The Sun.
London, England, 1833-01-05 00:00:00

mill rear Brachin, about g 0 miles from Dundee, and who
is about 30 years of age. This man does not stand, with
his deformity, above 4 feet 6 inches high ; and bad he
grown to his proper height, I think he would have been
about 5 feet Bor 9. He has been in mills since he was
five years old, and he is reduced to that state, that he
slides about on a stool to do his work ; and though be is
about 30 years of age, be can now do no more than a
girl's work."
The next mill was Strathmartin, distant only
half a mile from the former. Fifteen hours, ex-
clusive of meals, the time. But the overseers
were jealous of their knowing the time :
ti Ater the overlooker found I was possessed of a watch
I had lost the key, and he took the watch and broke it,
and gave it me back, and said I had no use for a watch,
and chastised me for letting the bands know the time of
day."
Here the boys and girls all slept in one apart-
ment, with a small division about four feet high
between them. After staying a yesr and a half
there, he endeavoured to get some other employ-
ment, but was forced to return back to Dun-
truin Mill as overlooker. There the system,
since he had been away from it, was worse :
" At what time of the morning did you have to attend
your labour there ?—I have been called up by the master,
who stood at the door cursing and swearing, at 3 o'clock
in the morning.
" How late in the night were you kept at that work?—
We were never less than till 10 and 11 o'clock at night.

" Were the hands princ pally young ones at that mill
—Yes ; there was a great number of them below 12.
" Were they very poor ?—Yes, very poor ; the poorest
of the poor.

" Where did they come from ?—Some from the poor-
houses in ESinburgh.
" Were they sent young ?—Yes: they came at 6 and 7
years old.
" And they were sent for a stated length of time

Yes.
" For a number of years ?—Yes: I kncliome that
were engaged for three and four years.
" Were those children worked as long as you have been
stating ?—Yes.
" Pi,t exceptions in favour of the yowler children, and
the girls ?—Not in the least.
" Was that excessive working accompanied by excessive
beating ?—Yes, very frequently they were beaten ; chil-
dren wete not able to stand the work ; and, if they had
mile the least fault, they were beaten excessively.
Did you ever hear of any one attempting to escape
from that mill ?—Yes; there were two girls thit made
their escape from the mill through the roof of the house,
and left nearly all their clothes behind them."
No person will have anything to do with any
of the unfortunate wretches so reared, for they
are quite helpless. If the females, when grown
up, are not ugly, they may find relief in prosti-
tution.
The flogging or strapping is continual,
and when it happens to be extreme the overseer
is fined :
" Did you know any individuals brought to trial for
inflicting the extreme punishment you hive described ?—I
heard of one ; there was an overlooker in Mr. Edwards',
mill at West End, Dundee, who was brought before the
Justice for licking a girl, and on being examined before
vie Justice he was fined ; but the master returned the fine
back to the overlooker, and turned away this girl whom
he had struck, and also her 9i-ter and two other sisters
who were connected with her. Mr. Edwards was ques
tinned about it in the Advertiser paper, and he ri-fused
to answer. The only reply he made was, that he could
do anything he liked with his own, though four er five
suffered by that transaction of taking the overseer to jus-
tice for that bad usage."
Thus the overseer is encouraged to violence,
and he is paid for making himself the scape-
goat of the master, who cannot be reached. The
poor children are hardly able to stand from fa-
tigue, and the overseers keep continually strap-
ping them to prevent them from dropping down
a-leep. We shall return more than once to this
interesting subject. The evidence of the emi-
nent medical men examined on the effects of
this system on the population, is well deserving
consideration.—Morning Chronicle.

The Times now seems to rest its objections
against the ballot on two principal grounds.

