Alexis de Tocqueville (French Historian, Philosopher)

“It is from the midst of this putrid sewer [Manchester] that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth. Here it is that humanity achieves for itself both perfection and brutalisation, that civilisation produces its wonders, and that civilised man becomes again almost a savage.”

[A.d.T: Voyage en Angleterre et en Irlande de 1835]