The Sun.
London, England, 1833-01-16 00:00:00

species of slavery which of necessity involves the
extreme. of physical. and moral suffering—which
produces infallibly bodily and mental decrepi-
tude—which drags, by a compulsion more co-
gent than the driver's lash, its helpless victims
through a life of vice and torture to a prema-
ture and unhallowed tomb. We feel it to be our
duty to compel our readers to dwell upon the
details of this faithful picture, lest they should
deem it no more than a hideous and frightful
illusion. This is no wanton infliction of un-
necessary or useless pain. The humane and
Christian people of England must be taught to
realize to their own imaginations all the horrors
to which this abominable system gives birth,
as a means of inducing. them to exert the
necessary efforts to insure its speedy and
complete extinction. The children of the poor
of England must be emancipated from the
horrible slavery to which so many of them are
now condemned from the cradle. This is an
object for which it is worth while to incur the
risk of being deemed tedious and importu-
nate ; and it is an object which the interests
of individual cupidity, and the vanity of short-
sighted and callous political science, or of that
concatenation of silly notions, which it is he
fashion to flatter with the name of political
science, will, it is now plain, labour strenuously
and conjointly to impede. We have, however,
no apprehension as to the result ; the final
triumph of humanity and justice is secure; but
yet victory is not to be won without zealous and

persevering exertions, and on our part they shall
not be wanting. Let the factory system be once
thoroughly understood and its working clearly
perceived by the mass of the people of Enlaud,
and the defensive excuses and palliations which
cruel selfishness or cold- blooded theory may at-
tempt to throw around it, will be found a feeble
and ineffectual protection to the gigantic and
abominable enormity. In order to accelerate
the speedy and complete extinction of this
horrible system of oppression and barbarity,
it is desirable that the nation should make

its sentiments known to the Legislature by
means of petitions from every part of the
country. The system, abominable as it is,
has its friends—friends among those who by its
means have become rich, and who being rich arc
powerful—friends scarcely less numerous, and
perhaps still more influential, in those who know
that the theoretic principles with respect to trade
and public wealth, on the practical success of
which they have staked whatever reputation they
possess, will receive a fatal blow whenever this
system of melting the bones and sinews of the
poor, and destroying their health and their
minds, in the production of cheap articles for ex-
portation, shall be finally abolished. The system,
therefore, we may be sure will not fall without
a desperate struggle in its defence, and for this
struggle it is incumbent upon the friends of
humanity to prepare themselves. We hope and
expect that ere long Committees will be formed
in all the principal towns in England, to act in
unison with a Central Committee in the metro-
polis, for the purpose of diffusing information
upon a subject so deeply important to the na-
tional character and welfare, and of bringing
the national feelings and opinions fairly to bear
upon the Legislature. There is one class of
persons to whom we would more especially
address ourselves upon this subject, and it is
a class to whom we do not venture to offer
a suggestion upon such an occasion without
great and undissembled diffidence. We mean
the parochial clergy of the Church of
England. It has been the uniform practice of
this excellent and discreet body to abstain from
direct interference upon subjects of immediate
public importance, preferring, most wisely and
judiciously, that course of general admonition
and instruction by which their hearers are
gradually fitted and disposed to the discharge of
their duties as citizens and men upon every
occasion or emergency. In a country like Eng-
land, where every subject of discussion or of in-
terest assumes more or less a tinge of party
politics, this general abstinence on the part of
the ministers of religion from interference with
practical or secular affairs in the discharge of
their pastoral office is probably the only means
by which they could invariably protect them-
selves from misconstructions injurious to the
usefulness and efficacy of their labours. Such
considerations do not appear to us, how-
ever, to apply to a case like that which we
now humbly but earnestly recommend to the
zealous attention of the clergy of the Church of
England, and in which it is plain to every un-
biassed understanding that humanity and reli-
gion are arrayed on one side, and nothing but
individual selfishness and the foolishness of
theoretic conceit on the other. If there were
no more to recommend the evil we have been
describing to their most strenuous hostility, this
alone would be sufficient, that it is proved be-
yond the possibility of contradiction or dispute
that one of the infallible consequences of the
system is to reduce all the children who are sub-
jected to its influence to an utter incapacity of
receiving moral or religious instruction, or even
of attending at all upon the stated ordinances of
religion.—Morning Post.