by which we gather, that, of late years, the tide of population in Leeds has steadily flowed towards improved ventilation and surface condition: since the increases in seven years, from 1851 to 1858, in the West and North-west Wards, exceed the per centage decennial increases of the ten years between 1841 and 1851. There has been a gradual decrease in the number of inhabitants in the Mill Hill Ward, which is in the centre of the town, and mainly composed of wide and well-ventilated streets; but here the population has given way to warehouses, shops, and offices. And in the Kirkgate Ward there has also been a continued decrease which we can understand;for though it is also in the centre of the town, as it were, and mainly occupied by shops and warehouses, yet its dense courts and yards lie contiguous to a river, which, though a trout stream within the last seventy years, having footways clothed with avenues of trees, is now nothing but an open sewer, containing the sewerage of Bradford, Shipley, and all the mills, houses, dyehouses, tanneries, and workshops, which crowd its western banks; and cannot, therefore, be healthy or pleasant to those who have not the means of removing elsewhere. We see, in fact, towards the less densely populated wards, a gradual movement made from the old localities, as well as a steady increase of a new population. Mr. Baker proceeded to exhibit the diminution in the rate of mortality resulting from the sanitary improvements effected by the Local Improvement Act and the Burial Act. In the north districts, for example, in the seven years from 1851 to 1858 the deaths decreased 25 per cent., the population meanwhile increasing in density, and the ratio of births to the population remaining the same. So also in the south-east district, with an increased population, the deaths decreased 16 per cent., and in the west district the mortality diminished 5 per cent. He considered that other ameliorating influences had been at work within the period in question, such as compulsory vaccination, the decrease of cellar occupancies, emigration to better-ventilated districts, improved regulations as to hours of labour, improved wages, temperance societies, a higher social and intellectual state brought about by lectures, cheap publications, and institutes for mutual improvement, all of which remedial elements Leeds possesses in an eminent degree. The importance of sanitary measures at Leeds could scarcely be over-rated, considering that 18 per cent. only of all its houses exceed £10 annual rent-a fact which showed how largely the population was composed of the working classes. Referring to some of the larger trades conducted in the town proper, he mentioned the following as being the staple :Woollen, worsted, flax, silk, dyeing, machine-making, leather, paper, tobacco, sanitary pipe and fire-brick, glass, earthenware, glue, and chemicals, coal, stone, railway terminals, and making garments for exportation. He doubted whether the prevailing manufacture of Leeds was at the present time woollen, or the fabrication of machinery. The interests engaged in the woollen trade were the manufacturer, the finisher, and the rag-grinder; and, as illustrative of the condition of this important branch of trade,

he introduced these statistics:-

Total number of persons employed, 10,193.

The wages of these processes are as follows:

Mr. Baker presented a mass of information relating to other branches of industry carried on to a large extent in the town, and employing 45,829 persons, whose wages he computed at £1,752,689 per annum, or £33,734 a-week. Speaking of the poverty or improvidence of the working population, he said that in 1857 there were relieved out of the rates 2238 men, 4862 women, 5653 children, and 4864 vagrants; in all 17,437 persons supported out of the savings of the industrious, notwithstanding all that was done by charity, by secret orders, and benefit societies. To his mind this pauperism was the result of sheer improvidence, and it would have to be dealt with by social science. He trusted that the day was dawning when morality would be a lesson taught with labour, and when as a people we might be wiser and better for our abundant benefits.

On the Degree of Education of Persons tried at the Middlesex Sessions. By JOSEPH BATEMAN, LL.D., F.R.A.S.

