thousands of different forms and colours. The Negroes are in possession of these countries-a race of men essentially distinct from all others. Though neighbours to the Moors, nothing can be more opposite than their manners, character, habits, inclinations, and physical conformation. Addicted to a kind of carelessness which nothing can equal-light and fickle, the Negro is a stranger to the cares of ambition, and to the chagrin of privations; his wants are few and easy to be gratified, from the beauty of the climate and fertility of the soil, without undertaking long journies, or sustaining painful labours. At his feet the indigo and the cottontree grow without culture. Half an ell of cloth is his whole wardrobe. Some feet of timber, ill cut, some reeds, straw, and leaves, suffice to rear him an habitation. A trunk of the ceyba hollowed serves for his pirogue or canoe. Twenty days labour in a year will effectually cultivate the fields that yield his most essential sustenance. At the age of eighteen, he selects a female companion, and though under a burning sky, desire, in him, is not a raging, devouring passion. Tranquil in the bosom of his family, forgetting the past, content with the present, thoughtless for the future-his life passes away in a voluptuous freedom from care-and this is his summum bonum. In the coolness of the night, and by the light of the moon, he will deviate into expressions of joy, by cadenced movements to the sound of instruments. To a people so satisfied, every thing becomes a subject of fetes and divertisements-ceremonies, receptions, births, marriages, duties rendered to the gods, even funerals, these all terminate in songs and dances.

The Negroes have prodigiously multiplied, and branched out into nume

PROCEEDINGS OF

HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Report of the Select Committee appointed to consider the several returns made to the Orders of this House in 1819, 1820, 1821, relative to the sums assessed, levied, and expended, on account of the Poor in England and Wales, and to report an Abstract of the same, together with their observations thereon.

HE returns referred to your

Tmittee contaif a statement of the total sum raised by assessment in each

rous nations; some have turned Ma hometans, and these are the most civilized, but they disfigure their religion; others retain their gross and inveterate superstitions. The example, however, of a milder religion, has entirely abolished, in Senegambia and in Soudan, those sanguinary habits and ferocious prejudices which excite so much horror in voyagers that penetrate into the interior of Guinea and Congo.

On the banks of the great rivers and lakes that water Senegambia and the Soudan-also in vallies formed by the lofty chains of mountains that cross these regions, or in the vast forests that cover them, the Negro nations have erected a considerable number of towns, villages, and even considerable cities.

Of all these, Timbooctoo is at present the most spoken of; and though from various credible reports, it is not the largest and most populous in the Soudan, the most moderate computations allow it 100,000 inhabitants. `Mohammed, the son of Foul, in an itinerary which I have analysed, speaking of Timbooctoo, has the following sentence: "It isthe greatest city that God has created, where all strangers find an abundance for all their wants; a city filled with merchants and traders."

On the coasts of this rich and populous portion of the globe, France has long established a colony, not so remarkable for its numbers as for the wisdom and moderation with which it has been governed. The French have hereby acquired the facilities of advancing further into the interior than any other European nation. They are much in favour with the Negroes and Moors of Senegambia, who have a regular commercial correspondence with the Soudan. The French, sooner than any others, might penetrate even to Timbooctoo.

that the returns so procured are very nearly complete. The deficiencies are very few in number, and with the exception of one parish in Middlesex, arise in inconsiderable parishes.

This is the parish of St. Matthew, Bethnal Green; and the deficiency appears to have arisen from litigation with respect to the custody of the books, and not from any wilful neglect on the part of the churchwardens or overseers. Your committee have directed the expenditure of this parish to be estimated in the abstract according to its amount in the preceding year.

The returns for the first four of the -years mentioned were called for by an order of the house, dated 30th April, 1819, and those of the last of these years by an order of the 5th of July, 1820.

It is necessary to make this distinction, because there is a slight variation in the wording of the two orders. That of the 30th of April, 1819, which was carefully framed so as to require as little as possible of detail from the officers, required an account," shewing the total amount of the money assessed and levied upon each parish, township, or other place maintaining its own poor; distinguishing in the said account, the amount of money paid out of such assessments for any other purpose than the relief of the poor." The remain der, after deducting the latter of these amounts from the former, was taken as the amount expended on account of the 'poor.

