{16} “The month of February appears to be the most trying to the poor of this district. Their little savings, if any, have been exhausted; their clothes and furniture are gradually being taken to the pawnbroker; hunger and cold are producing disease, unless timely help is afforded. . . . The clock is generally the first article sent to the pawnbroker; then the wife’s articles of wearing apparel; the children’s shoes, the husband’s coat and waistcoat; and afterwards his tools, his spade, his saw, &c. The last portion of property, is the bedding and furniture, when shavings are substituted. Such seem to be the regular gradations of distress. The last, happily, has seldom been witnessed since the first month or two of the Society’s operations in this district. It was pointed out to me to-day in another place.”—_Report of a Visitor_. _February_ 1845. {17a} A subject intimately connected with that noticed above, viz. the relation between IGNORANCE and SOCIAL MISERY, has received some remarkable illustrations from the practical operations of this Society. It would appear from the amount of relief administered in certain districts, selected for the calculation on account of their remote distances from one another, and from their containing a labouring population exclusively, that, although subject to modifications from the peculiar character and condition of the inhabitants, or from circumstances of an accidental nature in each case, yet the same law is found in the mass to prevail throughout; PHYSICAL DISTRESS AND WANT OF EDUCATION ARE EXHIBITED AS CO-EXISTING IN A DIRECT RATIO. Omitting, for brevity, 80 families of intermediate degrees of education, it appears that of the remaining 100 families respecting whom the calculation was made, the amount of relief required by those in which neither father nor mother could read, or one of them imperfectly, has been actually _twice as much per head_ as by those in which either father or mother could read and write well. The attention of the Committee was drawn to this important subject in consequence of the Report of an Intelligent Visitor. The result of his experience shows that, in his district, “distress has been very much in proportion to the deplorable ignorance of the recipients. More than half the relief has been given to persons who could neither read nor write.” Upon this fact he has founded an energetic appeal for measures to be taken to provide for the education of the adult population, so far as practicable. The Committee trust that the liberality of the Subscribers may put it into their power to co-operate with the Clergy in adopting measures for the purpose, which the limited means at their disposal have up to this time rendered impossible.