from which a paternal government would have chosen a guardian for helpless infancy, or for poverty, honest and not less helpless? Of Dr Southwood Smith, the last of the trio of the Central Board, little is known, beyond the fact, that he also is a thorough-going Benthamite, ready and reckless in carrying out theories whose substratum is pure and naked destructiveness. Such were the trio who mixed up the ingredients of the Factory Report, and seasoned the contents of the cauldron to Whig palates. In the description of the central worthy of the three we have been the more special, in order to display those peculiar qualifications for the performance of all sorts of work, which, in the Poor-Law Commission, so fitly earned for him all the eulogistic notoriety which the flash and froth of Lord Brougham's eloquence could bestow, and because also Mr Greg has challenged to the invidious task, and left no option, by his ostentatious parade of the "names and characters" constituting the unimpeachable "guarrantee" of his great authority. We shall here quit the subject, and throw the Report on which the last factory law was founded overboard for ever, as no better than an imposture, disgraceful to the parties by whom it was perpetrated; and this on their own showing. "The Report of the Factory (Central) Commissioners" (writes Mr Stuart to them, one of the district Commissioners himself, whose report was entirely suppressed), "is no more the Report of the twelve persons appointed to see things with their own eyes, and to report their observations on them, than of any twelve gentlemen whom one may by chance meet in St Pauls Churchyard. It is the Report of three gentlemen residing in London, who, for aught that appears in the Report, never visited a cotton factory nor a flax factory in their lives." With the value of that body of evidence collected by the district Commissioners, and quoted by Mr Greg as "unimpeachable, and, we believe, unimpeached," the three judges were so awfully impressed, that they cast it to the winds, or, to use their own more emphatic language, they state, that our "opinions and recommendations are not founded on that evidence;" having, as a climax of shuffling chicanery, previously published in the Spectator newspaper, which, with other journals, they were in the habit of priming, anonymously, but not unavowedly, that their "Report contained a clear and faithful analysis of the evidence, and a perfectly intelligible statement of the opinions and recommendations of the Central Board, founded on that evidence." The central penny-a-liner has not rubbed against and among thieves and thieves' attorneys at the Old Bailey for nothing; but surely a respectable man like Mr Greg should be sure of his man before he volunteers a certificate of "character."* We need offer no excuse for declining to rip up the question of the comparative health and mortality of the factory and non-factory popula tion. The common sense of the public has long passed sentence, and it is equally bad taste and wrong judgment in Mr Greg to disturb the verdict, in which, after all, the utmost industry can only encounter failure. Statistical tables, constructed upon partial or limited data, collected and applied to confined districts, influenced by local and other circumstances, such as the greater or less influx or change of adults, can be no safe criterion for decision. According to the animus of the calculator, they may almost be made to assume any shape by agents appointed and paid for the object. The late good and highly-gifted Sadler blew the bubble creations of the paid commissioners into airy nothing, and overwhelmed the puny whipsters of arithmeticians with well-merited ridicule, as Messrs Drinkwater, Baker, and Baines can testify. Greg, like all one-sided observers, omits any reference to, antagonist authorities, such as the tabular demonstrations of Mr Sadler, indisputably the most profound political economist, as well as the most ready and practically scientific mathematician of his day, nor does he once allude to the late most able and complete pub Mr The same petty larceny spirit of falsification, as if indeed in the same handwriting, is seen in the Reports of the Poor-Law Commissioners; witness the Petworth and the Cholesbury cases. VOL. XLI. NO. CCLX. 3 H lication and researches upon the question which has yet appeared, of Mr Charles Wing, surgeon to the Royal Metropolitan Hospital for Children, &c. a gentleman certainly of higher public repute than one-half of the Factory Commissioners, and as deservedly esteemed as the first in standing amongst them. The balance of credit, conceding the quality of evidence to be equal, would doubtless incline with all unbiassed people in favour of the unpaid, unbought advocates of the factory children and the factory operatives, over the paid, and with respect to certain of them, suborned opponents. We cheerfully admit, however, to their honour, that several of the Factory Commissioners rose superior to the odious nature of the service upon which they were sent, and arbitrated well and wisely between the Ministry and the poor. The proofs most incontestible of the effects of the factory system upon health and longevity must be sought in the population tables of Mr Rickman, whose results present the comparison of totals instead of fractional parts, of counties instead of towns and sections of districts. It is not denied, however the question of comparative healthiness be disputed, that