THE MANUFACTURING & METROPOLITAN DISTRICTS OF ENGLAND.

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 417, 13 April 1850, Page 3

THE MANUFAC TURING & METROPOLITAN DISTRICTS OF ENGLAND.

The Morning Chronicle had commenced the publication uf a terie* of communications, giving a *' full and detailed description of the moral, intellectual, material and phyiical condition of tbe industrial poor throughout England." Two of theie had already appeared—the one on the Manufacturing and the other on the Metropolitan districts of England. The following extract! from each will be found interesting:— THB MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS. Molt Englishmen are, either from actual observation or reiterated description, familiar with the general appearance of what are called the Manufacturing Districts. The. traveller by railway it made aware of his approach to the great northern seats of industry by the dull leaden coloured sky, tainted by thousands of eTerimoking chimneys, which broods over the distance. The stations along the line are more closely planted, shewing that tbe country is more thickly peopled. Then, small monufacturing villages begin to appear, each consisting of two or three irregular streets clustered round the mill, as in former times cottages were clustered round the castle. Road* substantially paved with stone, to as to support the weight ot heavy waggons, wind among tbe field-. — Canals, with freights of barges, intersect the coun. try ; and the rivers, if they bu not locked and dammed back, and embellished with towing»paths along the banks, run turbid and thick — charged with the foulness of the hundred mills they have aided in their course. Presently the tall chimneys begin to figure, conspicuously in the landscape ; the country loses its fresh rurality of appearance ; grass looks brown and dry, and foliage stunted and smutty. The roads and even the footpaths across the fields, are black with coal dust. Factories and mills raise their dingy maises everywhere around. Ponderous waggons, heavily laden with bales or casks, go clashing along. You shoot by town after town— the outlying satellites of the great cotton metropolis. They have all similar features— they are all little Manchester*. Huge, shapeless, unsightly mills, with their countless rows of windows, their towering shafts, their jets of waste steam continually puffing in panting gushes from the biown, grimy wall. Between these vast eitabliubments a network of iii^an but regular streets, unpictureiqut* and unadorned— just tbe sort of private lious. j s you would expect in Che vicinity of such public edifices ; and around all this, and here and there scattered amongst ■U tbil graft, Irregular, muddy spaces of waste ground,

studded with black pools, and swarming with dirty children. Some dozen or 10 of milei 10 characterised the distance, of course, more or less according to the point at which you enter the queen of the cotton cities— and then, amid imoke and noise, and the hum of never-ceasing toil, you are borne over the roofs to the terminus platform. You itani in Manchester ! There is a smoky-brown sky over head — smokybrown streets all around— long piles of warehouses, mtnyof them with pillared and stately fronts— great grimy mill', the leviathians of ugly architecture, with their smoke-pouring shafts. There are streets of ail kinds, some with glittering shops and vast hotel* — others grim and little frequented, formed of rows and stacks of warehouse* ; many mean and distressingly monotonous vistas of uniform brick houses. There are principal thoroughfare*, busy and swarming as London central avenues— crowded at once with the evidences of wealth and commerce— gay carriages and phaetons — clumsy low. built onanibuises, conveying loads which a horse must shudder to contemplate— cars, carts, and waggons of every construction, high piled with bales and boxes. There are crowds of busy pedestrians of every class which business creates— clerks, and travellers and agents, bustling from bank to bank and counting-house to counting-house. — There are swarms of mechanics and artisans in their distinguishing fusiain — of factory operatives, in general undersized, sallow-looking men— and of factory girls, somewhat stunted and pale, but smart and active looking, with dingy dresses and dark shawl*, speckled with flakes of cottol-wool wreathed round their heads. * * The repulsivenest of the factory system is upon the surface; the advantages lie beneath. Manufacturing towns are so essentially, so abomniably ugly, smoky and dirty, that it is really no wonder people turn from them with something like horror. It never seems to have struck the capitalist of the north, that appearances are of the least account. On the contrary, he seems to build his mills in the express hope that each succeeding huge brick box will rival its predecessors In intensity of ugliness- So with chimneys. No earnest or perseveiing, or systematic attempt ever seems to have been made towards the consumption of the smoke and the purifying of the air. It is my rcnl belief that nine-tenths of the superficial unpopularity of the manufacturing system would ba got rid of, were the manufacturers to set heartily to work to purify aud beautify their towns. The small per-centage of profr. sacrificed for this object would be well laid out.

