Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton FamineWaugh, Edwin
History
Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine
Waugh, Edwin
Cotton famine, 1861-1864; Labor -- England -- Lancashire; Working class -- England -- Lancashire
Well, the country at large must be made acquainted with these facts.
How is that to be done? It can only be by the diffusion of
information from this central committee. An appeal must be made to
the whole country, if this great destitution is to be met in any
part by voluntary aid. The nation at large must be made fully
acquainted with the exigency of the case, and we must be reminded
that a national responsibility rests upon us. I will, therefore,
suggest that this general committee should be made a national
committee, and we shall then get rid of this little difficulty with
the Lord Mayor. We shall want all the co-operation of the Lord Mayor
and the city of London; and I say that this committee, instead of
being a Manchester or Lancashire central committee, should be made a
national committee; that from this should go forth invitations to
all parts of the country, beginning with the lords-lieutenant,
inviting them to be vice-presidents of this committee. Let the noble
Lord continue to be at the head of the general committee--the
national committee--and invite every mayor to take part. We are
going to have new mayors in the course of the week, and, though I am
sorry to lose our present one, yet when new mayors come in, they may
be probably more ready to take up a new undertaking than if they had
just been exhausted with a years labour. Let every mayor in the
kingdom be invited to become a member of this committee. Let
subscription-circulars be despatched to them asking them to organise
a committee in every borough; and let there be a secretary and
honorary secretary employed. Through these bodies you might
communicate information, and counteract those misrepresentations
that have been made with regard to the condition of this district.
You might, if necessary, send an ambassador to some of those more
important places; but better still, if you could induce them to send
some one here to look into the state of things for themselves;
because I am sure if they did, so far from finding the calumnies
that have been uttered against the propertied classes in this county
being well founded, they would find instances--and not a few--of
great liberality and generosity, such as I think would surprise any
one who visited this district from the southern part of the kingdom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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