the term of life is shortened by it, and that the spinner dies of premature decay. Nor is this unhappy consequence peculiar to the factory system of this country alone. Mulhausen reciprocates the fatality of Manchester. The researches of M. A. Penot, in 1828, establish the fact that the mean duration of life at Mulhausen was onefourth less than in the rest of France. Nor can this enormous difference be attributed to the unhealthiness of the climate, for the air of that town, as that of Alsace in general, is represented as clear, bracing, and generous, and it contains little more than 20,000 inhabitants. The mean term of life notwithstanding is stated at twentyfive years only, whilst for the rest of France it is about thirty-three. Mulhausen, like Manchester, is a city of cotton factories and power-looms. This precocious mortality is more particularly observable in children below ten years of age. M. L. Lev rault ascribes it to the Factory System still. He says, "C'est encore au regime des fabriques qu'il faut l'attribuer. Les femmes enceintes continuent à se rendre aux ateliers jusqu'au dernier ou à l'avant-dernier jour des couches; elles y retournent le plutôt possible, car ce n'est pas tout de donner la vie à l'enfant, il faut vivre, et à Mulhouse l'on ne peut vivre un jour qu'en travaillant tout le jour. Les malades ont tort aux yeux de l'industrie, elle ne donne ou plutôt ne vend à vivre qu'aux bienportans. . Puis, à peine dressés sur leurs débiles jambes, ces malheureux enfans ne sont que trop souvent entrainés par leurs parens à respirer près d'eux l'air malsain des ateliers." The same writer observes, that one "need not be astonished at the great number of ghastly faces, pitiful, stunted, deformed beings (êtres chétifs, rabougris, defails), which are met wandering like spectres," &c. in the town. How strikingly does the picture correspond with that drawn by Dr Hawkins, one of the Factory Commissioners! "I believe that most travellers are struck by the lowness of stature, the leanness, and the paleness, which present themselves so commonly to the eye at Manchester, and, above all, among the factory classes. I have never been in any town in Great Britain, nor in Europe, in which degeneracy of form and colour from the national standard has been so obvious." The morality of manufactures is not worth the pains of discussion. We could easily show Mr Greg that it is pretty nearly on a par in most countries, in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium, as in England. The case of the rising manufacturing town of Lowell, in Massachusetts, United States, is one apart. It is an exception arising out of a state of things of transitory duration not difficult to account for, which serves only to confirm the rule. Comparative returns of illegitimacy is the mode least conclusive of the superiority of manufacturing over agricultural habits, for physical causes may be adduced to reconcile the smallést proportion of births with the greatest possible existence of female depravity. The population (say 25,000) of Merthyr Tidvil, the capital of the great mining districts of South Wales, is equal to about one-eighth that of Manchester and Salford. It is probable (we have not the data at hand) that the bastardy ratio may be higher in the former than the latter place; but, from information and observation in both towns, we are satisfied that the pro rata of prostitution, almost indiscriminate in Manchester, is perhaps not less than fifty to one over Merthyr. On such points statistics, even if vice were officially recognised and register ed, as in Paris, can teach us little, compared with the every-day exercise of the organs of sight and hearing. Nor ought much stress to be laid on the less weighty pressure upon poor's rates and the workhouse. In concentrated communities, such as the manufacturing, benefit societies can be arranged, and do exist upon a large scale; add the allowances and expenditure of these to the poors' tax of Manchester, or any other considerable town, and the balance of saving and pauperism will diminish, or nearly disappear. Such mutual guarantee societies can rarely be established in thinly peopled agricultural districts, where therefore every man must stand by his own resources, or appeal to the common stock of the parish. With every advantage of concentration, even nothing but the higher rate of manufacturing wages could support benefit clubs; the hand-loom weavers have long been struck with the same paralysis of incapacity to that end as their rustic brethren. We have, however, been led astray from our main intent much farther than, it will have been seen, was contemplated, by the unjust aspersions and unfounded assumptions of Mr Greg, the champion of his order, and of the mill-owners; aspersions upon the supporters of the Ten Hours' bill, and of the factory children, unjust because undeserved, and betraying a lamentable lack of good feeling and forbearance; assumptions unfounded, because reposing on no more solid substratum than culled portions from so much of the reports of the Master's Factory Commission, as would suffice to eke out a case. We are willing to admit, as on former occasions we have admitted, that although cotton factory labour is, from the nature of the raw material, somewhat more injurious to health than woollen or flax spinning, yet there is no question that the infant cotton operatives have been subjected to no such appaling barbarities as were proved before