dreaded by manufacturers, is not that of the foreigner, but amongst themselves. This has been, perhaps, more than any other, the cause of over-production and gluts. Eagerness to monopolize the entire orders, or desire to keep up the appearance of equal business with their neighbours, prompts a few to undertake with their single concern, what should be the occupation of many. The long hours' are favourable to these attempts; immense quantities are fabricated in short periods-but at last the mill-owners exceed the required supply. Then come a check, a glut, a cessation in the demand for labour-dismissal of the hands-losses to the manufacturer. But there are other, perhaps even graver considerations behind. Whatever has a tendency to withdraw mankind from the duties and influences of domestic life, and slacken the bonds which nature has ordained, hurts the state in its citizens. Of old the manufacture was conducted in the cottages, and notwithstanding occasional abuses, the result was good. A man with his family worked together at the loom, and the articles required were produced at no expense of conjugal intercourse and parental duty. It is not possible to return to that state of things; but surely we might restore something of it. The husband, at present, goes to one mill, the children to another, and perhaps his wife to a third. How often may the operatives be heard to confess, that from one week to another they never see their children-and yet the poor want neither parental affection nor parental pride; they would gladly behold them grow up as tender plants,' and flourish like 'olive branches round about their table;' but the system denies this. It is said that the advantages we would fain restore could only be obtained by the surrender of others. A reduction of wages is foretold as the result, with all its concomitant vexations. This we deny. No reduction of wages did ensue on the previous limitation of labour; other causes, distant both in time and principle, have contributed to abate the earnings of the operative. But though the assertion were true, our demand would lose nothing of its justice or its prudence, for the high wages of the workman avail him nothing, unless they be disbursed with skill and thrift. Let us, in argument, grant them twice the wages; to what purpose? With no knowledge of domestic economy, no skill in management, they waste as much as they consume, and enter into expenses where they should make savings. The ignorance of these matters among the manufacturing classes is almost incredible; the women, who have passed their early years in the all-absorbing toil of the mill, are totally uninstructed in the simplest requisites of domestic life. We have heard from the lips of operatives themselves, that in a vast number of families the females are wholly unable to dress dress a dinner or mend a shirt, which necessary duties, from the incapacity of the wife, are performed by an hireling. Now, though it be true that a stitch in time saves nine,' the operative, for want of conjugal experience, can seldom verify it; and repairs are no slight article of outlay in a family of several persons. The evidence of Mr. Bull, in 1832, is most accurate and valuable on this head, and proves satisfactorily that a reduction of time is fully equivalent to an increase of wages; and we have before us a document, drawn up by an inhabitant of Manchester, demonstrating that, in a family of four persons, with aggregate wages of 198. a week, full 7s. 4d. might, by a diminution of labour, be saved on the items of the weekly expenditure. The fact is,' says Mr. Gregg, that partly from thoughtlessness, partly from vanity, partly from habit, and partly from the love of selfish indulgence, but more than all from actual ignorance of domestic economy, their household affairs are carried on in the most unsystematic, slovenly, and expensive style, and display an almost incredible want of management, thriftiness, and care.'-(p. 33.) To this, if we add the miseries of frequent disorder, premature decrepitude, early failure of eyesight, and, at the age of forty, all the evils of fourscore, we shall be inclined to admit that the riches of Croesus would be no compensation for the diseases of Job. · Such ameliorations as those proposed in Parliament, would affect, in a ten-fold degree, the condition of the children: they would restore them to the society and protection of their parents, and the parents to the duties they owe to their offspring; save many from orphanage, and re-establish, in some measure, the order of nature. Dos est magna parentum virtus'-a precious patrimony here, where physical necessity gives a whet to the edge of evil example! The youngest in these towns soon learn to tipple, and practise every form of nameless profligacy. Worn down, and all but annihilated by toil, these wretched infants seek the stimulus of spirits; and gin is now dealt out at the drinking shops in the smallest measures, and for the smallest sums, thus suiting the dram to every age and every capacity. Those that slink home, 'fall stupidly like the dogs upon the hearth,' (so speak their parents,) and awake again only to renew their toil; some, less fortunate even than these, are detained throughout the night, praying, however short it might be, for some interval of repose. 'I remember,' says that amiable man, Mr. Bull, that a little girl remarked to me, "at five o'clock we often say, I wish it was seven.' Ay, in the morning thou shalt say, would God it were even; and at even thou shalt say, would God it were morning;'* thus have we * Deuteronomy xxviii. 