Our relief fund has been the means of relieving her from that degradation; but cannot those who read my letter see how strong are the temptations which their want places in the way of these poor girls!" On 25th April a number of city merchants, most of whom were interested in the cotton manufacture, waited upon the Lord Mayor of London, with a view to interest him, and through him the public at large, in the increasing distress among the operative population in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire.

Previous to this, the "Lancashire Lad" had made a private appeal, by letter, to the Lord Mayor, in which he said:- "Local means are nearly exhausted, and I am convinced that if we have not help from without, our condition will soon be more desperate than I or any one else who possesses human feelings can wish it to become.

To see the homes of those whom we know and respect, though they are but working men, stripped of every bit of furniture--to see long-cherished books and pictures sent one by one to the pawn-shop, that food may be had--and to see that food almost loathsome in kind, and insufficient in quantity,--are hard, very hard things to bear.

But those are not the worst things.

In many of our cottage homes there is now nothing left by the pawning of which a few pence may be raised, and the mothers and sisters of we 'Lancashire lads' have turned out to beg, and ofttimes knock at the doors of houses in which there is as much destitution as there is in our own; while the fathers and the lads themselves think they are very fortunate if they can earn a shilling or two by street-sweeping or stone breaking.