Ist, that the ballot would be odious to all that
portion of the electors who take pleasure and
pride in openly demonstrating their political pre-

ferences-2d, that it is inconsistent with the
duty which the electors, as a body, owe to the
non-electoral population, for whose benefit alone
they receive the trust, and to whom they ought
to be responsible for the proper discharge of it.
Ist. As to the first objection, we shall merely
remark, that the ballot does not debar any voter
from proclaiming his political preferences, if he
be inclined to do so. However fond a man
may be of publishing his opinions, he may surely
be satisfied' with the power of doing so through-
out every minute of the year, except the single
minute of actual voting. We do not at all
desire to circumscribe liberty of speech on the
part of those who choose to indulge in it. If
they can speak and vote as they please, without
dread of the oppressor's wrong, let them thank
Heaven for their enviable position ; but let
them not raise an outcry, because precautions are
taken to insure the simple liberty of conscien-
tious voting to those who are less favoured by
position than themselves. Can it be seriously

contended, that the invulnerable portion of the
electors will not renounce that transient and
frivolous gratification from which the ballot de-
bars them, when it is to the ballot alone that
the vulnerable portion of the body must owe the
blessing of au unconstrained political conscience ?
The supposition is monstrous : but even if it
were exact in point of fact, we should still con-
tend that the Legislature must submit to the pain
of overruling this most tender sensibility on the
part of the former class, in order to insure to the
latter class a protection, vitally necessary to the
faithful dischage of their trust. 2d. The second
obj,ction above alluded to is so far of weight as
it professes to be grounded on a consideration

of incalculable importance—the working of the
electoral system on the well-being of the more
numerous non-electoral population. If itillguld
for a moment he pretended that the choice of
the electors, taken openly, would be more favour-
able to the interests of the unfranchised majo-
rity than if it were taken secretly, we, for our
parts, should be among the most strenuouospi
s!
sup-
porters of open voting. But how ands the
fact ? It is precisely the poor and p
minded electors, those who have the keenest
sympathy, and the strongest feeling of commu-
nion with the mass of the people—it is precisely
these electors whom open voting condemns to
virtual disfranchisement : for disfranchisement it
really is, when a man is robbed of his conscience
and volition by the threats of a superior. Take
a particular instance :—Under the ballot, there
would be eight hundred independent voters in
the borough in Stamford ; each of them a real
man; each of them having affections and a
judgment of his own ; many of them poor, and
estimating the merits of candidates by the same
standard as the non-qualified poor without.
Under open voting, there is but one real elector
at Stamford : the nominal regiment of 801)
dwindles down into so many umbrae of the
Marquis of Exeter : the voices employed in the
ceremony are many, but the will is only one.
Now, will any one pretend that Members fa-
vourable to the non-electoral population are more

likely to be chosen under the 'dictation of this
Noblemen, that under the free choice of the

Stamford voters themselves ? The reverse of
this is notorious: and. the eise of Stamford af-

Fords an exact sample of the contrast between

open voting and secret voting everywhere else,
Electors (we are told), when they vote openly,
are placed under moral responsibility to the
general mass of non-electors. We deny this in
toto : we contend that the responsibility here
talked of is, in every case, a pure phantom of
the brain. But open voting introduces another
responsibility, which is indeed a most destruc-
tive reality—the responsibility of each voter to
his own separate superior, to his landlord, his
customer, his employer. Here is matter for
alarm—imminent and serious—quite enough to
banish all other considerations, and to render a
voter the passive instrument of those who can
thus molest him. So that, if it were true
(which it is not), that open voting tended
to make the voter in some degree responsible to
the multitude of non-electors, this feeble spark
of responsibility would be of no avail, since the
open voter is at the same time degraded into the de-
pendent slave of some private dictator, and is
cut off from sympathy with the country at large.
This idea of responsibility in electors to the
non-electoral multitude is not only a phantom,
but a most pernicious phantom, diverting the
mind from the real guarantees of a well-ordered
elective systeni. How are the multitude to
enforce responsibility to themselves ? They
mug do so by resolutions of exclusive dealing, or
by hooting, and yelling, and manual violence ; and
all these mischiefs, which the best friends of the
People have been the first to deplore, are now
legalized in effect by the Times, as means neces-
sary for its newly-discovered end—control by
the multitude ! The multitude are either fit or
unfit for the elective franchise. If they are fit,
it is gross injustice not to give them votes at
once; if they are unfit, that is a good reason for
debarring them from that secondary and indirect
control which the Times is now pleased to
extol. We thought we heard it alleged, over
and over again, 14y the panegyrists of the Reform
Bill, that a constituency had been ereated by it
so numerous and extensive as to be identified in
interest with the whole people. Certainly the
Ministers have pretended to do this ; and if they
have not really done it, the sooner the Bill is
recast the better. But, assuming that the Bill is
really such a measure asits authors profess, have
not the constituent body themselves a paramount
interest in choosing good representatives, and is
not this interest the best guarantee which any
electoral system can ever afford ? We affirm
that it is not only the best guarantee, but the
only real guarantee. The only service which
can ever be exacted from a voter is, that he shall
deliver his own genuine conscientious preference
at the poll, whether it coincides or not wi.h the
preferences of others. The only wrong which
he can do, is to deliver a vote not dictated by
genuine and conscientious preference. His duty
conists in conformity to his own conscience, not
to any standard imposed upon from without ;
his responsibility is, and must be, to the moni-
tor within the breast, not to the general public.
A Tory who votes for Sir Charles Forbes, and
a Radical who votes for Mr. Hume, each dis-
charges the electoral duty with equal fidelity. It
is to secure the elector's conscience from being
overmastered by private hopes and fears, applied
from without, that we now call for the ballot.
Let the elector be left at liberty to follow his
own conscience unmolested, whether he be Tory,
Whig, or Radical. Alas there are but few
who can taste of this blessing, while votes are
taken openly.—Morning Chronicle.
It too often happens that those who are most
ready to call for reform in others are the most
slow to apply their principles to their own case.

