example, but I am afraid it will not be a solitary one for a long
time. Then you have the shopkeeping class descending to the rank of
the operatives. It must be so. Withdraw the custom of 7,000,000
pounds per annum, which has ceased to be paid in wages, from the
shopkeepers, and the consequence must present itself to any rational
mind. We have then another class--the young men of superior
education employed in warehouses and counting-houses. A great number
of these will rapidly sink to the condition in which you find the
operative classes. All this will add to the distress and the
embarrassment of this part of the kingdom. Now, to meet this state
of things you have the poor-law relief, which is the only relief we
can rely upon, except that which comes from our own voluntary
exertions. Well, but any one who has read over this report of Mr
Farnall, just laid before us, must see how inadequate this relief
must be. It runs up from one shilling and a half-penny in the pound
to one shilling and fourpence or one shilling and fivepence; there
is hardly one case in which the allowance is as much as two
shillings per week for each individual--I won't call them paupers--
each distressed individual.

Now, there is one point to which I would wish to bring the attention
of the committee in reference to this subject--it is a most
important one, in my appreciation. In ordinary times, when you give
relief to the poor, that relief being given when the great mass of
workpeople are in full employment, the measure of your relief to an
isolated family or two that may be in distress is by no means the
measure of the amount of their subsistence, because we all know that
in prosperous times, when the bulk of the working people are
employed, they are always kind to each other. The poor, in fact, do
more to relieve the poor than any other class. A working man and his