had also frequent opportunities of enjoying healthy rational sports and amusements; and in consequence they became strongly attached to those on whom they depended, their services were willingly performed; and mutual good offices bound the parties by the strongest ties of human nature, to consider each other as friends in somewhat different situations; the servant indeed often enjoying more solid comfort and ease than his master.

Contrast this state of matters with that of the lower orders of the present day;-with human nature trained as it now is, under the new manufacturing system.

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In the mauufacturing districts it is common for parents to send their children of both sexes at seven or eight years age, in winter as well as summer, at six o'clock in the morning, sometimes of course in the dark, and occasionally amidst frost and snów, to enter the manufactories, which are often heated to a high temperature, and contain an atmosphere far from being the most favourable to human life, and in which all those employed in them very frequently continue until twelve o'clock at noon, when an hour is allowed for dinner, after which they return to remain, in a majority of cases, till eight o'clock at night.

The children now find they must labour incessantly for their bare subsistence: they have not been used to innocent, healthy, and rational amusements; they are not permitted the requisite time, if they had been previously accustomed to enjoy them. They know not what relaxation means, except by the actual cessation from labour. They are surrounded by others similarly circumstanced with themselves; and thus passing on from childhood to youth, they become gradually initiated, the young men in particular, but often the young females also, in the seductive pleasures of the pot house and inebriation: for which their daily hard labour, want of better habits, and the general vacuity of their minds, tend to prepare them.

Such a system of training cannot be expected to produce any other than a population weak in bodily and mental faculties, and with habits generally destructive of their own comforts, of the wellbeing of those around them, and strongly calculated to subdue all the social affections. Man so circumstanced sees all around bin hurrying forward, at a mail-coach speed, to acquire individual

wealth, regardless of him, his comforts, his wants, or even his sufferings, except by way of a degrading parish charity, fitted only to steel the heart of man against his fellows, or to form the tyrant and the slave. To-day he labours for one master, to-morrow for a second, then for a third, and a fourth, until all ties between employers and employed are frittered down to the consideration of what immediate gain each can derive from the other. The en ployer regards the employed as mere instruments of gain, while these acquire a gross ferocity of character, which, if legislative measures shall not be judiciously devised to prevent its increase, and ameliorate the condition of this class, will sooner or later plunge the country into a formidable and perhaps inextricable state of danger. The direct object of these observations is to effect the amelioration and avert the danger. The only mode by which these objects can be accomplished is to obtain an Act of Parliament,

1st. To limit the regular hours of labour in mills of machinery to 12 per day, including one hour and a half for meals. 2nd. To prevent children from being employed in mills of machinery until they shall be 10 years old, or that they shall not be employed more than 6 hours per day until they shall be 12 years old.

3rd. That children of either sex shall not be admitted into any manufactory,-after a time to be named,-until they can read and write in an useful manner, understand the first four rules of arithmetic, and the girls be likewise competent to sew their common garments of clothing. These measures, when influenced by no party feelings, or narrow mistaken notions of immediate self-interest, but considered solely in a national view, will be found to be beneficial to the child, to the parent, to the employer, and to the country. Yet as we are now trained, many individuals cannot detach general subjects from party considerations, while others can see them only through the medium of present pecuniary gain. It may thence be concluded, that individuals of various descriptions will disapprove of some, or all of these measures. I will therefore endeavour to anticipate their objections, and reply to them.

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The child cannot be supposed to make any objection to the

plans proposed: he may easily be taught to consider them, as they will prove to be by experience, essentially beneficial to him in childhood, youth, manhood, and old age.

Parents who have grown up in ignorance and bad habits, and who consequently are in poverty, may say: "We cannot afford to maintain our children until they shall be 12 years of age, without putting them to employmemt by which they may earn wages, and therefore object to that part of the plan which precludes us from sending them to manufactories until they shall be of that age." If the poorest and most miserable of the people formerly supported their children without regular employment until they were 14, why may they not now support them until they shall be 12 years old? If parents who decline this duty had not been ignorant, and trained in bad habits which render their mental faculties inferior to the instinct of many animals, they would understand that by forcing their children to labour in such situations at a premature age, they place their offspring in circumstances calculated to retard their growth, and make them peculiarly liable to bodily disease and mental injury, while they debar them the chance of acquiring that sound robust constitution, which otherwise they would possess, and without which they cannot enjoy much happiness, but must become a burthen to themselves, their friends and their country. Parents by so acting also deprive their children of the opportunity of acquiring the habits of domestic life, without a knowledge of which high nominal wages can procure them but few comforts, and without which among the working classes very little domestic happiness can be enjoyed. Children thus prematurely employed are prevented from acquiring any of the common rudiments of book learning; but in lieu of this useful and valuable knowledge, they are likely to acquire the most injurious habits by continually associating with those as ignorant and as ill instructed as themselves. And thus it may be truly said, that for every penny gained by parents from the premature labour of their offspring, they sacrifice not only future pounds, but also the future health, comfort and good conduct of their children; and unless this pernicious system shall be arrested by the introduction of a better, the evil is likely to extend, and become worse through every succeeding generation.

