Part 10

"But where," says the member for the University of Oxford, "are you to stop, if once you admit into the House of Commons people who deny the authority of the Gospels? Will you let in a Mussulman? Will you let in a Parsee? Will you let in a Hindoo, who worships a lump of stone with seven heads? I will answer my honourable friend's question by another. Where does he mean to stop? Is he ready to roast unbelievers at slow fires? If not, let him tell us why: and I will engage to prove that his reason is just as decisive against the intolerance which he thinks a duty, as against the intolerance which he thinks a crime. Once admit that we are bound to inflict pain on a man because he is not of our religion; and where are you to stop? Why stop at the point fixed by my honourable friend rather than at the point fixed by the honourable member for Oldham,[7] who would make the Jews incapable of holding land? And why stop at the point fixed by the honourable member for Oldham rather than at the point which would have been fixed by a Spanish Inquisitor of the sixteenth century? When once you enter on a course of persecution, I defy you to find any reason for making a halt till you have reached the extreme point. When my honourable friend tells us that he will allow the Jews to possess property to any amount, but that he will not allow them to possess the smallest political power, he holds contradictory language. Property is power. The honourable member for Oldham reasons better than my honourable friend. The honourable member for Oldham sees very clearly that it is impossible to deprive a man of political power if you suffer him to be the proprietor of half a county, and therefore very consistently proposes to confiscate the landed estates of the Jews. But even the honourable member for Oldham does not go far enough. He has not proposed to confiscate the personal property of the Jews. Yet it is perfectly certain that any Jew who has a million may easily make himself very important in the state. By such steps we pass from official power to landed property, and from landed property to personal property, and from property to liberty, and from liberty to life. In truth, those persecutors who use the rack and the stake have much to say for themselves. They are convinced that their end is good; and it must be admitted that they employ means which are not unlikely to attain the end. Religious dissent has repeatedly been put down by sanguinary persecution. In that way the Albigenses were put down. In that way Protestantism was suppressed in Spain and Italy, so that it has never since reared its head. But I defy anybody to produce an instance in which disabilities such as we are now considering have produced any other effect than that of making the sufferers angry and obstinate. My honourable friend should either persecute to some purpose, or not persecute at all. He dislikes the word persecution I know. He will not admit that the Jews are persecuted. And yet I am confident that he would rather be sent to the King's Bench Prison for three months, or be fined a hundred pounds, than be subject to the disabilities under which the Jews lie. How can he then say that to impose such disabilities is not persecution, and that to fine and imprison is persecution? All his reasoning consists in drawing arbitrary lines. What he does not wish to inflict he calls persecution. What he does wish to inflict he will not call persecution. What he takes from the Jews he calls political power. What he is too good-natured to take from the Jews he will not call political power. The Jew must not sit in parliament: but he may be the proprietor of all the ten pound houses in a borough. He may have more fifty pound tenants than any peer in the kingdom. He may give the voters treats to please their palates, and hire bands of gipsies to break their heads, as if he were a Christian and a marquess. All the rest of this system is of a piece. The Jew may be a juryman, but not a judge. He may decide issues of fact, but not issues of law. He may give a hundred thousand pounds damages; but he may not in the most trivial case grant a new trial. He may rule the money market: he may influence the exchanges: he may be summoned to congresses of emperors and kings. Great potentates, instead of negotiating a loan with him by tying him in a chair and pulling out his grinders, may treat with him as with a great potentate, and may postpone the declaring of war or the signing of a treaty till they have conferred with him. All this is as it should be: but he must not be a Privy Councillor. He must not be called Right Honourable, for that is political power. And who is it that we are trying to cheat in this way? Even Omniscience. Yes, Sir; we have been gravely told that the Jews are under the divine displeasure, and that if we give them political power God will visit us in judgment. Do we then think that God cannot distinguish between substance and form? Does not he know that, while we withhold from the Jews the semblance and name of political power, we suffer them to possess the substance? The plain truth is that my honourable friend is drawn in one direction by his opinions, and in a directly opposite direction by his excellent heart. He halts between two opinions. He tries to make a compromise between principles which admit of no compromise. He goes a certain way in intolerance. Then he stops, without being able to give a reason for stopping. But I know the reason. It is his humanity. Those who formerly dragged the Jew at a horse's tail, and singed his beard with blazing furzebushes, were much worse men than my honourable friend; but they were more consistent than he."

STRIKES (1834).

=Source.=--Duke of Buckingham's _Memoirs of the Courts of William IV. and Victoria_, Vol. II. p. 84. London, 1861.