Before the order of 1820 was issued, it appeared that this mode of ascertaining the expenditure on account of the poor was not quite accurate, inasmuch as the sum "assessed and levied," and the sum 66 expended" for all purposes, do not always in each particular year, correspond in amount. The expenditure of any year may be defrayed in part out of the balance of the assessment of the preceding year; or there may be a debt remaining at the end of the year, which in some returns may be included in the account of the sum expended, and in others excluded.

Some of the parish officers appear to have supplied this defect in the order, by stating separately the sum expended on account of the poor; and it is owing to this circumstance, that in the abstract of the four years ordered to be printed on July 17th, 1820, the second and third columns, which were intended jointly to state the total expenditure, do not exactly agree in amount with MONTHLY MAG. No. 359.

the first, which contains the amount assessed and levied. The difference, however, is very inconsiderable; and your committee are satisfied that the corrected account now given of" money expended solely on the poor," contains a sufficiently accurate statement of the expenditure for any purpose of comparison.

The order calling for the returns of the year ending March 25, 1820, required as before, an account of the sum assessed and levied, and also “the total amount of the money expended in that year:" when from this latter sum the amount of the expenditure" for other purposes," is deducted, the remainder comes out accurately as the amount of the expenditure on account of the poor.

There may possibly still be some difference between different parishes in the mode of making up the return; some officers may perhaps include in one column, and some in the other, monies expended in litigation, and other matters immediately connected with the poor, but not applicable to their relief. The amount, however, of this mixed expenditure, though considerable in one point of view, does not bear so great a proportion to the whole expenditure, as to constitute a material objection to the accuracy of the returns.

The committee have the further satisfaction of adding, that the returns under the late order have been made more promptly, and in a more regular form, than those called for in the preceding year.

It may be convenient here to observe, that in the order recently made by the house for returns for the year ending 25th March, 1821, a still further correction is made of the form. Instead of calling for the amount "assessed and levied," the requisition is now for the amount levied only: this alteration was certainly proper, as the whole sum assessed may not always be levied within the year.

Your committee having been instructed to report to the house an abstract of the late returns, together with their observations thereupon, conceive that they cannot more usefully execute the duty assigned to them, than by connecting the returns of the five years referred to them with those of former periods, which are to be found in the journals and papers of the house. Returns are already before Parlia

ment, in different degrees of detail, of the amount and expenditure of the poor rates in the years ending at Easter, 1748, 1749, 1750, 1776, 1783, 1784, 1785, 1803, and 1813, 1814, 1815; your committee have, therefore, included in their abstract so much of the account of those former years as can be compared with the more recent accounts; so that the house has now before it a statement of the amount of the poor rates at several periods, commencing in the middle of the last century, and reaching the year preceding the last.

The first statement which your committee submit to the house shows, in gross sums, the amount of monies assessed and levied in England and Wales at each former period, and in each year comprised in the late returns; and the amount expended upon the poor, and for other purposes, with other distinctions to be found in some of the returns. Your committee present to the house, in the second place, an account of the sums expended in each county for the relief of the poor only, in each of the eight years, ending on the 25th of March, 1820, being the latest period for which there are the means of giving complete yearly accounts of these eight years, the accounts of the first three are taken from the return of 1813, the others are from the returns referred to your committee; these they have combined in order that the eight years may be viewed together.

Your committee have not thought it expedient to give the detailed account of each parish. The house having lately called for returns of the poor-rates for the year ending the 25th of March, 1821, it appears to your committee more convenient that a parochial account, embracing nine years, should be prepared early in the next Session of Parliament, when the house will have the additional advantage of an opportunity of considering these returns in connexion with the result of the late enumeration of the people.

They have at the same time the satis-faction of informing the house that all the parochial returns and correct abstracts in which each parish is distinguished, are carefully arranged, so as to facilitate reference by any member of the house to the return of any particular district.

