9 worry of such work is exhausting; it depresses the physical energies and wears the heart. Some give up in despair, and leave the factory to beg or work on the moor or in the stoneyard ; others grow haggard or pale under the trial; the strong men grow weak,—the weak, ill. The men curse, and the women sit down and cry bitterly. A manufacturer resident in Manchester, who is by no means a tender-hearted gentleman, said, that instances of the kind were of daily occurrence in his factory, and that he had ceased to go into most of the rooms, ‘ for the women were all crying over their work.’ ”* The London “Times” informs us, that from the first of September to the twenty-fifth of October, the number of persons receiving parochial relief in all the cotton districts had increased by 68,456, and that there were in all 208,621. In addition to this, there are 143,870 persons who receive their aid from local committees. Total, 352,491. The weekly loss of wages is estimated at £ 136,094, and that amounts to £7,000,000 a year. “ Nor does this prodigious sum,” says the “ Times,” “ represent the whole loss incurred by these districts, for the ordinary receipts of a manufacturer must be such as to cover not only wages, but the expense of machinery, and the interest of capital sunk in buildings and land, besides a handsome profit.” It is the loss of this handsome profit which, more than all the suffering of the men and women who used to earn it, inspires the “Times” to unroll its columns of appalling figures in the interest of intervention and Southern slavery. The loss of this profit, and the discomfort of having 400,000 fresh paupers added in one year to its list of vagabonds, is the only drawback to English satisfaction at seeing the great Republic shrivelling from loss of blood, and sinking from the menace of its former estate to insignificance beneath debt, dismemberment, and national disgrace. But it reminds me of the principal cause for thanksgiving which we have to-day. In spreading before you a few facts in relation to the distress of the English workmen, my object was not only to contrast it with the substantial comfort which the institutions of a Democracy sustain, at the same time that it can wage war at the rate of $2,000,000 a day, and deaths and * Visit to the Cotton Districts, p. 75. 2
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