On the 28th, [April] there was a strike of the London journeymen tailors, numbering thirteen thousand. Their masters came to a determination not to employ men belonging to trades unions, and after a few weeks, the journeymen were content to return to their work on those terms.

These trades unions and their strikes were becoming an insufferable nuisance; nevertheless, no proper effort was made to put them down. The mischief they created was well known to the Government,[8] their interference with trade, their atrocious oaths, impious ceremonies, desperate tyranny, and secret assassinations, had been brought under their observation; but Ministers could not be stirred to any exhibition of energy for the protection either of the manufacturer, the workman, or the public.

Even the following powerful appeal was addressed to them without effect:

"Those whose lives and property have been endangered by these illegal associations have a right to call on Government to employ some additional means for their suppression. Those who wish for the prosperity of our trade, and what is of far more importance, the prosperity and happiness of the working-classes, should equally desire their extinction. Those who hate oppression should give their suffrages for the putting down these most capricious and irresponsible of all despotism. They are alike hurtful to the workmen who form them, to the capitalists who are the objects of their hostility, and to the public who more remotely feel their effects. Were we asked to give a definition of a trades union, we should say that it is a society whose constitution is the worst of democracies, whose power is based on outrage, whose practice is tyranny, and whose end is self-destruction."

AGITATION FOR REFORM OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS (1835).

=Source.=--Martineau's _History of the Peace_, Vol. III. pp. 254-5. Bohn's Libraries. G. Bell & Sons.

_Speech by Mr. O'Connell at Edinburgh, 1835._

"We achieved but one good measure this last session; but that was not our fault; for the 170 tyrants of the country prevented us from achieving more. Ancient Athens was degraded for submitting to thirty tyrants; modern Athens will never allow 170 tyrants to rule over her.... It was stated in one of the clubs, that at one time a dog had bitten the bishop, whereupon a noble lord, who was present, said, 'I will lay any wager that the bishop began the quarrel.' Now, really the House of Lords began the quarrel with me. They may treat me as a mad dog if they please; I won't fight them; but I will treat them as the Quaker treated the dog which had attacked him. 'Heaven forbid,' said he, 'that I should do thee the slightest injury, I am a man of peace, and I will not hurt thee'; but when the dog went away, he cried out, 'Mad dog! mad dog!' and all the people set upon him. Now, that is my remedy with the House of Lords. I am more honest than the Quaker was; for the dog that attacked me is really mad. Bills were rejected in the House of Lords simply because Daniel O'Connell supported them; and I do say, that if I had any twelve men on a jury on a question of lunacy, I would put it to such jury to say if such men were not confirmed madmen. So you perceive the dog is really mad--and accordingly I have started on this mission to rouse the public mind to the necessity of reforming the House of Lords; and I have had 50,000 cheering me at Manchester, and 100,000 cheering me in Newcastle; and I heard one simultaneous cry, 'Down with the mad dogs, and up with common sense!' The same cry has resounded through Auld Reekie. The Calton Hill and Arthur's Seat re-echoed with the sound; and all Scotland has expressed the same determination to use every legitimate effort to remove the House of Lords. Though the Commons are with us, yet the House of Lords are against us; and they have determined that they will not concede a portion of freedom which they can possibly keep back. Sir Robert Peel, the greatest humbug that ever lived, and as full of political and religious cant as any man that ever canted in this canting world--feeling himself quite safe on his own dunghill, says that we want but one chamber--one House of radical reformers. He knew that in saying this he was saying what was not true. We know too well the advantage of double deliberation not to support two Houses; but they must be subject to popular control; they must be the servants, not the masters, of the people."

THE FACTORY SYSTEM (1836).

=Source.=--_The Curse of the Factory System_, by John Fielden, M.P. London, 1836.

"Oldham, 25th February, 1836.

"Sir,

"I am instructed by the Master Spinners and Manufacturers in this Township to forward you the inclosed copy of a Memorial, the original of which has this day been forwarded to John Frederick Lees, Esq., one of the Members for this Borough, for presentation to the Lords of His Majesty's Privy Council for Trade, and to solicit your assistance and influence in obtaining an alteration of the present Factory Regulation Act.

"I am, Sir,

"Your obedient Servant,

"KAY CLEGG.

"John Fielden, Esq., M.P.

"House of Commons, London."

"_To the Right Honourable the Lords of His Majesty's Privy Council for Trade, etc., etc._

"The Memorial of the Undersigned Mill-owners, Occupiers of Mills, Master-Spinners, and Manufacturers of the Township of Oldham, in the County of Lancaster.

