which had been made for increasing the means of employment, were deferred or abandoned."
I will not harass the feelings of my readers by going into a detail of the great hardships and sufferings endured by this class of poor people, in parting from friends and home, in their passage of 200 or 300 miles in open boats or wagons, in being herded together and lying on straw in the ware-houses of the manufacturers on their arrival, or arising from small pox, fevers, accidents by machinery, or a want of faith on the part of the manufacturers afterwards. They were such as would scarcely be credited as having taken place in England, a land always boasting of her humanity, and such as England herself would not have tolerated in any other country, without an effort to suppress or ameliorate them.
The reader may imagine the extent to which this evil had been carried, from the following remarks made by Sir Robert Peel, in Parliament, on Tuesday evening, January 27th, 1846.
"I will now," said he, "direct the attention of the house to a law which has been greatly complained of by the agricultural interest; I mean the present law of settlement. It happens under the present law, that a large portion of the population of rural districts are induced to move into the manufacturing; and it happens frequently, that the power, the labor, the best part of a man's life, who so removes, are consumed in that manufacturing district, and thus all the advantages of his strength and good conduct, and industry, are derived by the manufacturing districts during the period of his residence. A revulsion then takes place in trade; and what course is taken with respect to the man who moved there in more prosperous times? The man with his wife and family are sent back to the rural districts; and the individual who spent the best part of his life as a manufacturing operative, is re-
