It required no small pains last night and this morning to wash myself clean after passing in an open carriage through the smoke and dirt of Wigan and its neighbourhood.

No wonder at such places being the hotbeds of chartists and of projects for dividing the country and of the Spencean doctrine that land is in its nature public domain and ought not to be appropriated by individuals. To live under such a canopy of black smoke is an excuse for the wildest plans to get away from it. Canopy it is not for there is no space between it and the ground. In a heavy atmosphere it must be breathed in all its density and hundreds and thousands are thus passing their lives in one continuous wail of their condition and envy of the lot of others.

Then their spinning is a never ending employment. Not the slightest change in it from the entrance of a child into the mill till the illness that closes his life. Labour in other manufactures not carried on in mills with steam power is comparative liberty. The collier and miner are their own masters, when they please. So are all workmen in their own homes. So are all who work by the piece and the weight. But the mill must be manned daily to the minute and attention and labour must keep pace with the machinery.

Lord Hatherton's Journal, August, 1839