§ MR. WILLIAM PRICEasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to the neglected sanitary and educational condition of our Canal population; and, whether as a Royal Commission is about to inquire into the expediency of extending the provisions of the Factory and Workshops Acts to certain classes now exempt from their operation, he is willing to recommend that the condition of our Canal population should be included in the inquiry?
MR. ASSHETON CROSS, in reply, said, his attention has been called to the very neglected condition, both in a sanitary and an educational point of view, of what was termed our floating population on the canals of this country. There might, however, as the children in question were not employed in workshops or in labour which came under the operation of the Factory and Workshops Acts, be some difficulty in including them in the inquiry to be made by the Commission which was about to be issued. He hoped, nevertheless, to find some remedy for the existing state of things, and he would undertake that a sufficient investigation should be made into it in a formal shape.