The committee lay before the house, thirdly, a statement in which the former returns, so far as they relate to the expenditure upon the poor only, are also

distinguished by counties; and the eight latter years are averaged in three periods; the first of three years, ending in March, 1815, being the period which was under the consideration of the committee of 1817, and which reached to the first year of peace; the second, embracing a like period of three years, ending in March, 1818; and the third, comprising only two years, to March, 1820, which may be completed to a triennial period, when the returns recently ordered shall have been received.

To this abstract, with the view of facilitating any comparisons which the members of the house may think it desirable to make, of the relative expenditure of the poor-rates in each county, with its population, your committee have also annexed a table of the number of people in each county, according to the enumeration taken in 1811.

And they have brought from the abstract of 1815, the account of the property assessed in each county under schedule A.

They have also thought it useful to annex an account of the average price of corn in England and Wales, in such of the years ending on the 25th of March, included in their abstracts, as have occured since the establishment of the office of Receiver of corn returns. The accounts of these averages already before the House are generally made up to a period of the year not corresponding with that of the poor-rate accounts; and as comparisons are sometimes made between the amount of the poor rates and the price of wheat, they trust that this account of the prices may be acceptable to the House.

Your committee do not feel themselves at liberty to make any observations which are not suggested by the mere inspection of the several abstracts.

These observations, they trust the House will permit them to commence, by the statement of a few results drawn from the returns of the earlier periods, which have indeed been formerly stated to the House, but which it may be useful to place here:

The pecuniary amount of the levies by way of poor's-rate progressively, and very largely increased from 1789 to 1812:

The amount of the sums applied to the relief of the poor, increased within the same period progressively, and very largely :

The amount expended for other purposes

poses increased progressively, and still more largely than the expenditure on account of the poor.

In reference to comparisons with the year 1803 your committee have to observe, that there is no account of any average of years between 1783-4-5, and 1813-14-15; nor any account of any single year between those periods, except that of the year 1803. The House will judge whether there would have been any materially different result, if an average of 1801-2-3 had been taken, instead of the year 1803 only. However this may be, it is clear that in 1812-13 the expenditure, both for the poor and for other purposes greatly exceeded the amount in 1803. Since 1812, the total expenditure in both branches has still further increased; and the remark made upon the former statements, that the expenditure for other purposes rose more rapidly than the expenditure on the poor, is not applicable to the later years.

The subsequent remarks your committee will confine to the amount of money expended upon the poor within the last eight years.

It appears, on an inspection of the table of averages, that the expenditure has continued to increase from 1812 to 1820:

sive.

From the year 1812-13, the amount declined gradually in the two subsequent years (which were years of war;) rose again in the next three years, so as to be in 1817-18 greater in pecuniary amount than at any former or subsequent period of which returns exist. In each of the two succeeding years, forming the first and second of the third triennial period, the expenditure declined again, but not very considerably. The returns for the year 1820-21 recently returned, will show whether the amount has continued to decrease; and your committee have been informed, that the greater number of the returns which have already been received exhibit a more or less considerable diminution.

Those comparisons are taken from the total amount of England and Wales. Your committee have considered the

county abstracts with the view of ascertaining the exceptions which are to be found, in particular counties, to the results drawn from a general average.

These exceptions are most numerous as to the first triennial period. In the counties of Durham, Hertford, Kent, Middlesex, and Surrey, the amount was considerably greater in 1813-14 than in 1812-13, and in seven other counties of England, and in eight of Wales, there was also a slight excess. But there is no exception to the statement, that the year 1814-15 was below the average of the two earlier years, and below the year immediately preceding.

As to the second period there are three exceptions to the gradual rise to the year 1817-18, and to the statement that that year was the highest which had at that time been known. In the county of Nottingham the year 1816-17 was the highest; and in Wiltshire and in Berkshire the year 1812-13 exhibited an amount which has not since been equalled.

There are more numerous exceptions to the statement, that the year 1817-18 was higher than any subsequent year; for it appears that in the counties of Devon and Surrey there was an excess, not inconsiderable, in 1818-19 over the preceding year; and a slight excess in Bedford, Cumberland, Gloucester, Huntingdon, Lincoln,Middlesex, Northampton, Rutland, Westmorland, and the East and North Ridings of Yorkshire. In other counties of England there was scarcely a diminution; and in Wales, generally, an excess. In Cumberland, Leicester, Lincoln, and the West Riding of Yorkshire, the year 1819-20 shows the greatest amount.

