31 AUGUST 1872, Page 3

The woes of the workmen find audience much more easily

than -those of the middle-class. When they are evicted there is endless -declamation, but when shopkeepers are evicted no one cares. We are told that it is a regular custom for corporations and companies which have obtained Improvement Acts to use them as slowly as possible, so that the householders to be evicted, being unable to improve, or repair, or sell, may consent to easy terms. The householders to the east of King's College Hospital, for example, complain bitterly that while they have been for six years under sentence, they cannot get a final settlement, or the compensation which would accompany it. It would be expedient to introduce into every Act effecting clearances a term within which they must be effected, or the Act will expire.