The Sun.
London, England, 1853-12-14 00:00:00

this terrible system still remains. The order of industry
is reversed in the manufacturing districts. Human
beings do not toil that they may live, but seem to live
only that they may toil. Health, strength, moral 'cul-
ture, intellectual improvement, all are sacrificed to the
one consideration—how much work can be got out of
the human frame ?. The flesh, and blood, and sinews of
our fellow-beings are estimated exactly as so lunch iron
and wood ; as for the minds and souls of the workmen,
they are as little thought of as_ if their flesh, and blood,
and sinews, constituted, in reality, nothing but machines.
The time is come when the Legislature must interfere
to regulate the entire of this !'system, which is now at-
tended with such fearful results. Millowners must
not. be . permitted to slay their thousands and tens
of thousands every year without check or control.
Men may prate as they will about the laws of politi-
cal economy, but there are laws of God and our
nature to which at least some respect is due. Here we
have a social system which condemns hundreds of thou-
sands of our noble population to earn their bread by a
labour which shortens their existence, and consigns them
to an early grave. The selfishness of man will tell us
that we have nothing to do with this—that it is the prin.
ciple of supply and demands the proportion of capital to
lahourseutirestricted competition—or reply in some one
other of the forms in which the cruel gangers of a false
philosophy appeal at once to the wickedness and the . in-
dolence of our nature. 'Political economy will repeat
the primmval excuse for the priuueval murder, and
teach society to, ask, " Ain i my brother's keeper ?" The
very Occasion on which the sentence was tittered which
has drawn out these remarks:., an answer. What brought
Baron Alderson to Liverpool? Exactly because society
has assumed a guardianship over the factory workers.
The millowners are now engaged in a tremendous
struggle to teach the factory workers that they are en-
tirely in their masters' hands. This is the plain meaning
of those enormous efforts by which a combination of
millowners on •one side is now endeavouring to break
down a combination of workmen on the other. In the
contest between labour and capital, which is now agitat-
ing our manufacturing districts, there is no other prin-
ciple involved but this—Can the masters absolutely dic-
tate their own terms to those whom they employ? Sup-
pose the masters to succeed, their power to do so is
established. But it is enough for our purpose to say that
they assert that right. A few hundreds of men—not
the most amiable—not the best educated—not the most
generous in the community, assert an absolute power
of determining the conditions upon which hundreds- of
thousands of our people shall work. - Thisis practically
the power now asserted by the conspiracy of the mill-
owners ; they are starving their dependents into submis-
sion ; they combine for the purpose of forcing their
workmen to accept implicitly their own terms. Their
b tt yo rtahnen yw
oi is
kai
nb saonl
_u t e“ andt
zueni
tic oe nt twork rolled.
as Ti
ohnegy
assay,
ay r in fact,
we please,
land for 'whatever wages we please, or you must starve.
This is the short and quick logic of these cotton lords—
a logic which their oppressed victims are, we fear in-
effectually, attempting to answer by strikes.'
It is impossible not to look to the practical effects of
the exercise of this power. We must remember that,
even partially controlled by acts of Parliament, these
men have yet so arranged the conditions of factory em-
ployment that under it human life wastes away. Eight
or nine years is a period sufficient to consume a genera.
tion of its victims, and in each cycle of the duration a
new supply of human sacrifices is offered to the Moloch
that is the god of the manufacturer. On the part of the
workers there is no power of resisting. This is the as.
sertion of the masters. This is the substance and the
meaning of all those homilies which are so condescend.
ingly addressed to the working classes upon the truths
of political economy and the folly of strikes. To this
one proposition they all in the end resolve themselves.
You must take whatever your masters think proper to
give yon, and to question it is only running your head
against the wall. If this be not the meaning of these
philosophical lessons, they have no meaning at all. The
rate of wages must be fixed by the masters. This is the
great law which is enunciated under every one of these
specious forms.
....

If there be truth in this it is impossible for any exer-
tion or any conduct of the working people to remedy the
state of things to which Baron Alderson bears such fear-
ful testimony. We may explicitly rely on human avarice
and human cruelty to continue the system as it is, as
long as millowners have the power. Contract is out of
the question—competition, practically, does not exist.
Strikes, we are told, are a species of contest in which the
master is sure to get the better. What, then, is to be
done ? Either the Legislature must interfere, or we
must submit to the perpetuity of a state of things in
which we sacrifice the souls and bodies of our working
population that a few capitalists may make rapid and
enormous gains ; under which we doom to a miserable
existence and a premature decay our fellow-creatures,
whom an All-wise Creator sent upon this earth for other
purposes than to toil away their health and strength in
the forced exertions which the avarice of the mill-
owners demands.

To the statement of Baron Alderson we earnestly
implore the attention of our readers, and to the reflec-
tions of the philanthropist and the Christian we leave
the fearful fact, that we are doing all we can to encou-
rage and extend in our land a system under which
human life—and young life—is wasted away in eight or
nine years—a system which condemns each year a large
proportion of our population to a tyramly that spares
neither age nor sex—that tasks the woman and the babe
—that exacts from its victims a toil that has neither re•
gard for physical health, nor mental culture, nor religious
training. This is the factory system of England. The
nation must regulate that system, or as sure as the world
is governed by the laws of moral retribution, that system
will destroy the nation.

WHAT EMIGRANTS SHOULD DO OR
THEIR ARRIVAL IN CANADA.

