Daily National Intelligencer

FROM LATE LONDON PAPERS.

LONDON, July 3.

STATE OF THE COUNTRY.

As a striking exemplification of the unprecedented distress of the manufacturing classes, we present our readers with the following memorial, which has obtained upwards of 19,000 signatures in Bolton, Chowbent, Leigh and the neighbourhood!

To his Royal Highness George, Prince Regent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with their Dependencies—This humble Memorial of the undersigned, being master Manufacturers of COTTON GOODS, and Workmen who have been employed in that once extensive and important manufacture,

SHEWETH:

That your Royal Highness's humble Memorialists, who are true and faithful subjects to his Majesty, under whose royal banners many of them have fought and bled, but now they are returned home, cannot obtain food, are brought to dire distress, which is every day becoming more poignant; and unless some means of relief be speedily devised, one common ruin must involve masters and workmen.

That this general and increasing evil may be ascribed to several causes, as 1st, to a prevailing system of reducing wages: this system must at all times decrease the value of the stock on hand, which is sometimes immense, and hath often proved ruinous to the best houses—2d, the exportation of the half wrought material, as twist and weft. By this traffic, one part of his Majesty's subjects work to enable foreigners to do without the other part, and hence the restrictive measures adopted by foreign governments against the Manufactures of the Memorialists—And also a third evil, growing out of the former two, viz. the most able of the masters have, either altogether or partly, declined the manufacturer—whilst others by repeated sacrifices of depreciated stocks, have been bankrupts. Hence, many thousands are out of employ, whilst those who have any, cannot, on a fair average one with another, earn more than four shillings and three pence per week, and two years since they could earn twelve shillings and nine pence in the same time.

The cotton manufacture has given employment to many hundred thousands of persons in the United Empire. Shall these and the trade perish together? No! Your princely breast will feel for your future people, our present wards; all of whom love, and many of whom fought for your royal house, and the liberty of their dear native land.

Your Royal Highness is the memorialists' only hope, under Heaven. They, therefore, humbly pray, that your Royal Highness would be graciously pleased to take unto your Royal Highness's most serious consideration, their distress; and without dictating, or presuming to point out, what should be done in this arduous case, the memorialists pray for speedy relief.