph Fletcher of Mile-end corroborates these statements by local acquaintance with the districts, and affirms of his own knowledge, that “the recent causes of commercial distress have produced unparalleled misery.”
“In the town of Blackburn and its vicinity, it has reached its highest point of aggravation. At the present crisis, upwards of seven thousand looms are unemployed in Blackburn, and nearly fourteen thousand persons have been compelled to depend on the bounty of the inhabitants; and as, according to the late census, Blackburn contains about twenty-one thousand inhabitants, two-thirds of the population are in a state of utter destitution.
“The remaining number of the middle and higher classes of society, bears a far less proportion to the population than in any part of the kingdom, while the same disproportion exists amidst a teeming and immense population in the villages and hamlets of the district.
“Thus, the accessible sources of relief are diminished, and the means of alleviation are not in the power of those whose very dependence for their own supply rests on the destitute themselves.”