164. _Mr. Kinnaird._ In your experience, in the last few years, have you not seen a very marked improvement in the working classes in this country in every respect to which you have alluded; take the last twenty years, or since you have turned your attention that way?--I have no evidence before me in England of that improvement, because I think that the struggle for existence becomes every day more severe, and that, while greater efforts are made to help the workman, the principles on which our commerce is conducted are every day oppressing him, and sinking him deeper.
Have you ever visited the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, with a view of ascertaining the state of the people there?--Not with a definite view. My own work has nothing to do with those subjects; and it is only incidentally, because I gratuitously give such instruction as I am able to give at the Working Men's College, that I am able to give you any facts on this subject. All the rest that I can give is, as Sir Robert Peel accurately expressed it, nothing but personal impression.
You admit that the Working Men's College is, after all, a very limited sphere?--A very limited sphere.
165. _Sir Robert Peel._ You have stated that, in the Louvre, a working man looks at the pictures with a greater degree of self-respect than the same classes do in the National Gallery here?--I think so.
You surely never saw a man of the upper class, in England, scorn at a working man because he appeared in his working dress in the National Gallery in London?--I have certainly seen working men apprehensive of such scorn.
_Chairman._ Is it not the fact, that the upper and lower classes scarcely ever meet on the same occasions?--I think, if possible, they do not.
Is it not the fact that the laboring classes almost invariably cease labor at such hours as would prevent them from going to see pictures at the time when the upper classes do go?--I meant, before, to signify assent to your question, that they do not meet if it can be avoided.
_Sir Robert Peel._ Take the Crystal Palace as an example; do not working men and all classes meet there together, and did you ever see a working man _gêné_ in the examination of works of art?--I am sure that a working man very often would not go where he would like to go.
