swear by non-interference. They must hold the Truck-system to be best. Why should not wages be paid in soap and tallow? But of all interference between master and man, the most odious, because the most imperative-the most tyrannical-must be the institution of the Sabbath. The following sentences of Mr Sadler's Speech deserve to be written in letters of gold.

"The Sabbath is a constantly-recurring example of interference between the employer and the employed,solely and avowedly in favour of the latter: and I cannot help regretting, that almost every other red-letter day has been long ago blotted out from the dark calendar of labouring poverty, whose holydays are now too few and far between' to cheer the spirits or recruit the health of our industrious population. It was promised, indeed, and might have been expect ed, that the great inventions of recent times would have restored a few of these;-would have somewhat abridged human labour in its duration, and abated its intensity: and it is only by effecting this that machinery can justify its very definition, as consisting of inventions to shorten human labour. I look forward to the period when machinery will fully vindicate its pretensions, and surpass, in its beneficial effects, all that its most sanguine advocates have anticipated: when those inventions, whether so complicate and minute as almost to supplant the human hand, or so stupendous as to tame the very elements, and yoke them to the triumphal car of human industry, shall outstrip our boldest expectations, not so much, indeed, by still further augmenting the superfluities of the rich, as by increasing the comforts, and diminishing the labour of the poor; thereby restoring to the mass of our fellow-beings those physical enjoyments, that degree of leisure, those means of moral and mental improvement, which alone can advance them to that state of happiness and dignity, to which, I trust, it is their destiny to attain. Hitherto, however, I repeat, the effect has been far different. The condition of the operative manufacturers has been rendered more and more dependent and precarious: their labour, when employed, is in many cases so in

creased, as to be utterly irreconcilable with the preservation of health or even life; infancy itself is forced into the market of labour, where it becomes the unresisting victim of cruelty and oppression; while, as might be expected from such an unnatural state of things, the remuneration for this increasing and excessive toil is regularly diminishing, till at length multitudes among us are reduced, in their physical condition at least, below the level of the slave or the brute."

But what think ye of free agents in the shape of children from four to nine years of age, and, if you please, upwards? What is the real condition of these sons and daughters-these boys and girls-these infants of liberty? Out of sight out of mind, for the present if you choosewith bastards and orphans. The commonplace objection, that the parents are free agents, and that, therefore, the children ought to be regarded as such, will hardly apply to orphans,-and too often bastards are orphans at the best,-for too often better would it have been for them had their father been hanged before their birth, and had their mother died in childbed. The Factories are too full by far of such free agents; and Mr Sadler can see no harm in legislating for their protection from those showers of cuffs and kicks to which now "their naked frailties suffer from exposure." But let us look at the legitimates. He separates the parents, who, in their free agency, send their children to infantile slavery, into two classes; those who by extreme indigence are driven to do so with great reluctance and bitter regret; those, who dead to all the instincts of nature, instead of providing for their offspring, make their offspring provide for them, and not only for their necessities, but for their intemperance and profligacy. The first class, say we, are not to be pitied only, but to be protected; they must not be blamed; their "poverty but not their will consents;" and many, perhaps most of them, do what they can to cheer their children's lot, but they have little in their power. They see them often so utterly wearied and worn out at night, that they have to beat them to keep them from falling asleep before

they have had their scanty supper. The most affectionate heart ceases at last to send up to the eyes useless tears, the well-spring itself is dried up, and where all is arid, love weakens and dies. The other class, Mr Sadler strongly says, count upon their children as upon their cattle, and they make the certainty of having offspring the indispensable condition of marriage, that they may breed what he calls a generation of slaves -what men, in their own conceit wiser than he, call a race of free agents. Such is the disgusting state of degradation to which the system leads. It shews us fathers "without the storge of the beast or the feelings of the man ;" and all this wickedness and woe must be suffered to wax wider and wider, rather than revoke the principle of non-interference !