During the year 1856 there were 1717 persons charged with offences at these Sessions. Of these, 880 (or more than one half) could not write; viz. 379 could not read, and 501 could read but not write. Of these 880 persons who could not write, 579 (out of 1262 committed or bailed, being almost one-half) were males, and 301 (out of 455, being two-thirds) were females. Besides these, 401 were returned as able to read and write imperfectly; viz. 74 males and 27 females. On the other hand, there were 677 out of the 1717 charged (being more than one-third) who were stated to be able to read and write well; viz. 561 males out of 1262 charged, and 116 females out of 455 charged, and 18 (all males) reported to possess a superior education, This amount was so considerable as to give a colour to the opinion which still prevails to some extent, that the imparting of the mere elements of education does not necessarily improve the morals of the people. But there is one circumstance connected with these statistics which is usually overlooked, and which it is the chief object of the present paper to point out:- it is this. Middlesex, to which these returns relate, is a county in which elementary education is more generally diffused than it is throughout the country at large. It appears by the Registrar-General's Report that in 1854 the proportion of men who, in the metropolis, wrote their names in the Marriage Register was 88 out of every 100, and the like proportion of women was 79 out of every 100. It may be inferred therefore that there are in the metropolis only about 12 men in 100, and 21 women in 100 who cannot write; and consequently that the criminals in that part of the country are not taken from the entire community indiscriminately, but that full one-half of them are taken from the class of extremely ignorant, consisting of one-sixth of the population, thus reducing the criminals among the educated classes to a very small proportion indeed: and, if we confine our observations to the case of women alone, we shall find that the extremely ignorant class, consisting of one-fifth only of the whole female population of the county, furnishes two-thirds of its female criminals. See Report of Mr. Pashley, Q.C., to the Middlesex Magistrates.

On the Investments of the Industrial Classes.
BY JOSEPH BATEMAN, LL.D., F.R.A.S.

The investments of the industrial classes are chiefly made in Friendly Societies and Savings Banks. The number of friendly societies enrolled and certified, and now in existence in England and Wales, is about 20,000, and the number of members belonging to them exceeds 2,000,000, with funds exceeding £9,000,000, of which the sum of £1,431,543 is in English and Welsh savings banks, and the sum of £1,944,991 invested with the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt, making a total of £3,376,534 so invested. The number of individual depositors in savings banks on the 29th November, 1857, was 1,241,752, and the sum due to them was £32,984,923. It thus appears that the members of these societies and depositors in savings banks possess funds amounting to nearly £42,000,000, and that the average investment of each member of the friendly societies is £4 10s., and of each depositor in the savings bank about £26 11s. 3d. It appears that the number of depositors in savings banks is five times more than the number of persons entitled to dividends on the public funded debt; and that of those so entitled to dividends, by far the greater number are for very small amounts, such as may be supposed to belong to the humbler classes; whilst the total number of persons receiving dividends exceeding £4000 per annum amounted only in the year 1856 to 227 in the United Kingdom. Another class of investments open to the working classes, but which was too little known to be acted upon, was the purchase of deferred and other annuities of the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt, who were empowered to grant such annuities (not exceeding £30 per annum to one person) on very advantageous terms to the purchaser. The number and value of these annuities purchased up to 5th January, 1857, were-immediate, deferred, and life annuities, number 10,864; purchase-money £2,071,831 188. 11d.; for terms of years, number 373; purchase-money £53,081 17s. 6d. Referring to the antiquity of friendly societies, it was remarked that Mr. Kenrick, the learned author of The Roman Sepulchral Inscriptions,' had shown that burial clubs were in existence among the Romans, and he had actually discovered a copy of the rules of such a society inscribed in marble. At the present moment there were more friendly societies of one kind or another in England and Wales than were to be found in the whole of the rest of Europe, or perhaps elsewhere. No less than 26,000 had been established according to law in England and Wales between 1793 and 1857, besides immense numbers of trade societies and "orders," some of them numbering their members by hundreds of thousands, and many of which no account was returned to the Registrar. Of the friendly societies properly so called, and which had come to the knowledge of the Registrar, there were, as has been said, 20,000, by which, in the aggregate, no less a sum than £1,000,000 per annum was expended for affording relief in sickness alone. In the year 1857, the friendly societies in Leeds raised, in round numbers, £25,000, and distributed £20,000. The author proceeded to notice the various other classes of friendly societies and modes of investment for the industrial portion of the population; the recent improvement of the law relating to those institutions; and, as another pleasing fact, the increasing confidence in savings banks, notwithstanding the failure at Rochdale and a few other places; and he expressed a hope that such failures would be prevented in future by the Government taking upon itself the responsibility of the funds. If the savings laid out by the working classes in the various other modes besides benefit societies and savings banks could be ascertained and added to the sums disclosed by the official accounts, they would swell the total to a sum that would astonish some persons by its vastness; and, though he did not think it would prove that the industrious classes were all as thoughtful and prudent as they ought to be, it would show that they were not so thoroughly dissipated and careless as some persons had represented; and they were entitled to every encouragement and assistance in carrying out their habits of prudence and economy.

Trade and Commerce the Auxiliaries of Civilization and Comfort.
By T. BAZLEY, M.P., Manchester.

