the provisions which make up the Sunday dinner of the poorest class.  The meat which the workers buy is very often past using; but having bought it, they must eat it.  On the 6th of January, 1844 (if I am not greatly mistaken), a court leet was held in Manchester, when eleven meat-sellers were fined for having sold tainted meat.  Each of them had a whole ox or pig, or several sheep, or from fifty to sixty pounds of meat, which were all confiscated in a tainted condition.  In one case, sixty-four stuffed Christmas geese were seized which had proved unsaleable in Liverpool, and had been forwarded to Manchester, where they were brought to market foul and rotten.  All the particulars, with names and fines, were published at the time in the Manchester Guardian.  In the six weeks, from July 1st to August 14th, the same sheet reported three similar cases.  According to the Guardian for August 3rd, a pig, weighing 200 pounds, which had been found dead and decayed, was cut up and exposed for sale by a butcher at Heywood, and was then seized.  According to the number for July 31st, two butchers at Wigan, of whom one had previously been convicted of the same offence, were fined 2 and 4 pounds respectively, for exposing tainted meat for sale; and, according to the number for August 10th, twenty-six tainted hams seized at a dealer’s in Bolton, were publicly burnt, and the dealer fined twenty shillings.  But these are by no means all the cases; they do not even form a fair average for a period of six weeks, according to which to form an average for the year.  There are often seasons in which every number of the semi-weekly Guardian mentions a similar case found in Manchester or its vicinity.  And when one reflects upon the many cases which must escape detection in the extensive markets that stretch along the front of every main street, under the slender supervision of the market inspectors—­and how else can one explain the boldness with which whole animals are exposed for sale?—­when one considers how great the temptation must be, in view of the incomprehensibly small fines mentioned in the foregoing cases; when one reflects what condition a piece of meat must have reached to be seized by the inspectors, it is impossible to believe that the workers obtain good and nourishing meat as a usual thing.  But they are victimised in yet another way by the money-greed of the middle-class.  Dealers and manufacturers adulterate all kinds of provisions in an atrocious manner, and without the slightest regard to the health of the consumers.  We have heard the Manchester Guardian upon this subject, let us hear another organ of the middle-class—­I delight in the testimony of my opponents—­let us hear the Liverpool Mercury:  “Salted butter is sold for fresh, the lumps being covered with a coating of fresh butter, or a pound of fresh being laid on top to taste, while the salted article is sold after this test, or the whole mass is washed