§ MR. SLANEY, in bringing forward his Motion for the appointment of a Standing Committee or unpaid commission, to consider and report from time to time on practical measures—unconnected with political changes—likely to improve the condition of the working classes, to encourage their industry, and increase their contentment, stated that he would not task the House to take his testimony as to the condition of the labouring population of the country, but he should refer them to the accumulated evidence on this subject, which was embodied in the successive reports which had been made to Parliament by accredited authorities, and also by several Committees of both Houses. The working classes were susceptible of two great divisions, namely, the agricultural or peasant classes, and the artisans or operatives who inhabited the large towns and manufacturing districts. The successive reports on the poor-laws and their administration, from, 1817 to 1834, gave a most deplorable account of the condition of the agricultural classes under the operation of the poor-laws as they existed up to the latter year. In the year 1835 a stern and severe poor-law was substituted for the former system, and his present object was to inquire whether 1066 the labouring population was in any respects better off than it had been under the former system. The reports of that commission would show what, if any, improvement in the condition of the poorer classes in our large manufacturing towns had been made. The rate of mortality was perhaps the best criterion that could be taken of the general health of those classes. The average rate of mortality throughout the country was something more than two per cent. In the large towns it was 2.5, 3, and 3.5, and in some of the more densely populated parts of those towns, as the courts and alleys, where the poorest of the people congregated, it was 4.5, and even as high as six per cent. In 1838–9, the Poor Law Commission reported as to the sanitary condition of the poor in the eastern parts of London, and in 1840 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the health of towns generally.
§ Notice taken, that Forty Members were not present; House counted; and Forty Members not being present,
§ The House was adjourned at a quarter after Eight o'clock.