A history of the past and present state of the labouring population. 2 vols. [in 1].

XIII

of roasted potatoes, cheese, coffee, aud American corn. The towns and villages of Sicily, swarm with beggars; the misery and consequent destitution of the poorer classes, are almost incredible; they live chiefly on lupines, a few chesnuts, and about two ounces of bread day; and their drink, is weak wine, for which they pay Id., quart. The Peasants

are dressed in Sheep-skins, in the interior of the country. The diet of the French, is bread and fruit for breakfast; bread and an onion for dinner; and for supper, it is bread, chesnuts, and onions, or grapes in the southern provinces ;-sometimes a pound of meat is boiled with the onions, as a rare dish :-very little is spent in clothing. The Peasants of Italy, sleep on the bare ground, others in the casule, or under their temporary huts made with cones, which grow luxuriently. Their diet is Polenta, or Indian corn, flour boiled with water and salt, made into a sort of pudding, with the addition of skimmed milk, or skimmed milk chesse. The natives of the Abruzzi, were often attacked by fever, their appearance especially of the women, is frightful from poverty, dirt, and disease; (Travels in Italy.) We enquired, says the intelligent narrator, what would become of these poor wretches, as they returned from the harvest, the reply was, we give them a piece of bread, and send them away. But where do they go? they return to the mountains, some of them die on the road, and if the remainder reach home, they are exhausted by illness and fatigue; to recommence the attempt next year. These poor people walk 50 or 60 miles, and back again, to work the harvest in the pestilental flats of the Morenna. In the time of the Romans, this country was cultivated by slaves, who were considered not so good or valuable as cattle; the owners forced on their work by beating, mutilating, and putting them to death, but at the introduction of Christianity, these became serfs, attached to the land.

In the letters from the north of Italy, the writer describes the following scene of misery, which he states as one out of a thousand. "A few days ago, I saw a poor infant lying under a sack in convulsions of an ague fit, and the next morning meeting with another child whom I knew to be his brother, I asked him, how does your Brother do? to which he answered: which brother Sir; your brother that had the fever? there are five of us with the fever sir. Where do you sleep? In an empty stable sir. Where are your mother and father? Our mother is dead, and our father begs, or does such little chance jobs as offer at the hotel. And what do you? I get up the trees here and pick vine leaves for the waiters, to stop the decanters with, and they give us our ponade; (that is bread boiled in water, with an infusion of oil.)-In Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, the same destitute class, are but too prominent, as is evident to those who will but inquire into their necessities, and lastly in the United States there are both paupers by law, and beggars, and vagrants, by connivance, as in England. In Boston alone it is estimated that 2000 persons get their daily bread by guing and fraud By the report of the Secretary of the State of New

According to the relative paupe, sm of New Hampshire, a population equal to that of the Eath Un'or, would contain 640 paupers, and according to that of Massachusetts nearly 1000 paupers,. In 1841,Each union contained 633 paupers, and in 1843, 681.

So that we clearly perceive that although a large proportion of our population is in a deplorable state of destitution, yet they are not generally so bad off as the poorer classes in other countries. But if the philanthropist can devise a means of alleviating the misery of his species, and particularly that of his fellow subjects, he well merits the kind feelings and gratitude not only of the class so benefitted, but of his countrymen generally.

Könyvek