The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-28 00:00:00

vious deputation had, in ans rto inquiries of a
like kind, received some time back from Lord
LLAIs.TOYER, then (as Sir BENJAMIN HALL) Mr.
COWPER'S predecessor, the not unwelcome informa-
tion that £38,000 yet remained out of the sum of
£145,000 originally voted by Parliament—£3B,ooo
still (at the time Sir BENJAMIN HALL spoke) in the
hands of the Board of Works, available for the com-
pletion of the embankment. The deputation yester-
day, encouraged by this recollection, put it to the pre-
sent Chief Commissioner of Public Works whether
—seeing that £60,000 might yet complete the de-
sign of this improvement—an additional sum of
£22,000 might not be asked from Parliament to add
to this £38,000 already in hand out of the first vote
of £145,000? What is the reply of the present
Chief Commissioner to the inquiry thus put to him
by Mr. TITE, as the principal spokesman of yes-
terday's deputation ? It is explicit enough, and
sufficiently fraught, too, with disippointment.
It came thus painfully before the deputation—
Mr. COWPER remarks that " if, as Mr. TITE had
stated, the £38,000 remaining unexpended of the
sum voted by Parliament were readily accessible,
there would no doubt be a claim, as had been sug-
gested, to go to Parliament for the revival of the
powers of the act, and to see how far that money
would go, but the fact was that the money was
not available ! " Then followed this agreeable little
explanation—" It was a rule," said Mr. COWPER,
" with the Treasury that when votes of money
passed by the House of Commons were not issued
within three years, they were written off and
taken into the general revenue of the country, and
that was what occurred in this case. This £38,150
was found in March, 1859, to have been unex•
pended and uncalled for for three years, and the
Treasury, in consequence, following the ordinary
rule, wrote it off as so much money saved !" All is
grist that comes to the mill of that insatiable
and voracious functionary the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. And so this £38,150 have gone the
way of all similar waifs and strays of neglected
moneys sucked down into the all-absorbing vortex
of that grand maelstrom of the Treasury ! When
the Chief Commissioner has added that " he should
be glad to render all the assistance in his power
and to urge the views of the deputation in the
right quarter, but he could not hold out any hops
that Parliament would at present be disposed to
vote the necessary funds"—the deputation has
nothing left for it to do, after the utterance of a few
ineffectual words of entreaty and expostulation, than.
[liko the mystical gallipot in the adage—about
whose identity we should like to ask Notes and
Queries] to thank Mr. COWPER " for nothing,"
and to retire bowing from the presence
of the right hon. gentleman. By the
articulation yesterday of the few words we have
here quoted, Mr.. COWPER, it is undeniable,
has effectually put his " spoke " in the wheel of
good fortune (for the time being at least) of the
project of the Battersea and Vauxhall embankment.
The same valid reasons, however, certainly do not
exist in regard to the embankment designed to be
built to the east, and to be actually constructed
out of—the old bridge at Westminster.' Let us look
hopefully for a more favourable decision, at any
rate in regard to this embankment, from the new
Chief Commissioner (whatever his title) of Public
Works, Woods and Forests, Parks and Palaces.

It is with great satisfaction we observe that
the attention of the House of Peers has been called
to the employment of women and children in the
bleaching and dyeing works by no less an autho-
rity than Lord BROUGHAM. That eminent and
venerable peer, whose energetic voice has been so
often raised in the cause of suffering humanity, de-
elared last evening that he had scarcely ever
read anything equal to the disclosures made in
the reports and tracts which have been recently
issued through the indefatigable philanthropy of
Mr. THOMAS I fort,liv. "For hours," said the noble
Lord, "after he had read the particulars contained
in these documents, he had been unable to get the
subject discharged from his mind." Lord GRAN-
vILLE, in reply, promised to make inquiry into the
subject, and we trust, for the honour of our Eng-
lish Parliament, this promise will be kept. The
state of things revealed by these reports is a dis-
grace
~to our national humanity. They reveal a
system of cruelty and oppression the more
intolerable because exercised towards helpless
infancy. In the midst of a free self-govern-
ing nation, which prides itself on the extended bene-
volence which embraces tribes of savages whose
names are scarcely known to us ; on the commercial
enterprise, which has invested trade and barter with
the dignity of a national heritage; which resents
the exercise of undue coercion over even the ex-
pression of opinion or the license of speech ; in the
midst of all this,the health and lives of children, of
tender years, are being sacrificed, slowly, delibe-
rately, and remorselessly, as surely as if they formed
part of the infant sacrifice to JUGGERNAUT, which
our Indian statesmen have striven so hard to re-
press. The following extracts, taken from crowds
of similar statistics, speak for themselves :
" At times, if a sudden order has come, we have not been
in bed mote than 16 or 18 hours in the week (averaging
more than 211 hours of unrest out of the 24 during soven
successive days and nights for girls and boys, some of
them no more than 12 years old)."—Report of the Com-
missioner appointed to inquire how far it may be advisable
to extend the Provisions of the Acts for the better Regu-
lation of Mills and Factories to Bleaching Works, pp.
10, 11, Nos. 81-84.

William Johnson, finisher—" I am twenty-four years of
age. I was eleven when I first went to work. I worked
first for Mr. Fletcher, Leylands, ten years. At my com-
mencement" (that is, when he was a child of eleven) " I
began at twelve o'clock on Sunday night, and worked till
eight on Monday night (20 hours) ; then we started at
six o'clock on Tuesday morning, and worked till 12 at
night (18 hours); and we did that for two or three months
without stopping.
a
* * * I have been at a worse place
than that for long hours since ; at Mr. Whowell's, Tvv o
**rs of
There
ag wee.r_e
a deal
po.f9y:oNuon.g6Bg.irls, one
oßrrot
underlovlcos. *
ten years
[To have a full perception of the severity of this toil, it
should be borne in mind that a very large number of the
workers in these establishments are standing and " work- •
ing hard" (as rapidly as possible) during almost the whole
of these lengthened periods. It is shown in evidence that
sometimes for days in succession the girls and boys have
no opportunity whatever of sitting down (save for their
hastily-snatched meals during the whole of the time spent
at the works.—Reports, passim.]
Ann Simpson (14 years old), Elizabeth Hilton (15),
Sarah Higson (16)—" We came to work last Friday morn-
in., at half-past six" (at Mr. Ridgway Bridson's Bleach-
works, Bolton). "We worked all Friday night till half-
past five on Saturday morning" (twenty-three hours.) "Wo
did not sleep any time in the night, except on Saturday
the
morning at half-past five we laid flown to sleep on
than
two and slept till a little after seven" (less
two hours' sleep—and with the clothes still on—after
twenty-three hours' work) ; " then wo went to breakfast for
half-an-hour, and then came and worked till ten minutes
past eleven."—Bid., p. 2.5, No. 233.
No wonder with such severe and unremitting toil,
tarried on, it must be remembered, in the hot
atmosphere of a crowded factory, no wonder that
" a strong and healthy man" confesses to being
so tired that he has often to sit at his bedside
when he gets up in the morning, with his fingers so
stiff, he can scarcely dress ! After which admission
we can but echo his own question, " If I feel thus
tired, what must
.the young girls and boys feel ?"
The evidence given by the foremen and managers
only too painfully confirms the reports of the
workers.

" James Thomson (Mr. Wallace's Bleaching, Scouring,
and Finishing 'Works for Cotton and Woollens, Burn