The same may too often be said of charity, in
the cause of which we frequently hear most
eloquent declaimers at public meetings, but look
in vain for their names in the subsequent lists of
con'ributors. The loudest declaimers against
public abuses have, at all times, been found
among the civic body of the metropolis; nor
are we at all inclined to deny, or undervalue the
fact, that it has been owing, on repeated occa-
sions, to the lead taken by the Corporation of
London that the country has been indebted for
many of those subsequent manifestations of
public spirit which have ended in the happiest
results. Still the scriptural doctrine of " Phy-
sician, cure thyself," has but rarely occurred to
the minds of the most flaming of our civic
patriots, who appear to be rather obnoxious to
the satirical remark of a poet of the last century,
who characterised one of the then Whig party
as a person
" Whose attention, 'tis said, has so long been directed
To the National Debt, that his own are neglected."
A very amusing little volum.. might, we are
persuaded, be made out of the jobbings, the
feastings, and other doings, of the Corporate
body. In this we, of course, include not merely
what passes under the eyes and noses of Gog
and Magog, but the abuses of the various funds,
some of them of enormous amount, confided to
the guardianship of various of the city com-
panies. We are glad to see a spirit arising,
which, if persevered in with energy and temper,
cannot fail to root out existing abuses. The
citizens begin to perceive that the hurried nature
of their annual elections on St. Thomas's Day
does not afford any thing like an adequate oppor-.
tunity to bring about the much-wished-for Re-
form, and have commenced holding ward and
parochial meetings for the purpose. As the
main protector of abuse is concealment, so one

effectual rooter out of it is publicity. Why the
Court of Aldermen should have been so long
allowed to close their doors against those over
hose rights and interests they are the elected
guardians we could never understand. The very
term " Court" implies publicity, except in the

two instances of the Star Chamber and the In-
quisition, to neither of which, we ate convinced,
can it be the wish of the worthy members of
the Court in question to assimilate themselves.
We shall be glad to see the members of the
civic body, more especially the Aldermen, meet-
ing their constituents half-way upon this subject.
The reform which they have so honourably pro-
moted in the State, cannot but in the end reach

public abuses, wherever they exist ; and they
will be the wisest who advance to ~,eet the spirit
of the age, which is become of too subtile,
penetrating, and powerful a nature to be any
longer re,isted.—Morning Herald.
We call upon the friends of humanity to con-
sider attentively the picture presented to them
in the portion of evidence we; have this day se-
lected tom the Report of the Committee on the
•' Bill to regulate the Labour of Children in the
Mills anti Factories in the United Kingio,n."
This is but the commencement of a series of
similar, and some of them even more striking,
delineations which we intend to give from the
same authentic source. Are such abomina-
tions as these, we now demand, to be tole-
rated in a Christian country which boasts of
its religion and philanthropy ? In comparison
with these horrors, all that has ever been
said of the cruelties connected with negro
slavery may be taken for a description merely