When C. Edwards Lester, an author of reputation, was in England, he visited Manchester, and, making inquiries of an operative, obtained the following reply:— "I have a wife and nine children, and a pretty hard time we have too, we are so many; and most of the children are so small, they can do little for the support of the family. I generally get from two shillings to a crown a day for carrying luggage; and some of my children are in the mills; and the rest are too young to work yet. My wife is never well, and it comes pretty hard on her to do the work of the whole family. We often talk these things over, and feel pretty sad. We live in a poor house; we can't clothe our children comfortably; not one of them ever went to school: they could go to the Sunday-school, but we can't make them look decent enough to go to such a place. As for meat, we never taste it; potatoes and coarse bread are our principal food. We can't save any thing for a day of want; almost every thing we get for our work seems to go for taxes. We are taxed for something almost every week in the year. We have no time to ourselves when we are free from work. It seems that our life is all toil; I sometimes almost give up. Life isn't worth much to a poor man in England; and sometimes Mary and I, when we talk about it, pretty much conclude that we all should be better off if we were dead. I have gone home at night a great many times, and told my wife when she said supper was ready, that I had taken a bite at a chophouse on the way, and was not hungry—she and the children could eat my share. Yes, I have said this a great many times when I felt pretty hungry myself. I sometimes wonder that God suffers so many poor people to come into the world." And this is, comparatively, a mild case. Instances of hard-working families living in dark, damp cellars, and having the coarsest food, are common in Manchester, Birmingham, and other manufacturing towns. Mrs. Gaskell, in her thrilling novel, "Mary Barton, a Tale of Manchester Life," depicts without exaggeration the sufferings of the operatives and their families when work is a little slack, or when, by accident, they are thrown out of employment for a short period. A large factory, belonging to a Mr. Carson, had been destroyed by fire, and about the same time, as trade was had, some mills shortened hours, turned off hands, and finally stopped work altogether. Almost inconceivable misery followed among the unemployed workmen. In the best of times they fared hardly; now they were forced to live in damp and filthy cellars, and many perished, either from starvation or from fevers bred in their horrible residences. One cold evening John Barton received a hurried visit from a fellow-operative, named George Wilson. "'You've not got a bit o' money by you, Barton?' asked he.