"Showeth,

"That an Act of Parliament was made and passed in the third and fourth years of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled 'An Act to regulate the labour of children and young persons in the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom.'

"That the eighth section of the said Act enacts 'That after the expiration of thirty months from the passing of such Act it shall not be lawful for any person whatsoever to employ, keep, or allow to remain, in any factory or mill for a longer period than forty-eight hours in any one week, any child who shall not have completed his or her thirteenth year of age.'

"That the said Act has prohibited the employment of children under twelve years of age for more than nine hours in any one day since the first day of March one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five, and such prohibition has tended greatly to injure the interests both of your Memorialists and the parents of such children, without any advantage resulting to the children themselves.

"That your Memorialists are looking forward with great anxiety and alarm to the situation in which they will be placed on the first day of March next, by the working of children under thirteen years of age being restricted to forty-eight hours in one week, for that such restriction will have the effect of throwing all children under thirteen years of age wholly out of employment, and will render it impossible for your Memorialists to work their respective mills with advantage, in proof whereof your Memorialists confidently appeal to the Factory Inspectors of this district for the truth of their assertion.

"That your Memorialists are far from wishing a total repeal of the provisions of the said Factory Act, but humbly submit that it is absolutely necessary to the carrying on of the cotton trade with advantage, to allow the employment of children of eleven years of age for sixty-nine hours a week.

"That your Memorialists approve of the principle of appointing responsible superintendents over the mills and factories of the United Kingdom, and are favourable to a restriction of the employment of young persons under twenty-one years of age to sixty-nine hours in the week.

"Your Memorialists, therefore, pray that a Bill may be forthwith introduced by his Majesty's Government, which shall prevent the latter part of the above-mentioned section from coming into operation on the first of March next, and which shall permit children of eleven years of age to be employed for sixty-nine hours per week in the mills and factories of the United Kingdom."

This memorial is signed by seventy-two mill-owners, but I do not think it necessary to publish their names. The following is the answer that I returned to Mr. Clegg:

"London, February 29, 1836.

"Sir,

"I have received your letter of the 27th, and a copy of the memorial sent to Mr. Lees.

"The prayer of the Memorialists, that young children between eleven and thirteen years of age should be allowed to work in factories sixty-nine hours in the week instead of forty-eight hours a week, which the law now prescribes, is so revolting to my feelings, and so opposed to my views of the protection such children are entitled to, that I must decline supporting the prayer of the Memorialists.

"The work-people have long petitioned that the maximum of time for those under twenty-one should be fifty-eight hours per week. This I should be glad to see adopted, as an experiment, and would support such a proposition by my vote; but I do not think the restriction is sufficient.

"I am embarked in the same business with the Memorialists. I have had long experience in it. I have paid great attention to this question; and, after mature consideration of it, I am convinced that eight hours work per day, in factories, is as long as ought to be exacted from either children or adults, and I am of opinion, too, that such a regulation, combined with a daily system of training and instruction, would be more advantageous both to masters and servants, than the regulation now in practice. But the subject is so important, and is likely to be brought under the consideration of Parliament so soon, that I propose to publish my opinions, and the reasons for those opinions, and the conclusions I have come to on this question, in reply to the Memorialists.

"I am, Sir,

"Your obedient Servant,

"JOHN FIELDEN.

"Klay Clegg, Esq., Oldham."

THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN.

=Source.=--_The Curse of the Factory System_, by John Fielden, M.P. London, 1836.

The Commissioners have given a short summary in pp. 26 to 28 of their report, of the "Effects of Factory Labour on Children," from which I make the extracts following. It is taken, it appears, from the mouths of the children themselves, their parents, and their overlookers.

The account of the child, when questioned, is:

"Sick-tired, especially in the winter nights; so tired she can do nothing; feels so tired she throws herself down when she gangs home, no caring what she does; often much tired, and feels sore, standing so long on her legs; often so tired she could not eat her supper; night and morning very tired; has two sisters in the mill; has heard them complain to her mother, and she says they must work; whiles I do not know what to do with myself; as tired every morning as I can be."

Another speaks in this way:

"Many a time has been so fatigued that she could hardly take off her clothes at night, or put them on in the morning; her mother would be raging at her, because when she sat down she could not get up again through the house; thinks they are in bondage; no much better than the Israelites in Egypt, and life no pleasure to them; so tired that she can't eat her supper, nor wake of herself."

The Commissioners say the evidence of parents is generally this:

"Her children come home so tired and worn out they can hardly eat their supper; has often seen her daughter come home so fatigued that she would go to bed supperless; has seen young workers absolutely oppressed, and unable to sit down or rise up."

