thoroughfare, but one is seldom in a position to catch from the street a
glimpse of the real labouring districts. I know very well that this
hypocritical plan is more or less common to all great cities; I know,
too, that the retail dealers are forced by the nature of their business
to take possession of the great highways; I know that there are more good
buildings than bad ones upon such streets everywhere, and that the value
of land is greater near them than in remoter districts; but at the same
time I have never seen so systematic a shutting out of the working-class
from the thoroughfares, so tender a concealment of everything which might
affront the eye and the nerves of the bourgeoisie, as in Manchester. And
yet, in other respects, Manchester is less built according to a plan,
after official regulations, is more an outgrowth of accident, than any
other city; and when I consider in this connection the eager assurances
of the middle-class, that the working-class is doing famously, I cannot
help feeling that the liberal manufacturers, the "Big Wigs" of
Manchester, are not so innocent after all, in the matter of this
sensitive method of construction.

I may mention just here that the mills almost all adjoin the rivers or
the different canals that ramify throughout the city, before I proceed at
once to describe the labouring quarters. First of all, there is the old
town of Manchester, which lies between the northern boundary of the
commercial district and the Irk. Here the streets, even the better ones,
are narrow and winding, as Todd Street, Long Millgate, Withy Grove, and
Shude Hill, the houses dirty, old, and tumble-down, and the construction
of the side streets utterly horrible. Going from the Old Church to Long
Millgate, the stroller has at once a row of old-fashioned houses at the
right, of which not one has kept its original level; these are remnants
of the old pre-manufacturing Manchester, whose former inhabitants have
removed with their descendants into better-built districts, and have left