the abuse be what it may. They are too ignorant to understand their rights, and too weak to assert them; they are trained up to one single branch of labour, and forever disqualified for everything else; they are neither instructed in science, religion, nor the common business and economy of life. Dr. Southey relates the following conversation with the proprietor of a mill in Manchester:

"We are well off for hands in Manchester,' said Mr. ; 'manufactures are favourable to population; the poor are not afraid of having a family here; the parishes, therefore, have always plenty to apprentice, and we take them as fast as they can supply us. In new manufacturing towns they find it difficult to get a supply. Their only method is to send people round the country to get children from their parents. Women usually undertake this business; they promise the parents to provide for the children; one party is glad to be eased of a burden, and it answers well to the other to find the young ones in food, lodging, and clothes, and receive their wages.' 'But if these children should be ill used?' said I. Sir,' he replied, 'it can never be the interest of the women to use them ill, nor of the manufacturer to permit it." "

And so it could be said, that it is never for the interest of men to do wrong, and oppress their fellow-men. It is not for the interest of the English government, if they understood their true policy, to endanger the stability of the throne or the safety of

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the people; to enrage the lower classes by unjust legislation. It was not for the interest of Charles I. to urge the nation into a revolution, as his own headless trunk testified while it lay upon the scaffold by the upper window of Whitehall Palace. If there be a class of persons obtained for selfish purposes, and reduced to the condition of mere instruments in the hands of their masters, it is the English apprentices.

Some years ago the cruelties inflicted upon factory children aroused the indignation of several distinguished individuals, who brought the matter before Parliament; and the Reports of the Investigating Committees, as well as facts brought out by others interested in the matter, convincingly show that the most shocking inhumanities are practised upon these poor children.

I will extract a few paragraphs from one of these Reports.

Evidence of Eliza Marshall.- "Eliza Marshall lives at Leeds; worked at Mars: all's factory. Am seventeen years old. Father dead. Sister and self did what we could to support mother. Have cried many an hour in the factory. Could scarcely get home; sometimes had to be 'trailed home. I have an iron on my right leg, and my knee is contracted. Worked in great pain and misery. I was straight before. Sister carried me up to bed many a time. The surgeon says it is with long standing at the mill, and that the marrow is quite dried up, and will never be formed again."

Evidence of Stephen Binns." Stephen Binns stated, I have worked in Mr. Marshall's factory. The work produces deformity. It lames the children. The work exacted from the children is all that can possibly be done. It cannot be done without resorting to flogging. It is an offence for any one to speak to another. The water used for hot spinning is heated to 110 or 120 degrees. The children have almost continually to plunge their hands and arms in that water. The heat of the rooms and the steam almost macerate their bodies, and their clothes are steamed and wet. If they fall sick, they are turned adrift directly, without wages, without provision. If a girl complain of ill-usage, she is discharged immediately, without any redress. The present system is ruining the rising generation. It is sacrificing the children for a paltry consideration!"

Evidence of Samuel Downe.-" Samuel Downe. I was ten years o'd when I began to work at Mr. Marshall's mill at Shrewsbury. We began at five in the morning, and worked till eight at night. The engine never stopped, except forty minutes at dinner-time. The children were kept awake by a blow or a box. Very considerable severity was used in that mill. I was strapped most severely till I could not bear to sit upon a chair without having pillows; and I was forced to lie upon my face in bed at one time, and through that I left. I was strapped on my legs, and then I was put upon

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a man's back and strapped, and then I was strapped and buckled with two straps to an iron pillar and flogged. After that the overlooker took a piece of tow, twisted it in the shape of a cord, and put in my mouth, and tied it behind my head; he thus gagged me. We were thus beaten. We were never allowed to sit down. Young women were beaten as well as young men."

Evidence of an Overlooker." The overlooker examined says: he walks around the room with a stick in his hand, and if a child falls drowsy over his work, he touches that child on the shoulder, and conducts it to an iron cistern which is filled with water. He then takes the child (heedless of sex) by the legs, and dips it overhead in the cistern, and sends it to its work. In that condition the child labours for the remainder of the day. That is the punishment for drowsiness! * * * * We have a vast number of cripples. Some are cripples from losing their limbs, many from standing too long. It first begins with a pain in the ankle; after that they will ask the overlooker to let them sit down; but they must not. Then they begin to be weak in the knee, then knock-kneed; after that their feet turn out, they become splay-footed, and their ankles swell as big as my fists. I know many deformed in the manner described."

Evidence of David Bywater.-" Were you afterward taken to the steaming department?" "Yes." "At what age?" "I believe I was turned thirteen

then." "Is that a laborious department ?"

"Yes."

"At what age were you when you entered upon the night-work?" "I was nearly fourteen."

"Will you you endured when you were put upon long hours, and the night-work was added ?"

state to the committee the labour which

"I started at one o'clock on Monday morning, and went on till twelve o'clock on Tuesday night." "You say you were taken to be a steamer; are not very stout, healthy youth usually selected for that purpose?"

*

"Yes; the overlooker said he thought I should be the strongest." * "Were you perfect in your limbs when you undertook that long and excessive labour?" "Yes, I was." "What effect did it produce upon you?" "It brought a weakness on me: I felt my knees quite ache." "Had you pain in your limbs and all over your body?" "Yes." "Show what effect it had upon your limbs." "It made me very crooked" (here the witness showed his knees and legs). "Are your thighs also bent?" "Yes, the bone is quite bent."

"How long was it after you had to endure this long labour before your limbs felt in that way?" "I was very soon told of it before I found it out myself."

"What did they tell you?" "They told me I was getting very crooked in my knees; my mother found it out first."

"What did she say about it?" "She said I should kill myself with working this long time."