We returned a refusal,
inasmuch as there was no local subscription; but when we came to
inquire, we found that from last February, when the mill closed,
these young men had maintained the whole of their hands, that they
paid one-third of the rates of the whole district, and that they
were at that moment suffering a yearly loss of 300 pounds in the
rent of cottages for which they were not drawing a single halfpenny.
That was a case in which we thought it right in the first instance
to withhold any assistance, because there appeared to be no local
subscription, and it shows how persons at a distance may be deceived
by the want apparently of any local subscription. But I will throw
out of consideration the whole of those amounts--the whole of this
unparalleled munificence on the part of many manufacturers which
never appears in any account whatever--I will throw out everything
done in private and unostentatious charity--the supplies of bedding,
clothing, food, necessaries of every description, which do not
appear as public subscriptions, and will appeal to public
subscriptions alone; and I will appeal to an authority which cannot,
I think, be disputed--the authority of the commissioner, Mr Farnall
himself, whose services the Government kindly placed at our
disposal, and of whose activity, industry, and readiness to assist
us, it is difficult to speak in too high terms of praise.
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