Not so thought the late-not so, we venture to affirm, thinks the present-Sir Robert Peel. The former has recorded his deliberate judg ment upon this subject in a document which he delivered to the Committee on the Bill he introduced in 1816. "Such indiscriminate and unlimited employment of the poor, consisting of a great proportion of the inhabitants of the trading districts, will be attended with effects to the rising generation so serious and alarming, that I cannot contemplate them without dismay. And thus that great effort of British ingenuity, whereby the machinery of our manufacturers has been brought to such perfection, instead of being a blessing, will be converted into its bitterest curse." Early in this century, he obtained the first act for the protection of the poor children employed in cotton factories; and sixteen years after wards, he carried another measure of a similar but more comprehensive nature. Sir John Hobhouse, the session before last, obtained another act, having the same benevolent object in view. But, alas! on every occasion selfish opposition has virtually succeeded in defeating the original intention of those who have successively proposed such measures. It has succeeded in lengthening the term of infantile labour, in connecting every art to one particular branch of the business, in introducing provisions which have rendered them liable to constant evasions, and

it is well known that the whole of these are evaded and rendered little better than a dead letter. But Mr Sadler was not discouraged by all those failures. He has not been discouraged by his own defeat. The report of the Committee, of which he was chairman, is before the public. Lord Morpeth, it would seem, has felt himself compelled to give up his Bill, an Eleven or Twelve Hours' Bill, introduced in opposition to Lord Ashley's Ten Hour Bill, in an unparliamentary and even ungentlemanly manner, (which we should not have expected from him,) and we shall not suffer ourselves to fear that Mr Sadler's triumph will yet be complete in that of his Noble Successor, in the cause of humanity, liberty, and justice.

Mr Sadler is too good and too wise a man to deal in violent and indiscriminate abuse of the men who uphold and act upon the present factory system. In contending for the necessity of his measure, he does not implicate the conduct of the millowners generally; many of whom he is well convinced are among the most humane and considerate of employers. Their interests, as well as the welfare of the children, greatly demand legislative protection, and he respectfully inscribes his speech to John Wood, Esq., junior, of Bradford, and those mill-owners, who, like him, earnestly wish for the regulation of the present factorysystem. The great invention of Sir Richard Arkwright, originally used for the spinning of cotton, has at length been applied, with the necessary adaptations, to a similar process in all our manufactures; and he holds that it would be the grossest injustice, as well as insult, to argue that those engaged in the cotton-trade (where Parliament has several times seen it necessary to regulate the labour of children) were one whit less humane and considerate than those engaged in spinning any other material. The same law should apply to all. It is against the system he fights-not against the men who have got involved in it by the operation of causes hard to resist, and which he thoroughly understands. The evil has been progressive; competition, not with foreign markets, but between capitalists at home, has car

ried it to a height which it cannot perhaps exceed, for it has reached the limit set by Nature's self, and flesh and blood would "thaw, and resolve itself into a dew," under any severer misery.

The evidence in the Report will be called ex parte. The same learned persons, who have been quoting French, are now quoting Latin; and having attracted little attention by the senseless cry of "Laissez nous faire," they are entitled to be heard, and they will be heard, when, claiming the privilege of a fair hearing, they rationally say, "audi alteram partem." Meanwhile, we deal with the evidence before us-and it is such as we cannot by any power of fancy imagine to be rebutted. If it be, we shall rejoice over the delapidated falsehood as it falls into rubbish.

to shudder so often at the thought of "some sleeping killed;" nor be then justified in exclaiming, "All murdered!"

It is impossible, Mr Sadler tells us, to furnish any uniform account of the hours of labour endured by children in the Factories, and he is careful not to represent extreme cases as general ones. Yet is it the bounden duty of Parliament to provide against such extreme cases, just as it provides against atrocious crimes. The following were the hours of labour imposed upon the children employed in a Factory at Leeds the summer before last. On Monday morning, work commenced at six o'clock; at nine, half an hour for breakfast; from half-past nine till twelve, work. Dinner, one hour; from five till eight, work; rest for half an hour. From half-past eight till twelve (midnight), work; an hour's rest. From one in the morning till five, work; half an hour's rest. From half-past five till nine, work; breakfast. From half-past nine till twelve, work; dinner; from one till half-past four, work. Rest half an hour; and work again from five till nine on Tuesday evening, when the labour terminated, "and the party of adult and infant slaves" are dismissed for the night, after having toiled thirty-nine hours, with brief intervals (amounting only to six hours in the whole) for refreshment, but none for sleep. On Wednesday and Thursday, day-work only. From Friday morning till Saturday night, the same labour repeated, but closed at five-to show that even such masters can be merciful. This is one of the extreme cases-but they are not of very rare occurrence; ordinarily the working hours vary from twelve to fourteen; they are often extended to sixteen; but in some mills (are we right in saying so?) they seldom exceed twelve for children.

