the Legislature to interfere. But is it not proved, notorious, and existing? He goes on

"Protection to the females employed in the few industrial branches open to woman's labour is humane and equitable; but why should it be given in factories where the labour is light, the wages good, the precautions against immorality greater than in any other line of life, and the hours of labour never protracted beyond the endurance of physical strength, while it is withheld from the women harnessed to waggons in the coal-mine, from the sempstresses and milliners of London, and from those who work for the slopsellers of the Minories? This ought you to have done, and not to have left the other undone."

Does the author forget that Lord Ashley, whom he tries to depreciate, is not exclusive in his humanity, and has succeeded in prohibiting women from being harnessed to waggons in a coalmine? Is he so absorbed in his love for mill-owners as to forget this? And does he not know that there are many social evils which defy legislation, but that, by the blessing of God, whereever they are remediable, they shall be remedied? We are making a beginning to an end; and where is the regard for truth, that can hop lightly over those portions of the reports which do not suit his views, and crowd together those which do, and which could feel easy in writing that the "hours of labour are never protracted beyond the endurance of physical strength?" We wish to overstate nothing; but, without hunting through report after report, we shall make one more extract from Mr. Saunders. He says

"Mr. Baker reports having seen several females, who he was sure could only just have completed their eighteenth year, who had been obliged to work fourteen hours and a half every day, from six A.M. to ten P.M., with only one hour and a half in the interim for meals. In other cases females are obliged to work all night in a temperature from seventy to eighty...... Mr. Baker says, ' If masters want hands to work long hours, let them employ men; to employ females such hours, when men are to be had, and doing nothing, is a curse upon the system, which ought to be put down. My week's lists refer you to some instances which I consider cruelty, though it may be voluntary, for, God help them, the hands dare not refuse."

More Englishmen will be found to sympathize with Mr. Baker's warm expressions of sympathy, than with the Doctor's cold philosophy. Mr. Horner tells us, in his Report of the 11th of October, 1843

"That many women work for thirteen, some for fourteen, and some for seventeen hours. Some are at constant work from six in the morning till twelve at night, less only by two hours for meals and rest...... What constitution can hold out long against incessant toil of

this description? Its fatal tendency is daily shown in the manufacturing districts, by the ravages it makes on human life."

And yet we are told that "hours of labour are never protracted beyond the endurance of physical strength!" The physical strength of the factory women, whom Dr. Taylor has seen, must be enduring indeed. Again, "the few industrial branches open to woman's labour.” Is it not notorious that female labour is being extensively substituted for male? And should not the author of "The Natural History of Society" know that men are most barbarous where women are most worked and drudged? Mr. Leonard Horner, at the meeting of the Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, observes

"The other evil to which I refer is the derangement of the social system, by the custom, which has of late years become so prevalent, of substituting female for male labour-a custom which has the most corrupting influence, and produces the worst effects upon the male part of the population. One of the necessary consequences, in the case of married women, is the abandonment of the maternal duties. Within a very short time after they have given birth to a child (and we may observe that they work up to almost the moment of their confinement) they return to their work, and commit their infants to the care of women who are called professional nurses, who take as many as they can get, and sometimes do some work besides. To diminish their trouble, these women are in the habit of administering opiates to the poor infants; and there are two drugs of this sort well known, the one of which is called Godfrey's Cordial, and the other goes by a very significant name-Atkinson's Quietness. I have been informed, on unquestionable authority, that in one street in Manchester there are three druggists or grocers who each sell five gallons a week of these opiates. As the dose is about a teaspoonful at a time, you may easily imagine to what an extent this pernicious practice prevails; and I have been told, by the same competent authority, that the average quantity given daily is equal to a hundred drops of laudanum. In this way infanticide is practised to a great extent, and those infants that survive grow up ricketty, stunted, and feeble.”

We want the women of England to be in a better position than Indian squaws; but, in truth they are, in one respect, in a worse, for the squaws have their children with them, whilst English mothers leave theirs to hireling and bad care.

One step in advance has been made; by the new law no woman is allowed to work more than twelve hours, no matter what may be her age. This is something gained. If we chose we could draw a much worse and yet a faithful picture of the labour which women and children perform in factories. Any man who has a heart to feel, will admit that Government superintendence was imperiously called for. We think, however, that

VOL. XVI.L

we have quoted sufficiently from Dr. Taylor's book to justify our opinion that it is not a fair view of the factory system; at the same time, it is useful to see the favourable side of the question; and we are ready to admit that many of the evils attached to the system are attributable to the "great town nuisance," where masses of beings, huddled together in an impure and dark atmosphere, generate disease and immorality. The author's remarks on this head are valuable; and we were pleased also to have grouped before us the pictures of comfort and happiness which the Doctor has truly drawn of the life of those factory families where work is abundant and masters benevolent. Amendment Act itself we cannot now say much-the limitations which it has imposed on labour, and the provisions which it makes for education, are, so far as they go, good. On the 11th of July, 1839, Lord John Russell fairly put the question of the Ten Hours Bill.

Of the

"It seems to me the noble lord (Ashley) has not answered the question, whether, having reduced the hours of labour, he can provide, at the same time, that the same remuneration shall be given for the shortened hours of labour?....... Whatever shortens the hours of labour, and with the present high price of provisions reduces the rate of wages, instead of being a proposition of humanity, would be a proposition of great inhumanity; therefore, as I think the proposition, if carried into effect, would be cruel in its operation, I must vote against it."

