beer-shop, that we with justice ascribe the many acts of sanguinary violence, the horrid tragedies of atrocious murder, which have defiled within very recent memory many scenes of rural life, and tainted spots, which have often been supposed, but very falsely at the present day, to be the favoured recesses of comfort, peace, and virtue.

CHAPTER III.

STRONG TENDENCIES IN THE SYSTEM OF MANUFACTURES TO MORAL EVIL-PARTICULARLY DRUNKENNESS-AGGRAVATED BY NEGLECT OF PROPRIETORS-SITUATION OF A CHILD IN A MANUFACTURING TOWN SUPPOSEDEXTRACTS FROM PARLIAMENTARY REPORTS WHICH THROW LIGHT UPON THE GENERAL MORAL CONDITION OF SUCH TOWNS-COINCIDENCE OF VIEW, AS REGARDS THE GENERAL POSITION OF THE ESSAY, ON THE PART OF JOSEPH FLETCHER, ESQ. INSTANCES

OF NINETY-ONE JUVENILE DELINQUENTS IN LIVERAS TO STATE OF CRIME IN

POOL

COMPARISON

AGRICULTURAL AND MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS.

ALTHOUGH the increase of juvenile crime has been general throughout England, and therefore is referrible to an agency in universal operation, yet the augmentation has been in greater and more rapid proportion in those districts, where are the several centres of trade and manufacture. Hence it is necessary to consider the peculiar circumstances which have given to these parts their distressing prominence in crime.

The fact which at once strikes the eye, is the accumulation of such a vast mass of human beings, forced into the closest communication and contact with one another. The increase of population in these districts has not been

E

in the ordinary proportion of the increase of population throughout England; but in a ratio immensely larger. The population of Lancashire in 1811, was 828,309; in 1821, 1,052,859; in 1831, 1,335,800; in 1841, 1,667,054. If we compare the increase of population in Norfolk, a flourishing agricultural county, during the same period, the disparity will be apparent. The population of Norfolk, in 1811, was 291,999; in 1821, 344,368; in 1831, 390,000; in 1841, 412,664: so that in a space of thirty years, the population of Norfolk increased more than one-third, while that of Lancashire more than doubled itself.

A large portion of the population of Lancashire is grouped here and there in immense knots in and round towns. Many evils naturally arise from this accumulation of so many human beings, each of whom is possessed of large powers and propensities to evil; and these in such a concourse are stimulated into exercise, and have every scope for their full development. The moral checks ought to be on a gigantic scale, to be at all adequate to the need; and should increase with the same rapidity as the population itself. These two conditions are indispensable to anything like order, respectability, and morality, in such a vast assemblage of men, such a shifting and heterogeneous mass. But the absence of any such system at all proportionate to the powers of evil which must be encountered, is as notorious as it is lamentable; and hence the destitute condition of our trading and manufacturing centres, as it may be pictured on the imagi

nation by inference from the simple facts of this enormous gathering of human beings, and the great accessions continually made to it, will go far to account for the unhappy proportion and rapid increase of juvenile depravity in these districts and in our times.

The peculiar circumstances of manufacturing life require to be further considered. The wages which the operative receives are high; very high, as compared with the average wages of agricultural workmen; and, probably, as many bad results flow from the highness of wages in the one case, as from their lowness in the other. The medium between the two extremes is certainly the most favourable to virtue, however difficult it may be to hit; nor in fact, is the rate of workmen's wages capable of regulation by strict ordinance under a regard to considerations of this nature. But the operative's wages being in general thus high, there is a less demand for prudence and economy in disposing of them. The almost universal effect is improvidence. The same evil results from the same cause amongst the fishermen on the coast of Yorkshire. Three men and a boy have been known to take in one night, under favourable circumstances, fish which they sold the next morning for £20. Instead of carefully husbanding their respective shares of the sum, they with their families resort to over-feeding and drinking; and contrive to spend every farthing of the money before the end of the week.*

Another unpropitious circumstance to a high tone of moral character, is the fluctuating rate of wages, dependent * Chambers's Miscellany, vol. i. " Employer and Employed."

in a great degree, as it must be, upon the variation in prices. It has always been found in every period of the history of man, and in every country and climate, that a situation subject more or less to the control of circumstances which admit of little calculation, i. e., to that we denominate chance, is unfavourable to moral improvement. The operative will not lay by in a moment of plenty against the approach of hard times, but riots in dissipation, fondly hoping that the present prosperity may be permanent; when there is a depreciation in the price of labour, he is equally negligent to reduce his expenses within his altered means. These two causes, the high rate and frequent fluctuation of wages, may account for the extreme improvidence which characterises the manufacturing population. It was lately found that out of 14,937 deposit accounts in the Savings' Bank in the great manufacturing town of Manchester, only 4181 were the deposits of working-people.* I would also refer on this subject to the table in the "Minutes of Council on Education," adduced above, in which one column is devoted to the comparison of the several districts in respect to improvidence.

But the circumstances of the work itself deserve our special attention. It appears from the Report of Commissioners, that labour used to be continued in the mills during as many as fifteen and even sixteen hours and that it has been known to have been occasionally protracted as long as eighteen, and in some instances,

* Chambers's Miscellany, vol. i." "Employer and Employed." + Minutes, 1846, p. 272. Trades and Manufactures, 1843.