of Stockport, and Mr. Dixon, of Accrington, proceeded to London, and made strong representations to ministers and to a number of leading ministerial members, in both Houses of Parliament of the appalling distress in their respective localities, and used urgent entreaties that some remedy might be applied before the prorogation of Parliament, and on the 24th, issued a letter, containing some of the more prominent facts stated in their private interviews, to be addressed to every member of Parliament, feeling, as they stated, that if they were to permit a single member to remain uninformed on so momentous a subject, they would be abandoning their duty, and incurring a heavy responsibility. In this letter they said:—
"The great bulk of the people, the customers of each other, and of all the other classes, are becoming too poor to purchase, and thus they cease to consume, and profits are destroyed. Confidence no longer exists; trade is everywhere paralyzed; wages are rapidly declining; workmen are being discharged; poor's rates are fast increasing in the agricultural as well as manufacturing districts; private charity has subscribed nobly, but yields to the overwhelming pressure; peaceable men made savage and desperate; the loyal and obedient are becoming discontented, disaffected, and revengeful; and society, in many parts of the country seems to be on the very verge of dissolution. The disease is admitted—it makes progress hourly. Where is the remedy? We believe there is but one, and that the abolition of every other bad law now in existence would not remove the evil, so long as that law remains in force which denies the people the right to exchange the products of their industry for food."
On Friday, July 1st, Mr. Wallace moved in the House of Commons resolutions, of which he had given notice, to the effect, that the labouring and industrious classes had been suffering many privations and severe distress—that the distress was increasing—that the alterations in the Corn Laws and the duties on imports and exports, coupled with an Income Tax, which would add four millions to the burthens of the people, were not calculated to afford relief, and that the house ought not to separate until a diligent and searching inquiry had been instituted into the
