I noticed an interesting connection between the image that Gaskel creates of the current status of the lower classes and the makeup of her husband's congregation and their treatment of the working class in the community directly surrounding Cross Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester. 

The congregation at Cross Street was made up of philanthropic upper class gentlemen and gentlewomen: “William therefore came to a congregation with which many wealthy and powerful families were associated…, a congregation also of self made men deeply conscious of the need to improve the educational and social conditions of the working class from which they themselves had sprung” (Head). This was the kind of class of people that Gaskell especially wrote Mary Barton for, the people that were in a socioeconomic position to readily help those that needed it. It would make sense that there was some overlap between the intended audience for her book and the composition of her husband’s congregation.

In Mary Barton, Gaskell points out that many of the suffering workers in Manchester were suspicious of the constituents of the upper classes, including ministers. This was due to the working class's horrible poverty during this time. This period of affliction resulted in a “feeling of alienation between the different classes.” Gaskell points out, I assume to the wealthy members of her husbands parish, that she knows–in a “Christian land” like England–the wealthily fortunate would have “thronged with their sympathy and their aid” if they were aware of the problems plaguing their community (Gaskell, 127). It makes sense that Mary Barton includes this last section in the passage to somewhat soften the hard knews of the upper classes' neglection of the lower class and remind them that the lower classes need the charity of those better off.

Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton, edited Jennifer Foster. 1848, Broadview Literary Texts.

Head, Geoffrey. “Cross Street Chapel in the Time of the Gaskells.” Cross Street Chapel:Individual Belief, Shared Community, 2009, https://cross-street-chapel.org.uk/cross-street-chapel-in-the-time-of-the-gaskells/.