it.

That is not all: Mr Farnall has told us that at present the
increase of the rates in this district is at the rate of 10,000
pounds per week. That will be at the rate of half a million per
annum, and, of course, if this distress goes on, that rate must be
largely increased, perhaps doubled. This shows the amount of
pressure which is threatening this immediate district. I have always
been of opinion that this distress and suffering must be cumulative
to a degree which few people have ever foreseen, because your means
of meeting the difficulty will diminish just in proportion as the
difficulty will increase. Mr Farnall has told us that one-third of
the rateable property will fall out of existence, as it were, and
future rates must be levied upon two-thirds. But that will be by no
means the measure of the condition of things two or three months
hence, because every additional rate forces out of existence a large
amount of saleable property; and the more you increase your rates
the more you diminish the area over which those rates are to be
productive. This view of the case has a very important bearing,
also, upon the condition of the shop-keeping class as well as the
classes of mill-owners and manufacturers who have not a large amount
of floating capital. There is no doubt but a very large amount of
the shopkeeping class are rapidly falling into the condition of the
unemployed labourers.

When I was at Rochdale the other day, I heard a very sorrowful
example of it. There was a poor woman who kept a shop, and she was
threatened with a distraint for her poor-rate. She sold the Sunday
clothes of her son to pay the poor-rate, and she received a relief-
ticket when she went to leave her rate. That is a sad and sorrowful