The exceptions to the statement, that as the two years of the third period, of which there are returns, there was a slight diminution in the second, arise in the counties of Chester, Cumberland, Derby, Durham, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Warwick, and the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Reverting to the averages, it is to be remarked, that there is no exception to the general excess of the second period over the first; and that Berkshire, Norfolk, and Salop, afford the only exceptions to the general excess of the third period over the second.

At the foot of the table of yearly amounts, the house will find a statement, in which the returns from towns

are

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are distinguished from all others. The towns included in this distinction are those which in the abstract of popula tion in 1811 are set down in Roman capitals.

This separate account of the towns affords no exception to the general statements which are worthy of particular remark.

It appears that select vestries, under the act 59 Geo. 3. c. 12, have been appointed in 2006 parishes; and assistant-overseers in 2257. The whole number of parishes, townships, or other subdivisions, from which returns have been required, is about 14,700.

Your committee have not thought it necessary to make any selections from, the "Observations" which in conformity with the orders of the house, have in some instances been subjoined by the parish officers to the returns. Many of these are irrelevant; some, such as the Committee must have no. ticed with reprobation; but there are others of a different character; and your committee conceive, that much useful information would be obtained, if parish officers would, whenever their returns exhibit a remarkable variation, whether of excess or diminution, from the preceding year, give some explanation of the causes of the variation.

And here your committee avoid observing, that returns stating merely the

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gross amount of the expenditure, fall very short of what is necessary to enable the house to judge of the nature and causes of the variations in the amount. For that purpose it would be necessary to have accounts, shewing the different circumstances under which relief has been afforded, and the rate and principle of relief adopted in each district. The able bodied entirely out of employ; the able bodied earning wages not sufficient for the maintenance of his family; the married, the single, the sick and impotent, the aged, the labourer in husbandry, and the manufacturer or mechanic, should all be distinguished. And it should be known whether the relief is afforded at the discretion of the parishes themselves, or by order of the Justices of the Peace.

The committee are not of opinion that returns in this detail could conveniently be called for by order of the house.

It is for the house to consider whether overseers, in rendering their accounts under the act 50 Geo. 3. c. 49, should be required by a new law, to state these or any other particulars, in a prescribed form, so that a more complete and useful account of the expenditure of the poor rates than any which has hitherto appeared, might be rendered periodi cally to parliament. 10th July, 1821.

TO CHRISTOPHER HILTON, of Darwin, near Blackburn, Bleacher; for a Process for the Purpose of improving and finishing manufactured Piece Goods.

M

R. HILTON declares that his invention of a process for the purpose of improving and finishing manufactured piece goods, is as follows: it consists in applying a pulp, such as is obtained by grinding cotton or linen, to improve the appearance of cotton or linen manufactured piece goods, or a mixture of the same, which he accomplishes as follows: The goods being already prepared, as heretofore practised by the trade, they are introduced on an even surface, of about three yards in length, formed by small rollers, and the pulp applied, and permitted to filter itself into and on the manufactured piece goods, which are made to pass over the said surface at the rate of about 12 yards in a minute, for the purpose of

allowing the water to escape, and the pulp to form itself; after which it is pressed between two rollers of metal, or other suitable materials, situated at the end of the aforesaid series of rollers, and driven by gear, the top roller being covered with a felt or flannel, and supplied with a stream of clean water, to prevent the pulp from adhering to the roller, which it would otherwise do. It is to be observed, that the pulp, previous to its being applied, should be kept in a state of agitation, and considerably diluted with water, more or less, according to the fineness or coarseness of the goods; the proper degree of which dilution must be left to the discretion and judgment of the workman; and that the diluted pulp is made to flow evenly on the surface of the cloth, by passing through a box with several divisions in it. His invention consists in applying such pulp as is obtained by grinding cotton or linen to cotton

or

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