that not only permits the sordid cruelty within its circle of influence, but disposes of its own land with the understanding that houses are to be built upon it back to back,—and the Government that calls none of these parties to account, that interferes not in these vital matters, at least so far as to see that local Power meets local Abuse,” as “all participators in an injury to the Poor, whose enormity it is impossible to describe, for the details embrace every thing that is morally or physically impure." This noble-hearted Discourse must surely help forward that exposure of local evils which is the first step necessary to their mitigation. Liverpool, by right of its natural advantages, ought not to be, what on the average of its population it is, the most unhealthy place in England. E. H. H. LINES INSCRIBED TO THE REV. J. JOHNS, LIVERPOOL. CAN we analyze the perfume That within the violet breathes; Can we seize the bright reflection Can we chain the viewless spirit, At whose touch the wind-harp swells, Now with tones of solemn grandeur, Now with chime of silver bells? Even so no eye discovers What the hidden charm may be Love casts in his crown of roses, That thy wave its hue may brighten ; And e'en words of deepest import, Poet eyes have wished unlifted Fancy's veil from Heaven's bright bow. Never aiming to discover All the wonders of the shrine, But content that on our pathway Let our spirits reverently Wait on those to whom 'tis given, Thus to raise, refine and bless, Brighton. Strewing Earth with flowers from Heaven. A. W. L. CONDITION OF THE RAILWAY LABOURER.* THE changes wrought on the social and intellectual, the monetary and political condition of England, by the progress and full development of the Railway system, is a subject of vast extent, and has its attractions; yet it is one which at present it would be premature to affect to treat fully, and which at any time it would be unwise to view superficially and hastily. Great as have been already the influence of railways on the habits and prosperity of the English people, the system is still far from having attained to maturity. It will require the experience of the next ten years at least, before the subject will be ripe for philosophical discussion. In the mean time, however, an immediate evil, of frightful magnitude, has in the progress of railway construction developed itself, which not merely Christian benevolence, but social prudence, calls upon us to provide against and remedy. For nearly twenty years, English capital and the dauntless spirit of engineering skill have been incessantly at work,-crossing extensive plains,-spanning the deepest and widest valleys with immoveable masonry,leaping, by the aid of the graceful arch, from bank to bank of streams and rivers, cutting through the entire hill, over the apex of which our ancestors, with perverse industry, invariably made their roads,and, where the rock or the mountain forbade all other passage, piercing a tunnel through rocks and quicksands and cavernous streams, at which the genius and courage of Hannibal at the Alps would have stood appalled. The magnitude of such enterprizes, and the wonderful conveniences that result from them, dazzle our eyes, and we forget the humble agents by whose giant strength and steady industry these extraordinary works have been completed. The unparalleled demand for labour occasioned by the construction of railways in progress during the last ten years, has produced almost a revolution in the habits and condition of the English labourer. The tide of emigration has been altogether stopped. Some agricultural parishes which were previously oppressed with the superabundance of their population, have found themselves deprived of the necessary number of farm-servants to carry on their spiritless system of tillage. The fertile territory of Kent no longer blazes at night with incendiary fires. Its unemployed and discontented young men have disappeared, and are revelling in the coarse plenty which prevails amongst railway labourers in Lancashire and Yorkshire. So far good. Employment and food have been provided for the dailyincreasing population of England. But man liveth not by bread alone. The labourers are fed and clothed; but almost every other want is very partially supplied or altogether neglected. There is a tendency in hard and continuous labour to sink and brutalize the mind, and to extinguish the best affections of the heart. We seek in various ways, (though in a far less degree than we ought,) in a settled state of society, to counteract this tendency. We provide decent cottages for *Papers read before the Statistical Society of Manchester, on the Demoralization and Injuries occasioned by the Want of proper Regulations of Labourers engaged in the Construction and Working of Railways, &c. &c. Published at the Request of the Society. Manchester-Simms and Dinham; London--C. Knight. 