WORKINGS OF A GREAT COLLIERY.

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"Elizabeth M'Neil. I knew a woman who came up, and the child was born in the field next the coal hill. Women frequently miscarry below, and suffer much after."

"Jane Wood. The severe work causes women much trouble. They frequently have premature births. My neighbor, Jenny M'Donald has lain ill for six months, and William King's wife lately died from miscarriage, and a vast number of women suffer from similar causes."

The Report states that all the married women examined, (and they were many) relate their experience to the same purport. The Herald inquires “if it may not be asked, without exaggeration, whether such a system can be regarded as anything less than murderous!"

"In fact," says a very intelligent witness, Mr. William Hunter, the mining foreman of Ormiston colliery, "women always did the lifting or heavy part of the work, and neither they nor the children were treated like human beings, nor are they where they are employed. Females submit to work in places where no man, or even lad, could be got to labor in; they work on bad roads, up to their knees in water, in a posture nearly double. They are below till the last stage of pregnancy. They have swelled haunches and ankles, and are prematurely brought to the grave, or, what is worse, a lingering existence."

XXXI.

N surveying the workings of an extensive colliery under ground," says Robert Ball, Esq., the eminent coal viewer:

"a married woman came forward, groaning under an excessive weight of coals, trembling in every nerve, and almost unable to keep her knees from sinking under her. On coming up she said, in a plaintive and melancholy voice, 'Oh, sir, this is sore, sore work. I wish to God that the first woman who tried to bear coals had broken her back, and never would have tried it again.' "Now when the nature of this horrible labor is taken into consideration, the extreme severity, its regular duration of from twelve to fourteen hours daily, which, and once a week, as in the instance of J. Cumming, is extended through the whole of the night; the damp, heated, and unwholesome atmosphere, in which the work is carried on; the tender age and sex of the workers; when it is considered that such labor is performed, not in isolated instances selected to excite compassion, but that it may be regarded as the type of the every-day existence of hundreds of our fellow-creatures a picture is presented of deadly physical oppression, and systematic slavery, of which I conscientiously believe no one unacquainted with such facts would credit the existence in the British dominions."

But all this accumulation of torture and murderous outrage is not the worst part of the picture. There is a hunger of spirit worse than starvation-a nakedness of soul more repulsive than that of the body-a bondage of the mind worse than the chain of the limbs-a darkness of intellect gloomier than these deep caverns, where the light of heaven never shines on the dull and deadened.

Of the intellectual and moral degradation of the colliers, the Bishop of Norwich, in the House of Lords, said, "To this horrible physical toil extorted from them, is superadded the moral degradation to which these females are from their earliest years

350

ALL THE MEN NAKED.

exposed-associated as they are with the lowest profligacy and grossest sensuality."

"All classes of witnesses," the Report tells us, "bear the strongest testimony to the immoral effects of the practice of females working in the mines. In the southern part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, in great numbers of the coal-pits, the men work in a state of perfect nakedness, and are in this state assisted by females of all ages, from girls of six years old to women of twenty-one, these females being themselves quite naked down to the waist."

Patience Kershaw, examined by Mr. Scriven, says, "The boys take liberties with me sometimes; they pull me about. I am the only girl in the pit. There are twenty boys and fifteen All the men are naked.”

men.

In all the mines this indecency prevails to a degree very slightly mitigated in shamelessness. Mr. Thorneley, a magistrate near Barnsley, says:

"I have had forty years' experience in the management of collieries. The system of having females to work in coal-pits prevails generally in this neighborhood. I consider it to be a most awfully demoralizing practice. The youths of both sexes work often in a half-naked state, and the passions are excited before they arrive at puberty. Sexual intercourse frequently occurs in consequence. Cases of bastardy frequently also occur: and I am decidedly of opinion that women brought up in this way lay aside all modesty, and scarcely know what it is but by name. Another injurious effect arises from the modern construction of cottages, where the father, mother and children are all huddled together in one bed room; this tends to still more demoralization."

On such disgusting details we will not dwell. No doubt can remain in the mind of any person who reads the Report, that to look for chastity among such persons would be a fruitless undertaking. The lamentable fact is also proved, that the depravity of females far exceeds even that of the men.

The assertion needs no proof, that where the bodies of men are left uncared for, their souls are neglected. Baxter said, "starving men are poor theologians." The Commissioners tell us, that they examined large numbers of young persons, taken indiscriminately, in regard to their knowledge of religion: I make the following extracts to show the result. In a church school, which the Commissioners praise as superior to many, no

NO KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST.

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one, in reading the miracle of the draft of fishes, knew the meaning of the words "shores," "abundance," or "prophecies." One boy said the disciples were the people who did not go up to Jerusalem.

"Elizabeth Day, a girl of seventeen.-I don't go to Sunday school. The truth is, we are confined bad enough on week days, and want to walk about on Sundays. I can't read at all. Jesus Christ was Adam's son, and they nailed him on a tree; but I don't rightly understand these things."

"William Beaver, aged sixteen.-The Lord made the world. He sent Adam and Eve on earth to save sinners. I have heard of the Saviour; he was a good man, but he did not die here. I think Ireland is a town as big as Barnsley, where there is plenty of potatoes and lots of bullocks."

"Ann Eggley, aged eighteen.-I have heard of Christ performing miracles, but I don't know what sort of things they were. He died by their pouring fire and brimstone down his throat. I think I once did hear that he was nailed to a cross. Three times ten make twenty. There are fourteen months in the year, but I don't know how many weeks there are."

66

Bessy Bailey, aged fifteen.-Jesus Christ died for his son to be saved. I don't know who the apostles were. I don't know what Ireland is, whether it is a country or a town."