the committee of Mr Sadler, and not less irrefutably before the master's commission afterwards, to be of very common occurrence in the woollen and flax mills. These, in justice be it said, were not chargeable upon the masters, but the overlookers or adult operatives. The superiority of cotton fictory regulations, however, in every respect was solely attributable to acts of Parliament, humanely, not less than judiciously framed for their government, in the benefits of which, until the act of 1831, the infant operatives in wool and flax were not admitted to participate. Having thus discharged our conscience, let us proceed to a brief review of the state and prospects of trade, with reference to the practicability of a Ten Hours' bill for labour ; we shall take the cotton trade only as being by far the most extensive of our manufactures, as well as the most sensitive, because most dependent upon the accidents of foreign demand and foreign competition, and also because we have no more than a fragment of space to dispose of. The importance of the subject with which we have to deal, in a national point of view, will be duly estimated by the following returns:— Total Exports of the Produce and Manufactures of the United Kingdom. £47,372,270 46,796,937 £22,128,304 25,019,619 more than one-half of the raw cotton imported and worked up in this country is consumed, not at home, but abroad. Thus : Mr Greg says, "three-fourths, or probably four-fifths in quantity; perhaps two thirds to three-fourths in value, would be near the truth." These calculations appear to be overcharged, if the official accounts and "Burn's Commercial Glance" are to be Total weight of Cotton imported for consumption, that is working up. 168,853,053 lbs. Left for home consumption only, It is not necessary to encumber the account with the fractional items of waste, which would not affect the result Assuming, which would not, perhaps, be much wide of the truth, that the cottons consumed in Great Britain were of equal value with the real or declared value of those exported, it would seem that the annual movement of the trade reached to the enormous money quantity of fifty millions sterling! The last, and the one preceding, having been years of extraor Cottons exported, Consumed at home, either way. dinary excitement, and an extrava gant rise in prices, must be regarded as furnishing rather an exaggerated view. Allowing, however, an abatement of one-fifth, or 20 per cent, on the amount, which will reduce the appreciation more nearly to that of ordinary times, the prodigious sum total must still excite astonishment. Forming an extraordinary circulation of values annually The manufacture gives bread to operatives and families Now, it must be admitted that this is an interest of importance so vast, that, compared with it, all others, save agriculture, seem to fade into insignificance. It is one, therefore, which should awaken all our solicitudes rather to surround it with every guarantee for its future progress, than to run the slightest risk of impairing its permanence by undue interference with those conditions of existence under which it has advanced to its pinnacle of present greatness. For it is not an industry of which, like iron, or coal, or hardware, or earthenware, or woollens, we hold the keys in our own possession, but one artificially created, dependent, and therefore at £20,000,000 20,000,000 £40,000,000 1,500,000 £20,000,000* the mercy of other continents for the very first necessary of its being. Nor, prodigious as in its dimensions it appears, and resembling more the gigantic product of the energies of a world than of an islet, is it a monopo ly which we can claim and control as our own. Its very grandeur will be the primary cause of its fall, whenever the hour of its fall arrives. It provoked the wrath and the unprofitable covetousness of Napoleon, and gave birth to the continental system; followed by the prohibitory tariffs of the Bourbons, by which alone the mighty rivalship of France was called into action. It awakened the cupidity, at the same time that it opened trusted. The quantities speak for themselves. Taking into account the more expensive quality of the goods fabricated and retained for home consumption, and coupling it with the fact of the vast proportion which yarn bears to the whole export, which may be considered an article in the first stage of manufacture only, and therefore of low comparative value, we are satisfied that the value of the home consumption of cotton equals, if it do not transcend that of the export trade. See Blackwood for March, 1836, article "Cotton Manufacture," since which the quantities consumed and values circulated have increased probably as above noted. These are the quantities, as stated in the Tableau General of commerce, the official record, and are the latest official returns published. From Mr Greg's pamphlet, however, we learn that the consumption of The increase therefore in France was more than one-seventh, whilst that of Britain was less than one-ninth. The total export of manufactured piece goods from France was, 1833, to the amount of It had risen in 1835 to 56,663,351 francs. 61,608,731 Declared value of Not having the French official reports before us for 1834, we shall pursue the comparison of the same two years for this country. British cottons exported, So that in seven years the consumption was not far away from being doubled. Within the same period the British speed was, |