Mr. Bazley sketched the rise and progress of the cotton trade, as confirming and supporting the views enunciated in the title of this paper. In 1758 the imports of cotton and its consumption by domestic labour might be three millions of pounds weight for the entire year, but in the present year, a century afterwards, the quantity consumed would be one thousand millions of pounds, of which the United States supplied three-fifths, the other two-fifths being obtained from the East Indies, South America, Egypt, and the West Indies. For the last year, by the return made by the Board of Trade, the exports of cotton manufactures sent to every part of the world amounted to upwards of thirty-nine million pounds sterling. Hence this large sum became the agent of payment to a corresponding extent of imports; but in thus largely aiding in procuring increased supplies of foreign products, whether in gold, silver, raw materials, food, wines, sugar, fruits, or luxuries of distant growth which are received into the United Kingdom, there was the satisfaction that our cotton industry had contributed clothing comforts to the benefit alike of the savage and civilized in every region of the earth. In this current year the exports of cotton manufactures would perhaps amount to forty millions value, and the portion left for home consumption might be twenty millions, or equal to 17s. per head for the population of this country; but, as the cotton trade of Great Britain is not half its magnitude in the entire world, including the domestic and semi-domestic manufacture still extensively carried on in the East, the manufacture of the world at large could not be less than the annual value of one hundred and forty millions, and therefore this industry afforded to the world's population 38. worth each of cotton clothing, or, represented in calico, fourteen yards per annum for every man, woman, and child in existence. Presuming the cotton industry of this country to amount to sixty-four millions in value for the current year, and the cost of the raw material to be twenty-four millions, then the sum remaining for wages, interest of capital, rent, taxes, fuel, freight, carriage, and other requisites, would be forty millions. The population employed in this trade exceeds half a million, and, as every worker is said to be connected in his family with three non-workers, who depend upon the single worker for subsistence, two millions of people are therefore supported by it. Engineers, founders, machine-makers, and other auxiliary traders employ vast numbers of well-paid workmen, who are constantly engaged and sustained at the cost of the capital invested in the constructive department of the cotton trade; hence these further sources of support increase the total number of people dependent upon this extraordinary industry. Viewing Lancashire as the chief seat of this industry, if we refer to its population a hundred years ago, we find it to have been about 300,000, whilst now it was 2,300,000, making an increase greatly in excess of any of the old trading and agricultural communities of this or any other country. After noticing the numerous other places in different counties of England and Scotland in which the manufacture of cotton has become the great support of labour, Mr. Bazley proceeded to discuss the question of increasing the supplies of the foreign raw material, and urged the importance of opening up new fields for its cultivation. Africa and Asia could grow more cotton than the most sanguine could contemplate the demand of the whole world would ever require; and to extend its production in those two quarters of the globe would be at the same time to extend civilization and to diffuse the comforts of life. Workpeople, manufacturers, merchants, statesmen, and philanthropists had all the deepest interest in this vital question, which hitherto had been shrouded in almost fatal apathy. At home and abroad the wonder was that the British East and West Indies had not supplied the largest portion of the cotton needed in this country. For much of the unproductiveness of those portions of the British empire misgovernment was responsible. Roused, however, by the salutary influences of public opinion, the legislature of our country had given to the East Indies a new existence. No intermediate spoiler would hereafter prevent the queen and a direct executive from developing the resources of India. An enlightened and just policy applied to every British colony would yield the benefits of an extended commerce, blessing, like charity, those who gave and those who received.

Notes on Self-supporting Dispensaries, with some Statistics of the Coventry Provident Dispensary. By CHARLES H. BRACEBRIDGE. The statistics of the self-supporting Dispensary at Coventry are offered to this Section as an example of those institutions projected by Mr. H. L. Smith, of Southam, Varwickshire, which, when supported by a sufficient number of members, have been successful. The statistics of that at Northampton are fully as favourable, though not carried over so long period; this latter having been instituted in 1845, and the former in 1831*. The queen's visit to Warwick gave occasion to the formation of a Central Society for the promulgation of the principle, to whom application might be made for information as to rules, books, and other details, by the possession of which the founders might proceed safely, and without danger of failing in their objects, pro* The following are the statistics for 1857 of the Dispensaries at Coventry and Northampton:

a

35.

..

...

...

41

17

128

397

525

262

72

27

95

456