"Elizabeth Eggley, aged sixteen.-I cannot read. I do not know my letters. I don't know who Jesus Christ was. I never heard of Adam either. I never heard about them at all. I have often been obliged to stop in bed all Sunday to rest myself."

This is no one-sided view. The same state of things prevails throughout the numerous coal mines in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, South Wales, and the east of Scotland; and in all the coal mines of Great Britain a slavery and a degradation exists, unequalled in any other land. Nor is the number of its victims small. "Thousands and tens of thousands of children," says the Earl of Winchelsea, "have been destroyed in consequence of being compelled thus to breathe an atmosphere unfit for preservation of health." In Christian England these thousands of tender children are condemned to a toil which in Austria and other European states is seldom, if ever, imposed on any but criminals; and even they are treated with greater humanity. The Siberian exiles, too, are in a condition far preferable to the free miners of England.

It may be thought that all these barbarities have ceased after having been exposed. This is not true. No lasting reform of this kind, or among any of the slave classes of England, has ever yet been worked.

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EFFECTS OF THE GAME LAWS.

A

XXXII.

WORD must be said on the demoralization of the peasant classes through the Game Laws. What are the Game Laws? What are their effects? Mr. Kay sums them up:

"1. Any person, by night, unlawfully taking or destroying any game or rabbits, in any land, whether open or inclosed, or on any public road, highway, or path, on the sides thereof, or at the openings, outlets, or gates from any such land into any such public road, highway, or path, or by night unlawfully entering or being on any land, whether open or inclosed, with any gun, net, or other instrument, for the purpose of taking or destroying game, may be punished by the landlord-magistrates at petty sessions, without the intervention of a jury

"For first offence, with three months' imprisonment with hard labor, and at the expiration thereof may be required to find sureties, himself in £10, and two sureties in £5 each, or one in £10, not so to offend again for one year; and in case of not being able to find sureties, as is often the case, the poor fellow may be sent back to his felon associates in the jail for six calendar months longer.

"For a second offence, he may be imprisoned a whole year, and sureties to double the former amount may be required.

"2. Where game has been killed out of season, the offender may be sentenced, in the same manner as above, to pay £1 a head for every head of game so killed, and in default of payment, may be imprisoned for two or three calendar months.

"3. Any person selling game without a certificate, may be in the same manner sentenced to pay £2 for every head of game so sold, and in default of payment be imprisoned for two or three calendar months.

"4. Any person killing game, without having taken out a certificate, may be in the same manner sentenced to pay £5, and in default to be imprisoned for two or three calendar months. "5. Any person taking the eggs of game, without having the right to do so, may be in the same manner fined 58. per egg, and in default imprisoned for two or three calendar months. "6. Any person entering land in the day-time, in search of game, may be in the same manner fined £2, and in default of payment imprisoned for two or three calendar months.

"7. Any person killing game upon land which he occupies himself, but upon which some other person has reserved the right of shooting, may be, in the same manner, fined £2, and in addition £1 for every head of game killed or taken, and in default, may be imprisoned for two or three calendar months.

"Many of the poor fellows, who are thus imprisoned for the pardonable offence of poaching, return from the jails with all the shame and dread of a prison destroyed, with all horror of felony too often destroyed also, and with a fatal familiarization with criminals and crime. They return, to find their families too often in the work-houses, and their household furniture sold. They return, with an injured character, and with a very greatly increased difficulty of obtaining employment. Goaded on by a knowledge of these sad facts, and no longer restrained by their former dread of a prison and of the name of felon, they soon commit some greater crime than that of shooting or snaring a pheasant, and thus add to the sad length of our criminal lists, and to the numerous inmates of our crowded jails."

William Howitt, in his "Heads of the People," says: "These -the English peasants are the men that become sullen and desperate; that become poachers and incendiaries. How, and

THE DEMONIZED PEASANT.

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why? It is not plenty and kind words that make them so. What then? What makes the wolves herd together, and descend from the Alps and Pyrenees? What makes them desperate and voracious, blind with fury and revelling with vengeance? Hunger and hardship. When the English peasant is gay, at ease, well fed and clothed, what cares he how many pheasants are in a wood, or ricks in a farmer's yard? When he has a dozen backs to clothe, and a dozen mouths to feed, and nothing to put on the one, and little to put in the other, then that which seemed a mere playful puppy suddenly starts up a snarling, red-eyed monster. How sullen he grows! with what equal indifference he shoots down pheasants or gamekeepers. How the man who so recently held up his head and laughed aloud, now sneaks a villainous fiend, with the dark lantern and the match to his neighbor's rick! Monster, can this be the English peasant? 'Tis the same! The very man! But what has made him so?

What has thus demonized, thus infuriated, thus converted him into a walking pestilence? Villain as he is, is he alone to blame, or is there another ?"

THE

XXXIII.

HE following table shows the increase of offences against the Game Laws from 1839 to 1846, since when the ratio has been steadily augmenting:

In

"The great increase of late years in poaching, is a striking feature in rural crime. the three years from 1827 to 1830, no fewer than 8,502 persons were convicted under the Game Laws. The increase since that period has been startling. In 1848 the committals for this offence amounted to 4,529. In 1844-45, and up to May 1846, that is, during a period of eighteen months, the convictions were 11,372, which gives an average of 4,834 per annum.

"The peasants, who have no amusements, no gardens, no farms, and no chance of getting any, are irresistibly tempted to begin poaching. They cannot learn to regard a hare, a pheasant, or a partridge as the property of any particular person. They know that the property in them is subject to perpetual change, at the will of the creature itself. One day it is the property of