"'If you think so, tell me this. How comes it they're rich, and we're poor? I'd like to know that. Han they done as they'd be done by for us?' "But Wilson was no arguer—no speechifier, as he would have called it. So Barton, seeing he was likely to have his own way, went on— "'You'll say, at least many a one does, they'n getten capital, an' we'n getten none. I say, our labour's our capital, and we ought to draw interest on that. They get interest on their capital somehow a' this time, while ourn is lying idle, else how could they all live as they do? Besides, there's many on 'em as had naught to begin wi'; there's Carsons, and Duncombes, and Mengies, and many another as comed into Manchester with clothes to their backs, and that were all, and now they're worth their tens of thousands, a' gotten out of our labour; why the very land as fetched but sixty pound twenty years agone is now worth six hundred, and that, too, is owing to our labour; but look at yo, and see me, and poor Davenport yonder. Whatten better are we? They'n screwed us down to th' lowest peg, in order to make their great big fortunes, and build their great big houses, and we—why, we're just clemming, many and many of us. Can you say there's naught wrong in this?'" These poor fellows, according to the story, took care of Davenport till he died in that loathsome cellar, and then had him decently buried. They knew not how soon his fate would overtake them, and they would then want friends. In the mean time, while disease and starvation were doing their work among the poor operatives, their masters were lolling on sofas, and, in the recreations of an evening, spending enough to relieve a hundred families. Perhaps, also, the masters' wives were concocting petitions on the subject of negro-slavery—that kind of philanthropy costing very little money or self-sacrifice. It may be said that the story of "Mary Barton" is a fiction; but it must not be forgotten that it is the work of an English writer, and that its scenes are professedly drawn from the existing realities of life in Manchester, where the author resided. In the same work, we find an account of an historical affair, which is important in this connection, as showing how the wail of the oppressed is treated by the British aristocracy:—