They say that the evidence of the overlooker is:

"Children are very often tired and stiff-like; have known children hide themselves in the stove among the wool, so that they should not go home when the work is over; have seen six or eight fetched out of the stove and beat home; beat out of the mill, however; they hide because too tired to go home."

Again, an overlooker says:

"Many a one I have had to rouse, when the work is very slack, from fatigue; the children very much jaded when worked late at night; the children bore the long hours very ill indeed; after working eight or nine or ten hours, they were nearly ready to faint; some were asleep; some were only kept awake by being spoke to, or by a little chastisement, to make them jump up. I was obliged to chastise them when they were almost fainting, and it hurt my feelings; then they would spring up and work pretty well for another hour; but the last two or three hours was my hardest work, for they then got so exhausted."

Another child says:

"She often falls asleep while sitting, sometimes standing; her little sister falls asleep, and they wake her by a cry; was up at four this morning, which made her fall asleep at one, when the Factory Commissioners came to inspect the mill."

A spinner says:

"I find it difficult to keep my piecers awake the last hours of a winter's evening; have seen them fall asleep, and go on performing their work with their hands while they were asleep, after the billey had stopped, when their work was over; I have stopped and looked at them for two minutes, going through the motions of piecening when they were fast asleep, when there was no work to do, and they were doing nothing; children at night are so fatigued that they are asleep often as soon as they sit down, so that it is impossible to wake them to sense enough to wash themselves, or even to eat a bit of supper, being so stupid in sleep."

In alluding to the cruelty of parents, who suffer their children to be overworked in factories for their own gain, as spoken of in the Report of the Board of Health in Manchester, and above-quoted, the Commissioners say that

"It is not wholly unknown in the West Riding of Yorkshire for parents to carry their children to the mills in the morning on their backs, and to carry them back again at night."

And, further, that

"It appears in evidence that sometimes the sole consideration by which parents are influenced in making choice of a person under whom to place their children, is the amount of wages, not the mode of treatment, to be secured to them."

If this is not enough to show that there were grounds for the further protection, I will now refer to the same Report of the Commissioners, to show, that from Scotland the details are full as affecting, and even more disgusting. At page 18 (Report) the Commissioners open with these words:

"Had the fact not been established by indubitable evidence, everyone must have been slow to credit, that in this age and country the proprietors of extensive factories could have been indifferent to the well-being of their work-people to such a degree as is implied in the following statements":

In page 41 an half-overseer gives this evidence:

"Does not like the long hours; he is very tired and hoarse at night; and that some of the young female workers in his, the spinning flat, have so swelled legs, one in particular, from standing so long, about seventeen years old, that she can hardly walk; that various of them have their feet bent in and their legs crooked from the same cause."

In short, so universal is this complaint of "sair tired," and of swelled legs, ankles, feet, hands, and arms, that it almost seems as if one voice spoke the facts; for if we find them varied, it is only here and there by touches like the above, so true to nature, that one would think they must pierce even the most callous and avaricious man to the very core. In one page we find a little child of eight years old complaining that she is "sair tired" every night, and has no time _for going to play_.

"That, at the age when children suffer these injuries from the labour they undergo, they are not _free agents_, but are _let out to hire_, the wages they earn being received and appropriated by their parents and guardians, and therefore they think that a case is made out for the interference of the legislature in behalf of the children employed in factories"--p. 32.

THE POLICE (1836).

=Source.=--_Treatise on the Magistracy of England_, by Edward Mullins. London, 1836.

_Commissioners' Report on Police._

"The constable is most commonly an uneducated person, from the class of petty tradesmen or mechanics, and in practice is usually nominated by his predecessor on going out of office. No inquiry takes place into his qualification or fitness for the office, and indeed he is said to be often the person in the parish the most likely to break the peace. So common is it for the constable to be unable to write or read, that an improper fee is often charged upon that ground by the Magistrate's clerk, 'for making out the constable's bill for conveyance to gaol.'

"'The manner of appointing constables, in my opinion,' says a correspondent, 'might be advantageously altered, for the court leet jury and steward being irresponsible parties, and the jurymen (vulgarly called Tom-fool's men) not liking the burthen themselves, often appoint persons of _bad character_, and sometimes for the purpose of keeping them off the parish.' If respectable persons are sometimes chosen at the Leet, they 'find substitutes for a _small sum_, and these deputies blunder through the year, and when they are most wanted are never to be found.' What integrity or propriety of conduct can there be expected from one whose necessity renders every shilling that is offered him an irresistible temptation?