THE GOVERNMENT PLAN FOR LANCASHIRE.
MR. FERRAND has one claim which may be admitted to represent the operatives of Lancashire. Like all other classes in the country they have their faults, and everything that is bad in them has his most cordial sympathy. Their distrust of the manufacturers, their strange caste pride, their credulity about all charges of oppression practised upon their own order, the occasional bursts of envious spite with which they announce their hostility to the rich,—all these evil peculiarities are reproduced in a concentrated form in the mind of the member for Devonport. In his speech on Mon- day, which fills three columns of the Times, there is not one trace of statesmanship, one expression of genial sympathy with the class he attacks, or the class for whom he pleads, one fact which is not either inaccurate, or so old that it has lost all bearing upon the controversy. Stories of millowners working up " hands" invented during the Corn-law debates, legends of "slaves" imported from Devon, to enjoy wages which Devonshire never saw in a dream, harrowing accounts of stunted children, true only before the Factory Act, arguments such as only class prejudice would employ for a momentary effect, charges such as only hatred would even affect to credit, made up the staple of the most incendiary speech uttered in the House of Com- mons since Feargus O'Connor lost his reason. The House listened at first with amused impatience to the fossil ideas and forgotten theories flung so violently at its head, but it wearied at last of half-hour after half-hour of fables without humour, invectives without point, and statis- tics which yielded no information, and when Mr. Ferrand sat down there was not a Tory in the House, except, perhaps, Mr. Bentinck, who did not secretly regret the strange freak which induced the electors of a dockyard borough to disinter once more the buried stump orator of oh the agricultural districts. There is but one excuse for a an outburst, intended to be read by half a million of me,, irritated at once by suffering and by alms, and that was th speaker's consciousness that among that half-million there is no one so stupid as not to say, " It is only Mr. Ferrand."
The speech, however, Aid service. It so far surpassed in virulence all that the few enemies of the cotton trade are likely to feel, that it will shock them into comparative kind- liness, and it afforded Mr. Villiers a peg whereon to hang his exposition of the intentions of Government in their greatest internal difficulty. The exposition might have fallen to a more fluent orator, and have been made on a more solemn occasion than a discussion raised by Mr. Ferrand ; but it was plain and intelligible, and introduced by far the most states- manlike plan which this Ministry has yet advanced.
There are three great objects to be secured in this matter. The workmen of Lancashire, starved by the cotton famine, must be kept in full health and strength under penalty of injuries to Great Britain heavier than any mere loss of cash. They must, therefore, as a corollary, be relieved on a scale somewhat above a bare maintenance on bread and potatoes.
Fourpence a day is not enough for a man accustomed to fourteenpence, and there is already a look among the "re- lieved" workmen which indicates that should fever make its usual appearance in the train of want its ravages will be terrible. Men, moreover, exhausted in the effort to obtain bare food are always liable to outbursts of turbulence, which they feel cannot, whatever happens, make their condition worse. Hospital after a sabre cut is almost as endurable as a bare room and fourpence a day. They must also be main- tained without dispersion, at least for one more year, till the country can make up its mind as to the course of the Ameri- can war, or the chances of cotton from other sources once more becoming cheap. Whatever the value of emigration— and as yet even the possibility of exporting fifty thousand families remains unproved—it is too early for the despair which alone could justify such a waste of future resources. Thirdly, they must be so fed and kept together without becoming dangerous paupers. They are not paupers now, for men do not forget in a twelvemonth the self-respect of a life, but idleness, and the discontent which idleness breeds, are alike doing their work, and " one year more " of simple relief might reduce even Lancashire men to a condition little above that of lazzaroni. The very self-respect of these men, by making relief distasteful, increases the discontented querulousness with which they hunger for full employ, for means to earn, instead of permission to receive. The Government scheme meets all these diffi- culties, and meets them fully, without either calling on the country for an exhausting effort, or deranging the ordinary current of trade. Work is to be found for the whole class under the Boards of Health. These bodies, except in Lancaster, with all their powers, have hitherto done little or nothing. The cities of the cotton trade, with here and there an exception, are disgraceful alike to the wealth and the intelligence of those who inhabit them. Half-drained and badly ventilated, without parks or other open areas, their ways, water supply, and means of recreation, are all equally deficient. In eighteen towns nothing whatever has been done under the Health Acts ; in twenty-one, the works, though planned and begun, have never been completed. The improvements are absolutely required, and in devoting to them this immense accidental supply of labour, there is no waste of force, no crank-turning or oakum-picking. Every shilling expended will be returned either in diminished rates, or reduced mor- tality, or improved capacity both for labour and for enjoy- ment. The special works to be executed will be decided upon within three weeks by an officer deputed from the Central Board of Health ; but Mr. Villiers believes that 70,000 heads of families may be employed at once. Should the work, however, be insufficient, there are moors to be broken up, bogs to be reclaimed, and pastures to be drained all over Lancashire (how Carlyle must have chuckled over that speech !) ; and these tasks, when wisely selected, always pay. The incapacity of the hands for such labour is, it would seem, a mere delusion—one of those stories circulated to depreciate the cotton trade. They cannot at first work like agricultural labourers, but they stick to their tasks with patient persistence, and bring to their labour an intelligence which throws no stroke of the pick away. They return, too, to the mill but little unfitted for their usual avo- cation. Strong testimony was adduced in the House as to the beneficial effect of such labour upon the workmen's health, and the only point left in doubt was the mode of supplying the funds. The Boards have ample borrowing powers, and it d appear, from some quotations read by Mr. Villiers, that y already possess authority to obtain loans from the public chequer, like private landowners under the Drainage Act. t may be necessary to assist them a little by exempting these loans from interest ; but with the Guardians, the Munici- palities, and the State all working together, the supply of some 60,0001. a week for reproductive labour cannot be a matter of more than consideration. The men employed will, -of course, be paid the wages which would be paid to anybody else, and, returning useful work for their labour, will lose -altogether the sense of living upon parish relief. The work is exceptional, the tasks which would have lasted a ..dozen years being completed in one; but it is not work expressly created to give them something to do, and of which, as there is no necessity, so also there is no visible -end. Above all, this year of out-door labour will give to each man employed that greatest of all benefits—a second trade, and, should events ultimately declare against the manu- facture, enable them to disperse gradually to agriculture or other labour. A strong spinner who for twelve months has been ditching a people's park will be far more fit for the farm or for emigration than any ordinary labourer. The transition time is well employed, whether it end, as we believe it will, in a resumption of manufacture upon a reduced, but gradually increasing, scale, or in the dispersion of this great reservoir of labour over a hundred fields.
The proposal was received by the House with a cordial feel- ing of pleasure, Colonel Patten answering for the acceptance rof the Relief Committees, and even Mr. Maguire only hint- ing, with unusual justice, that Government did not display such appreciation of the hunger and want of Tipperary. Abroad it is still under discussion; but the more it is examined, the more must its breadth and adaptability com- mend itself to the mind. The Ministry have hardly yet re- ceived the full credit they deserve for their plan. They -shun new efforts and proposals with a pertinacity which is not a little annoying, but the Ministry which can frame a budget like that of this year, encounter a calamity like the • cotton famine, as if it were an incident of the Home Office, and strenuously support Liberal Europe in extorting justice from Russia, is not, with all its faults, one which impartial men can decry as inefficient. wor th
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