fund. (Cheers.) F. gives, in addition to his
subscription to the central relief fund, £20 per week
to the Provident and another society; furnishes
coals and food to 700 hands. No cottage rents
have been taken since the mill stopped; 330
children are sent to school at the expense of the
employer, who pays for them 3d. per head per week.
G. gives £50 per month to the fund, and, in addition,
pays wages equal to £230 per week to his own
hands. H. pays to his hands £130 per week, in
addition to large subscriptions to the general fund.
I. (a small concern), with limited means, gives from
£10 to £20 per week for clothing. J. has arranged
to spend £10,000 amongst the workpeople as
required, besides foregoing their rent. K. is spending
£800 weekly in relieving the wants of their
workpeople. L. gives £500 to the general fund, and has
given in cash, in small sums, to workers upwards of
£1500, and has also given clothing. (Cheers.)
There were also two cases as strong as any of those
he had named, of which no particulars could be
given, one of the persons concerned having given
405 sacks of flour within the last two months. This
gentleman refused to give any information as to
what he had given, and the fact just mentioned was
only obtained through the dealer who supplied
the flour. It was due to the great masses of
the community that these facts should be known,
and they were the best answers to the charges made
against the Lancashire mill-owners. (Loud
applause.)

It is worth while considering, in support of
the hypothesis that a vast amount of good is
being done among mill-owners and others which
is never heard of, whether it is not likely that
that same pride which we see existing among
the "hands," and which renders them unwilling
to make their wants known, may not also exist
among some of the masters—who, be it remembered,
are men of the same stamp—and whether
it may not make them unwilling that their good
deeds should be trumpeted forth. If this be so
—while I respect the feeling which induces such
reticence—I cannot but regret it, for though it is
true that in performing acts of mercy we should
not let our left hand know what our right hand
doeth, it is yet not good or just that we should
allow the section of society to which we belong, to
be reviled for neglecting duties which it really
performs, and so to fall into discredit unnecessarily
and undeservedly.

My task is done. I have endeavoured
familiarly, and with as few statistics as possible, to
give a general sketch of the distress which exists
in a certain district, the inhabitants of which
have always been regarded—and deservedly
regarded—by their fellow-countrymen with an
especial respect and affection; and I have tried
also to give some notion of the actual working
of the machinery of mercy which has been set
in motion by means of public benevolence only.
I believe that that machinery will assuredly be
kept going, just as long as that other machinery
which stands idle in the Lancashire factories
remains inactive. I believe that it will want
neither fuel to keep it in motion, nor oil to
lubricate and brighten it. And I should not be
surprised if, one day or other, it should turn
out that the setting that machinery going, was
a good speculation after all, and brought back
to those who invested in the benevolent
undertaking a better profit than some of them ever
thought of looking for.

ONE GRAND TOUR DESERVES
ANOTHER.

THE enterprising clothier who, more than
thirty years ago, first exhorted humanity to
reform its tailors' bills, and the equally
enterprising statesmen who, about the same period,
refashioned the representation of the country in
the Commons House of Parliament (which is
more than any of them can manage to effect
now), left one rank old crop of errors untouched,
to discredit and perplex a later age. I mean the
absurd estimates which the several nations have
formed of each other and of themselves. There
may have been a time when some of these
characterisations had a degree of truth in them; but
nations change as individuals do, and I cannot
see why we are to be bound by a set of effete
traditions. Many, even, were never worth much
at the best; yet they hold their ground with
unflinching pertinacity. Those which have
reference to foreign countries I suspect to be the
offspring of that tremendous entity, the Grand
Tour. The young nobleman of former days,
who was obliged to take the round of the
Continent in company with his tutor, generally
performed that task with certain conventional ideas
in his head, which he was expected to confirm
by travel; and he confirmed them accordingly.
He started full of the traditions of an earlier
generation of aristocratic young tourists, and he
came back with the cargo which he had taken
out. Thenceforth he, too, became an authority on
foreign life and manners; and so the ball was
kept rolling. But the ignorance of people with
respect to their own national characteristics is
no less remarkable. We are all in a fool's
paradise of vanity and ill nature, seeing false
reflexions of ourselves and others, and never
suspecting them to be anything but the
truth.

How much longer are we English to assist
foreign nations in misunderstanding us, by holding
up that ridiculous lay-figure of our race
known by the style and title of John Bull? I take
up a caricature in which it has been found necessary
to present an impersonation of England.
How do I find this done? I see a gross, over-
fed, vulgar, unintellectual, arrogant, animalish
man, dressed in buckskin breeches and top-boots
(which people never wear now-a-days, except
when they follow the hounds), with a heavy
knob-stick under his arm, and a sullen bull-dog
at his side. I am to accept this as the national
portrait; and, what is worse, it is sent forth to
foreign countries with all the authority of its
native origin.

I protest against this detestable object as
anything like a reasonable and correct expression
of the great English race in its totality. A
compound of a grazier, a butcher, a licensed