THK METROPOLITAN DISTRICTS. The City of London, within the walls, occupies a space of only 379 a<res, and this but the hundred and fortieth part of the extent corered by the whole me tropolii. Neverthel«ss it is the parent of a pan of united and far-spreading tenement*, stretching from Hammersmith to Blackwall, from Holloway to Cambtrwell. A century ago, acoording to Maitland, the metropolis had drawn into its vortex one cityi one borough and forty- three Tillages. Despite its vast extent, still its increase continues to be so r»P' d that every year further house room has to be provided for twenty thousand penons — so that London increase annually by the addition of a town of con*' ( ' eraD ' e size. At all times there are 4,000 extra hous es in 'h* course of erection. By the last return the metropolis covered an extent of nearly 45,000 acres, and contained upwards of two hundred and sixty thousand houses, occupied by one million eight hundred and twenty thousand souls— constituting not only the densest but the busiest hive, the most wondrous workshop, and tbo ric'neit bmk in the world. The mere name of London awakeni a thousaud trains of varied reflection! : perhaps the first thought that it excites in the mind paints it as the focus of modern civilization, of the hottest, the most restless activity of the social elements. Some turning to the west, see it as a city of palaces, adorned with parks, ennoh ed with triumphal arches, grand statues, and stately monuments; others looking at the cast, see onty narrow lanes and muity counting-housei, with tall chimnies, vomiting black clouds, and huige masse* of warehouses, with doors and cranes ranged one above another. Yet all think of it as a vast bricken multitude, a strange incongruous chaos of wealih and want — of ambition and despair— of tlid brightest cliarity and the darkest crime, where there are more houses and more houseless ; where there is more feasting and more starvation, than on any otber spot on carth — and all grouped round one giint centre— the huge black dome, with its ball of gold looming through the smoke (apt emblem of the source of its richei), and marking out the capital, no matter from what quarter the traveller may come. Those who have only seen London in the day time, with its flood of life pouring through its arteries to its restless heart, know it not in its grandest aspect. It is not in the noise and roar of the cataract of commerce pouring through its streets, nor in its forest of ships, nor iw vast docks and warehouses, that its true solemnity is to be seen. To behold it in its greatest sublimity, it must be contemplated at night, afar off, from an eminance. The noblest prospect in the world, it has been wrll said, is London viewed from the suburbs on a clear winter's evening. The stars are shining in the heavens, but there is another firmament spread out below, with its millions of bright lights glittering at our feet. Line after line sparkles, like the trails left by meteors cutting and crossing one another, till they are lost in the haze of the distance. Over the whole there hangs a lurid cloud, bright, as if the monster city were in flames, and looking afar off like the sea by night, mad<; phosphorescent by the million creatures dwelling within it. At night it is that the strange anomalies of London are best seen. Then, as the hum of life ceases and the shops darken, and the gaudy gin palaces thrust out their ragged and squalid Crowds to pace the streets, London puts on its most solemn look of all. On the benches of the parks, in the niches of the bridge*, and in the litter of the markets, are huddled together the homeless and the destitute. The only living things that haunt tha streets are the poor wretches who stand shiveritiK in their finery, waiting to catch the drunkard as be goes shouting homewards. Here, on a door step, crouches some shoeless child, whose day's begging has not brought it enough to purchase even the twopenny bed that its young companions in beggary have gone to. There, where the stones are taken up and piled high in the road, and the gas streams from a small pips in the crntre of the street iv a flag of flame— I here, round the red glowing coke fire, are grouped a ragged crowd, smoking or dozmg through the night, beside it. Then, as the streets grow blue with tho coming light, and the church spires and chimney tops stand out against the sky a sharpness of outline that is seen only in Londou before its million of fires corer the town with their, pH,U of smoke— then corns sauntering forth the unwashed poor, some with greasy wallas on their back, to hunt over each dirt heap, and eke out life by seeking refuse bones or stray rags and pieces of old iron. Others, on their way to their woik, gathered at the comer of the street round the breakfast stall, and blowing saucers of steaming coff<e drawn from tall tin cans, with the fire shining crimson through the holes beneath ; whilst already the little slattern girl, with her ha»ket slung before her, screams water-cresset through the sleeping street*. Yet who, to tea the squalor and wretcbednen of London bv night, would believe that twenty-nint only

of the London banker h,\ • cleared through their clearing home as much <r n<o< Hundred and fifty-four million pounds in ouo year, ue nrerage being more than three million! of mom/ tlr.ily— or that the loans of merely one home in the city throughout the year exceed thirty millions.