ABSTRACT
It usually affords a fair presumption for the excellence of any administrative system, that it proves equal to extraordinary exigencies. Now, we know no past period of emergency at all approaching in severity and extent, and even in duration, of pressure, to that through which the authorities for administering relief to the poor within the large and populous union of Manchester have been, and still are, passing. With many thousands of our own workpeople idle, and many thousands more having only partial employment, with a large and continuous influx of Irish paupers, importing with their usual rags, and wretchedness, and improvidence, the additional concomitant of a wide-spreading infectious fever, which even now is more malignant and fatal than for some time past; and with, recently, a generally unhealthy condition of the atmosphere, more or less affecting and afflicting all classes of the community; these circumstances, taken in connection with the increased cost of food during a part of the year, and the depressed state of trade during the whole of it, surely present such a combination of evils, as guardians of the poor in this or any other union have rarely been called upon to cope with at one and the same time. The administration which not only does not break down, but readily expands its powers and its means as the evils to be grappled with increase and multiply, is surely one deserving of all praise, and of general imitation. p us see, then, what the Manchester board of guardians has had to contend with, and it has discharged its unusually onerous and responsible duties.
