Awful, awful poor man's country! The bell rings and then eight-and-thirty women bid adieu to it, rescued from it (as a few more thousands will be) by some kind people who are interested in their behalf. It is a solemn moment indeed--for those who (with the few thousands who will follow them) are leaving this country and escaping from the question between rich and poor; and what for those who remain? But, at least, those who go will remember that in their misery here they found gentle hearts to love and pity them, and generous hands to give them succour, and will plant in the new country their grateful tradition of the old. May Heaven's good mercy speed them. Emigration was one of the contributory influences which helped to end the hunger of the Hungry 'Forties. The repeal of the Corn Laws was a far more powerful factor in the revival of prosperity, and the efforts of Protection to raise its diminished head met with consistent derision from _Punch_, who gloried in the statistics of increasing trade. But he was no Benthamite, and one may search his files in vain for any recognition of the salutary results of the new Poor Law. The famous report of 1834 was drawn up by men who were largely inspired by the doctrines of Bentham and Malthus, and their scientific principles were repugnant to _Punch_. There is really not much to choose between his criticisms and the hostility of the Chartists to the workhouses or "Bastilles" of the new system. In his zeal for pillorying instances of harsh administration he overlooked the real improvement effected in the Act of 1834 in the rural districts. But the new Poor Law, though it was followed by an immediate local re-absorption on a sounder economic basis of agricultural labour and a migration of the surplus elsewhither, was not the sole cause of this improvement.[4] The demand for labour in the rapidly expanding industries of railway construction and coal mining was an even more potent instrument of relief. Coal, on which both industries equally depended and depend, may be now a tyrant, but it was in a sense the good genius of the 'forties, though the high prices paid in London owing to extortionate tolls caused _Punch_ to denounce him as "Cruel King Coal" from the point of view of the poor consumer. [Footnote 4: See C. R. Fay, "Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century," p. 204.] [Sidenote: _The Beginning of Better Times_] The threat of revolution passed, but the diffusion of prosperity brought with it, as it always does, further demands for increased wages. The year 1853 was so notable for strikes that _Punch_, who had already applauded poor needlewomen for adopting this course, and suggested it to poor curates, felt obliged to register his protest:--