No desire have we-any more than Mr Sadler-to make out a case against the mill-owners. So far from it, we freely and fully admit that there are many evils necessarily inherent in the labour in factories. They will endure for ever. No legislative enactments-no regulations, however wise and humane-will entirely remove them-while the beings working there breathe by lungs, and their blood circulates from their hearts. The atmosphere must be hot, and dusty, and polluted; and there fore does humanity demand for them who must inhale it, a few more gulps of fresh air. Sickness and sorrow enough, and too much, will there be under a Ten Hours' Bill-but many will then escape death, who now wither away out of a languid life, old-looking dwarfs though yet in their teens. The engine will, under any bill, clutch up boy or girl, and dash out their brains against the ceiling, or crush them into pancakes by pressure against the walls, or seem to be devouring them, as, in horrid entanglement, mutilated body and deformed limbs choke the steamfed giant, till, for a few moments he coughs-rather than clanks-over his bloody meal, and threatens even all at once to stop, when away he goes again, free from all impediment, as if fresh-oiled with that libation, and in scorn of his keeper, who, in consternation, has been shivering amidst the shrieks like the ghost of a paralytic. But we shall not have

The length of labour varies according to the humanity of the employer, and the demand for his goods at particular seasons. Thus sometimes the operatives, mostly children, are worked nearly to death; at other times, they are thrown partially or totally out of work, and left to beg gary or the parish. Averaged throughout the year, their work may

not seem excessive. But is it just, asks Mr Sadler, that the owners should be allowed to throw out of employment all these children at a few days' notice, and to work them at an unlimited number of hours the moment it suits their purpose? Just or unjust, it is-say we-a lamentable condition for the children-and we do think with Mr Sadler, that, if the effect of his bill were in some measure to equalize the labour, and thereby prevent those distressing fluctuations, distressing in both extremes, it would so far accomplish a most beneficial object.

Man is said to be distinguished from the other living kinds, by being a laughing animal. While Mr Sadler was dwelling with disgust and indig nation on the shocking cruelty of forcing girls approaching to puberty to work far beyond their strength, and was describing the miserable effects of such slavery on their persons and constitutions, a biped, whose feathers were all in his nest, vainly attempted to prove that he was not a dunghill fowl, by-laughing. His laugh, however, was so much like a chuckle, or a clack, that it failed even to establish his sex. His risibility was excited by hearing that the danger and difficulty of childbearing were thereby increased; and that young wives, who had all childhood and girlhood long been forced to stand at their work for perhaps fourteen hours a-day, ran a great risk of perishing miserably in parturition. He made that statement on the authority of Dr Llewellyn Jones before the Lords' Committee of 1818, who said that during the short period of his practice at Holywell, (where there were extensive cotton factories,) he met with more difficult and dangerous cases than a gentleman of great practice in Birmingham, Mr Freer, had met with in the whole course of his life. This sounded so excessively funny to our two-legged legislator, that "he could not retain his laughter for affection," just as certain gifted individuals are said in Shakspeare to lose the power of a slightly different kind of retention, "when the bagpipe plays i' their nose." Indeed, Mr Sadler's speech, from beginning to end, must have been to him a source of infinite amusement. We advise him as a friend to be cau

tious how he reads the report, (600 folio pages,) for such are the horrors and the miseries it relates, that, before he gets half through, he will die of laughing, in giggle-convulsions. What can be conceived more ludicrous, in parts, or as a whole, than the following picture painted by us from the life?

A Factory child—say, a smally girl, "Simon's sickly daughter"-must be at her work-say at four o'clock of a snowy winter-morning-else she will be cursed-fined-or strapped. Her father's house is a long mile from the mill-and has no clock. To ensure punctuality, the smally sickly wretch (" nature," says Mr Sadler, laughably, "is not very wakeful on a short night's rest, after a long day's labour,") has been roused much too early, by one of her parents shaking the sleeper, "more in sorrow than in anger;" and with the sleet in her face, away she sets off to the town just as the cock, after his first few faint crows, has again put his head under his wing, on his perch between his favourite partlets. 'Tis no uncommon case; “whoever," says Mr Sadler," has lived in a manufacturing town, must have heard, if he happened to be awake many hours before light on a winter's morning, the patter of little pattens on the pavement, lasting perhaps for half an hour together, though the time appointed for assembling was the same." She works for some hours before breakfast, after what some folks would have called no supperand then what a breakfast-covered with dust! Nor is she allowed to eat it, such as it is, sitting; but must swallow a mouthful now and then as best she may, standing and working at the beck of that engine. Her work, it is true, may not be of a very hard or heavy kind. Nay, it is even light. But her eye must be quick, and her hand nimble, and her mind on the alert-for if she have "a bad-side," smack comes the strap across her shoulders. It is not so much the degree of the wretch's labour that wears her out, as its duration. Wearisome uniformity, continued position, constant and close confinement -these are cruel to body and mind, and these are her portion. A cockney in a counting-house "wielding his delicate pen," as he " pens a stanza

