"Before I allude to the condition of the agricultural labourers, I wish to state that, whatever may have been the animus which influenced others in investigating the condition of the manufacturing districts, I am actuated by no invidious feeling whatever towards the agriculturists, for, bear in mind, that my conduct has been throughout marked by consistency towards both. (Hear.) Had I ever concealed the wretched state of the manufacturing operatives, or shrunk from the exposure of their sufferings, my motives might have been open to suspicion in now bringing before your notice the still more depressed condition of the agricultural poor. (Hear.) I was one of that numerous deputation from the north which, in the spring of 1839, knocked in vain at the door of this House for an inquiry at your bar into the state of the manufacturing population. (Hear, hear, hear.) I was one of the deputies who intruded ourselves (sometimes five hundred strong) into the presence of successive Prime Ministers until our importunities became the subject of remark and complaint in this House. (Hear.) From that time to this we have continued without intermission to make public in every possible pay the distress to which the manufacturers were exposed. We did more. We prescribed a remedy for that distress. (Hear, hear.) And I do not hesitate to express my solemn belief that the reason why, in the disturbances which took place, there was no damage done to property in the manufacturing districts was, that the people knew and felt that an inquiry was taking place, by active and competent men, into the cause of their distresses, and from which they hoped some efficient remedy would result; and I would impress upon honourable members opposite as the result of my conviction, that if the labouring poor in in their districts take a course as diabolical as it is insane—a course which I are sorry to see they have taken in many agricultural localities —of burning property to make known their sufferings, if I might make to those honourable gentlemen a suggestion, it would be this—that if they had come forward to the House and the country as we, the manufacturers, have done, and made known the sufferings of the labouring population, and prescribed any remedy whatever—if that population had heard a voice promulgating their distresses, and making known their sufferings—if they had seen the sympathies of the country appealed to, I believe it would have had such a humanising and consoling effect upon the minds of the poor and misguided people, that in the blindness of despair they would never have destroyed that property which it was their interest to protect. (Hear, hear, hear.)"
He proceeded to state from the report of Mr. Austin,one of the assistant poor-law commissioners, the condition of agricultural labourers in Somersetshire, Devonshire,