I do not anticipate any objection from employers to the age

named for the admittance of children into their manufactories; or to children being previously trained in good habits, and the rudiments of common learning; for, upon an experience abundantly sufficient to ascertain the fact, I have uniformly found it to be more profitable to admit children to constant daily employment at 10 years old, than at any earlier period; and that those children, or adults, who had been the best taught, made the best servants, and were by far the most easily directed to do every thing that was right and proper for them to perform. The proprietors of expensive establishments may object to the reduction of the now customary hours of labour. The utmost extent however of their argument is, that the rent or interest of capital expended in forming the establishment is chargeable on the quantity of its produce; -and if, instead of being permitted to employ their work-people within their manufactories so long as human nature can be tempted to continue its exertions, say for 14 or 15 hours per day, they shall be restricted to 12 hours of labour per day from their work-people, then the prime cost of the article which they manufacture will be increased by the greater proportion of rent or interest which attaches to the smaller quantity produced. If, however, this law shall be, as it is proposed, general over England, Scotland and Ireland, whatever difference may ultimately arise in the prime cost of the articles produced in these manufactories, will be borne by the consumers, and not by the proprietors of such establishments. And, in a national view, that labour which is exerted 12 hours per day will be obtained more economically than if stretched to a longer period. I doubt, however, whether any manufactory, so arranged, as to occupy the hands employed in it 12 hours per day, will not produce its fabric, even to the immediate proprietor, nearly if not altogether as cheap as those in which the exertions of the employed are continued to 14 or 15 hours per day. Should this, however, not prove to be the case to the extent mentioned, the improved health, the comforts, useful acquirements of the popula tion, and the diminution of poor's-rates naturally consequent on this change in the manners and habits of the people, will amply compensate to the country for a mere fractional addition to the primé cost of any commodity. And is it to be imagined that the British Government will ever put the chance of a trivial pecuniary

gain of a few, in competition with the solid welfare of so thatty millions of human beings? The employer cannot be injured by being obliged so to act towards his labourers as, for the interest of the country, he should act. Since the general introduction of expensive machinery, human nature has been forced far beyond its average strength; and much, very much private misery and public injury are the consequences.

It is indeed a measure more to be deplored in a national view than almost any other that has occurred for many centuries past. It has deranged, the domestic habits of the great mass of the people. It has deprived them of the time in which they might acquire instruction, or enjoy rational amusements. It has robbed them of their substantial advantages, and, by leading them into habits of the pot-house and inebriation, it has poisoned all their social comforts.

Shall we then make laws to imprison, transport, or condemn to death, those who purloin a few shillings of our property, injure any of our domestic animals, or even a growing twig; and shall we not make laws to restrain those, who otherwise will not be restrained, in their desire for gain, from robbing, in the pursuit of it, millions of our fellow-creatures of their health, their time for acquiring knowledge and future improvement,-of their social comforts, and of every rational enjoyment? This system of proceeding cannot continue long ;-it will work its own cure by the practical evils which it creates, and that in a most dangerous way to the public welfare, if the Government shall not give it a proper direction.

The public, however, are perhaps most interested in that part of the plan which recommends the training and educating of the lower orders under the direction and at the expense of the country. And it is much to be wished that the extended substantial advantages to be derived from this measure, were more generally considered and understood, in order that the mistaken ideas which now exist regarding it, in the most opposite quarters, may be entirely. removed.

"A slight general knowledge of the past occurrences of the world, with some experience of human nature, as it appears in the little sects and parties around us, is sufficient to make it evident to those, not very much misinstructed from infancy, that children may be