It is not a little in favour of the Ten Hours Bill, that, after five years' additional experience, the same noble lord has entirely changed his opinion, and voted for it. On the ground of humanity, let the question rest. We care not for the reduction of the mill-owners' profits, except so far as it operates to lessen capital and employment; gold cannot be weighed in the balance with human suffering. But are the operatives prepared to bear the reduction of wages? Do they not believe that wages would not be reduced? For them only are we interested; and we feel that we cannot blame the Ministry, with all the responsibility of office upon their shoulders, for being nervously apprehensive of going too far. They had a duty to discharge painful to their feelings, as well as disagreeable to their supporters. They, no doubt, remembered the severe distress of those by-gone years, when the complaint of the operatives was, not that the work was too much, but that there was none at all; and when trade was but beginning to revive, Ministers dreaded placing a restriction on it. We confidently hope that their fears are groundless, and that the success of the present measure will embolden them to go further; for we must deplore the hard fate of those who, from the tender age of thirteen, are doomed to a life of toil, where there is little time

for rest, and none for improvement. Meantime, it behoves our clergy to labour earnestly in storing with knowledge those children who, under that age, have granted them the opportunity of being taught; and even after the hours of toil are over we bid them to speak to the young and hard-worked operatives words of consolation and of Christian hope. These are not the times in which it is safe for a nation to repose in the lap of ignorance. "Everything in the condition of mankind announces the approach of some great crisis, for which nothing can prepare us but the diffusion of knowledge, probity, and the fear of the Lord." Let us, at least, mitigate those evils which we cannot altogether naturally avoid.

We must hasten to a conclusion: we have not space to notice the Dissenters' Chapels Bill, nor the foreign policy of Ministers, which seems to draw together, into one bond of union and of friendly intimacy, the potentates of Europe, assuring to their respective people the blessings of peace and concord.

Has the country, then, gained by a Conservative Ministry, and has our retrospect satisfied us? Let us see. Do they exhibit "the disposition to preserve and the ability to improve?" We have a Ministry who maintain the Constitution, as established in the three estates of Queen, Lords, and Commons-a Ministry, members of the Established Church, and, we believe, determined to maintain her in connection with the State. We found this belief on the declarations of the Duke of Wellington, on the tried attachment of Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham; and, despite his "overpowering necessity" speech, on the conviction of the Premier. As Lord Stanley's expressions* are so fresh and so straightforward, we give them :

"Against the confiscation of Church property I will raise my voice as long as I have a voice to raise within the walls of Parliament...... This I will say, that while I believe the bulk of the people of England is firmly determined to do full and substantial justice, in respect of the civil rights of their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, in common, I believe, with the vast majority of the people of England, I entertain a fixed and unaltered determination to maintain and uphold the Protestant Establishment of this country."

We have a united Ministry, opposed to vote by ballot, universal suffrage, and triennial Parliaments-a Ministry anxious for the preservation of peace, determined to give no insult to foreign powers, at the same time to take none; earnest for the spread of commerce and the extirpation of slavery. We believe we have a free-trade Ministry, with the exception of conferring pro

* On Lord John Russell's motion for an enquiry into the state of Ireland.

tection on corn and sugar, and imposing a series of differential duties for the advantage of our colonies-a Ministry who will maintain the supremacy of the laws and the integrity of the empire at every risk; who, nevertheless, are somewhat dilatory and somewhat temporizing, permitting a gaming indemnity law to pass, and postponing the amendment of the Poor Law-and, in fine, we have a Ministry who equalize revenue with expenditure-who establish a sound system of currency-who found the country with an embarrassed exchequer and a drooping trade, and who, in less than three years, made the exchequer free and trade flourishing.

Have we stated its measures fairly? Have we sketched its character truly? And if so, what would be the sentence of the people of England?

ART. VII.-The Sacred Calendar of Prophecy; or, a Dissertation on the Prophecies which treat of the Grand Period of Seven Times, and especially of its Second Moiety, or the Latter Three Times and a Half. By G. STANLEY FABER. Second Edition. London: Painter. 1844. Three vols. 12mo.

WHENSOEVER we turn our thoughts to the subject of prophecy we are filled with wonder, and reverence, and praise— in thinking of the grace of God in making known to man his purposes and plans for the government of the world; of the condescension there is in his having vouchsafed such continual guidance to the Church, as a light to her feet and a lamp to her paths; and of the wisdom and mercy displayed in the mystery which surrounds these communications; so that while they repel or evade the presumptuous and merely intellectual scrutiny of the unprepared or profane, they become to the Church, taught by the Holy Spirit, and having the eye of faith to penetrate the mystery-they become, and we say it advisedly, her clearest light and her most strong consolation. Among the chances and changes of this transitory life we need an anchor of hope, sure and steadfast-this we have within the veil; but by the light of prophecy our eye is carried even now within the veil, and we may even now look, not at the things which are seen and temporal, but at the things which are unseen and eternal. It is a light shining in a dark place, and leading us onward until the day dawn and the day-star arise in our hearts. It came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.