The Sun.
London, England, 1832-02-04 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

While the active benevolence of Englishmen has
been exploring distant regions of the earth for ob-
jects of human oppression and misery, to bring con-
solation to the sufferer and deliverance to the captive,
there has existed in the very heart of this country a
cruel and destructive species of bondage, which
blights and withers all humanity exposed to its
noxious influence. The young are its victims—the
unprotected children of the poor are its hopeless
slaves. At a tender age they are taken from the
care of p:trents—from the opportunities of instruc-
tion—from the ordinary recreations of youthful life—
imprisoned in the Bastiles of modern manufactures
—pent up in foul air—worked in cheerless and ex-
hausting drudgery until the powers of nature give
way, and they sink into the grave, or drag on a lin-
gering existence, the prey of bodily infirmities and
moral degradation. This is the system of our fac-
tories—a system created by that selfish spirit of
mammon which makes the misery and debasement
of thousands subservient to the sordid interests of

one—a I;ystem which our political economists view
either with approbation or with cold indifference,
but which enlightened benevolence reprobates as no
common calamity to a civilised land, and which,
we trust, sound legislation will, with as little
delay as possible, effectually and for ever remove.
Thii is no party question—it is one on which all
the friends of humanity, whatever the colours
of their political creeds may be, can and ought
to cooperate. With the strongest feeling pos-
sible, on our part, for the prosperity of manu-
factures, we cannot think that a system of en-
slavement and torture is necessary to their suc-
cess, or that they can prosper the more in the
sight of God or man by means that create large
masses of misery, disease, and immorality, to spread
their unwholesome influence over a great country,
and be the physical and moral defilement of a
Christian land. For his searching inquiries into the
condition of the poor children who are slaves of this
system, and for his earnest exertions to root out its
evils from among us, 3lr. Sadler is entitled to great
praise. Without going at present into the details
of his Bill fur the regulation of factories, we do not
hesitate to say that its principle is of a character no
less enlightened than humane—for that is the wisest
legislation which makes the prosperity of the rich
inseparable from the comfort arid moral welfare of
the poor, and which, giving the employers all rea-
sonable benefit of the industry of the humbler

c►asses, protects them from the oppressive abuses
with which labour is loaded by intemperate cupidity.
Our readers will recollect that Mr. Sadler presented a

petition the other evening, upon this subject, from the
great manufacturing town of Leeds, signed by nearly
10,000 persons, praying for a legal limitation of
the hours of labour of children and adults in facto-

ries, which he supported by an eloquent and im-
pressive appeal, urging the adoption of the prayer
of the petition on every ground of religion, mora-
lity, and sound policy. On that occasion Sir James
Mackintosh supported the petition in a most decided
manner, and emphatically stated that he would not

allow the principles of political economy to be car-
ried so far as to be the means of inflicting torture
upon any class of persons. Sir Edward Sugden
justly argued that nothing would more essentially
operate to produce a good understanding between
the labouring classes in the factories, and their em-
ployers, than the manifestation, on the part of the
upper classes in those districts, of good feeling arid
kindness towards the labouring order of people.
They, as legislators, were certainly bound to pro-
vide for the preservation of the health and the pro,-
perity of those placed in the several laborious walks
of life. iNir. O'Connell observed that the present

was an opportunity wherein sound policy and hu•
manity were legitimately connected, and happily di-
rected to the same object. Mr. Hunt bore witness
to the demoraliz,ng effects produced by the system
upon the youth of both sexes in the great
manufacturing districts. Lord Morpeth stated that
he had been instructed by his constituents to sup-
port the prayer of the petition, and said that the
-Members of the Legislature were called to the per-
formance of this great and humane duty, uot only
by the petitioners, but by their duty as men and
Magistrates. Mr. Croker expressed a hope that
the benevolent views of Mr. Sadler would be ex-
tended to Ireland, adding that it was one of the first
dbties of a good Government to take care of those
peaceable and industrious classes who were too se•
verely occupied in earning their daily bread to have
leisure to take care of themselves. In short, Mem-
bers of every variety and shade of political opinion
upon both sides of the House perfectly agreed on
the necessity of a legislative remedy being speedily
applied to a system so barbarous in its nature—so
unchristian in its principle—so cruel to the poor in
its operation—so prolific of physical and moral evil
in its effects. To this general concurrence with the
object and arguments of the mover of the petition,
there were two exceptions. The precise and
timid Sir Robert Peel expressed his fears of
endeavouring to do substantial good, as he al-
ways does when solid improvement is at-
tempted; and Colonel Torrens, as is his wont,
levelled, without much effect, at the united cause of
reason and humanity the heavy dogmas of political
economy. There is no people that dread disease
more than the English, and yet they allow the most
dangerous receptacles of contagion to exist in the
midst of them—where little children, of eight or ten
years of age, are confined 16 hours out of the 24
without rest or sleep! No people have such severe
laws to punish crime ; and yet they permit a system
to flourish which, by its demoralizing effects, is an
abounding source of crime, and all the vices which
afflict human nature. As to Sir J. Hobhouse 51111,
relative to cotton factories, its provisions were so
inadequate to its object as to render it a failure.
But we trust that now a general measure will be
adopted, which will take away a great evil out of the
}and by giving humane protection to the children of
industry.—Morning Herald.
The administration of justice, as it is dispensed in
the police-offices, has often been a subject of com-
plaint. Why the evil has been permitted to exist
so lona' we are at a loss to conjecture. It certainly
is not because Reform is impracticable ; for if the
evil be the incompetency of Magistrates, the cure
must be the removal of such Magistrates, arid the
appointment of others more competent to till their
places. Neither is it because the evil is not of suffi-
cient importance to deserve the attention of Mi-
pisters ; for what can be more important than that
character and liberty should have something like a
guarantee against wanton or stupid violation in the
early stages of the judicial process—an object which
can only be accomplished by selecting persons duly
qualified to superintend them ? So far, however,
from this course being adopted, all our Administra-
tions Lave persevered in the old system—appointing
Magistrates without regard to knowledge of any kind,
as if the office carried its own qualification along with
it, or as if there were no distinction, so far as police
justice is concerned, between the decisions of a
blockhead and a man of sense. Our Paper of to-
day contains no fewer than two cases which reflect
additional light; if such were required, upon the
wisdom of the Learned Functionaries, to whom we
have been alluding. One of them an indictment in
the Court of King's Bench against Sir It chard Bir-
nie and his coadjutors for the false imprisonment of
Mr. Carmichael Smyth ; the other a rehearing of the
extraordinary fraud made against Messrs. Fordham
and Tatham, on Wednesday last. It, the first case
the defendants—that is, the bench of Magistrates,
were all found guilty. Their conduct, as described
by the witnesses was ridiculous in the extreme. It
is impossible to read the account without laughing;
but the thing becomes more serious when we reflect
that it was in the very act of administering what they
call justice that they committed an offence against
the lavuot which they now stand convicted by the
verdict* a Jury. We have no wish to bear hard upon
men Owed: in jfie'liredicament in which they have
placediberns'elbut our duty to the public compels
Us totrielarethat theignorance—to say no worte:of it,
the ignorance watch (hots, Magistrates have ren-

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