8vo. Pp. 51. the labourer's family. We distribute Bibles and tracts. We build schools for his children. We encourage provident societies, savings' banks, allotments for gardens. We build churches and chapels; and we invite the rude sons of labour in our larger towns by the voice of our city missionaries to avail themselves of the means of civilization and religion placed by legislative prudence or individual benevolence within their reach. But the railway labourer is not sufficiently stationary to attract around him these efforts and agencies of benevolence. Let us realize to our minds the condition of a "gang" of "navigators." The course of a railway is marked out. The works are let by the directors to one, or at the most two or three great contractors. They sub-let the several portions of the undertaking to an inferior class of contractors, who sometimes again sub-let a portion of the work. Each transfer of responsibility takes something from the influence and authority of the directors, who consequently at last find themselves without the power, if they have the will, to protect the labourer from injustice and oppression. The works are begun simultaneously upon several parts of the line. Of course, many of the early labour stations will be removed from towns and villages and the means of supplying food, medicine, lodgings, education for the children, or employment of an honourable kind for wives and children who have leisure for employment. Neither directors, nor contractors, nor subcontractors, take any pains to procure comfortable lodgings for the labourers. Sometimes the farmers' haystacks and barns are the sleeping places of the men. But in some of the wilder districts of Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire, there is not this resource. By the side of a slope, or in some natural cavern, a miserable hut, not water-proof, and scarcely large enough for a cattle-stable, is constructed, and in this rude, dark and damp cell half-a-dozen labourers will find their nightly resting-place. In such a hovel, the comfort of a change of dry clothing is not easily secured. This hut is no place for any hours but those of sleep. But whatever else is wanting, one building is sure to rise wherever railway labourers congregate. This is the beer-shop, usually reared and supplied with the needful capital by one of the lowest class of contractors, who has perhaps knowingly taken the work at a ruinously low price, with the understanding that he is to supply the labourers with their meat and drink. Out of this his profit is to come. To throw the men completely into his power, wages are paid at distant intervals. Even if there be other shops at hand, the railway labourer, without character or local habitation, often without a name, (except that which we, infelicitously enough in such a case, call his Christian name,) has little credit and less money, and is compelled to go to the tommy-shop," as it is called,—an establishment kept by some creature of the contractor, where he pays from 25 to 50 per cent. more than their value for his bread and bacon and other necessaries. Often the tommy-shop and the beer-house are not only under one proprietor, but also under the same roof. The poor plundered labourer may be conscious of the wrong that is done him, but he has no alternative. fire and lights and society, he must go to the beer-shop. So long as he has labour-tickets to produce from the overseer of the works, he has credit without stint. If the beer-seller is not content with the ordinary profits, enormous as they are, his victim is sometimes supplied with For liquor that is drugged, and, in the senseless condition that ensues, is at the mercy of those around them. The poor wretch, on returning to his senses, finds himself stripped, to pay for one night's intoxication, of the produce of the labour of weeks. In addition to the naturally demoralizing circumstances of the labourer thus situated, he finds himself, if he have recently left his parish, free from all the restraints that have previously acted upon him. He has no neighbours whose good opinion he covets. If married, wife and children are far from him. No minister of religion looks upon him as his peculiar charge. There is every thing around him to encourage vice and profligacy. Amongst the gang, it will too often happen there are men who have passed through the horrid contamination of the gaol and the house of correction, or at least have passed through their degrees of crime, and have fled from situations where they were known, to the railway, where no inquiry is made, where no certificates of character are needed, and where coarseness and brutality are no disqualification. Upon one dark part of the case we scarcely dare to touch. Vicinity to a railway gang is no place for the decent wife or the modest daughter. They who might preserve the hapless labourer from the lowest degradation, are away. But the gang, like the army on a campaign, has its followers, and vice, misery and disease stalk with them. This is a picture of the wrongs and miseries and temptations of the railway labourer, which very many of our readers will be able from their own observation to verify. The wonder really is, under such circumstances, that the class of men have retained any good at all, and that they are not much worse than even the darkest statement