while he should engross," is wearier at nightfall in his embroidered vest, than the naked coalheaver who has hoisted from the hold of a Newcastler a ton of black diamonds to each of his twelve pots of porter. At midday "to dinner with what appetite she may," and some hours after, a cup of thin sugarless tea, for nothing else will stay on her stomach. There is a demand-and work must go on till midnight. She gets drowsy, and lies down on the floor to snatch some sleep. The overlooker espies her white face upon her thin arm for a pillow-blue eyelids shut-pale lips apart; and, to cure that lazy trick, dashes over her head, and neck, and breast, and body, a bucketful of water. Well may our legislator laugh at the recital, for all the imps there laugh louder than he at the reality, and it cannot be denied, that the practical joke is of the first water. And now the whole gang of small sweaty sickly slaves is at work in spite of the stupor of sleepiness, and how think ye do they contrive to keep themselves awake? By all manner of indecencies of look, speech, and action, possible in purgatory. Fathers have sworn to it, and wished they had been childless. Weak, sickly, rickety, chicken-breasted, crooked, decrepit, spine-distorted Sally, scarcely nine years old, to that leering deformed dwarf Daniel, answers obscenity to obscenity, at which the street-walking prostitute would shudder, and fear the downfall of the day of judgment!

Yet it is maintained by some that the factories are healthy. Let us speak first of the health of the body -afterwards of the soul.

We hold in the highest honour the medical profession. But it contains some queer practitioners. We have before us "A Summary View of, and Extracts from, the Evidence" of certain medical gentlemen, who attended as witnesses against the Bill, in 1818. Let us hear Drs Richard Holmes, Henry Hardie, Edward Garbutt, Surgeons Thomas Wilson, William James Wilson, James Ainsworth, Thomas Turner, and Samuel Barton.

Dr Holmes is thus addressed :"Suppose I were to ask you, whether you thought it injurious to a child to be kept standing three-andtwenty hours out of the four-and-twen

ty, should you not think that it must necessarily be injurious to the health, without any fact to rest upon, as a simple proposition put to a gentleman in the medical profession?" This seems to be any thing but a poser. But the Doctor, putting his goldheaded cane to his under lip, and shaking his head like a Mandarin, replieth in slow and measured speech, "Before I answered that question, I should wish to have an examination to see how the case stood. If there were such an extravagant thing to take place, and it should appear that the person was not injured by having stood three-and-twenty hours, I should then say it was not inconsistent with the health of the person so employed!" There is a blockhead for you of a CL. (150) M.D. power indeed! If the Doctor be yet alive, we beg to ask him, "Do you think it injurious for a child to fall out of a window in the third story?" We are prepared for his answer. "Before I answer that question, I should like to have an examination how the case stood." Well-he has an examination; and, strange to say, not a bone in the child's body has been broken, and so little the worse was the little lively fellow of the accident, that he went to school trundling his hoop, that very afternoon. The Doctor, palming the fee, with his wisest face delivers his opinion that Tumble-down-Dick is none the worse-we deliver ours gratis, that he was much the better. But that is not the question. The question is, "Is it likely to be injurious to a child to fall out of a window three stories high on pavement?" We assert that it is highly so-the Doctor must have an examination to see how each particular case stands or rather fallsand no doubt should he find a boy's brains scattered about, he will pronounce them bad symptoms. The Doctor was next asked in the Lords' Committee," Is it your opinion, as a medical man, that recreation and exercise in the open air are necessary for growing children?" He answered, "I cannot certainly give an opinion upon that." Poo-pooDoctor-you might certainly have given an opinion. Could a mouse flourish all summer below an inverted toddy-tumbler? There is no saying; but surely he would be happier,