The difficulties of an emigrant on first landing are not
those which an uninformed imagination would be apt to-
paint. Canada is no longer a new province with little
means of absorbing labour : she is far advanced, and her '
power of absorption far exceeds the quantity of labour
likely to be thrown upon her shores in any particular
year. An English, Irish, or Scotch emigrant, of the
labouring class, is safe enough, if on landing at Quebec
he has sufficient means to carry him to the old settlements
!of Upper Canada or the neighbourhood of those railroad
enterprises everywhere going on. A few dollars will
suffice for each individual ; and every able-bodied man is
certain of obtaining immediate employment at 4 shillings .
!sterling a day, and more on the railways and other public -
!works. As the ultimate object of_ every emigrant ac•'
fcustomed to agricultural lab Our should be to become
the farmer of his own land, he cannot too soon begin to
acquire that knowledge which he will find essential in
:his vocation. There is necessarily a wide difference in the mode of farming here from that pursued in an old
'country ; and the poorer the settler the greater will he
'tfionrdalthat
emigrants,differe
difference
ewithout o
It
most be the fate of all agricul-
hour, to clear the land oft hietrs ' r
forestse s o urc. e s
This
sn
itheir
sill a• :
emigrants a new Occupation ; and it is better that every ;
emigrant should learn something of this-and similar new '
etiecowunpatt
io° ns
clear by
he work working for another before
,he : settles
the emigeroanuntt
asa araf.alrrn on his own account. the
that will b 17
h of time
in the mai rhoaraddlyorreamna.4?agricrulitenurgat_ labourer,r,
e useful to him as a settler on his
own land hereafter. As a farm-labourer the know-
ledgewithout acquiring knowledge
kind; but many would at first obtain better. remunera-
tionallhe will acquire will be of the most useful
as railroad labourers. There is oneh Nt,hel nag whichdesire to
emigrants of the labouring class who
Main object of all voluntary emigration
and towns as
better their condition—and that. wet atuak_e.
sthooubled thebe
careful to do : they should shun
faorthleifree,;tlemntchifatnhceeys
will betmereis,uboo
reason in the world why
tolaeoense otfhesyettlernent. If theyll urreenmrsai
go to the counttry,eeohmeree
independent farmers, owning
hey
should no b
niuch real independence .
of
land
rk
settle-
see p i
00 o r 200 acres
as can land,
well
fallan d
to
ntjhoey ilnogt, aosf,
,_
114: i eeb nwt:c iandehnist whateverd-t oree tr]
earned
et d s
man. The
gagrictuolbt
object
tl etnigorbatnatinsiluioguld
Oa s eulhe does should always be made
affident to`fitty an instalment on
I When the emigrant has spent a year or two in the
country, ai.i
me
Thevaluable
worth know-
ledgeo f this
pr e i. min a r y knowledge can hardly be over-estimated. - It
land,
lieto aN's.jslilsttlhiiesnftilitaLeeoobptearainteidonsso.
iii more valuable than a considerable amount of ready
cash. The emigrant who brings a small capital with
him, and goes to work as a farmer, on his old coup-
tly- plans, instead of waiting to learn the methods
filch experience has proved to be profitable here,
In such Wises
which th
1 i ..31most sure to- miscarry ; while he who brings not. -
1
pital, but his labour, and is, therefore, necessitated •••_
ti• accustom himself to the prevalent modes of
*ming, almost invariably succeeds.
failure is almost unknown. The 'terms on
In
thei g r abbe st i l
Government disposes of the public lands are e - •
i'Thend s
in
n price a ah- °e
stc
o varies ..' ,
firnonpta6gseo.
tuos
stso.
ataheaci)reo,ofrore
tg, or indeed in the world. Of
only one-tenth is required clown '- the purchase money
payable in nine annual instalments. purchase
being
give the emigrant a great adva t These conditionsg denied in the United States vihn age) ,which. Would
re
sold exclusively for cash: , , ere the '
public_nd, "
are being demonstrated i Tae capabilities of Our ail 'III
rapid increase of our n yemarkable way by soil rig
which article we shall, exports, pa,rtieulari f ''' •e 14
United States. • as export Y(3 Wilea‘ in
ers, soon outdo the '
If it is important for the :' r
bred to agriculture to dais of emigrants who are ~
the grave of their ro avoid a residence in the town, as
profesSional men pspeets, it is no less needful to warn 1
skilled labour a • and all who follow any description of ~
There is, no gainst the seductions of a farming life.
~,.
classes to become Mistake thin for persons o_f these '
homy could
Possibly be
farmers in Canada. 1•1
valuelesas. '''
What, it-has taken
isi renderttooeui bark in a pur-
suit '1
where they c yearts tohope leartno,
ain(lval the labourer who .
has
no pretensionasntnooskill. It is a Mistaken idea that
because Canada
Mechanical labour is equally
is a colony mechanical labour is not in
demand; and that . !.
if mechanics emigrate to this country
they must necessarily
turn their attention to agriculture.
sought for as agricultural ;
and the competition among employers has, during the
last year been severely felt in some branches of industry.
d for bricklayers, masons, There is a great demand
classes of mechanics.
Emigrants other
car-
penters, joiners, and several . . .
Emiants of some means, especially if farming be
their pursuit, should not be precipitate in making pur-
chases of land or anything eise. Their success depends
upon precaution. Let them first acquaint themselves
with the country, its various resources and capabilities,
and the modes of cultivation which prevail. Let every
class of emigrants be sober, industrious, and economical,
and success will to a certainty crown their efforts.—
;Toronto Leader. -