67. imposed, imposed, upon an innocent and a helpless race, the curse that was deemed sufficient for a rebellious and sinful people. Did we not know the inconsistencies of human nature, and the lamentable exaggeration of them in his Majesty's Ministers, we might well be surprised to hear them propose eight hours for the negro adult, and twelve for the child in the factory. But the surprise will decrease when we arrive at the cause; in either case they sought parliamentary votes; and having to deal with the same parties, but conflicting principles, they gave one law to mercy, and another to oppression. It was politic, but cruel; the loudest declaimers at anti-slavery meetings were the fiercest in demanding an autocracy over the children; there were some honourable exceptions--but their numbers were few—while Lancashire and Yorkshire, teeming with influence, mill-owners, and votes, denounced tyranny in the planter but bepraised it in themselves. The one system, however, has fallen, nor will the other stand long; it may possibly be the purpose of a gracious Providence to make them, like Sennacherib, the instruments of his power, howbeit they think not so;' for every argument and every principle, urged by themselves on behalf of the blacks, have an equal strength in favour of the whites, the country at last will perceive and enforce it; the more extensive the inquiry the more accurate the parallel. Those who are at all conversant with factory-life, and have heard of the domestic virtues of slavery,' will comprehend the resemblance without the specification of disgusting details. And, after all, in the slavery of the British Indies there was an advantageous contrast; the deficiency of the supply of labourers inspired the planters with an artificial humanity; but the redundancy here seems to blunt what is natural; they apportioned, moreover, the toil to the years of the child, and fixed its labour under the canopy of heaven! ་ We have received, while writing this paper, a little poem entitled, A Voice from the Factories,' which presents many touching and by no means over-coloured pictures of our accursed system of white slavery. Let us pause to consider the following striking stanzas, which assuredly could have come from no other than a mother's hand : There the pale Orphan, whose unequal strength • There, 'There, sounds of wailing grief and painful blows (While the lungs gasp what air the place bestows;) And bids him wake to Life,-to labour and to weep! Slumbering sinks down unfed, and mocks her useless care. To conclude-We must look to it, for evil is before us.' A population already vast is rapidly increasing, but not so morality and the knowledge of religion. Political privileges are more widely bestowed; and in proportion as external checks are withdrawn, the internal should be multiplied; though liberty be given to all, few only are fit for self-government; and it will be utterly impossible to rule a free state, where the minds of the people are left in total darkness, to be illuminated at intervals only by the livid and unwholesome glare of infidelity and sedition. We must not be answered by forced and fictitious tables-by relative statements from agricultural districts; did we allow them to be true (which assuredly they are not), such documents would prove nothing; the education in cities should be five-fold better, not only because there is five-fold opportunity, but because there is, in truth, a fivefold necessity. The contagion spreads fast in thickly-crowded towns; one infidel of talent may corrupt or disturb the faith of hundreds, and prepare the soil for the labours of the Jacobin, should he not already have united in himself both these fashionable and congenial characters. These are arguments for politicians; there are higher ones for Christians. Thousands of children never hear of God, except in the profanation of his name; very few even pass through the semblance of education; they live and die like the beasts of the field, with nothing to amend, and nothing to console them. Were their labour reduced, an hour a day might be given to learning; and the studies of the week sanctified and completed by the Sabbath-schools. But, alas! in many instances these useful institutions have been lamentably perverted; they have cloaked avarice, sheltered oppression, and cherished ignorance. Examples are not wanting where the master, who has pushed the labour of Saturday even to midnight, and commanded the renewal of it at one o'clock on Monday morning, has, during his Judaical nicety of observance, driven the unhappy children to a Sunday-school! But were the whole Sabbath honestly given, it would not be enough; some portion of every day should be placed at their disposal; and if man be not, as this system would make him, a mere animal, insensate, and irresponsible, the public is bound by duty as well as interest, to demand as his right, that he have both time and opportunity for the cultivation and exercise of his immortal part. One thing is certain-the people of the manufacturing districts, old and young, male and female, are determined that they will never be quiet until parliament grants them a ten-hours bill. How long is their cry to be trifled with? During this unhappy agitation, we can hope for nothing but suspicion, hostility, and discontent |