represents them. The writer of these remarks has lived for the last nine years in the immediate vicinity of railroads in the course of construction, and has watched and conversed with hundreds of the men. Beyond improprieties of language, and now and then a rather importunate request for beer-money, or rough demand for charity to some man injured on the line, he has had no personal cause of complaint. During two winters, a neighbour found that the top of his haystack, which was covered with a wooden roof, was the chosen bed-room of a select party of men. He for some time (till he found the attempt useless) daily contrived to increase the difficulty to them of mounting their lofty couch; but they were never baffled. During the whole time his premises were thus unceremoniously invaded, his property was untouched, his gardens were not robbed, his poultry-yard was unruffled. An intelligent magistrate's clerk in the same neighbourhood assured the writer, that although in his district there were more than a thousand labourers at work on the line, few cases came before the bench of a deeper die than a drunken brawl, or violence in consequence of disputes about pay. During the last summer, the writer had occasion to visit an unfrequented part of the country on the borders of Yorkshire, where an enormous tunnel for a Lancashire and Yorkshire railway was being cut. At one place he fell in with a gang of men who were anxiously awaiting the arrival of a sub-contractor, who was indebted to them for nearly three months' pay. The men were in a state of great anxiety, having been several times put off by him, and fearing that he had run off and left them in the lurch. On conversation with one of the more intelligent of the party, he learnt that this was not an uncommon occurrence, and that the men and their families, generally at a distance, were great sufferers thereby, and, were it not for the charity of their more fortunate fellow-labourers, would undergo all the pains of hunger. These men had struck work from the uncertainty of being paid, and had come to the resolution to mount guard over their debtor, should he re-appear, and not allow him to go out of their sight until their demands were satisfied. On another part of the same line, a more painful sight presented itself. At the house of a contractor, where provisions and beer and wine and spirits were all sold, nearly a hundred men were assembled to receive the several balances due to them (if any?) on nine weeks' work. The cashier had entrenched himself securely within a small room, to the window alone of which the claimants had access. He sat with his books and tickets received from the shop, and his cash, and a brace of loaded pistols. The process of reckoning was very slow. It had then been going on several days, and was far from its end. In the mean time, the men, according to the state of their account, were served with whatever they wished for, and gallons of beer, spirits and wine, were consumed by them while waiting for their wages. They were to be seen in every stage of intoxication, and two or three of them were bleeding from blows and falls. Intermingled with the men were the harpies already alluded to, encouraging the men to drink or fight. A more painfully disgusting sight could scarcely be. The men generally left the pay-window with oaths and execrations on the head of the Too ignorant to keep a check upon him, they knew themselves to be at his mercy, and in every instance believed themselves to be defrauded. contractor. There is one aspect of this subject that must excite thoughtfulness and fear even in minds not roused by more generous feelings. The condition of our railway labourers is confessedly dissolute and abandoned. So long as work and pay continue, the mischief to the community may not greatly exceed its present amount. Of late, we know that railway speculation has been going on at an unnatural and dangerous speed. Even if it receive not a speedy check, it must, so far as England is concerned, come to an end in a few years. What is then to become of the huge and demoralized gangs of men whom we have permitted, year after year, to remain untended and unimproved, in the gratification of all their passions, and contracting the most lawless habits? The gaol will then be the asylum of too many of these pitiable beings. The restraints of a well-regulated workhouse these men will never endure. Deprived of work and food, without character, connections or friends, the discharged navigators will betake themselves to our large towns, and there, by pilfering or violence, seize what their industry will no longer procure for them. Now, on the mere score of economy, it will be far better to prevent this evil by timely and prudent efforts, first to protect the railway labourer from wrong, and then to improve and raise him from intellectual and moral degradation. Better by far will it be now to go to some expense in building lodging-houses and schools, and churches and chapels, than hereafter to have to enlarge our prisons and increase the number of our convict-ships. This subject is beginning, we hope, to attract a |