was instituted under the new Ack which may be read of in Oliver Twist." Outdoor relief was cut off, ind the working classes were offered the alternative of the "house" or starvation. For nothing is more striking in the social history of sixty years ago, than the awful pressure of population. We have the evil of the "submerged tenth" still with us in England, but it is clear that emigration, philanthropy, en-operation, po-palar thrift, and trade" union materially lessened its influence since 1837. {In that year there were 000 hands out of employment in Manchester alone, and four years later, out of every 10,000 persons in the cotton metropolis, 6,000 had less than 1s. 6d. a week upon which to live At the same time wheatrwas at 60s. to 70s. per quarter. It is interesting to note that the serfdom of 1837 was thus more inimical to stable prosperity of trade than the labour agitation of recent years. In 1834, six labourers were sentenced to transportation for "forming themselves into an association to better their condition," and it was not until quite recent years (after the Luddite and Broadhead riots) that the right of association was legally granted to working men. It is not surprising that crime flourished amongst the filthy hovels in which penury and disease were housed. Romilly and Peel had wiped out-most of the 160 offences which had been punished by the law of England with death, but judges and recorders still had to exercise a vindictive justice as the only solution Society could offer towards the problem of crime. Highway robbery was still a surviving, if not a flourishing institution, and the streets of London were~crowded with ruffians and'swindlers. The*sanitation of those streets, and their lighting, were as bad as their police. The blood from the shambles ran into the gutters in the City of London, under the shadow of St. Paul's, 'The gas lamp burnt in the' streets, but most of the shops were Still lit by candles. The youtig bloods of the West-end swaggered out "Of: the supper-rooms in the Haymarket; to hub-nob with dustman and coal-heavers in an all-night" tavern in aod stand unhappy "Chatlies" on their Whitechapel, or to wrench off knockers
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.