one, these females being themselves quite naked down to the waist."

Patience Kershaw, examined by Mr. Scriven, says, "The boys take liberties with me sometimes; they pull me about. I am the only girl in the pit. There are twenty boys, and fifteen men.

All the men are naked."

In all the mines this indecency prevails to a degree very slightly mitigated in shamelessness. Mr. Thorneley, a magistrate near Barnsley, says:

"I have had forty years experience in the management of collieries. The system of having females to work in coal-pits prevails generally in this neighbourhood. I consider it to be a most awfully demoralising practice. The youths of both sexes work often in a half-naked state, and the passions are excited before they arrive at puberty. Sexual intercourse frequently occurs in consequence. Cases of bastardy frequently also occur; and I am decidedly of opinion that women brought up in this way lay aside all modesty, and scarcely know what it is but by name. Another injurious effect arises from the modern construction of cottages, where the father, mother, and children are all huddled together in one bed-room; this tends to still more demoralization."

On such disgusting details we will not dwell. No doubt can remain in the mind of any person who reads the report, that to look for chastity among such persons would be a fruitless undertaking. The lamentable fact is also proved, that

the depravity of females far exceeds even that of the men.

The assertion needs no proof, that where the bodies of men are left uncared for, their souls are neglected. Baxter said, "starving men are poor theologians." The commissioners tell us, that they examined large numbers of young persons, taken indiscriminately, in regard to their knowledge of religion: I make the following extracts to show the result. In a church school, which the commissioners praise as superior to many, no one in reading the miracle of the draft of fishes, knew the meaning of the words "shores," "abundance," or "prophecies." One boy said the disciples were the people who did not go up to Jerusalem.

"Elizabeth Day, a girl of seventeen. I don't go to Sunday school. The truth is, we are confined bad enough on week days, and want to walk about on Sundays. I can't read at all. Jesus Christ was Adam's son, and they nailed him on a tree; but I don't rightly understand these things."

"William Beaver, aged sixteen. - The Lord made the world. He sent Adam and Eve on earth to save sinners. I have heard of the Saviour; he was a good man, but he did not die here. I think Ireland is a town as big as Barnsley, where there is plenty of potatoes and lots of bullocks."

"Ann Eggley, aged eighteen. I have heard of Christ performing miracles, but I don't know what namby pamby magazines, it was declared I had exaggerated the sufferings and wrongs of the poor of England, not even adding the modest qualification " in their opinion." Noble critics these, surely, upon the condition of the poor of a land which they visited, and it appears, only to pet a profligate aristocracy, who have caused this same misery of which I spoke. Some of these persons who have been so kind as to correct my mistakes by exposing their own ignorance, were in England, the same summer with myself. And while their pretty feet were pressing the winter carpets of the halls of the aristocracy, they had made such a death struggle to enter, I happened either from humanity or curiosity-call it which you please, to be exploring the coal mines of Lancashire, and the factories and lanes of Preston, Manchester and Leeds. Some of these travellers have told us what they saw--they have described soirées, balls, and all kinds of fashionable dissipation, enough of which I witnessed to be disgusted with it all, and with descriptions of which I might have filled two volumes and peddled out the leavings to fashionable magazines, had I cared more for the esteem of the beau monde, than of the humane and the philanthropic.

But to return. It is impossible such horrid barbarities could be perpetrated in a country like England, and not be known to multitudes. They were most likely unknown to the aristocracy and fashionable circles in the metropolis--to the great pleasure-seeking world of London; for these classes meddle no more than is necessary with the affairs of the poor. "It is," says Blackwood's Magazine, "nauseous and emetical to such persons to be told that our fellow subjects starve outside our gates: such recitals of domestic misery interfere with the process of digestion, and like the sad realities of another place should not be mentioned in the hearing of ears polite. Nothing can be more vulgar, uninteresting and anti-sentimental, than the distresses of Hicks, Higgins, Figgins and Stubbs, and all weavers and others, who are neither rebels nor refugees-who are vulgar enough to work if they can get it-who wear no bristles under their noses and lips, and who have no names ending in 'rinski.”

But whether the legislators of England knew these facts or not, it is nevertheless true that this damning slavery which stamps the condition of the lower classes in Great Britain, is the result of unjust laws, and an oppressive system of Government, by which the helpless poor man is robbed of the fruits of his hard toil. It is also true that after a full investigation of the facts, Parliament refused to provide a remedy, and indefinitely postponed the whole matter.

As investigation goes on, and one abuse after another is exposed, Englishmen profess great surprise at such unlooked for developments ! They shock all men who have a spark of humanity left, but they surprise no one who is gifted

with sagacity enough to discover that these terrible sufferings are produced legitimately and of necessity by the tyranny of the government. This grand cause is adequate to the production of more misery and crime than have yet been brought to light. Let the investigation go on. Let the curtain which has so long veiled the distress and degradation of the slave classes, from the gaze of the aristocracy be lifted, and let them behold the fearful ruin they have brought on starving millions, so that they be not taken by surprize when they find themselves visited by the ISSUE.

END OF FIRST VOL.

UNIV. OF MICHIGAN,

JUN 24 1912